Background
As Web3 and NFT universe is expanding, it becomes more and more tedious for the musicians and artists to identify the right platforms to partner with. We are going to investigate the platforms one by one to identify their value proposition and help Web3 musicians to build their path to success by prioritizing their participation in NFT projects.
This time we are looking at Audius.co
Summary
- Awesome features including API, mobile app, art picker, stats
- Must have verified Twitter or IG account
- Little to no support to Web3 musicians
Day 1: First look and register
Brr, just starting on Audius.co gave me shakes. The very first pieces of info you read on the landing page of this platform are so promising that you just want to dig into it. My first destination was obviously music, I landed on Trending to gain the first impression, and I was not disappointed. In fact, I was quite impressed. As this is the 8th platform review already, I can’t help comparing: I see the stats I’m always craving for (# of plays, reposts, likes), and I also see the genre filters. As opposed to Sound.xyz, Trending list starts is defaulted to weekly rather than all time – which is great thinking. The quality of the music I’m listening to is perfect, even the life version. Variety is also different from other Web3 platforms often dominated by Electronic and experimental. I was able to start listening before I registered – as a listener, I like the player UI, and the music I’m offered.
I didn’t plan to spend long here today, but given the excitement about registering and downloading the app, the end of my day is being pushed to later.
The first hiccup – tried to sign up from the Trending page and got this:
Who gives an error message on a Sign Up attempt? Was able to get to the form after reloading though, and wanted to proceed with Metamask, but it was NOT RECOMMENDED. Weird, but ok, I can get why this might turn into a bit of a hustle with user experience, but still, we’re trying to advocate for Web3 here, wallet-first, etc. Then I had trouble connecting my Twitter account, gave up, and filled out the required info manually. Registration was a hustle.
I was offered to upload a track immediately after the registration, but I decided to leave it to the next day, as I had yet to log in from mobile. The app has about 3.5 rating, but downloaded, and logged in successfully, landed on my feed track list (! a recommendation system in place !), and started listening right away: Missy Eliot’s Rain remix by subtoll – pretty neat pick, thanks!
There’s so much more to explore here: playlists, community, tracks, and rewards – so excited about tomorrow!
Day 2: Artist Onboarding
Alright, it looks like Audius has many things to excite Web3 musicians with. But somehow my irritation keeps growing with error messages here and there. Apparently, there is no specific artist onboarding process, and I decided to edit my profile a bit before I start uploading my music. The cool feature was that I could search for an image for my profile and background pics instead of uploading my own. I randomly picked something perfect quite soon…
…And that’s when the waterfall of errors began. After hitting the save button, the % of profile completeness went up, and then it started to drop – my background pic disappeared, then my bio disappeared, then my profile pic, and the % went back to 50 something as it was before I implemented the changes. Long story short, I had to update piece by piece, save, wait, change the next one, save, wait… Needless to say, the randomly picked artwork I chose for my profile and background were gone, and I had to settle with whatever else I found. One ruined experience.
Life goes on, I noticed the “Claim rewards” button at the top left, and it reminded me of Crew3 quests Pianity is leveraging to drive community engagement. Aside from the fact that nothing works! I can’t claim anything, look:
Along the way, I uploaded 3 tracks (hoping to claim the unclaimable $AUDIO), and the process was quite alright, given I learned to be cautious with making too many changes. And that’s how I became an artist on Audius.
Day 3: Community and Support
Do Not Overpromise (DNO). I sent a message to support email – the only channel they have to communicate about troubles. They are not responding.
When the wait lasts too long, I start looking for other channels. Looks like Audius Web3 musicians community is hanging out a lot on Twitter (seen a few links here and there), and Discord. And here’s the funny note in the “help” channel, which doesn’t really go along with my still unreplied emails:
I was lucky to catch somebody in the community to confirm a wild guess for me – they asked if I verified my Twitter or Instagram account. The answer is negative, why? Because not only the handler of both Audius + verification platform has to be identical (I can match that), but your Twitter or IG account must be verified. Showstopper. Gates closed. I’m not famous enough, and that “Claim rewards” icon will keep teasing me until Twitter considers me “notable”. This will happen, but no, on that day I won’t come back to Audius.
Day 4: Business Model
Despite the disappointment, I’m continuing to looking into the business side of Audius. It is still the largest player on the market, but I’m a little confused by the recent drop in the number of backlinks to the platform (just my observation, I won’t swear my life on this data) – it went down so significantly that it’s impossible to attribute it to just a couple of sites going out of business.
Either way, it’s still #1 in popularity if you ask me, judging by organic search, number of followers, and the diversity of music on the platform. When I just joined, I saw that the “Hot&New on Audius” playlist was favorited by default. The count of favs on it is currently 996k, which implies the number of registered user accounts is well over a million. Then I found this dashboard, with a 5.5M figure on the number of unique visitors:
You have to give Audius team that – never seen such a beautiful, detailed, and satisfying way to hype up all kinds of stakeholders – role model. Other platforms should really learn from them.
Transparency is the key! And in this way, Audius reminds me SoundCloud (not for the first time), but what grabbed my attention 12 years ago, when it appeared was the stats! As an artist, I want to be able to see my metrics, and related info – plays, shares, listeners’ geo and demographic data, genre popularity and distribution, etc. etc. etc.
Speaking about $AUDIO token, it’s traded at about $0.25 to $0.29, the historical chart for it does look like it’s been in decline. I’m not a financial advisor, it may go either way from here. The fact that their token is live is a win against many other platforms just preparing for the launch.
Still, wondering what made Audius lead the popularity contest. And I think have the answer – API. I’m not doing the review from a developer’s point of view, but the simple idea of having a music platform so open to collaboration with other projects looks like the king of marketing concepts we discovered so far. Audius has the possibility to ensure payouts to artists for streaming in a much more efficient manner than Spotify or YouTube. Additionally, the platform itself appears to provide ways to tip Web3 artists for their music. Web3 musicians and fans can also get $AUDIO rewards for getting into “top trending” in multiple categories on periodic bases.
I haven’t seen any NFT terminology on Audius so far, so I had to google it, and I think the only way Audius has NFTs integrated is the ability to display your music NFTs in your profile. I’m sure the NFTs in your wallet can be interacted with, but clearly, it’s not the focus of the platform.
Day 5: Web3 Musicians on Audius
As you might have noticed on the dashboard, the artist population is dominated by Electronics and Hip-Hop. However, it seems like the distribution of other genres is catching up.
One thing that was quite fun to notice was the notifications like this:
Really, Skrillex needs to be tipped? Not entirely against the idea, but I’d be surprised to find out that he manages his uploads on Audius himself. Possible, but it’s quite likely he has a marketing agent ensuring his presence on relevant platforms. Unavoidable, but I’d rather tip the undervalued artists, and advertise them. A few notable profiles:
- ill-esha – sci-fi (is that a music genre yet?) electronic
- Temerity, especially “i only wanted to help” – lo-fi hip-hop beats to put on repeat
- Kahtnipp – Some next-level experimental
- Diego The Producer – I love how funky it gets, and even have a feeling I’ve heard “Natural” somewhere before I joined Audius
Day 6: Mint
As we know by now, you don’t mint anything here. You can show off with music NFTs in your wallet, other than that, no minting action. Just not to waste the day, let’s look into some more of what Audius has to offer that differentiates it from other Web3 music platforms.
- Albums – don’t know if it’s good or not – artists these days are better off with just releasing singles according to multiple sources. Not a single Web3 platform actually offered to release albums except Audius.
- Events – there’s plenty: remix competitions, listening parties, social nights, Q&As, etc.
- Desktop application – which essentially looks very much like the website, but it is available, and was running smoothly on my mac. Most platforms would see this as an unnecessary extra feature, and I’d be very curious to see how many installations they actually have.
Day 7: Results
If only the very first promises this platform is making were fulfilled, I’m sure this review would have been much more positive, and it would likely be way longer. But without the basis, it feels like I’m reviewing the house from the outside. Lack of support and every (not so descriptive) error message made me feel unwelcome. Despite gaining 4 followers, I only got some streams at the very end of writing this review, like 10-15 maybe. And let’s compare it to SoundCloud one last time – it’s all up to you spamming others, and playing the social media follow/unfollow games. Nothing bad with the fair market, and obviously if the choice is between uploading to SoundCloud and Audius, I would choose the latter, but I saw other platforms do so much more for their Web3 musicians and community.
That’s not to say it’s completely bad, it’s just not for me. Audius brings a few breakthrough features setting the example for other platforms (like artwork picker, advanced stats, and playlists). If I had to pick one platform to kick butts of SoundCloud and Spotify, it would probably be the one.
