Music-Sharing Startup Audius Gives New Details on Twin Crypto Tokens

Soon after closing a $5.5 million funding round, music-focused blockchain startup Audius is revealing just how its network will operate when it launches in roughly a year.

As previously reported, the firm is creating a decentralized platform aimed at providing artists the ability to take back control of their intellectual property's distribution, while connecting more easily with fans. Now, as revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Audius is taking the next step in the process with the publication of its white paper.

Co-founder Roneil Rumberg told CoinDesk in an email that he believes Audius distinguishes itself from existing platforms by not depending on any centralized infrastructure, adding:

"We strongly believe in the value of a fully transparent, decentralized and community-driven effort to share the world's audio content."

The startup plans to release two tokens: "loud," to be used for conducting transactions, and "audius," which will act as a governance token. Both creators and listeners can use loud tokens to "interact with the protocol," according to the paper.

"[Audius will be] used by service providers to participate in staking protocols and earn proceeds from the minting of loud tokens," it continues. "This separates the mechanism for price-stable value transfer (loud) from the mechanism for value capture and accrual (audius), better serving the needs of users of each token."

Under the proposed scheme, creators who receive loud tokens would be "compensated in proportion to how much value they create." Meanwhile, users who specifically contribute to the protocol itself would receive governance tokens

The startup also intends to ensure that the protocol is accessible to all, the white paper notes, provided users follow the protocol's rules.

Audius intends to maintain a stable price for the loud token algorithmically, and tokens will be created or burned as needed to ensure that there is a consistent supply and demand, according to the document.

In addition to the two tokens, the protocol is underpinned by several components, including a decentralized storage protocol, an upload manager, a payment and revenue sharing protocol, and a "discovery protocol" to help listeners find new music.

"Our architecture includes novel work around how decentralized content discovery can work, including a cryptoeconomic mechanism for enforcing honest behavior of services indexing content. Discovery services index the Audius blockchain and are paid by other network participants to query this dataset," Rumberg explained.

To help govern the platform, the company also intends to release two meta-protocols. The first will establish a community of paid arbitrators tasked with resolving disputes, while the other will allow community members holding audius tokens to propose or vote on improvements to the system.

An alpha version of the platform is expected to go live by early next year, with a full launch slated for the end of 2019.

Mixing desk image via Shutterstock