$AUDIO Token Surges 200% After DeFi Music Streaming Service Partners With TikTok

Audius, a music streaming platform based on the Ethereum and Solana blockchains, has partnered with popular Chinese video-sharing and social media app TikTok to create TikTok Sounds.

📢 Announcing the Audius TikTok integration! 📢

You can now share your tracks directly from Audius to TikTok!

Follow and tag us in your videos using an Audius track for a chance to win 50 $AUDIO.

Official TikTok → https://t.co/mP0BKOjzRV pic.twitter.com/3ydBQq3GzL

— Audius 🎧 (@audius) August 16, 2021

Audius is the first streaming platform to allow direct sharing to TikTok, a coup for a music site that only recently crossed the five million users threshold.

The decentralised service is driven by the Ethereum-based $AUDIO token, which users can stake in the Audius platform to participate in governance decisions, as well as earn rewards for securing the network. $AUDIO is also given out as rewards for top artists and active users, and token staking unlocks advanced features too, such as displaying NFT collectibles on the site.

Within 24 hours of the announcement, the $AUDIO price spiked over 200 percent (see chart below).

The partnership aims to streamline TikTok’s current music upload and selection process. Audius users can simply upload tracks and share them to TikTok, a process said to take less than a minute.

Roneil Rumburg and Forrest Browning, the platform’s founders, say they followed up on personal contacts at TikTok to facilitate the integration.

We’re proud to be one of the earliest launch partners for TikTok Sounds and to give the artists on Audius a chance to increase their exposure.

Forrest Browning, Audius co-founder

Founded in 2018, Audius is the largest decentralised consumer blockchain application and boasts a roster of over 100,000 music artists. Last month, it announced a partnership with the Solana Creator Fund to attract new artists to its platform.

TikTok Claims 750m of its US Users Find New Artists on the Platform

Like TikTok, Audius does not pay royalties to artists but provides them with a platform to engage with fans and attract new listeners. TikTok, with over 1 billion monthly users, claims that 75 percent of its US users find new artists via TikTok videos.

The partnership with Audius is a surprising move for TikTok given the app’s decision last month to ban cryptocurrency-based promotional content as well as “the promotion of all financial services and products”.

For its part, Audius claims its integration with TikTok is more about the music rather than spreading the word on cryptocurrency or decentralised finance. According to Browning, roughly 95 percent of Audius users “have no idea that blockchain is even involved”.

The TikTok sharing feature went live on August 16 for all Audius users.