- Web3 music streaming platform Audius reached 7.5 million monthly active users last year.
- CEO Roneil Rumburg says the company doesn’t shout about Web3, and that’s on purpose.
- Audius has more than 250,000 artists and one million songs.
Audius is a crypto company that doesn’t shout about Web3, and CEO Roneil Rumburg says that’s on purpose and EDM artists find fans in a more organic way than artists in other genres, according to Audius co-founder Rumberg.
“We seen growth continue through this market cycle of sorts because the average Audius user is not even aware the crypto is there,” Rumburg told Decrypt at the Mainnet conference.
So, does the bear market not affect Audius, a music streaming service that Rumberg says is for “superfans”
Maybe, or maybe the platform has found a niche that doesn’t feed into crypto hype cycles and gives users something they can’t get anywhere else.
Rumberg says that less than 10% of the people who use Audius have MetaMask installed. And for a Web3 company that has been around for more than two years, user engagement has stayed steady, with anywhere from five to seven and a half million monthly active users in the last year.
Audius is a platform with more than 250,000 artists and one million songs. It’s reasonable to wonder why there’s a crypto part at all if the company doesn’t promote it, but Rumberg says he thinks the tech behind the scenes gives artists and fans a closer connection.
“They’re getting the benefits of decentralisation without having to be super aware of having to use a wallet,” Rumberg said.
Who are the roughly 7 million people who use Audius every month? Data from the company shows that the platform is mostly used by people who like electronic dance music (EDM).
“Forrest (my cofounder) and I were both embedded in the dance community as fans at the time and the artists we reached out to first were in dance,” Rumberg later told Decrypt via email. “Anecdotally, dance producers are more likely than those in other genres to be tech-savvy and willing to try new products.”
If other electronic artists who work in Web3 are any indication, this seems to be the case.
Both Tycho and Dillon Francis told Decrypt in the past that electronic artists are more likely to be open to platforms with crypto or NFT elements because they make music with computers and are more tech-savvy.
Rumberg also thinks that EDM artists find fans in a more organic way than artists in other genres.
Rumberg said, “The dance producer movement is more bottom-up than rock or many other types of pop, which are more top-down and harder for newcomers to get into.”
Hip-hop is the second most popular type of music on Audius. Rumberg also thinks this is because it is both tech-forward and grounded at the same time. (Illmind, a hip hop producer who won a Grammy and made his own membership community based on NFT, is a great example of this.)
Audius might be staying warm during the crypto winter, but its “superfan” approach, which is based on the community, won’t be for everyone. Audius isn’t meant to replace Spotify, so it won’t.
“Audius isn’t trying to compete with Spotify or Apple Music,” Rumberg told Decrypt at Mainnet.
Instead, the new streaming service has made a place for itself where music and Web3 meet.
