Audius, the largest decentralized music community, discovery platform and marketplace for artists and their fans, announced today that it will enable verified artists on its platform to create their own crypto coin, unlocking functionality that aims to transform the traditional artist fan club. Artists can now create their own Solana-based coin in just minutes, rewarding fans on the Audius platform with custom artist-branded coins. Fans who hold a balance can access benefits from the artist who created the coin, including exclusive music, private Discord channels, app-wide badges and leaderboards, and private messages from artists. The move is seen as a way to deepen the relationship between artists and their most passionate fans, while creating an additional revenue stream for artists on Audius.
The new functionality is underpinned by the 1.0 upgrade of Audius’ protocol. The completely redesigned Open Audio Protocol features a new modern architecture for transaction metadata and media retrieval. It natively supports the widely adopted DDEX standard, used across the music industry, powering integrations with DistroKid, Warner Chappell Music, Downtown Music, and many others. Complementing the launch of Artist Coins, the protocol adds support for creating custom reward pools and claimable coin accounts for fans, so that artists can utilize the same distribution tools $AUDIO has used under the hood to reach 5 million wallets: airdrops, quests, and rewards.
“There have been challenges and missteps in the artist community on how to make Artist Coins work up until now,” said Audius co-founder and CEO Roneil Rumburg. “But we believe our approachable user experience, the rich functionality around Artist Coins that Audius is able to provide, and the market structure of Audius Artist Coins are a winning combination. The market has been missing a holistic experience until today.”
“When we founded Audius in 2018, Artist Coin support was the final item on our roadmap,” continued Rumburg. “Reaching this milestone is not just a significant event in the development of Audius 1.0, this new innovation enables artists to create their own coin in just minutes and give their fans the ability to support them in a wholly unique way.”
About 25 verified Audius artists have been invited to be among the first group to create their own Artist Coins The process, which takes just minutes, creates a unique SPL token that is paired with $AUDIO in on-chain liquidity. With tokenomic goals to emphasize utility and fairness, Artist Coins on Audius create a unique launchpad, setting it apart from many of the successful creator coin tools of 2025. Artists earn 50% of trading fees generated from $AUDIO-based liquidity, and over the course of a five-year unlock period, receive 50% of their coin’s supply. Artist coins can be traded natively in the Audius app and most other Solana trading tools.
The redesign of the Open Audio Protocol enables unlimited media storage and streaming capability that scales with its incentivised, staked $AUDIO validators. More details are available in technical documentation on the newly launched protocol website: openaudio.org.
About Audius
Audius is a global decentralized music community and discovery platform that puts the artist in control. Audius is run by a vibrant, open-source community of artists, music fans and developers from all over the world, which makes it possible for artists to retain control of how their work is distributed and creates new revenue streams for them and other rights holders around the sharing of their music. With millions of unique monthly users, Audius is one of the largest decentralized applications in the world. Sign up today at https://audius.co.
30y passionate guy about music, social media, digital marketing and infographics!
I founded youBEAT in 2012 as manifesto of my passion for electronic music, with the aim of promoting artists and events.
Graduated in Media Languages at UCSC in Milan (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) with a thesis on the revolution of daily life with the streaming in entertainment and information.
Everyday more passionate and keen about data, tools and music insights and their connection in this everyday faster social connected world.
From 2017-2023 A&R, Marketing and International Manager at EGO Music (www.egomusic.net).
In 2024 I founded MAVIL, my artists&labels mgmt and promotion solo company!