Oddbean

Best of luck competing with the network effects of established and well-capitalised corporations. Nostr might be cool tech, but it’ll remain niche until there are platforms with order of magnitude improvements in the eyes of ordinary users. Trying to reinvent the wheel will only result in wasted work. Creator platforms already exist that seek to enable monetization, so v4v is not an actual selling point for normie creators. Bitcoin is also a tough sell unless you’re already orange-pilled and own sats. It’s an uphill battle. Build something users want, that’s the only way they’ll use it. Don’t force tech down their throats because you drank the freedom tech kool aid.

Yeah this is the standard response to any criticism to the echo chamber of nostr worship. I’m on here because I want freedom technology to flourish, but I also tried and failed to build freedom tech products that people want. Maybe instead of spitballing cheap ideas you actually tried to build something your perspective would change. Talk to real users instead of larping online. Value signal > virtue signal. All you have is cheap talk with no real effort behind it. Creating a future where freedom can flourish isn’t gonna happen by someone else putting in effort on your behalf.

Why don’t you get off your ass and try to onboard real users. Then you’ll see how hard it is to change people’s mind when it comes to the social platforms they use. Your talk is cheap. It reflects your lack of experience in actually building product and talking to users.

Sounds like you’re offended. How about let’s start with why you believe everyone should switch to v4v if the vast majority of creators don’t know about it and don’t care. I’ve put a lot of effort into trying to onboard artists and music producers onto different platforms and I’ve actually received their feedback. They don’t care. They mostly want to make art or music and share with the widest possible audience. Where’s your proof of work besides being inspired by a podcaster?

Before starting Bitcoin Prediction Market my co-founder and I were iterating through a few variations of social/art/music betting webapps, which are no longer online. We tried gamifying the music/art/money interaction so as to take it a step beyond tipping, which many already had links for (paypal, buy me a coffee, pateron, etc). In gamifying the UX we thought we could make the money component more interesting. We talked to hundreds of music producers and artists and they were intrigued at the idea of receiving money, but none were interested in actually participating in a v4v economy. Their main objective was more views and more fans—they wanted to publish to the widest possible audience and gain as much reach as possible. Legacy music industry has convoluted publishing rights deals, and it gets even worse with labels. Artists are mostly chasing after fans because most people don’t care about their music anyways. Even big producers who got tiktok famous are not interested in a few sats here or there. They either want collabs with more famous artists (signed with labels and have convoluted publishing royalty deals) or they want to promote their music and get more views. Beatstars and airbit already sell the dream of licensing beats so producers can make a living (and artgrab/redbubble does for artists), and some are succeeding. If u have over 1m listens per month spotify cheques can sustain you as a solo/small artist. When we tried communicating the new digital economy pitch these artists really didn’t care. They saw the current internet as that new digital economy that already existed. I was even making money off my beats from beatstars way before v4v was a thing. Creator economy is run on paypal. The worst thing is when these artists said adding money convoluted the art and made it all about money. At the end of the day they r in the business of making art or music because they love art or music, not because they love money… They just want to make enough to do what they love, and that comes by creating a business. Unless they can find customers (fans or other artists willing to license their stuff) then u can’t make money as an artist, and it’s just a hobby u do for the love of it…

I can see you have navigated many routes and grown discouraged as any one gets when spending time and passion on such an important purpose. I’d like to instill some level of hope with Nostr clients like @wavlake and @fountain_app along with the V4V Nostr community that a lot of us are driving for. @PhantomPowerMedia is currently running artist consulting and managing out of Nashville. @OpenMike is currently doing live V4V artist onboarding through @tunestr in combination with many V4V advocates. V4V at its current state IMO is not an either or but more a value add to increase the sovereignty of artists. I’d recommended Wavlake’s telegram group as a forum to express your experience and navigate potential solutions. Whether it goes mainstream or not that doesn’t necessarily have to be the end game. But providing some revenue at the end of the day is a win for starving artists. Just my two cents.