Very much agree with you on the V4V approach! It’s been extremely hard to scale in practice but we’re heading in the right direction. My company almost did a deal with a group from Chicago that ICO’d in 2017 w a similar concept. Right now there are a few issues at play. First, outside of western Europe and the US, many people don’t even have the income or financial access to contribute as they would like (hence why paid music subscriptions are roughly only 7% of all music streamers in those markets, and it goes as low as 1-2% in places like Indonesia, which is the 4th largest country in the world by population). Second, the major labels have a death grip on much of the music people
still want to hear. This is slowly changing, but the ideal scenario is some
kind of mass exodus of many big artists from the major DSPs to enable a critical mass of users on the burgeoning V4V platforms. As is, toggling across multiple music services is a hindrance for the casual listener, especially if they are only going to one service for like 2 artists or something. In any case, like I said, we’ll get there, though I envision some kind of pareto principle at play - like 20% of fans are responsible for 80% of ‘tips’ or something. I will help how I can! I’ve spent the last many years as co-founder and head of music at TREBEL, a music service you can read about below. Learned a lot in the process. Good luck Joe! Stoked to check out your music this weekend. Unrelated but I saw your pic w Abba and I LOVED it. Big fan. Rutgers Gunnarsson was a special kind of bassist. RIP.
Trebel (music app) - Wikipedia
