Decentralized Music Platform | Crypto Academy / S5W3 | Homework Post for @wahyunahrul

The average music streaming platform takes about 30% of profits gained from streams. This is independent of the other charges, plus record label percentages. At the end of the day the artist is left with very little.
More artist can even get robbed of their music when more influential artist claim to be owners of the song. This makes the situation worse, making music less lucrative to artist and content creators.

Blockchain technology has come to solve the problem of high cost of publishing and making money from the art of music by linking the music/content creators to the consumers directly through a blockchain, thereby saving so much costs, but more making ownership of music genuine via proper recording of owners of the music.

Good day beautiful Steemians, welcome to the steemit crypto academy season 5, I am @hadassah26, and this is my homework for professor @wahyunahrul on Audius - Decentralized Music Platform.

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"1). What do you think about the presence of the Audius platform in the music industry?"

• The average music streaming service charges artists almost a quarter of the earnings gained by artist for streaming their music on their platform.
• Record labels clog the deals they sign to with artists such that earnings from remixes and other tracks retwined from the original songs are siphoned from the artist.
• Generally artist only gain 12% of the total earning gained from their music.

Audius media platform tries to solve these issues with blockchain technology.
Through Audius blockchain technology artist or any audio content creator can upload, monetize and manage how their music is streamed by fans and the general public.
Built on the Ethereum blockchain, the Audius platform has a solid record of every track uploaded, and great documentation of its creators so music cannot be stolen or claimed by others.

From my own perspective, the Audius platform is a great movement in the direction of decentralized music and the elimination of third parties between artists and listeners.

"2). With the governance system used by Audius, do you think that system has made Audius a fair and fully decentralized platform? If not, please provide your personal suggestions for the system that Audius uses to make it more fair and decentralized."

Audius Uses an open and general governance system but with a governance weight based on the amount of $AUDIO token one has staked on the blockchain.
This is a great idea to the growth of Audius platform as it incentives people to stake more on its progress, allowing them to have a say on the activities carried out on the platform.

Although with the weighted vote to $AUDIO token ratio, this may bring about some big sentiment between the rich and the poor.
Giving those who have more money more say on the platform, may forge the platform to be majorly sentimental to the wealthy causing a gap in decision making.
Yes this is still a decentralized system, but one which is weighed by the amount of bucks one has in his pocket.

Giving my own personal suggestion, I think the governance of Audius should be weight by just the amount of users and the majority of suggestions should be weighed by the amount of support each suggestion has based on the amount of users that support it positively.

"3). Explain how to do 2 types of staking on Audius complete with illustrations. (Image Required)"

Staking on Audius is basically putting ones skin in the game, so as to facilitate the growth of the platform via providing both computational power and on-chain resources.
Audius staking is divided into two broad categories:

• Node Operator staking
• Node operator pairing staking

Node Operator Staking
The first category of stakers on the Audius blockchain are given a responsibility of being nodes to the block-chain, therefore providing information storing and processing computing power to the blockchain.
This helps the blockchian to grow in a rather progressive manner ensuring scalability as growth of users continue.
The minimum amount of $AUDIO needed to become a node on the Audius blockchain is 200,000 $AUDIO.
A 7% annual reward is given to stakers on a weekly basis.

Node Operator paring staking
The second category of stakers on the Audius blockchain are those who pair with node operators to stake on the Audius platform.
These set of individuals earn a shared return on investment directly on-chain from staking on the blockchain.
The minimum amount one can stake on the Audius blockchain is 100 $AUDIO. This lets one have just enough skin in the game.

Below I will be carrying out a detailed procedure on how to perform the Audius Staking.

• We open the Audius official website:

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• Now we click on the "explore" icon

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• We now click "Connect to Metamask" and then authorize the connection via our Metamask wallet.

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• On completion of connection with our Metamask, we can now use our Audius wallet account as shown below.

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• To perform client staking, we have go down to operators and we select any one we wish to stake with as shown below.

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• On selecting our chosen Node Operator, we can now click on "Delegate".

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• We can now enter the amount of $AUDIO we wish to delegate and then confirm transaction.

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• We are now redirected to our Metamask for us to sign the transaction, but as we can see we have insufficient funds on our Metamask.

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"4). Show the steps to create an account on Audius. (Screenshot Required)"

• On downloading the Audius app from playstore, I now open to use it.

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• I now Signup entering my email address in the text box provided

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• I can now connect either using my twitter or Instagram, or manually I can now fill in my display name, handle and display picture

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• I now select at least 3 artists to guide the app on my type of music and Genre.

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• My account is now good to Rock

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"5). Explore and explain the features available on the Audius application or website. (Screenshot Required)"

Opening the Audius media website, we can see it is organized to make our media experience smooth.

First we see the "Feed". Here we can see "All posts" designated for our viewing, we can also go to "Original posts" or "Reposts".

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Next we can click on "Trending". Here we can either select from "This Week", "This Month", or "All time". We can also go under "All Genre", or "Electronic", or "Hip-Hop/Rap", etc.

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Next we can click on "Explore", Under explore we can see "Trending Playlists", "UnderGround Trending" and other trending playlists.

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Lastly we can click on "Upload Track". Here as explained in Question 7, we can go through the process of uploading our own tracks.

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"6). Explain in detail how the mechanism of uploading music content on Audius."

Uploading a music on the Audius platform goes through a process which helps in verification, authentication and proper distribution of the music across listeners so the artist can make more from his content at a far more cheaper rate, yet the Audius platform doesn't host, process and distribute these music via its own servers, rather it uses a network built by nodes which carry out these processes. These nodes are categorized into two major functions as explained below.

• Content Node process
• Distribution Node process

Content Node
Content nodes are responsible for the storing, analyzing and delivering of the music content to other nodes, such that the newly uploaded music is on its servers and has been stored and can be very easily accessed.

With the idea of storing the content node operators thereby need more computing space with a minimum hardware space of 200 GB SSD.

Distribution Node
This node which first collects the authenticated data from the Content node, then does the job of distributing the data but in a more strategic manner. Here the Distribution node takes a record of playlist, users and followers who regularly play other tracks of the artist and then uploads the music to those repositories so that the track is widely known and confirmed as to be from the artist.

The Distribution node is the final process in uploading a music via the Audius platform and so needs to be fast in analyzing individuals who play the songs of the artist so as to properly suggest other related songs for a better listening experience on the Audius platform.

The hardware requirement of the Distribution node is 250GB SSD space ROM and a 16GB RAM.

"7). Upload your original music to Audius and show the proof using a block explorer. (Screenshot Required)"

• To upload my first track on the Audius platform, I first Open my dashboard as shown below:

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• Then I click on Upload Track

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• I can now browse and select any track from my media list

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• I select the Track and it is first uploaded to my dashboard for previewing

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• I Preview the track, adding descriptions and artworks for the track.

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• I can now fully upload the track by clicking on "Continue"

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• The track is now fully uploaded on my tracklist and I can now play it and share with my community.

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Conclusion

The Audius platform has made music distribution as easy as a click away.
Muscicians can now make more form their music, following hashtags and trends may also help artists keep their music in the know.

Thanks to professor @wahyunahrul for this great knowledge exposure.