INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
“It was SoundCloud’s opportunity to lose and now it’s ours,” says Audius CEO Roneil Rumburg
Plenty of musicians and fans are sick of SoundCloud’s expensive hosting costs, haphazard content takedowns and lagging user experience as
the site’s status withers
Audius wants to be the opposite, and offer a new home for artists where they’ll eventually earn 90% of revenue earned and the startup
itself can’t remove songs.Today Audius launches its music streaming and free hosting service backed by DJs like deadmau5 and Zed’s Dead,
plus $5.5 million in A-list venture capital
Music makers can upload their songs at no cost, and users can browse, follow and get listening recommendations
The catalog is small to start, with just a few hundred artists, but Audius has big plans for how to lure artists choosing between other
SoundCloud alternatives, from Mixcloud to YouTube.The secret sauce is that Audius isn’t just a web and mobile site, it’s an open-source
protocol built on the blockchain, not that users need to be versed in cryptocurrency or do anything special to sign up
Audius doesn’t actually host the music, but decentralizes it across independently operated nodes, which it believes will protect it from
lawsuits and record label pressure
It’s distributing its own crypto tokens to incentivize artists that join early, as well as the node operators, with the insinuation that
these might rise in value if the service grows popular.Audius is completely free for listening at high-quality 320kbps
For now, artists can’t make money, though many still can’t on SoundCloud
But in early 2020, the startup plans to let artists opt into requiring users to occasionally listen to ads or pay a few dollars per month
for an Audius subscription
Ninety percent of revenue will go to the artists and 10% to the node operators, and there are also plans to cut in playlist curators
Audius itself hopes the value of its tokens will rise so it can sell from its stockpile to generate revenue.“Audius’ dedication to
empowering artists through supporting direct relationships with fans, censorship resistance, and fair pay is so important in a time when
artists are being mistreated regularly,” writes dance music superstar deadmau5, aka Joel Zimmerman, who’s on the startup’s advisory
Other artists like Zeds Dead, Mr
Carmack and Rezz have pledged to put some exclusive music on Audius, ranging from finished tracks to rough drafts
They were attracted by the promise of bigger and faster payouts, plus a transparent copyright takedowns process.The biggest challenge for
Audius will be playing catch-up recruiting artists and listeners over a decade after SoundCloud launched and when Spotify already has 108
million paying subscribers from its 232 million users
For now there’s not much special about the user experience, where you can listen to a feed of what you follow or library of saved songs,
or check out trending artists and playlists
At least sign up is easier than most blockchain apps, requiring merely an email address or Twitter sign-in, though crypto kids can use
The lack of native mobile apps won’t help, though.All the artists-first philosophy won’t matter if it never gains traction
But if Audius does grow, it has a savvy approach to preventing unnecessary content takedowns
Rumburg claims an estimated 80% of takedowns on apps like SoundCloud and YouTube are not actually infringing copyright, leading to great
“Audius doesn’t have the ability to deplatform you or censor you,” says Audius co-founder Forrest Browning.Audius co-founders (from
left): Forrest Browning, Roneil RumburgFirst, because it doesn’t host the songs itself, it will just pass copyright-holder complaints on
to the uploaders themselves
Owners can be reassigned the revenue being earned by a song rather than have it taken down
And instead of pulling down a whole DJ set, the rights-holder of a five-minute song in an hour-long mix would get 1/12 of the proceeds
Browning tells me, “A lot of artists are completely fine with their content being remixed or mashed up.”If disputes aren’t resolved,
rights-holders can approach the operators of nodes hosting the music and file a local equivalent of a DMCA takedown request, though the
music might still live on other nodes beyond the law
In that case, rights-holders file a complaint to the Audius arbitration committee made up of users
That group can vote on whether a track legally should be removed or its revenue reattributed, and both plaintiffs and committee members must
put up a small financial stake they’ll lose if their claim is frivolous or they make erroneous decisions.We’ll see if this hands-off
approach to censorship actually flies with the law
If so, it could give artists confidence in joining Audius that they lack elsewhere
Many are frustrated after constantly having to rebuild their audience on different platforms, from Myspace to iTunes to Spotify to
SoundCloud, especially if their tracks are disappearing
One benefit of being open-sourced and decentralized… “Let’s say our company closes up shop in 5 years? Audius and the content will
live on forever, as long as folks continue to operate the nodes,” Rumburg explains.To make sure it stays in business as it stretches its
venture funding from General Catalyst and Lightspeed, Audius has plans for additional tools that could make it and artists money
From being able to crowdfund future albums to selling merchandise or VIP experiences, Audius could become a gateway to spending on
It could have to compete with itself, though, since Audius’ on-demand streaming site is just one client built on its open-source protocol
The founders say they hope other people will build Pandora-style radio clients, music discovery apps and more listening options through its
APIs.Rumburg and Browning met the summer after high school at a camp of Stanford admits
Throughout college, the recent graduates got deeper into dance music subgenres by devouring everything on SoundCloud
But watching their favorite artists get music kicked off that app while their DJ friends struggled to break through the algorithms, Rumburg
says they wondered “how can we remove the platform from this equation?”Music businesses aiming to free art from “the man” so often
But by decentralizing control and funneling money directly to creators, Audius may code its way into music culture.
