I love bluegrass and the banjo. If you do too, this song is one of my favorites.

https://lnbeats.com/album/c3fb85f3-e45b-5927-b8b9-8aab074f3da3/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2lydGp0aGV3cmF0aGZ1bC5jb20vd3AtY29udGVudC91cGxvYWRzLzIwMjMvMDcvQmV3YXJlLW9mLUJhbmpvX01vcnJpc3Rvd24tQmx1ZXMubXAz 

 I suspect a lot of early adopters of BTC don’t actually care about freedom, they just see it as a way to get rich, like it’s finally their opportunity to invest in the next big thing like Apple or Google or Amazon before they became household names. I figure this to be true because when you talk about other technologies that would free them, they talk about how hard it is instead of how exciting it is to actually be free. 

 Some people putting and infinitely reproducible digital commodity (song, audiobook, pdf, podcast) and expecting their audience to pay for it are practicing v4v. I would argue they're actually practicing a form of Marxism. Maybe I'm wrong in my assessment of what it is they're saying, but it sounds a whole lot like "Labor is the fundamental source of economic value." There seems to be this idea that "I made an album or podcast, and my listeners should support me." Maybe... if what you're providing is valuable enough to them. 

Maybe giving some of their very precious time to understand your ideas is all the value they derive from your work. Maybe it's no more valuable than that to them, and they owe you nothing else. They've already given you their most precious resource, which is their time. Anything else is icing.

If I was to make a mud pie and an apple pie, I could've spent the same amount of time and energy creating both. It could be the most impressive mud pie in the world, the best ever created. I could've spent hours crafting it, many more hours than I spent on my apple pie. I can value my time at $50/hr, and spent 4 hours on this pie, and say it's worth $200. But that doesn't mean the mud pie is more valuable than the apple pie. Only you, the consumer gets to decide it's actual value. Only you get to decide if that mud pie is worth $200, or $2, or nothing. 

So what do we do with infinitely reproducible digital commodities that I build once and put out in the world. I give it away for free. I expect nothing in return and I ask people to pay me what they think it's worth, which may just be a listen and nothing more. And I hone my craft to a point that people want what it is I'm building, and would be sad to see me stop creating, and are willing to pay me to continue doing what it is I'm doing because they value my creations. My creations enrich their lives in a way that their day would be less bright if I wasn't creating, they love being part of the community I'm part of and want to grow that community, so they contribute their time, talent, and treasure. 

v4v requires faith. Faith that want I'm building is valuable (and for me, my creations are like the Velveteen rabbit. They're real because I love them, it doesn't matter if someone else does, ultimately, they're for me and my enjoyment, your enjoyment is icing), and faith that you'll value what it is I'm putting in the world enough to freely give me some of your very precious time, talent, and treasure. v4v is not for the faint of heart, it's for those with a tremendous amount of faith and courage. 

 You think someone pulling up your song on LNBeats and playing it for a friend is somehow less valuable than them sending you a 21 sat zap. That exposure is infinitely more valuable. Value is way more than sats. 

 v4v isn't Field of Dreams. Shoeless Joe ain't going to rescue your farm. If you think putting your song on Wavlake is going to mean automatic passive riches, you're a damn fool, and lazy. v4v is proof of work, and you have to put in the work. That means creating something that's valuable to others, then asking for them to return value; time, talent, treasure. v4v is a grind, and you have to put in the continual work of connecting with your fans. 

 https://bunny.net?ref=pnx450l5qr 

BunnyCDN lets you pay your hosting in Bitcoin. Use https://musicsideproject.com/ to create your RSS feed, add your value block to get paid in BTC, host it on Bunny and pay your hosting bill in BTC. It comes out to around $1 a month. No host gets to take their 10% cut of your sats, and you're not paying a host $6 - $20 per month to do something you're perfectly capable of it. Stop being a digital cuck and start taking responsibility for your own content.


https://image.nostr.build/48ea022bf7cb39b11d6733bb0fc3299e922685a0839c851b8dc52f2bdbd20098.jpg 

 Any musicians looking to self host your own Decentralized Music 2.0 feed, I've updated MSP to make it as easy as any hosting company. Walk through the tutorial for integrating Bunny CDN, and uploading your mp3s and art work is as easy as drag and drop.

I chose Bunny because it's cheap. I've been using it for a year, and I've never spent more than $1.10 a month. 

Save yourself some money, and take sovereign control of distributing your own music.

musicsideproject.com

Once your on MSP,  in the main menu, Log In. 

Register a new account if you don't have one.

Once you're logged in, you'll see Bunny Credentials in the Main Menu. Click on that, and there's a tutorial for integrating Bunny for serving your files.

If anyone decides to try it out, let me know if there's any confusion in the tutorial.

And because I care about self-hosting and sovereignty, all of my code is open source. If you know what you're doing, you can just as easily run this on your own machine instead of relying on my website. This should hopefully lower any barriers to taking control of your own music feed.

github.com/thebells1111/msp-studio 

 Freedom isn't free
It costs folks like you and me
And if we don't all chip in
We'll never pay that bill
Freedom isn't free
No, there's a hefty fuckin' fee
And if you don't throw in your buck o' five
Who will? 

 https://lnbeats.com/

LNBeats is for the people, ALL the people. Unlike some other lightning enabled music players, we don't believe in segregation. EVERYONE is allowed to swim in our pool.

Open Source Decentralized Music Player for EVERYONE
https://github.com/thebells1111/lnbeats 

 One of the things that pisses me off is a lot of people seem like they don't actually want to disrupt the system, they just want to be the ones running the system. Disrupting the system means an actual change in mindset, not a change in who the slaver is. "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

The people that see v4v as all about money are basically prostitutes. I'll give you a service, but I'm expecting some money in exchange. A girl has to eat you know.

I see v4v as a friendship. I help her move, she makes me dinner, I change her tire, she drives me to my surgery. We're providing valuable things to each other that we would normally have to pay for, we're exchanging value, but we're not worried about who's providing more or what's fair because we actually like each other.

I'd rather have sex with a lover than a hooker. 

 v4v is transactional, but not in the same way of setting prices and telling the person "take it or leave it". That's the transactional nature of something like an employee/employer relationship, "Here's some work, now pay me my agreed upon wage". No, it's transactional like a marriage. A husband takes care of his wife because he loves her, not because he gets something out of her, and she returns the love in kind. It's an exchange of value, but one built on love, not negotiation.