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.