In order to realize our mission of being a decentralized, community-owned music streaming service, we are built on a novel tech stack that includes storage of content on a public blockchain.
Public blockchains are immutable (unable to be changed), community-operated, and fully decentralized, meaning that no single individual / entity (even our company) controls them or can modify them.
This is unprecedented.
In our case, this is a blessing - you can use Audius with full faith that neither we nor anybody else can censor your content or change the platform rules on you without your consent.
Censorship of music is and has been a major problem worldwide.
See the following case studies for reference on how other platforms have censored legitimate content from dissidents in the past:
Li Zhi, a Chinese artist who's pro-democracy songs were deleted from China’s streaming platforms: https://twitter.com/AudiusProject/status/1143987175337316353
14 Times American Companies Self-Censored Or Apologized To Appease Communist Chinahttps://thefederalist.com/2019/10/10/14-times-american-companies-self-censored-or-apologized-to-appease-communist-china/
List of companies bowing to China censorship pressure:https://mashable.com/article/china-censorship-companies-hong-kong-protests-nba/
Censorship of Hip Hop Worldwide from Patriot Act with Hasan Minhajhttps://youtu.be/MEZV6EE8JMA?t=527
Why we think music distribution needs to be decentralized: https://cointelegraph.com/news/how-blockchain-could-decentralize-the-music-industry
Also try googling "NWA censorship."
In our case, using blockchains was a deliberate choice in the tech stack rather than the reason we exist, which is why we focus on marketing the benefits of blockchain (censorship-resistance, community control, etc.) without focusing on the fact that a blockchain is there.
If we’ve done our job right, our company should be able to shut down and have Audius the streaming service continue to live on, with your help as a community member! Blockchains are what make this possible.
You can also learn more about the Audius vision in our whitepaper: http://whitepaper.audius.co