Audius, a streaming startup powered by blockchain, has announced a multimillion-dollar investment round funded by a number of superstar artists and top music executives.
Audius, a platform built on a blockchain and has the same technological network as NFT, is a three years old San Francisco company that employs less than 40 crypto-inclined people. The company had officially attracted the interest of some of the music industry’s top stars.
Celebrity investors include Nas, Katy Perry, The Chainsmokers, Jason Derulo, Disclosure, Pusha T, Steve Aoki and Linking Park’s Mike Shinoda.
Top executives within the music industry have also registered their interest in investing in Audius. These top music executives include Martin Bandier, who ran Sony/ATV Music Publishing as its chairman and CEO for 11 years; Guy Oseary, Madonna and U2’s longtime manager, via an investment firm he launched with Ashton Kutcher called Sound Ventures; Michael Kives, founder/CEO of investment firm K5 Global, who also used to be a talent rep for the likes of Perry, Kate Hudson, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; and Hitco Entertainment founder and Bahamian recording studio owner Charles Goldstuck, who previously co-founded J Records with none other than Clive Davis, and helped build it into RCA Records.
Other investors include Electric Feel Ventures’ Austin Rosen, the founder of a management company of the same name, who is also a co-writer of mega hits for stars like Post Malone (“Rockstar,” “Better Now,” “Sunflower,” “Congratulations,” “Wow”), Selena Gomez (“Wolves”), and Jonas Brothers (“Sucker”); Three Six Zero CEO Mark Gillespie, who’s Calvin Harris’ longtime manager; John Josephson, chairman and CEO of SESAC Rights Management; YM&U’s Matt Colon, who co-founded Deckstar, the management company that represents Aoki, Blink-182, Travis Barker solo’s work, and crypto-savvy musicians like RAC and 3lau; and Tom Windish, the live music veteran who, perhaps most notably, sold The Windish Agency to Paradigm in 2017.
On record, the last time a number of industry bigwigs dropped huge amounts of dollars into a streaming competitor, it was for Jay Z’s Tidal.
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