This week, host Alex Kehaya interviews entrepreneurs creating the next wave of the Internet and building a decentralized future on the Index Podcast. The podcast is brought to you by The Graph.
In the second episode, Alex takes a deep dive with Roneil Rumburg, Co-founder and CEO of Audius, a music streaming and sharing platform that puts the power back into the hands of artists.
The company’s mission is to decentralize the music industry and shake up the artist-fan relationship. With over 5 million users, Audius empowers creators to take control of their content and get paid directly by their fans. The top artists on the platform include heavy hitters such as deadmau5, Skrillex, RAC, Alina Baraz, and Kenny Beats.
In this episode, Roneil states that the music industry generates $42 billion a year, with only 12% of that income making it into artists’ pockets. The other 88% goes to the network of distributors, writers' societies, record labels, and various other middlemen. Audius is dedicated to shifting this paradigm.
From the artist’s standpoint, the most significant difference is that they own the relationship with their fan so that it can’t be taken away from them. For example, in cases like Spotify, as an artist, you can only share one time with your fan per year. There’s a prescribed email template that Spotify requires you to use to communicate with your fans and they approve the editorial content.
The Audius platform empowers artists to build relationships with their fans, and they receive all the data generated by engagements. This in-depth analysis includes information such as their most popular tracks, how many streams a song has developed, how many fans follow their music, and how many times a song has been liked.
Another exciting new feature the platform offers is Audius Collectibles, a new way for fans to showcase NFTs they have created or collected directly on their music profile. Audius is uniquely positioned to help artists and fans experience this new world of NFTs.
We believe that a fan on Audius will be worth more than a fan on other platforms like Spotify or iTunes. At a philosophical level, what the company is creating is a free marketplace for content.
Listen to Alex’s full interview with Roneil Rumburg and discover how Web 3.0 will disrupt the music industry and how artists connect with their fans. The Index podcast episode with Roneil Rumburg premieres on June 30th and will be available for download via Apple, Spotify, and other major streaming platforms.
To explore Audius and download music, visit their website at audius.co. Follow us on Twitter to stay updated on the latest Web3 news.
