Many good points here. Visibility and reaching the right audience are some of the more challenging areas right now, but I’m sure this will improve over time. As that happens, it will become easier to bring in more music fans.
The Wavlake UI can definitely be improved, but it is still easier than hosting your own feed. I’m sure this will improve a lot over time. Sooner or later, there will probably be a very simple interface that makes self hosting just as easy as using Wavlake, as long as you have access to your own server or web hosting. In the end, this is likely what most artists would appreciate. No middlemen, no extra fees, and a process as simple as uploading to Spotify or Wavlake.
Better filtering of search results would be a great feature. I’m sure it comes with its own challenges, but where there is will, there is a way. Apps like V4V ( https://v4vmusic.com/ ), by nostr:nprofile1qyg8wumn8ghj7cfwdehhxtnvdakz7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcqyzsf2t4srftxagc8wrcn9elsgzz6450ewyz95z5478nse53etrkx6hp5hgd are definitely moving things in the right direction and deserve our support.
Multiple trending feeds would also be very helpful for discoverability. Wavlake’s Top 40 list ( https://wavlake.com/top ) is pretty good, but it is quite AI music heavy. It would be great to have dedicated human charts, such as Rock, Classical, Electronic, and so on, or any other way of categorizing music that is less genre specific but still gives a clear idea of what to expect.
To bring more established artists into this space, I think the economy would need to be at least somewhat competitive with Spotify. Even though Spotify payouts are very low, they are still far above what the v4v concept produces at the moment. That said, I’m optimistic. We are still very early, and many of us want this to succeed.
Exciting times ahead.
