I may have some fairly decent sized news coming this Thursday m8. It Could be the catalyst we need. Plus we have an industry focused show with @Fountain @Oscar Merry and @antidotebtc @G.O.L.D @Longy and @Andy_Princz end of April that could move the needle a bit.

Exactly.

La conversación fue genial, pero lo que me hace sonreír es que siguen bajando el precio de los shitcoins y el Bitcoin sigue subiendo, ¡eso es la verdad!

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

I wish I had time to discuss this subject. But it's good that you still believe in this model.

I think there are several factors here: For Artists: "People change when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. " "Network affect" You go where your audience are, not where you'd like them to be. For the audience: Free > Cost Free + adverts > Cost, for most, but not all. Attention is a currency most are used to paying, if you charge money on top of that, then the benefits have to be clear. In the case of YouTube or Spotify, this becomes the removal of adverts. Semi serious, but perhaps artists could do deals with advertisers and write songs about private health insurance or EasyJet and integrate the adverts into the songs 😂

The resistance to V4V adoption might mirror what I’ve seen in other systems—people tolerate inefficiency until the pain of change outweighs inertia. Your point about onboarding is key; friction kills momentum. Reminds me of a piece on Iranian protests—grassroots energy vs. systemic barriers.

The Board

Iranian People vs Iranian Regime: Protests Rise

Explore the growing divide between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime. Discover anti-war protests, Starlink resistance, and diaspora fundrai...

Truth always win even if it hurts

I'm going to travel on a hypothetical journey which will include exploring the world of altcoins and NFTs. If this offends you look away 😂 Graphic artists have NFTs on altchains to enable them to monetise digital art. It doesn't lock it behind a paywall, but it does allow supporters to pay for unique digital copies. I know this went crazy with the whole bored ape thing, but the principle is valid. It would technically be possible to create an audio encoding system that embedded a wallet address which, through a smart contract, would force the transfer of funds in order to execute (play) the contract (music track). Thus, you could place audio tracks behind a decentralised, artist owned, paywall. That contract could be modified by the artist so that they can change the monetary exchange depending on demand, fame etc... So an artist just starting out may wish to allow free play of their tracks, whereas Taylor Swift may up the cost to play a song to $1 (for example). Historically, despite the bad wrap and the potential for abuse, recording labels and managers have been highly incentivised financial guardians of their artists ensuring not only the artist earned money from their work, but the studio and manager earned its share too. Placing that monetary management onto artists in the V4V space may be too much of an ask, encoding it into the music tracks itself may be a way to abstract the artist from the financial management they are now burdened with.

That last bit 🤢

I was always interested in NFT's culture and the digital art space. I always wanted to know why the bored Ape got so damn popular lol.

It did go crazy 😂

For sure , what was it like 2000 it jumped off or like 2005 or so?

I lived through 2000 building data centres, I knew the dot com crash was happening all around me, but it didn't affect our business, just our share price.

Personally I think cryptographically linking art to money cheapens the art. I don’t know how we solve the #v4v dilemma but NFTs ain’t it.

Looking forward to this mate. You're doing a top job getting new artists to take a look at all this stuff, respect!

This post wasn't meant to be a moan or rant but rather to ask people what their thoughts are on this. Shout out to @New Music Nudge Unit and @Phantom Power Music for what they're doing to onboard new artists! 🤘 View quoted note →

He really is

I think NFTs got a bad name. Finally. Enough people got burned off phrases like “web3,” and “blockchain” through the rug pullers.

That won’t wash off easily.

yeah, I think most people believe these platforms are 'free' to use when they're really paying with their data and attention. It has really screwed things up. It's hard to go back to charging for something that people expect to be 'free'

agree

shitcoins and NFTs have also screwed things up badly. V4V is a pure model with no catches or expectations. It is the only reason I feel comfortable promoting this idea. To people that don't fully understand what I'm talking about, they think I'm being scammy somehow. It's sad

Yes, except my 7/12 David Hockney print would argue otherwise.

Buying a vinyl album or CD required money and while CD's were digital, they took effort to copy. Copying an audio file or recording a stream is extremely easy by comparison.

Now that I think about it, rappers have been plugging products for years, shamelessly

Same as people think Bitcoin, a decentralised money that nobody controls scammy, while the government issued, infinitely printable money is legitimate.

True, also a lot of jingle writers make very good money.

There’s nothing quite like a signed copy. NFTs are an interesting concept, but they’re not baseball cards and they’re not signed albums.

I've always wanted to get in the jingle game 😔 I think I'd be good at it. I know so many jingles from childhood still to this day, so feel I have an innate understanding of what makes them work. Hook me up

Interestingly Joe, I think this is where managers and record labels come in. They are shamelessly chasing the money and only the money. You are chasing artistic authenticity. They are incompatible, but perhaps need each other.

The writer of "Jingle Bells" must be pretty well off by now 😂

I have a signed copy of @Joe Martin 's yet to be released album and CD 💜

Public domain, I checked. But I get the joke

Fyi its about a drunken ride through boston

Now THAT is cool. Thats what im saying - signed copies are the top of the food chain, and NFTs are marketed that way, but they fall short because they’re on a screen and the vast majority of people don’t understand why they’re unique. Its like the patina that a coin can get after years of being in circulation.

I kind of agree but there shouldn't really be anything to manage. It should be as abstracted as possible for both artist and listener (with options to later become more self sovereign if they want to learn and do more) IMO the ideal flow would be something like Artist downloads an app like Primal which gives them a non custodial lightning wallet and address balance defaulted in fiat. They can then nostr login to an RSS or nostr music hosting app and start uploading their music under that account. Their music then propagates on RSS and nostr music with their lighting address already baked in. No extra steps needed. They just upload and click 'publish' never see the words RSS or nostr Lets say Fountain or Wavlake let users zap with one click apple pay / google pay (no KYC - don't know if that's possible?) Artists could tell their audience to listen on there and send them a zap (could be displayed in fiat by default) The listener would download the app, search the artist, zap via apple pay and it would go straight to the artist's primal wallet. The biggest hurdle would be a smooth fiat onramp for the listeners and is the hardest piece of the puzzle. Easy to ask for these things. Super hard to build it. But like I said, there's no one going to buy bitcoin just to zap their favorite artist $5. As long as that's the case. The space is stuck where it is

It's f***in true 😱 Boston Bells, Boston Bells Boston all the way Oh what fun it is to ride in a One horse open sleigh

Its how @boston wine got their name

I was equally surprised to learn the lyrics of both are: Bells on Bobtails ring Making spirits bright and not: bells are about to ring making spirits cry I dunno why, one of those childhood misconceptions that stayed with me.

The most expensive NFT sold for $91M I have a copy of it I downloaded for free 😂 Here's my copy if you wish to plagiarise it 😂

If it make you feel smarter i don’t attempt wordle

It does not.

I can't handle this many new facts in one day 😳

Sorry, bored this morning. I should have better things to do

A lot of the people in the music industry that we could have reached with V4V have gotten scammed by Shitcoiners and are no longer susceptible to new ideas at this time. It's a sad truth.

My neighbour from Beckenham, South East London, David Bowie, a person I never met, but my best friends mum used to sell David's mum fruit and veg from her shop. David embraced the early Internet and was instrumental in the adoption of the Internet by the music industry. Perhaps your destiny Joe, is to be the person to drive the re-monetisation of artistic content for the benefit of its creators, removing the middle industries.

That needs more than a "laughing face" emoji: LMFAO 🤣

“I don’t do crypto” is a common response. This is bitcoin’s fault anyway. The original idea was so good, and every scammer on the planet tried to co-opt and copy it to enrich themselves.

Bitcoin rails only ATM, i see that already with mult. currency, Joe, just thinking out loud here on the spur

Thanks. Am currently researching foot rests (or better still, leg rests) for my desk. I can't vibe any longer without proper leg/foot support. I want what that guy had in your video, but I'm not seeing it as an attachment for my chair. Herman Miller makes a $300 leather foot pillow though...and they know a lot about comfort/ergonomics, so ...

when I say fiat denominated, I mean just displayed in their local currency so it feels familiar, but under the hood it's all sats

Yes, you're taking my shitpost waaaay too seriously, but good luck on you. One thought, have you considered a massage chair? They include foot rests, fully recline and massage your back for you as well. There are office chairs that include massage functions, I have one currently, although mine doesn't have a foot rest.

Guilty 😂😂

Why do they think you are being fraudulent? Do you have any theories?

You’re curious mind is inspiring. 😊

Years of pump-and-dump scams and rugpulls and you ask this question.

No, there's just an immediate turn off when I say bitcoin and music. They just equate with scam

V4V is still only a theory. I have yet to see evidence that V4V works in practice over the last 3.5 years. If you look at "value distribution" it looks more like V4P or "Value for Popularity," which in this community seems to manifest as "Value for Appealing-to-Agreeing-With-And-Propagating-The-Message-Of-Those-Who-Have-Power-Money-And-Influence." This is actually not much different than the status quo in the "fiat world," and could even been seen as contradictory to the proposition of V4V. Throughout history, concepts, creations and philosophies of true and lasting value are often contentious and disruptive to the powerful and influential, very, very rarely are they popular, more often than not they are extremely unpopular; at least initially. In the software development side of V4V specifically, i have observed that it is that only the tip of the iceberg is rewarded, while everything that the tip relies on is taken for granted, and the value never really "trickles down." It's not sustainable, because it indirectly incentivizes superficially presenting "value" by leveraging the hard value creation of others. This has the side effect of rationalizing closed-source development so that the actual creators of value can leverage their effort instead of their labor being leveraged by "drive-by influencers" I say this as someone who was critical piece to onboarding initial wave of users in 2022/2023, where basically every client-dev at the time externalized the responsibility to me (until they could handle it internall), has served well over 1 million unique visitors, 150M requests and provided services for 140+ clients, tools and utilities over the last 3.5 years, but yet has seen less cumulative "value" (zaps) than a single photo of a cappuccino published by someone popular in 2023. This is not a complaint, it's an objective observation of statistics that clearly suggest I have provided value, yet the actual data tells me otherwise. I think the solution is to find a way to reward "deep value" where all contributions in the tree of value creation are rewarded, not just the individual or group that puts all the pieces together and has the time and reach to get rewarded for it. Solving this problem sooner rather than later will help cure the inverted incentive structure, and potentially liberate true "V4V." V4V is a wonderful concept, and it's why I was initially attracted to this community, but unfortunately it's an idea that has not come to fruition and also why I have been moving away from it. Note: I intentionally removed my LUD-16 a couple months ago.

Hold on a second, I'm not talking about NFT, I'm talking about V4V. What does one thing have to do with the other? What would make someone think V4V is a scam and confuse it with NFT? Again, I asked Joe. Why do they think you would be deceiving them?

Because in their minds, bitcoin, crypto, web3, NFTs, and scams are all interchangeable. “Value for value” is a meaningless term to them.

It's just a new idea with a lot of nuance and if you try and give an elevator pitch, people just hear the word bitcoin and think 'scam'. The only way for it to click for people is them seeing a zap happen in real time. I think this has to be marketed as 'the easiest way to support your favorite artist' but there's still a lot to build out to make that happen

That could be the productivity boost I need...

In this case, we have a range of information. An education problem, and a platform problem. It's great to receive in satoshi, but that shouldn't be the rule on Nostr. We already have a gap to be filled. The fan wants to pay and receive the product, right? If this is resolved, from the artist's and the audience's point of view, the medium makes no difference whatsoever. Afterwards, one can even ask or advise that they work with BTC, but it shouldn't be mandatory. This is a barrier. In my opinion, an opportunity.

I think btc (lightning) being used under the hood is a must for the openness and interoperability aspect. But I deffo thing default displays can be in fiat. Imagine downloading one of these apps as a listener that has never interacted with bitcoin and seeing a default zap of 1000 sats. They'd be like what the hell, how much is that?! *delete

A lot of fiat companies denominate in fiat while using Bitcoin on the backend. Strike being one of them, although they do show BTC as well, but one of their core markets is allowing foreign workers to send their pay checks back home without the high cost of wire transfer services.

It's more for calculation purposes for newbies. They want to know if they're sending and receiving a dollar, not 1000 sats. If the artists choose to keep the sats or cash out is up to them. We're trying to solve the payment issue for artists. Keep it as simple as possible We're looking at this from a payments perspective of lightning rather than btc as better savings (that's a separate conversation)

This is where stablecoins on Lightning might begin to bridge the gap soon. It’s coming.

While on holiday, say in Europe and you see something for 1 Euro, your mind automatically calculates that back to being around 80p. Bitcoin is just another currency, you either need to convert it or you don't. You say 1,000 Sats is a dollar, I wish, I remember those heady days 😂 But that makes another point. In highly volatile jurisdictions such as the Lebanon, the local currency is not held by its locals due to its high inflation rate. It is converted to and from either the product being bought or a more stable currency such as the USD, often in the form of stablecoins. Even in high inflation or volatile currencies, people find ways to adapt. If you want to see pounds dollars or Sats, the choice is the users. If they choose to see pounds or dollars, they would not expect to experience the volatility of Bitcoin, or see that affect their dollar or pound earnings. A firm like Strike may make a good partner for this kind of wallet or service. I am deliberately not tagging Strike or Jake Mallers, as I think you should make those kind of strategic decisions.

While on holiday, say in Europe and you see something for 1 Euro, your mind automatically calculates that back to being around 80p. Bitcoin is just another currency, you either need to convert it or you don't. You say 1,000 Sats is a dollar, I wish, I remember those heady days 😂 But that makes another point. In highly volatile jurisdictions such as the Lebanon, the local currency is not held by its locals due to its high inflation rate. It is converted to and from either the product being bought or a more stable currency such as the USD, often in the form of stablecoins. Even in high inflation or volatile currencies, people find ways to adapt. If you want to see pounds dollars or Sats, the choice is the users. If they choose to see pounds or dollars, they would not expect to experience the volatility of Bitcoin, or see that affect their dollar or pound earnings. A firm like Strike may make a good partner for this kind of wallet or service. I am deliberately not tagging Strike or Jake Mallers, as I think you should make those kind of strategic decisions.

Yeah, I think the balances should be held in sats (shown in fiat) so the fiat number would go up and down and that would dawn on the artist that they're holding bitcoin which they can cash out to something like strike or hopefully go down the rabbit hole and want to hodl

I think trying to build the idea of V4V and grounding this with Bitcoin as the only option may be a harder journey than allowing artists to choose their own currency. John Nash's game theory applied to Bitcoin will still work here. When fellow artists denominated in Bitcoin start to NGU, other artists will get jealous and start down the Bitcoin route. I think game theory beats preaching when it comes to Bitcoin.

But when you say their own currency, if you mean fiat you have all the same limitations as the traditional system we're trying to get away from and if you mean shitcoins, it's enriching some insiders somewhere and it's not a neutral protocol of value like bitcoin. It can be displayed as fiat' to the end users for easy calculation and recognizability but bitcoin under the hood to keep the openness and permissionless-ness. Think that's a healthy compromise but just my opinion

You're not wrong, but be aware you're fighting two battles simultaneously. My suggestion is to choose one fight and try to win that.

Possibly but I don't think it has to be. I just think it's an optics / branding thing. Like if I said to a new artist 'hey download this app and I can easily send you money for your music'. And they downloaded Primal and set up the wallet. And they saw a dollar land in their wallet when I zapped them. That would freak them out less and leave them with less questions than if it was bitcoin. Then I said, upload your music here with this lightning address and tell your fans they can support you on Fountain with apple pay (also denominated in fiat) they don't even have to know they're using bitcoin or nostr, it all just works.

It sounds like we have accord 👍

Glad this discussion is happening

Was never taken as a moan. Just the dialogue we need to have. Nearly 2000 Artists are here. 30000 songs published. Next we onboard the fans. This was never gonna happen overnight. But 22 quid a month for fxck Spotify or a minute and a half of ads to listen on YouTube is becoming painful. Just a matter of time...... We over here just keep pushing.

V4V Music Statistics

> quirky terms like 'valueforvalue' and 'boosting' Don’t forget “zapping”. Yeah this stuff is horrible, no offense. Like the “pura vida” and 🤙 stuff. When you’re on the outside of it, you just scoff and move on. It doesn’t intrigue you and make you want to try to get in to what is apparently the exclusive club. Economically though, “value 4 value” fails because nobody wants to make a financial decision every 2 seconds. It fills your leisure time with anxiety when you think about the burn rate of your capital lol. Subscriptions won for that reason. Pay once a month and then just have fun for that whole month, not thinking about it. Now could bitcoin and nostr offer a better solution to streaming subscriptions than Spotify? Maybe! Would be interesting to see. I guess @jack probably already is doing that with Tidal?

Why would anyone put their music up on Bandcamp? Don't they know they can make their music available on podcast apps? Don't they know they can make their music available through a fringe blockchain-based social messaging protocol???

*Pushes glasses up* "I checked"

I consider correcting people on the internet as "wins," especially when that person makes me feel dumb by running circles around me with their AI knowledge on a regular basis. In other words, I needed this to balance the scales.

I too was bullied as a child. I understand the satisfaction...

I'm a petty, petty man

You're not supposed to tell people that, you're just supposed to call them fat or ugly when they upset you, or make a bad meme about them or something. (pls not me I can't take it)

Oh, right! Good looking out, lost myself in a moment of weakness. I did a little digging on you, found your prom pic online with a bit of sleuthing (assisted by my OpenClaw, that has many advanced features you can't begin to understand), and can see quickly why YOU got bullied (I never did, obv), dork!

Goteem! 🔥

Lmfao 🤣 🤣

I was taught to respect women okay...