Roneil Rumburg is a firm believer in the need for censorship-resistant technology. His early interest in crypto and blockchain stemmed from a strong conviction that tech is the key to freedom from a centralized authority. Congruent with these beliefs, Roneil founded decentralized music streaming service Audius to help artists take back control and ownership of their content.
Based on both Ethereum and Solana, Audius has grown from 500,000 monthly listeners in 2020 to over 7 million today. It is currently most popular among EDM musicians, with many embracing its token-based approach to music streaming. Audius uses cryptography to empower musicians to create their own business models. This protects artists from any changes in business arrangements that could affect their cut of the proceeds.
Having grown up in Los Angeles, music is close to Rumberg’s heart. He would often visit EDM clubs to listen to his favorite performers. His intention for building Audius was to challenge the restrictive terms of closed platforms like SoundCloud. Rumberg is a graduate of Stanford University, where he obtained a degree in computer science with a focus on systems. He also previously co-founded Backslash, a peer-to-peer Bitcoin payment company.
In 2021, Audius enjoyed a 14-fold jump in usage, with listeners ballooning from 500,000 a month to over 7 million a month. The number of artists on the platform also increased, tripling to over 200,000. In turn, the music catalog has doubled in size and is now hosting some 600,000 tracks.
As the platform surpassed 3 million active users and geared up NFT integrations, the price of Audius’ native token AUDIO also hit an all-time high, surging by 108%. In March 2021, the altcoin’s trading volume dramatically increased from $3 million to a record-high $55 million.
Yet another big move for Audius in 2021 was partnering with TikTok. Alongside TikTok’s creation of the new TikTok Sounds feature, Audius users were allowed to directly share tracks on the immensely popular social networking app. TikTok subsequently reported that 75% of its users in the United States discovered new artists through its app. 2021 was also the year of Audius’ integration with Solana, allowing users to feature NFTs on their Audius profile from the Solana ecosystem.
Before year end, market conditions for AUDIO were favorable due to $5 million worth of investments from musicians Nas, Katy Perry, The Chainsmokers and others. The amount was raised after a strategic funding round for Audius.
Audius plans to tackle monetization in 2022 in a bid to “put more money and financial tools into artists’ hands.” This move is something that Audius announced was under early development in 2020, during which it outlined its 90-10 monetization model. Audius also launched the Audius Visualizer in late January, which changes based on album art. “The community asked, and we heard you.”
Anticipating licensing issues when it finally joins the platform, EDM band duo The Chainsmokers announced that it plans to upload the music it plays live, which it wouldn’t typically do so on traditional music platforms. Currently, top names in the electronic music industry such as Skrillex and Deadmau5 are already on Audius, and more are expected to join as the platform’s listeners continue to increase.
Rumberg talked about the future of streaming on the Untold Stories podcast by Charlie Shrem, noting that Audius is building tools to help non-crypto native users wanting to get onboarded. As per Rumberg, it’s important to provide different services depending on the user’s level of tech sophistication.
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