Decentralized music platform Audius names Sirius XM/Pandora exec as chief business officer

Quick Take

  • In the newly created position, Ranasinghe will oversee the company’s relationship with the music industry, take a lead role on innovation and develop reporting, analytics and other tools to help make artists, labels and rightsholders successful.

Decentralized music platform Audius named Shamal Ranasinghe as chief business officer.

In the newly created position, Ranasinghe will oversee the company’s relationship with the music industry, take a lead role on innovation and develop reporting, analytics and other tools to help make artists, labels and rightsholders successful.

Ranasinghe, who has been an advisor to the company for several years, was previously an executive at Sirius XM/Pandora where he oversaw product development for artists, labels, rightsholders, managers and live music partners.  

“Shamal built some very sophisticated tools at Pandora that enable artists to leverage the platform to build their fan bases in very powerful ways,” said Roneil Rumburg, co-founder and CEO of Audius.    

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The platform is among those seeking to provide exclusive experiences to users through the use of blockchain-empowered tokens and connections. Sports teams, including Premier League football clubs, have tapped into fan fever with digital assets providing access and experiences only to token-holders.  

Audius allows artists to generate immutable records for their creative works, and also offer premium features for curated engagement that can be unlocked with the native platform token $AUDIO. The platform is owned and operated by users, with voting weight directly correlated to $AUDIO staked for value-added services.

Audius said it currently has seven million unique monthly users. 


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About Author

Christiana is a long-time journalist who has written about markets in the Americas, politicians who stashed cash in their underwear and high-end heels, to name just a few. She previously spent six years at Bloomberg, and her work has appeared in the WSJ, LA Times, Insider, Vogue Business and more. Christiana has a bachelor's degree in English from Pace University and a master's degree in journalism from New York University. She completed a master's degree in media psychology for fun.

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