A decentralized streaming service that hosts no music on its own servers but instead relies on far flung, privately operated "nodes" for its content, and that passes takedown requests on to those nodes to work out on their own. What could go wrong? What could go right? Is blockchain startup AUDIUS your dream escape from a universe of corporate-owned, label-partnered, lawyered-up, buttoned-up music services or is it a renegade nightmare lying in wait to repost all the problematic content you've spent months and years getting the other services to take down? Is the SOUNDCLOUD challenger going to make you famous or make you poor? Your answer of course depends on who you are—a DJ, say, who wants to share your killer mixes, or a publisher, say, who controls 35 percent of one of the songs in one of those mixes. It also depends on your audience-building and monetization strategies. And your general feelings about the internet. And whether or not you have a law degree. And, and, and. TECHCRUNCH is all in on Audius as a free, artist-friendly, open-sourced cultural hub. The VERGE is more skeptical of the service, which launched its public beta two weeks ago. "Audius contains infringing material that, if its promotional materials are right, the company cannot remove," the Verge's DANI DEAHL wrote on Wednesday beneath a headline that calls the site "a copyright nightmare." MUSICALLY wonders what happens if neo-Nazi music, banned from other streaming services, starts showing up. In one sense, it seems odd that, 20 years after the launch of the original NAPSTER, playing fast and loose with music content is still being pitched as a forward-thinking business model. In anther sense, fast and loose and sometimes outright illegal has always been an essential piece of the music distribution chain, from bootleg vinyl to underground cassette trading to Napster and LIMEWIRE and GROOVESHARK to mixtapes to YOUTUBE. Some of the players are run out of the business and some, sooner or later, become a legit part of it. All contribute to the culture. And all piss a lot of people off. Audius is certainly a fun site to explore right now, smaller than its streaming competitors but still overloaded with DJ mixes, remixes, hip-hop, pop and other such pleasures. LIDO's 2016 KANYE WEST-remixing LIFE OF PEDER album, which isn't on SPOTIFY but is on SoundCloud, was at the top of the trending page Wednesday; not far below, you might find, for example, pop songwriter MOLLY MOORE's current (and available everywhere) single "I LOVE YOU BUT I DON'T LIKE YOU." Neither they nor any artist (or songwriter or producer) is making a dime yet. But there are plans. Landmines, too... As of this week, you can—for the first time—ask APPLE's SIRI to play music on Spotify. You don't have to say "please" but you do have to say "on Spotify." If Apple was expecting Spotify to say "thank you," it was misguided... Confirmed: RIHANNA turned down this year's SUPER BOWL halftime show out of respect for COLIN KAEPERNICK. "Who gains from that? Not my people," she tells VOGUE. "I just couldn’t be a sellout. I couldn’t be an enabler"... MUFFS drummer ROY MCDONALD remembers KIM SHATTUCK, and Shattuck's bandmates in side project the COOLIES are rereleasing their debut EP in her memory; it will benefit research into ALS, the disease that took her life... GRATEFUL DEAD drummer MICKEY HART remembers ROBERT HUNTER, who was "in a way, writing our story; our biography. If you listen to his words, you can hear our struggles."