Share this article
Most Influential 2021: Roneil Rumburg
Audius CEO on growing a Web 3 Spotify to 6.6 million monthly listeners.
By CoinDesk
Updated May 11, 2023, 5:16 p.m. Published Dec 7, 2021, 2:08 p.m.
Make us preferred on Google
Audius, a music streaming platform based on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, grew from having 500,000 monthly listeners at the end of 2020 to nearly 7 million today, CEO Roneil Rumburg says. That’s significant, and a signal that Audius might emerge as a real challenge to centralized services like Spotify – or at least find its place within the music establishment.
The Complete List:CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2021
Rumburg’s app, especially popular among electronic and dance musicians, takes a novel, token-based approach to the economics of music streaming. But it still has to figure out the best way to get cash in artists’ pockets, Rumburg says.
What was your biggest success in 2021?
Audius grew from ~500,000 monthly listeners at the end of 2020 to nearly 7 million today – representing a 14x jump in usage. Artists on the network nearly tripled to over 200,000 while the content catalog doubled in size to more than 600,000 tracks.
Name one big plan for Audius 2022.
Monetization. :)
How is crypto going to change the world by 2030?
I think everyone in the world, whether they know it or not, will interact with a crypto-powered product on a daily basis.
The Complete List:CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2021
More For You
Pudgy Penguins is building a multi-vertical consumer IP platform — combining phygital products, games, NFTs and PENGU to monetize culture at scale.
What to know:
Pudgy Penguins is emerging as one of the strongest NFT-native brands of this cycle, shifting from speculative “digital luxury goods” into a multi-vertical consumer IP platform. Its strategy is to acquire users through mainstream channels first; toys, retail partnerships and viral media, then onboard them into Web3 through games, NFTs and the PENGU token.
The ecosystem now spans phygital products (> $13M retail sales and >1M units sold), games and experiences (Pudgy Party surpassed 500k downloads in two weeks), and a widely distributed token (airdropped to 6M+ wallets). While the market is currently pricing Pudgy at a premium relative to traditional IP peers, sustained success depends on execution across retail expansion, gaming adoption and deeper token utility.
More For You
World token jumps 27% as Sam Altman reportedly eyes a biometric social network to kill off bots
The WLD token surged after Forbes reported that Sam Altman's OpenAI is planning to use Worldcoin to fight bots online.
What to know:
- World’s WLD token jumped sharply on Wednesday after a Forbes report said Sam Altman’s OpenAI is exploring a biometric social network to combat online bots.
- The report said OpenAI has considered using Apple’s Face ID or World’s iris-scanning Orb device to verify human users, though no formal partnership between OpenAI and World has been confirmed.
- World Network, which has raised $135 million and says it has verified millions of people, is pitching its World ID system as a privacy-focused way to prove personhood online even as it faces regulatory scrutiny in countries such as Kenya and the U.K.
Top Stories
