The company was founded by CEO/Founder Dan Novaes. Mark Cuban, who has invested in other projects of Dan's is serving as an adviser, along with Bancor Co-founder Galia Benartzi and CEO of Couchsurfing Daniel Hoffer - making this one of the most experienced teams in the space, with multiple tech startup successes under their belt.
So here's the concept - the app gives users access to a 'universal media search' - when you search for video or audio content you'll be searching the libraries of multiple sites at once. For example, you search for a song then choose if you want to stream the audio from Spotify - or watch the music video from YouTube.
When the user hits play, they're rewarded for ads watched, time streaming, and allowing the app to record personal data. Like all major streaming services, your search and play history creates a user preference profile that will be used to recommend other media and deliver targeted advertising. Since the Current app is actually a gateway to multiple media outlets, they believe they can create the most accurate user recommendation profiles to date.
For those with an iPhone, you can download the Current app in the app store now - Android users get the app later this year.
The app itself, while not yet on the blockchain actually launched last year - and one thing we've learned during the ICO craze is it's better to have a product in place, then add blockchain - than it is to ask for people to invest, then build the product from scratch. Browsing the app I see they already have full functionality to pull media from some of the 3rd party providers like YouTube, Spotify and Soundcloud.
Now this is impressive - there's no ICO for this! They hit their investment hard-cap before the ICO was even scheduled to start, so to keep interest going and the community involved they're airdropping $4 million worth of tokens to the public to kick things off strong - full info on that here.
"We‘ve already had over 250,000 people register for our token sale. Due to this demand, we felt the AirDrop to be the best course of action, as we still had well over a month to the scheduled token-sale date, with thousands of people signing up each day. It was a tough decision, but we feel this is the only fair way to give everyone the ability to participate in a meaningful way — independent of your location or economic background." says co-founder Nick McEvily.
The token "CNCR" (pronounced “currency”) is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain and will function as a multi-purpose utility token, when mined by playing media distribution is split between consumer, creator, curator, and growth pool.
“I only consider ICOs if I can use the token in the application or the network” Mark Cuban told Forbes magazine earlier this month.
Really living up to the phrase 'multi purpose token' - users can choose to use them to cover their streaming services subscription fees, in-app services, or trade them on exchanges.
You can learn more, and apply for their airdropped tokens at https://current.us
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Author: Ross Davis
San Francisco News Desk
