Troubled Clef moving all streamed audio files to Audius

In an effort to support truly decentralized audio storage, and to remove reliance on any centralized streaming services that do not reward creators in any meaningful way, we are moving all of our streaming audio to the decentralized and blockchain based Audius platform. If you don’t know about Audius, you should. This platform uses a decentralized storage model based on IPFS, which stores all of its files across the Internet on hundreds of thousands of participating servers. This removes the power position any one player has (I’m talking about you Spotify), and makes a closer connection between the artist & the audio creations that they produce.

Why is this important?

In 2024, about $0.12 per $1 spent on music makes its way to the artist. The artist invests tens of thousands of hours in their craft, and recording studios invest millions of dollars in providing a safe, powerful and productive place where artists can unveil their creations. And yet we all share something in common….

If the artist doesn’t make any money, they can’t afford a recording studio, let alone pay the rent.

And if the artist has no incentive to create new content, they will either:

• Not create anything, so the listener has little to choose from, or
• Create the easiest, low-hanging fruit content, that the listener will just eventually respond with “There’s no good music out there anymore”

Music is our cultural blood stream. Artists deserve to be able to pay their rent and put food on the table. So why is it that something held as precious to all of us punishes the creators of the thing, and makes the middle-man rich?

This situation is seen in so much of our world today - to the point where the costs of just existing eats up 75% of our waking life so that we push aside our true intentional self in favor of doing whatever the boss at work tells us to do. The counter parties that we empower with our time & our resources can own us if we are not careful.

Audius returns the control to the artist

Audius allows an artist to host their audio content and lets their audience stream it just like they could do on other services like Spotify or Apple Music. But the difference is that the audience can build a direct relationship with the artist, can tip or pay the artist directly using a token that can be cashed out to their native currency, and even allows the artist to put premium content behind a paywall so that they can be paid directly for their work.

The following video explains it better than I can. I hope you spend the 5 minutes to understand why this is so important and support your favorite musician in a way that they actually do benefit from your support.