I can only speak for myself but four years ago, a music album was released via RSS feed by Able and The Wolf proving ANYONE could release their own music v4v. The RSS feed is a transparent contract between all collaborators which anyone can view to see who gets what amount of value for each song. Thanks to the Podcasting 2.0 protocol, the album was distributed to ALL modern podcast apps and #DeMu (decentralized music) was born.

Unlike any other P2.0 app, WL does NOT surface those self-custodied feeds. It's a walled garden and also a centralized platform, like Spotify 2.0.

When you look at WL artist feeds, 100% of the value goes to WL and anyone sending sats has to trust 90% gets distributed to the artist behind the scenes like they say. There's also the terms of service artists must abide... which means censorship and third-party data collection.

So here we are, watching the music industry get reinvented by many LEGACY industry players when there's a really simple, open source solution for anyone and everyone in #DeMu with no middlemen between listeners and artists:

https://github.com/de-mu/demu-feed-template/blob/master/feed-with-comments.xml

Also if you're interested in music discovery, check out LNBeats.com which is FOSS and features ALL music RSS feeds, DeMu and WL alike. 💜

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This is a very good summary of what the issues some of us have with Wavlake. We see BTC and RSS as freedom tech that lets us build things on our terms and conduct commerce peer to peer. Having a middle man to hold and distribute our sats, control our feeds, take 10% of the top, make us abide by their TOS, all for the privilege of being on their exclusive platform, well, that goes against some of our values. Now some people prefer a “free” and easy platform over taking control of their digital property, while others just aren’t aware there are other platforms that put digital sovereignty first. We don’t have a marketing budget to promote the alternatives, we only have our voices, which is why we may come across as so vocal.

I’m aligned with most of what’s being said by you and nostr:npub19ha7tju4teqp3dmwv4p28wrcy9zd6h6hxkg5mwvjrlfycweazpkse2q0fa but it seems very ideological for a very niche thing. Is your electricity coming from a decentralized network? Do you pay a company for water? I would want every aspect of my life to be decentralized before I hate on a company for taking 10% for providing a service and having terms. All love for your values, I just don’t want to hate on a thing that’s actually apart of helping artists get paid.

Spotify = Artists don’t get paid.

Wavlake = Artists need to trust to get 90% of listener payment and then also have the freedom to move to a new host. It’s a completely different situation.

I think people misunderstand some of the issues. I don’t care if someone wants to pay for or charge for hosting. Now I’d argue if you are, you’re not v4v, you’re charging for a service, but I don’t care if you want to charge for your service. I pay for services all the time.

My main beef with Wavlake (and for the record I think what WL does is good for a lot of people) is they are an exclusive platform. If your music isn’t hosted by Wavlake, you can’t play it on Wavlake. I mean they can do whatever they want, but I wouldn’t call them an open platform.

My main beef with musicians is hosting your own music is so easy. Like it’s as easy as importing a CD and cataloging in iTunes. If you want to use a host or Wavlake because you understand the process and still want some else to handle a server going down, I get it. But I grew up with punk rockers with a DIY spirit, and hosting your songs is easier than screen printing a shirt or ripping a CD. I don’t want musicians thinking Wavlake or any other platform is doing a bunch of heavy lifting that is too complicated for the musician to figure out. I want them to be able to make informed choices. And if they host out themselves, they can do it for a little more than $1 a month. If they’re already hosting a website for their band, they can add their music and a feed for no additional cost.

If they make $100 a month, they have to pay $10 for the service. If it’s $1000 they pay $100. Or they can host it themselves and pay $1 or no additional cost. I just want the musicians to know there’s alternatives and their choices aren’t limited to Spotify or Wavlake, and Wavlake isn’t providing anything they couldn’t provide for themselves.

There's a distinct difference between WL hosting and the WL app.

WL have chosen a path that forces them to do this. So be it.

This is true. If they were just a hosting company, we’d probably be singing their praises. I haven’t heard anybody complain about RSSBlue or PodHome which both charge for their services. But they’ve chosen to attach their open hosting brand to their closed player brand and chosen to obfuscate their splits. Which is fine, I understand the appeal of “ease of use”, but I also know bitcoiners tend to be a more technical and independent crowd, and I want them to know there are other avenues available that may align more with their values.

strong point, however the fact that I have to pay to distrokid or any other distributor around 40$ per year for ever to hold my music and in wavlake not, makes it the best option available for whoever wants to jump out of spotify dictatorship.

I guess they know this and thats the deal.

And wich other alternatives are you talking about? Maybe you could share some info.

Check out https://musicsideproject.com/

Alternatively if you enjoy DIY and have a website, you can build your own RSS feed (XML file) to host on your website and add its URL to the PodcastIndex so it appears on ALL Podcasting 2.0 apps including Fountain. There's a copy-and-paste decentralized musi. RSS feed with comments explaining the tags here:

https://github.com/de-mu/demu-feed-template/blob/master/feed-with-comments.xml

very interesting 🧐

The free upload to try it out is a huge draw for sure. If I was a musician and was curious about what all this was about, free sounds like a damn fine deal. Now it’s not exactly free, it’s 10%, but if I only make $1 or even $10, 10% isn’t that big of a deal. I get the appeal, and the marketing is great.

So, what are the alternatives? I list quite a few of them here. musicsideproject.com/about

I’m not trying to convince you to use MSP, I just want you to know there are alternatives if you want them, and maybe it’s important to you to control the means of distribution for your digital property. If you have any quotations, I’m happy to help.

Nice false equivalency.

If I could decentralize utilities, I would. I can decentralize v4v payments for digital art, so I do.

Wavlake claims to be a decentralized solution but runs a walled-garden service with a single node and a centralized catalog. They blog about one thing and do another. It isn't super complicated. 🤷‍♂️

But actually

Maybe that’s the issue I’ve been having. I don’t care how people run their business, but I care about honesty. If you charge for your service or take a percentage of a bands money, you’re not v4v. It doesn’t make you bad, but don’t claim to be something you’re not. If you claim to be for independent artists, but they depend on you, they’re no longer independent. If you claim to be open but don’t let outsiders in, you’re not open.

I don’t care if they’re a take a split, easy hosting, play only Wavlake music platform. Their business model makes a lot of sense if their goal is running a business and attracting customers, and I have zero problems with that goal. My problem is when they claim to be one thing, but from my perspective, their actions look like something else.

Thank you Cole for saying this.

We must have some centralized services to help people see what is possible.

"Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety."

Hosting is by its very nature decentralized. Wavlake is part of that. Their feeds work perfectly fineiin all apps.

They just have a crippled app, people won't use it. Spotify spent a billion dollars to find this out.

I don't waste any time on apps that are crippled.

They will change it or fail.

Why waste energy on it?

Oden wouldn’t Oden

If it wasn’t boiled

The Land of Wano will be opened!

I agree with both points, I would even say that the criticism is respectable and I hope the Wavlake team receives it positively, since I doubt that they can guess all the possible concerns and ideas of improvement that will appear and hopefully can be implemented in a near future, in fact, the music of Wavlake is accessible via Fountain wich is a plus and I hope they always keep it, I am using wavlake pilot application and looks great, there is a good team behind it investing some time and effort.

And just in case, cuz im very new here and im still catching up and learning, apart from #wavlake what other nostr compatible option do we have? As far as i could find the next best option is Tidal? Not decentralized at all.

I wont be surprised that eventually as soon as spotify starts to consider Nostr a serious competitor they may implement the protocol in their services and if happens that by the time wavlake or any other option is not good enough to compite artists may jump back.

I mean the whole effort to convice people to stop using spotify after a decade is a big challenge.

But here is why you guys are right. So I get it. nostr:npub19ha7tju4teqp3dmwv4p28wrcy9zd6h6hxkg5mwvjrlfycweazpkse2q0fa