Trying Audius Out - Music Streaming + Crypto?
If you've been following me for the last couple of years, you'll know that I have shared a few music streaming sites I've come across that aim to tackle some of the music industry's "biggest challenges". Some collapsed, some just faded away and others were way too complicated to get set up with. I believe it was a combination of posts I saw from @acidyo and @gribbles that shed a light one called "Audius" so I thought I'd finally get involved and have a look! Here's my first impressions of the site from the last 24 hours or so.
It Works
As I'm typing this post, I'm listening to a lovely Liquid Drum & Bass mix from a DJ called Millu without any interruption or buffering, pretty smooth experience and it played straight away. You may think that's insignificant but can't tell you the amount of times I've had playback issues elsewhere!
Easy To Use
Anyway, it took me less than a minute to get an account set up last night. There are quick tips to help you get started and you have little tasks to complete your profile, they have a search function which I've used to find liquid drum & bass music (of course!) and uploading a track was easier than Soundcloud actually!
You also don't have to go through any complicated stuff setting up any crypto wallets and what not. In fact, there wasn't really any mention of crypto unless you go looking for it as they seem to have a very different way of doing things - I like it, takes the pressure off, you can just use the site and the rest will take care of itself!
Cryptonomics
There is an $AUDIO token that you earn by using the platform and you can check your balance in your dashboard - there's a tiered system that will unlock benefits depending on how many $AUDIO you have, more information can be found here. I believe there's miners/nodes you can set up to help maintain the chain that pay in $AUDIO but that seems to be the only way to earn AUDIO - I think you can get them on Uniswap as the token is based on the Ethereum network. More information about AUDIO can be found here.
Decentralised
From what I gather, there are various node operators spread across the world that aren't run by Audius themselves but rather by the community. Unlike services like Spotify or Soundcloud, if those companies go under or something happens to their database, it's likely they'll have service outages. By having different node operators around the globe, that won't happen to Audius (in theory). That's my high level understanding of it, not sure about the technicalities but we're aware of how the nodes/witnesses operate around HIVE blockchain to keep it running in the same way here!
Mobile App
They have a mobile app that you can download from Google Play and Apple Store and it's working just as smoothly as the website with push notifications whenever someone follows or reposts your music. No complaints here!
No Comments
There's no way to leave comments or interact on a track or mix like there is with Soundcloud but that may be a feature you can unlock in one of the higher tiers, I'm not too sure at the moment seeing as I'm still within the first 24 hours of exploring! I spoke to someone in their Discord and it's a feature that might be coming later on. No biggie really, if you have music streaming in the background anyway then you probably are happy to let it run!
So a very quick run down of my first 24 hours of using Audius, I think it's pretty decent and heard there's some big names on the platform in the electronic music scene, it's free to use and works pretty smoothly. I think I'll be posting my music there and sharing more often from it along with the usual links I do with you folks but you might as well follow my account on Audius too, here's a link and you can stream whilst you browse HIVE or LEO posts!
Is anyone else using Audius? What has been your experience so far? Let me know in the comments below!
Stream it easy
Nicky
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https://twitter.com/NickyHavey/status/1362831320997638145
It's been doing well in ROI, glad I posted about it after some time after the Binance listing cause on Uniswap it pumped hard the first day. Hopefully someone took the gamble on it and maybe even used it to earn some coins as I didn't really get stuck when I couldn't find anything worthwhile to listen at the time, but maybe things have changed now and I should look back into it!
I'm intrigued as to what all the different levels offer you depending on how many tokens you have. You probably have more experience on the token structure and how staking works etc. I did read that it's possibly to stake for 7%?
Nothing ventured nothing gained, I'll see how it goes over the next few months but if they introduce comments, I might as well ditch "botcloud"... sorry, soundcloud seeing as I'm paying for that particular "pleasure"!
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Hehe anything that can be botted will eventually, people need to figure out ways to incentivize manual things and disincentivize botting, same with curation here on Hive. ;)
This video was interesting regarding spotify too:
Thanks for sharing the video - shed a bit more light on what's going on with Spotify. I am aware of some shady goings on across the industry and see these bots all the time that try to promote millions of plays but it's really rampant! You're right, incentivising manual interaction is where it's at. There'll always be a way to automate and make shortcuts but if you can do it so that manual interaction is not completely disincentivised, that's about as good as you can hope for.
Love the top comment though haha!
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Hahaha, that's a nice comment indeed :)
I don't like to sound negative, but I think the 'hope' you have in incetivicing manual over automatic is something that is not reachable at all, unless we changed our own human culture to want to be fair towards others and not get ourselves tricked in something. That said, the more we progress in the digital era, the more we get tricked. A whole new industry is in creation: the industry of playing the human mind with tricks we don't notice.
To be honest, sometimes I think: We need to step away from our capitalistic system to take some more of the tricks that are played on all of us, away. Money is the evil in all of this. Money prevents industries to become and behave fair. This counts for companies, but also for every single individual on earth, since with the consumer, many of the companies would not have a revenue.
Oh it's definitely more of a hope rather than expectation! We're in a world now where automation and technology are dictating play and the pandemic has also taken away the human interaction so everything is online, no face to face (for better or for worse depends on your own perspective) so it's easier now more than ever to just click a button and move on to the next - turning things that were once valued in to commodities.
Money is just another "technology" that substitutes productivity/time of someone/business with a token that can later be redeemed for future use. Provide a service that people want, get money for it. If you remove money from the equation, would this remove all unfairness in the world? Still have to deal with people at the end of the day :D
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The social control is taken out of the equation with anything that is online. Not that everybody start to disrespect everything and everyone, but it becomes easier to do so since we don't have to face the others from whcih we take in real life. Maybe the future should turn our societies into local ones again. Think of eg online experience restricted to the local physical space. Sure, I understand such idea may not be wanted since it is restrciting users, ie a form of censoring and definately a form of restricting freedom. But that said, I always try to find solutions to problems :) Not saying that the idea of restricting access to online just to the information created in a given physical area is well thought of by myself yet, but certainly an idea I'll explore further to see what I can learn from such idea. At this stage, more a phylosophical question :)
Agree, taking money out of the equation doesn't solve everything. But it may drive a better culture by a larger group of society. I've seen often enough how a few 'scammers', giving the freedom for too long a time, pull those people who are sincere, into the 'scamming' game as well, ie becoming less honest and scincere. I generally believe in the good of people, and I believe that most are good. But many of the good people are pulled into the games as well and end up being not so good people anymore... Therefore we shall think of societies (offline and online) in which the culture is generally good towards eachother and stays generally good over time. I don't believe this is to be achieved with absolute freedom, with a capitalistic system without limits. Not saying we shall remove all the freedom though and not saying we shall kill our capitalisic system as well... but limitless usually trend to bad use for the mentioned (and also some unmentioned) topics :)
I don't think that's a bad idea at all regarding localised societies. It will bring people together again (those that want to anyway) and make it feel like you're not alone, which is a tough mental condition in itself. I'm one for trying things out to see if they work, find it's the best way of making some sort of progress - throw yourself in. Otherwise you can talk about things forever and nothing gets done.
I do wonder what life would be like if money just didn't exist. Like, if everyone had what they needed as basic necessities (food, water, home...), how would the world look then? Could well go back to your localised community idea where people work together to achieve something and people talk rather than tweet haha!
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Agree!
When we are a bit lucky, we will be able to experience this in a few decades. I truly believe AI will reach Singularity sooner than later. In the post-Singularity era, any taks will be handled by AI, giving the people 100% freedom over their own time. Everybody need to get some income of some sort to get to the basic necesities. We need to arrange that before AI took all our jobs. A major transformation we need to go through. But that's another topic :) But yea, as I mentioned, when we live for another 3 to 4 decades on planet earth, I'm convinced we'll be ina situation we don't have to work, we need to deal with live without any obligations towards making money, we need to be able to give purpose to our lives with all the freedom we got by the 'system'. Very very interesting times ahead of us!
Interesting video giving some insights into Spotify. A bit of a shame though this video is not giving proofs but at most circumstantial evidence. The viewer has to really research all the claims made before we (the viewer) shall decide to believe or not to believe the sincerity or the shady sides of Spotify.
As you pointed out, bots versus human shall be distinguishable. But to make an industry fair, like the music industry, also popularity versus not popularity shall be addressed. Something that is popular doesn't have to be good at all. It's the human who goes the easy route, reads and votes or listens to the top in the charts. Same at HIVE. Good authors posting consistently good articles may continuously stay undervalued post after post after post, whilst popular users get 5 to 10 to 20 times more vote value on their work whilst their work is consistently under par.
In the digital space, scamming in the music industry is done differently than in the old pre-digital age. But even in the pre-digital space, a lot of tricks were used to make money. Think of all the made bands where artists were selected for a concept invented by the production house and pushed to the top of the charts by the production house. Many one days flies where created. Generally no quality in the work, but business play at full swing. To get the mass to listen (and buy) the music, it was just a game of getting the song on popular radio stations every single hour. Some pay good money for that, others use their network and relations.
In the end, I believe musicians have the start thinking differently about how they make their money. I believe, earning money is to be done through gigging, like this was always the case until someone invented the vinyl, the first-ever recording device. Suddenly, the locality of music turned into a global play. Create once and sell millions of times. How unfair is that? One can spend as much time creating some song or album to prepare a gig, but suddenly this can be sold multiple times over a single time performing in some venue.
Any product that is created once and can be sold unlimited times, results in an unfair business and industry. That fact can never be changed in my honest opinion.
Regarding Spotify. They may add some functions like 2FA to their service. This may lead to less hacking... (I say may: since hackers always find new ways to hack), but what do music fans want? They want the simplicity of the use of service. One-click to get to whatever they want. I for one, a frequent Spotify user, for sure don't want to 2FA every time I open my Spotify app. When they would introduce 2FA and I have to 2FA all the time, I go to TIDAL. When they do the same, I go to some other service. Spotify knows this. So why would they become the one to introduce it while their subscribers will run to another service while doing so?
You pointed out THE biggest problem with music services. It's not easy to get people to use a (new) service when the music itself is not in the interest of the music fan, not enough variation, not enough quality and all, not enough music. For some reason, I don't understand crypto-based music services. They all start with an empty database. Why not take the content from somewhere else? Make a deal with Spotify, allow Soundcloud to play in the app as well, add YT if need be. I'll likely gonna use Soundcloud and Spotify for a long time to come :)
I'm guessing they don't wanna strike deals with competitors. :p
I guess, but that is a very non-business approach wrt to service itself.
That said, In crypto space, the business approach may be in the large percentage of tokens the founders keep in their pocket while using business tactics to pump the coin and then monetise. That is a business approach, but not one that will make a successful service or is honest to the industry they belong to.
I really don't like the comment omission. Artists need more feedback than just 'likes'.
I asked in their Discord yesterday and a few others agreed and put in a feature request so hopefully that will happen this year!
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Supasweeet
Hehe yeah man! Even if they don't, it seems they have embedded the player on twitter when you share it so people can listen and leave comments there. Still early days though so!
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I like Audius - but there is a dichotomy within it.
It does what it says on the tin, but then it doesn't.
As you state - the streaming side just works. Out of all the nascent cryptostreamers, this is by far the most polished. And key things like being able to play an Audius song from the twitter feed is bob on. these guys know what they are doing on that front (it's not perfect, but then what s/w is?)
However, despite the cryptocurrency base, there's no clear policy on how you earn currency from streaming (yet). There was one airdrop based on initial usage, but no indiction if that'll happen again. That airdrop put $AUDIO in folks hands, so made it real and started movement of the coin. And their plans are cool - but (as usual) no real indication of when thing will develop.
Folk can set up nodes, and others can stake in and across them. I looked at that (as it's the only way to get more $AUDIO right now), but sky-high ETH Gas prices at the time put me off. I may look again.
It's interesting, because it's almost the polar opposite of Emanate (my other favourite cryptostreamer). MN8 has a functioning reward model - you do get paid for streams. But the UI is -er- not friendly. Despite the earning potential, it's not somewhere I feel comfortable encouraging listeners to go to, because I think it'll be judged harshly in comparison to mainstream apps and newcomers like Audius. (But once they sort that UI out and add a few more features - away we go!!)
There are other players out there but - for me - it's all about Audius (dead easy to use, promise of earning in the future) and Emanate (earning happening right now, promise of ease of use in the future) 😉
But either way - with a bit of luck and a following wind, the future looks rosy.
Even the most established companies have imperfect software so we can expect to have a few teething problems but out of all the ones I've used (and have used many), Audius has trumped the usability/aesthetics side by far at the moment!
I did read that they only launched $AUDIO in December and so it's still in its infancy on how the rewards model will work with the token but from the operations side of things with it being decentralised, sounds like that's in pretty good shape as well. Gas fees right now are ridiculous though! Jeez, you'd probably lose out from moving your $AUDIO in between different wallets!
What we really need is "Audiate" from what you're saying :D
You know me, crypto bull! I think we're just getting started with it all and there'll be a real explosion of applications and development as top talent comes to the space. Hopefully they'll stay in the bear market too!
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Im on there i can see them growing more and more i understand why they havent done distribution good things take time
Yeah I agree, the focus then moves away from the usability of the platform and into how you can earn the token so I'm fine with it being focused on functionality first with the crypto aspect running in the background. This is still early days and we're in the exploration/development stage of the industry. It will be a different landscape in 4 years time!
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Exactly only a matter of time
I looked into Audius a month or so ago. Got myself signed up and all. Initially, I thought they integrated other music databases into the service as well, like Spotify. But quickly I found this was not the case. I must say: I stopped investigating further since most of the time these crypto music services are not built for the music fan, but just for the music creators. Maybe I shall give it another try, to discover its music fan features. But in the end, as a music fan, I usually am not interested in services with small databases of music. I guess I'm too lazy to switch services all the time when I want to listen to some specific artists, set recording, or album :)
I believe I notice one of the bigger electronic artists having a profile. To be honest, I remember my first thought: Is this for real? Or is this a scam account? I know, not nice to think negatively from the second one. But we all know, when not being a sceptic in crypto, one can be fooled easily.
I know what you mean about being these crypto platforms being for the producers and not the fans. I think out of all the crypto music sites I've tried, Audius is probably the best on usability and for the fans - heck, they have a functioning search bar! Happy days! The trouble with these new services (where offering content is key to its success) is that they have to start with an empty catalogue. They'd need licences to have music from Soundcloud/Spotify and port it over, negotiating with labels, probably have their own types of contracts... not really sure the legalities of it all with regard to copyrights too. It's why a lot of the T & C of uploading music is that it has to be new and unreleased music.
It sounds like you've been in crypto too long but it's given you a good education on what to trust :D
There was an interesting video in RealVision where a bigger artist spoke about creating his own token and distributing out to his fans as a membership style token which wasn't down to a specific platform but rather being a part of the artist's community. If a platform shut down, didn't matter, they all had a token so they could rejoin at another platform if needed. Was quite a different take on things.
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When making deals with eg Spotify to get content, for sure the chain needs to be cloased as well. Ie the deals Spotify has with labels shall include resell of content to other services. But I do believe, for any crypto project to become cool enough to be ableto comete with the much better services out tehre (for the music fan), they can't just hope there database will become full enought. In the past I had Spotify and TIDAL subscriptions since the albums of some of my favourite artists where partically on both, but not overlapping. When these bands (labels or whomever) decided to puth everything on Spotify, I cancelled my TIDAL subscription. In video streaming we now see a lot of content houses to launch there own, competing with the former monopolist Netflix. Everybody thinks they want to earn the money direct, instead of through partner services. But the consumer will not like this. In the end we will so a consolidation of these services again :) Unless the content owners makes is really easy for all services to offer their content without locked in and exclusive contracts from the service owners.
And yeah... Maybe I'm too long in crypto space already hahahaha
The artists (and extrapolating: brand) tokens is a really nice idea. Not sure how this is gonna work. Need to think this through. One thought already. The content may need to be stored outside of any music service, 100% under control by the content owner. Music services shall be used as a UI only, not storing the music in their own database. Maybe not even storing meta data in their own database. Just a UI. This will require some law making, because in a free market such model will not be developed and made successful.
Interesting to hear your perspective - are you a music producer yourself? I think if you are a fan enough of someone's work then you will follow them regardless of which platform they are on. There's no doubt Spotify has the biggest library of music and I do publish my music there, if nothing else to say "I'm on Spotify"! That tends to have a bit more gravitas!
However, I've adapted in to the crypto life and to be honest, have found it a lot more enjoyable and it's made me diversify more than just being a "here's a track, feel free to listen". I'm thinking of ways that I can perhaps make some tokenised community of my own but not really sure the best way about it and whether it's worth the hassle for someone who just feels like he does this as a hobby rather than a profession! There's nothing to stop a music producer having their own website and uploading their music to it with exclusive access to those who have x amount of a token. You'd just need a powerful enough server that can give you enough bandwidth to allow people to stream it... but that's EXPENSIVE! So maybe private links from Soundcloud might be a better option. There's a lot of ideas going on, something hasn't quite stuck yet but it's in there... somewhere haha
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No, not at all. Am just a big big music fan and am quite well connected in the techno side of this industry. Close friends in the business, from agency to producers and DJs. Over the last 2 to 3 decades experiences a lot, from both sides, the fan and the professional side. I'm a kinda insider while I'm in fact not a real insider 🙃 Discussed many topics with my friends. Seen there successes but also problems in the industry. At times, tried to boost positive vibes with them when things changed for the bad. But changes are inevitable. Better to be prepared; Change when things happens; Try to work with the changes; Change course when needed. Anyway, music and the industry as such has a special place in my heart 🙃
True. Discoverablity is the issue though. I know a great guy, techno and electro producer, DJ and live act guy having quite a lot of success over the last 3 decades, who did this. He hated the system and didn't want to work with labels as so many others do. But, even though this guy had and still has a very established name in the Techno scene (co-artists and fans), selling music from his own website was mightly difficult. Most people, including fans, use other platforms to discover music. Recently he got himself involved in a online technoclub. Every other weekend, a weekend full of performances (all online), a kinda club experience with multiple rooms running at the same time. For a few Euro (5 I think) one can attend the weekend and jump from room to room. Not sure how this is going in terms paying audience, but I do like the approach, the attempt to get something going while club/festival gigging is not possible.
Ideas are flowing around in my mind as well. I have a vague idea what would be great, but need to troubleshoot it, ie make sure the idea is possible in real life and shape the details. The concept includes: msuic stored someweher with 100% control over who is allowed to access it. A standardised API to this store used across the world, ie all music will eventually be accessible through the same API. UIs for the music fans which offers a meta data database of all music, provided like a library, no top x lists or something. When showing some: "you may like to listen to this or that", the music selection shall be 100% random. No favouritism in any way. All software somehow needs to be open source, I think. But now we are coming to the details that I have to think through. In the end, software can be open source, but someone spend time and effort creating it, so that person and team needs some income for that. Also any API, software and all requires maintenance. Also that requires some form of compensation. Anyway, when I idea becomes more clear to me, I'll for sure will write a post about it at HIVE 🎶
It sounds like it from your extensive experience and knowledge you share in the music community here on HIVE. Music has a special place in anyone's heart, food for the soul, think we'd be lost without it. I'm glad to have some kind of ability to make music, it's a great creative outlet but never really considered myself as more than a hobbyist looking to get things to pay for themselves and bring my best to whatever I try.
Yeah, unless you have a big budget to pay for advertising then more likely than not, only your absolute hardcore fans will follow you to your site. I like the idea of having online events, it's about as good as you can get in the current climate. Blast the speakers, turn the lights down, livestream on the big screen and away you go!
I'd like to see what you eventually come up with - let me know!
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The music industry is very fragmented. Some big players, but many many many small players, in every way. Crypto based or not, to be discovered as a musician requires all sort of business tactics, which includes advertisement. For gigging, this requires a network. Promoters at an event have their own views on which artists to book but get influenced by those artists bookers they work with, or the artists themselves. Package deals are more common than exceptions (eg book artists xyz and you get artists abc as well, or you book xyz for this event, and then you book abc for that event in one deal). But even when releasing music: Well connected labels can add value to the artists, but not all do, and not for all artists... all depends on what they earn from it, but also what the personal relations are with such label. In any way, the music industry is a peoples industry and networking is key to get inside. I think this will never change. Even with databases and services like Viberate is working on, this will not change much. I've seen too often artists being booked that weren't that good at all, while artists creating quality music never got the chance. Former maybe friends of the event owner, the later may not be.
Much appreciated! I always like it when people get involved in one or the other way. To get paid for the work, that is the difficult side of things in the music industry.
When electronic music was still more or less in the underground, everybody involved because of their passion only, the little money that was earned more or less distributed evenly over the organisrs and artists; This space was beautiful and full of small events. Today, electronic music became a business with all the negative effects that comes with it. The love and passion is gone (so it seems); Business (and with that money) is prime focus for many. The smaller events suffer, since they dont have enough budgets to compete. But hey, now its mass market, and mass market will not go the extra mile for some not well known artist. The good side of electonic music becoming a business, is that it became large industry offering more changes to those who want to be professional to earn enough moey to live from it. This was different not too long ago, like in the 90s. Most professional artists needed a job to able to survive :)