Crypto Music Streaming Platform Allows Users Sending Token to Support Artists

Crypto music streaming platform Audius has developed a new feature that allows users to send the platform’s governance tokens to their favourite creators.

The Audius protocol provides a blockchain-based alternative to SoundCloud to help artists publish and monetize their work and distribute it directly to fans.

This consists of a first-party app for interacting with the protocol and a reference implementation of the underlying protocol as specified in the whitepaper

With 7 million users and 250,000 artists, the platform, which is currently valued at more than $1 billion, allows its fans to support their favourite artists in a tokenized form, express their support through the Audius platform’s governance token audio or connect to an external crypto wallet.

The company plans to add ways to tip in fiat currency by credit card in the coming months,

Forrest Browning, co-founder of Audius, said, “We kind of see it as laying out the breadcrumbs to help our mainstream, Web2 audience start to understand how to tip and how to support their favourite artists and a Web3 ecosystem.”

He added that the platform doesn’t need to attract all the fan base from various platforms but mainly tries to attract the 10 most engaged fans.

Last August, The global video streaming platform TikTok and the encrypted music streaming platform Audius developed a new feature called “TikTok Sounds” to support users to share sounds to the TikTok platform through Audius.

In two funding rounds, Audius has raised a total of $8.6 million. The Solana Foundation has launched a $5 million product in conjunction with music streaming service Audius and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace Metaplex to attract influencers to create their artwork on Web 3.

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Audius Launches NFT Embed Tool for Twitter, Discord

Key Takeaways

  • Audius has launched a feature to let users embed their NFTs on Twitter and Discord.
  • Users must connect their Web3 wallet to the app to get access to an embeddable video gallery of their NFTs.
  • Besides Audius, several Web2 companies have started to explore NFTs as the technology has gained popularity in recent months.




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The feature aims to usher in mass NFT adoption by making unique digital assets more discoverable. 

Audius Unveils NFT Preview Feature 

Audius just took a big step toward bringing NFTs further into the mainstream. 

The Web3 app, which primarily serves as a decentralized music platform, has launched a new feature that lets users preview their NFTs on websites like Twitter and Discord. The tool supports tokens based on Ethereum and Solana, the two biggest NFT hubs. 


Users must connect a Web3 wallet such as MetaMask or Phantom to view their NFTs via the Audius platform. From there, they can use the tool to share a video gallery of their collection on social media, blog, or other types of websites. Connecting to a crypto wallet lets users show that they are the verifiable owner of their NFTs. The tool can support NFTs of various forms, including digital art, music, or other types of content. 

Audius was among the earliest crypto music projects and has enjoyed a rapid rise as the technology has grown in popularity in 2021. It jumped to over seven million users and has attracted the interest of superstars like Deadmau5, Katy Perry, and Nas. In August, it partnered with TikTok to launch a feature that lets artists upload their music to TikTok videos. 

Audius is aiming to use blockchain technology to democratize the music industry. It runs a streaming platform similar to Spotify, where artists can monetize their music via the native AUDIO token. It’s also slowly begun to move into the NFT space in recent months, allowing Audius users to connect their Ethereum and Solana NFTs to their profiles. 



Several major applications have started to follow Web3 native projects like Audius in adopting NFT technology this year. Twitter has made various moves to embrace NFTs, from giving away its own collection to teasing a forthcoming NFT authentication feature. The social media behemoth’s CEO, Jack Dorsey, also sold his first tweet as an NFT on Ethereum for $2.9 million in March despite declaring he has no interest in the second-ranked blockchain (Dorsey is known for his support of Bitcoin, but he’s less keen on other cryptocurrencies). 

Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, announced that Facebook would support NFTs when he shared the news of his company’s rebrand to Meta last month. Discord’s CEO Jason Citron also hinted that his company may begin natively supporting NFTs by integrating Ethereum earlier this month, but he appeared to drop the plans after a fierce backlash from the Discord community over the purported environmental impact of the technology. Whether or not the critics who slammed Discord’s plans will feel the same way about the new Audius feature remains to be seen. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies. 

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Solana extends rally with another new high — Why is SOL price up by 70% in one week?

Solana (SOL) started Sep. 3 at a new record high as investors continued to bet positively on its success in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and nonfungible tokens (NFT) sector.

The SOL/USD exchange rate reached $146.28 for the first time in history, following a circa 35% month-to-date rally. The huge upside move lifted the pair’s returns for the year above 7,500%, taking Solana’s market capitalization over $41 billion to make it the seventh most valuable project in the cryptocurrency space.

Solana’s run-up to record highs also brought overvaluation risks in focus, with a classic momentum indicator, the relative strength index (RSI), returning an overbought reading for the cryptocurrency. Above 70, the RSI suggested that SOL/USD could undergo a sell-off in the coming sessions, and that opening a long position on the pair could prove risky.

SOL/USD daily chart featuring RSI. Source: TradingView.com

But analysts noted that it is hard to call the Solana top just yet. Independent market analyst, known by the pseudonym The Crypto Dog, advised speculators to just let Solana ride and see where it goes with its current strength.

Yuri Mazur, head of data analytics at cryptocurrency exchange CEX.IO, anticipated that SOL/USD rates would cross above $150 in the coming sessions. But he too noted that the pair had entered a “price discovery” stage, and its upcoming bias relies on how well Solana emerges in the DeFi and the NFT space.

“The price of Solana (SOL) is on the uptrend as the blockchain is currently showcasing its potentials in serving as a viable alternative hub for all things Decentralized Finance and Nonfungible Tokens,” Mazur said via email.

“The growth of Solana to $146.28 is steered positively by the increasing demand for the tokens for use in minting thousands of NFTs being launched on the Solana blockchain.”

On most NFT and DeFi platforms, users pay for the transaction costs required to process and validate transactions on the blockchain. The so-called gas fees changes as per the network. Ethereum hosts most NFT and DeFi projects via smart contracts supporting its native token Ether (ETH), though this is also why the network suffers from excessive fee issues.

Yuri said investors now consider Solana a potential, long-term rival to Ethereum, especially when providing lower gas fees and higher scalability. He cited Audius, a blockchain-enabled music stream platform that integrated Solana to support its NFT project.

“Solana is still proving itself to be a resilient and a better alternative to Ethereum,” the analyst explained.

“It has a long way to go in terms of becoming a major DeFi and NFT infrastructure […] However, to sustain its growth, better upgrades and features must be unveiled to beat competition from other blockchains, including Cardano and Ethereum.”

Mysterious event revealed as hackathon

More bullish backstops for Solana appeared following its global hackathon launch, dubbed as Ignition, on Aug. 31, which will run until Oct. 8. The contest attempts to draw talents and ideas to the Solana public blockchain to drive growth and innovation.

Related: SOL burn? Solana price hits $100 for the first time after mysterious ‘Ignition’ event revealed

Ignition will distribute over $5 million worth of rewards and seed funding, including prizes from event sponsors like Microsoft, Jump Capital, and Standard Chartered. Mango Markets, the leading Solana-based decentralized exchange and the winner of one of the recent hackathons, will also add $30,000 to the prize reserves.

Speculators earlier misidentified Ignition as a SOL burning event, which helped sending its prices above $100 for the first time in history on Aug. 30.

The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph.com. Every investment and trading move involves risk, you should conduct your own research when making a decision.