In answer to this:

I’m so glad someone said this. Because this sums up how musicians coming here see it at first. The state of this free, open, sound music space is a bit in disarray. Mostly because we’re still building it and we need more people to make a bigger “we.” I’d prefer that “we” be made up of musicians.

The musicians are here, like primal.net/p/nprofile1qqsd9uhap32m3j2a6v6hgxrvrweclah78cactcvzxz7dcfpxyu50m3sz6pldp, but he seems to have gotten busy. Happens to everyone, especially with the expectations on musicians to post everywhere and be part of all the things in order to be visible.

Wavlake is hard at work behind-the-scenes. I’m sure something exciting is coming soon.

Fountain has been focused for some time on podcasting, which is a help to us podcasters. I’m excited to see Avi Burra will be adding a song to each episode of Plebchain Radio.

Since this is a new/experimental feature for Fountain (that I used to use on RSS Blue), I have moved my music podcast, Radio Detox to Podhome, where this feature is already built in. (Fountain has wisely stolen RSS Blue’s Founder, Dovydas to work for them). I would like to join Fountain as a podcaster, but it doesn’t make sense for me yet as I put Radio Detox on hiatus in 2025 due to being hit with a lot of “Other Stuff” to work on. I just re-started the podcast. Episode 2 of Season 2 is about to drop…

We need more music and we need more podcasters. This flywheel must exist to feed itself.

A few of us have been working hard for the past two years to create the dream platform for musicians and we’re not done yet. An end-of-year pause is on deck for me, personally. I’ve taken a break, though I do tend to pace myself and seek balance, until 2026. Many work harder than I and take far fewer breaks, which is also a problem; burnout is a problem. We could avoid this if we had more folks around here. The few who are present are spread very thin.

There is more to come in 2026.

I support Tidal’s journey into the space where we can directly pay our favorite musicians. Tidal has been pretty vocal about its Upload Headliners contest, which is great.

As a marketer, I see it as a smart marketing move. Smarter than browbeating people to pay for music with Cashapp; we’ve been banging the Bitcoin/Nostr drum for the past two years. What we’ve found is terms like “Value for Value,” and “V4V” haven’t taken off. We’ve kicked around many phrases. They’re clunky, technical, and too much to explain. I can tell you everything NOT to do after two years of trying to make this happen. We also find that HODL culture holds us back; Bitcoiners must part with their bitcoin. We need more zappers.

This is why I’d prefer to see musicians take the reigns and build this from here on out. I’m still here to help in every way I can. But I want the musicians to have the voice here, not a chick who markets open source software as her mea culpa for 27 years in radio and TV (being part of the media problem). I’ll still be recording Radio Detox episodes and helping organize events while supporting creators with our open source software from Soapbox, like Shakespeare. If you’ve got ideas, I’m listening!

What can we help you build? Tell us what is broken, what’s not working, what you want, and what can be better. Folks are vibe coding music apps; more apps are needed. More ideas are welcome. We don’t just need musicians on Nostr, we need musicians to bring their fans here. If anyone has some ideas to help move this along and keep both musicians and their fans engaged on Nostr, I’m all ears. I want to shift into serving artists.