Uploaded a few tracks from my back catalogue to @wavlake. It's great to see builders on #Bitcoin & #Nostr transitioning music from the old system to the new (h/t @Jeff Booth)
I'll give some of my experience with the dance #music scene over the last 10 years.
Back in the early 2010s, laptops became cheap and powerful enough to run decent music software and there was a boom of amateur music producers. I ended up starting a small record label just to keep control over my music and expanded out to a great group of likeminded individuals from all over the world. We had some fun and decent success for a few years but eventually all your creative spirit ends up drained by the fiat system.
Even if you managed to sell a download, the store and the distributor would take 50%. My label would split the remaining 50/50 with the artist but for all the remixes and releases I did with other labels, I never received a penny.
A major reason for this was the royalty accounting was just so complex that unless you had a big hit, it isn't worth the time. It just become the norm that as an artist, you didn't get paid.
As the number of tracks being released grew, the gatekeepers and curators decided the winners. Whether this was the online store featuring your release or mainstream radio giving you airtime. The more centralised it became the more the larger labels captured the decision makers. Nobody really cared about the money but now you weren't even getting a chance to be heard.
Once downloads switched to streaming, it just made everything 100x worse.
Many of us hung up the headphones at this point but I see real hope for the future.
Sat-splits, #value4value, decentralised platforms and sovereignty over your content will kill off the trusted 3rd parties and inspire a new generation of artists who can connect directly with fans.
The revolution will need a soundtrack and we're here to provide it.
LFG (h/t @ODELL)
https://wavlake.com/album/bfc5cdd9-29f8-4a0b-91f7-f60230ce85b4
Notes by OnlyJackJones | export