I don't need half an emotion
Lose the penny thin lesson, everything, it ain't enough
It's gotta be new from the start, so
Don't hand me a hand-me-down heart, no
Don't hand me a hand-me-down heart
Can you be the one I run home to
Through the good and bad, nothing but the truth
Have my share of hollow lies
Oh, empty words, lying eyes
Don't bring me a heart that's all used up
Anything less than everything, it ain't enough
It's gotta be new from the start, so
Don't hand me, hand me down hard, no
Don't hand me, hand me down hard
Don't help me, help me down hard
It's now or never
It's all or nothing
It's now or never
Yeah
Don't bring me a heart that's all used up
Anything less than everything, it ain't enough
It's gotta be new from the start, so
Don't help me, help me down hard, no
Don't help me, help me down hard
Don't end it, end it, hell me doubt hard
Don't end it, doubt hard
No Maybe
Like
Your
Radio Detox is back with a very special guest, Joe Martin. Welcome, Joe. He probably needs no
introduction. Thanks for having me, Heather. It's great to be on the show at last. At last. I know,
like I've been meaning to interview you for like two years and then I finally met you in person
in Nashville in October. You were doing this epic like U.S. tour. Do you want to kind of
kick it off there with just, what did you spend like a month here to work on your latest album?
Let's just orient people to the fact that this guy is a true rock star, amazing singer-songwriter,
and just did this amazing US.
I'll just let you explain everything you did here.
Yeah, thanks.
It's a good time to have me on because I've got this new album coming out.
And it was a bit of a whirlwind trip going out to Nashville to record it.
I was there for three weeks, I think, in total.
It felt much quicker because every day was just so hectic.
There was no time to waste.
So yeah, in the studio, well, it was kind of spread out over two weeks, but it was like a total of eight days.
And then in between, sorry, not in between, after the studio, went to Valentine, Texas to shoot all the artwork and the music videos, stuff like that.
And then at the very end of the trip, squeezed in that Bitcoin Park session, which was a Nostra thing.
I think it was a Nostra thing.
Bitcoin and Nostra.
But it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, it was a songwriter round. It was Nashville Songwriter Rounds with you and Ainsley and of course, Bitcoiners, Bitcoin Park. You know, I think that it's really, there's such a disconnect in music now between like if people haven't seen you play live, because up until that point in October, I had listened to all your music online, on Fountain, on Wave Lake and not gotten to see you play live.
And I feel like I was robbed because I think to truly see how talented an artist is, you've got to be in the same room.
And to really hear your voice in the same room was so, like, I can't even describe how good you are as a singer, as an artist.
It's just a shame if people can't see Joe Martin play live somewhere, which is, you know, leading into, of course, the fact that you have a tour coming up.
Very kind.
I see myself as more of a live artist and I really thrive, like, with an audience and being on stage.
the studio really isn't my comfortable place uh especially like when you're surrounded by such
talented guys you kind of got a bit of imposter syndrome being like well i'm out of my depth here
you know in some ways but yeah it's it's i mean i'd love i'd just love to play in the states and
all over really if i could make it work but for the time being i'm sort of in the uk doing as much
as i can here and uh yeah i've kind of with this tour with the album i've tried not to take on too
much because with my last album, Empty Passenger Seat, I tried to do everything, cover the whole
country in one run. And it was so exhausting, not just from like actually, actually doing the gigs
is a lot of fun. It's not that bad at all. Like that's the good part. The exhausting bit is trying
to promote the whole tour. And I've kind of felt maybe I spread myself a bit too thin on the last
tour. So I thought next time I'm going to split it in two and do a Northern tour first and then a
southern tour a bit later on in the year so that's what i've done this time i've got eight dates in
the north in april when the album's out and then i've got a similar amount of dates around the south
of the uk in september so it's kind of like spread the load a little bit but yeah it's uh yeah i just
i just want to gig anywhere everywhere yeah just if i can get to the stage at some point i'll be
there be on the stage okay so what is the name of the album and when does it come out so the album's
called Alone in Valentine. It's out on the 17th of April. A few singles are already out online now.
In fact, the latest single, which is the opening track that I wrote with a guy called Ben Jonesy
Jones from Nashville. He's great. That came out today on all streaming platforms, but it's all out
in the value verse too. And maybe the album might be out a day or two early on all the V4V
platforms. So we'll see. But yeah, that's the plan. Alone in Valentine. It's kind of a group of songs
that I've been working on for the past, say, three years maybe.
And it was all tied together with the song Alone in Valentine as a concept.
It's not really, I wouldn't say it's like a title track of the album.
It's more of an album track in my opinion,
but it kind of just had this title that I just thought threaded all the songs really well.
There's a cool story behind how I wrote that.
We could go all night with stories.
So I think it was the 2024 trip to Nashville.
I was invited out there by Wavelake to do a show.
that was with Ainsley as well that was a great gig and that was around the conference that was going on
in Nashville and on that trip I was catching an uber from one part of town to the other
get chatting to this uber driver who was telling me about this documentary film that he was working
on called 10 year town and it kind of pricked my ears up because the phrase 10 years town 10 year
town is a common phrase in Nashville because it is known as the 10-year town. It takes a decade
to make it in Nashville, really, to pay your dues and to make it there. So he was telling me all about
this documentary film and I asked if I would know anyone in the documentary and he said,
probably not. There's a guy called Gabe Lee in there. And I was like, I was with Gabe last week
because he was over in the UK, touring in the UK, and he put my name on the door to one of the shows
because I met Gabe in 2018 when I was out there.
And I said, well, you must know Vinny.
And he's like, yeah, Vinny's in the documentary too.
And I said, oh, well, I've written a song called
It Doesn't Rain in LA with Vinny.
And he was like, oh, I love that song.
So I was like, oh my God, this Uber driver knows my song.
Does this mean that I've made it now?
So anyway, we hit it.
So we hit it off and we penciled in a songwriting session.
because I mean in Nashville you write with anyone and everyone you know the bartender your uber
driver like there's no barriers you write with everyone um so we got together and we wrote this
song and he threw out the line it was actually his line she's drinking tequila in the evening
alone in valentine the song the premise of the song the idea that I took to him was like of this
lady driving this silverado car through colorado down to texas and I was like I don't know if she's
trying to run away from a bad relationship or whatever. I just had this image in my head.
And then the song transpired. And I mean, I'm going to give it away for anyone that hasn't
listened. But there's a twist at the end and she's scattering her husband's ashes on the banks of the
Rio Grande. And she's traveling to all the places that they said they would go together and they
never got the chance. And she's going alone on this trip. I only write sad songs, you know,
if you don't know already. But so it was it was deep feeling songs like, yes.
yeah it's pretty heavy adam curry's picked me up on that a few times anyway so the line that steve
came out with was she's drinking tequila in the evening alone in valentine and i said alone in
valentine i hadn't heard of valentine didn't know anything about it and he just said it's this
little town in west texas because he'd been there before and i was just really intrigued by this and
i thought what a great phrase alone in valentine and i said that sounds like the title of an album
right there. And then when I finally got the chance to make it, to make the record with Goose
and Cal, I sort of got back in touch with Steve and said, should we go to Valentine?
And we did. So it's this little one horse town, one horse town in the middle of the desert,
Texas, population, 73 people. And there's this little dive bar in the town and it's been dubbed
the diviest bar in America. I don't know who gave it that title because I'm sure there's a lot
a lot vying for that position but it was it was rough and ready and i mean half of the bar was
collapsed and it was just desert behind it so it made for a really good shot and that's the
that's the cover of the album artwork
guitar solo
in the pines
and took the pieces
of a broken heart
to try and build
a better life
and all the words
left unsaved
and all the many
miles ahead
onto my way
far away
she'll find a place
to pray
and ask the Lord
for strength
from up on high
He's headed for tomorrow
In that beat-up Colorado
She'll find her way
To finally say goodbye
guitar solo
Standing there at night
Lost in the marfilis
Tequila in the evening
Alone in Ballantyne
A movie at the starlight
A drive down River Road
The Eagle's desperado
Is playing on the radio
And all the words are left unsaid
We know that many miles ahead
While on some highway far away
She'll find a place to pray
And ask the Lord for strength from up on high
Who's headed for tomorrow
In that beat-up Silverado
she'll find her way to finally say goodbye. Those ashes in her hand on the banks of the Rio Grande,
a warm Texas wind to take him home again Across that great divide she says her last goodbyes
Her hands on the wheel, tears in her eyes.
In his beat-up Silverado, through southern Colorado.
How did you get into this space?
I don't think I actually know your origin story of if it was you got into Wave Lake or Fountain First
or met any particular person like Ainsley or whoever.
How did you get into this space that we're in where we're just kind of building an alternative path
to be discovered and be monetized, etc.?
Well, it all started off from I was listening to podcasts about Bitcoin and Lightning stuff.
And Oscar Meri from Fountain was on a podcast, a guy called Kevin Rook's podcast.
I don't know if he's still doing that podcast now, but it was all kind of Lightning focused.
And he was talking about this app that he was building, this podcasting app where you could support your favorite podcasters with sats, basically.
and was just kind of explaining the whole idea behind making it just super easy to receive
payments and then making it easy for people to send the payments you know the the fact that
it's instantaneous and there's no you know lower or well i guess there is a higher amount technically
but like you know you can you can pay them whatever you want from anywhere in the world
and it's all obviously native to the lightning network and uh i just was like really interested
by this and I thought you know this is such a good idea does this exist for music I wonder if
anyone's working on a music equivalent and I just went ahead and basically put out a song
on an RSS feed because I didn't really know anything about podcasting I still don't as you
could tell I try to set up this microphone I don't do many podcasts these days that's okay
yeah i kind of didn't really know how it works but then kind of started learning about rss and
the open protocols and stuff and it's all it's all new to me because as a musician you have a
dsp you have a basically you know your publisher who you upload to and they distribute to spotify
apple everything on your behalf as like a middle a middle man so i i uploaded a track to rss.com
with an RSS feed and it showed up in Fountain because, you know, the open protocols. And then
I think I posted about it on Stacker News and Twitter and stuff and tagged a few Bitcoiners
in a tweet and just said, hey, I've put some music out on Fountain app. You can send sats.
And like, just out of curiosity, just for a bit of fun, if you like the song, you know,
send me some sats because it's all about the ask as well. Like you've got to kind of put your music
out there but then you got to make a point to like encourage people to send sats and just remind
them that uh it is a voluntary thing but you know you as the artist you know it's good to be
compensated because then you can continue making art and continue what you're doing so to my
surprise i made nearly i think a hundred dollars in like a day or two i think it was like 80 pounds
which is great like i was really blown away because it was amazing because uh i think
you know i hadn't made that really on any song or even collection of songs you know over the years
on spotify because obviously you don't really get paid anything so i it just clicked and i was like
got even more interested and then sam means from wave lake very shortly after that reached out to
me and said that they were working on this platform that was music specific which I was
kind of looking for initially and then just said you know we'd love you to try it out and then kind
of in one fell swoop uploaded my whole back catalog there and then I've just been kind of
learning I've been kind of discovering and learning with everyone since as the technology's
progressed and improved and it's getting easy to use and there's a lot more optionality now
definitely than there was even just when was it 2022 like four three or four years ago oh wow so
you've been doing this a while so it's a cool journey it's a cool yeah yeah well it's not that
long in in you know the grand scheme of things but if it feels a longer timeline when you're when
you're in it when you're in the trenches yeah it does so if i'm hearing this correctly you were a
bitcoiner first and that's how you found the rss podcasting 2.0 you know lightning zaps
boost, whatever you want to call it. Like I'm giving a word salad because there's kind of no
easy eight second soundbite to explain what the, you know, quote unquote value verse is,
but you already understood and already were passionate about Bitcoin.
Yeah. Yeah, I was. And I kind of, I never, well, I didn't really expect a way to marry the two
things like music and, you know, Bitcoin and the values that it imbues in it. And, uh, and then
And this seemed like the perfect opportunity because, you know, like I'm sure everyone listening to this podcast probably knows the music industry is pretty broken.
And, you know, there's a saying that Bitcoin fixes this.
And I mean, might not go as far as to say it's a silver bullet, but it's definitely going to help, you know, bring some incentives back into line and kind of get the right people, you know, money to the right people that are actually making the art instead of these massive platforms that are kind of siphoning off all the all the value.
So that kind of like really made me passionate when I saw how both things could intersect.
And I mean, even back then, NOSTA, I don't think it was a thing.
I can't remember when I joined NOSTA now, but I mean, even that is a whole different universe in itself.
And it's growing so fast.
And I think that's the way it's going to go from now on, really.
So, yeah.
What was your Bitcoin story?
How did you get to Bitcoin?
I love it when younger people grasp Bitcoin so easily.
You know, it's just that to me is like, how do we bottle that, Joe?
I don't think it's that easy because it does take a lot of reading and being a bit of a nerd.
Just keep asking questions and keep digging and not being satisfied.
You've got to have a certain type of curiosity, I think.
But it was, I don't know, like I picked up a copy of The Bitcoin Standard by Saifedean, who I actually met recently at the Plan B conference in El Salvador.
Got him to sign me a couple of books.
So it was pretty, pretty nice moment for me getting to meet him and just say thank you.
But it was that book that really kind of blew my mind and led me to reading a lot more and just taking it very seriously.
And then I kind of, the approach I've taken, well, that I've tried to take with the music side of it is that this is a revolution.
You know, it's not just a revolution in kind of savings and sound money, but it's a revolution in payments as well, as much as anything.
And disintermediating the big sort of platforms and gatekeepers that have kind of had such a grip on not just the music industry, but everything really in general for so long.
So I think the idea of being able to pay people directly with no middleman for, you know, the work that they're producing that you enjoy, the value should be going directly to those people.
And so I've kind of tried to say it's a revolution in payments as well.
That's what the Lightning Network's doing for the music and the artist side of stuff.
You don't need permission to sign up, to create an account, to start receiving value straight away for your work that you've already made.
So, you know, I always tell people that you've already done the proof of work in actually creating the music.
You know, you've put the hours in, you've put the money up front, you've spent all that time and effort into creating a really beautiful piece of work.
You're already putting it on Spotify and YouTube, which, you know, don't respect you as an artist.
They don't value you.
You can just upload it into this one extra place, but you can actually start receiving value immediately for that directly from people who value it.
And that's pretty cool.
So I just think we've hit a bit of a roadblock at the moment.
I feel maybe, well, in Noster and just the value for value scene, it seems.
I was kind of hoping there would be more people interested by now and involved.
Yeah, same.
And I don't know whether it's messaging.
I don't know whether it's the tech.
I think it's probably both.
The concept is quite new and it's quite revolutionary.
It's so hard to get your head around.
But I think it needs to be massively simplified.
I'm probably going to get a lot of hate for what I'm going to say, but I don't care. I'm going to say it anyway. There just needs to be easy, really easy on ramps, really easy on and off ramps for people. And I don't know how that's going to be built because there needs to be a bridge between the fiat world, if you will, and this new sort of decentralized way of doing things where, and we shouldn't even really maybe even be talking in terms of sats for the average person.
just just display you know a balance in your local fiat currency if they want they can switch
it to sats maybe in settings if they want but just you know send value you know but it just works and
they can just send value and it reaches the other person and their songs are being published maybe
to nostor and they can be discovered discovered in an open way but we we don't need to get too
technical with the terms i think it's kind of maybe scaring people away or i don't know what it is but
I've got like a few anecdotal stories like one anecdotal story recently I won't sort of give her
name but a girl that gigs in similar circles to me I saw on Instagram that she'd been completely
deplatformed while all her music had been completely taken down off Spotify Apple Music
and everything I think it I don't know if it was malicious or if it was just a it was just an admin
error on the part of her publisher but i mean could you imagine like your whole life's work
just getting deleted it just must be so awful she was scrambling this is a conversation that
that we have all the time you know because since you know i work for a company where we're building
this alternative right we're the thing that we're working on right now is called ditto it's ditto.pub
and it's you know it's a new nostre app that should do everything it should aggregate every
form of nostre content whether it's video photos whatever i've streams you just turn it into
whatever you want, right? So if you just want to log on and see live streams, that's all you have
to do. If you just want to log on and see videos, that's all you have to do. And it should be,
you know, it should in the end, we'll like integrate everything, right? It'll be like
this everything app. But I think that you're making some strong points here of like, people do
want to be able to pay in fiat because they don't know what the heck Bitcoin is. And they don't
trust it, you know, especially here in the US, they equate it with, you know, crypto, and then
they equate it with Trump, and nobody likes the guy that's, you know, apparently running the
country and it turns into identity politics here. And if you throw in the word freedom,
they don't like it, you know, because he uses that word, right? So if you throw in the word
sovereignty, like that's a trigger word too. Like decentralized, nobody cares about. Like
we keep, we've been using these terms for a couple of years, like value for value is clunky,
decentralized is clunky, and the mainstream public isn't ready. You're right. You know,
they're not ready for all this tech, technological jargon. They're not, they don't know what Bitcoin
is and they don't trust it yet so like how are we going to explain to them layer two lightning
and payments you know and how how are we going to explain all this to people and we start to try
they freak out and they go back in their shell and they go okay thanks nice meeting you goodbye
it's like you're absolutely right it does need to be well easier yeah just to finish the story as
well so this this girl she got all the music wiped off the traditional platforms and i just basically
reached out to her and as you said i'm so sorry to hear about this like that's that's just
unforgivable that's awful i hope you get it sorted as soon as possible i and then i just
sort of said like i thought it might be an opportunity to just suggest about this whole
other ecosystem and i just said you know you can upload your music here it can't be taken down and
you can start receiving you know value for it i just said you can get paid for it is what i said
and she just came back to me and said i don't trust that stuff
Right.
And I thought, but you've just had your music deleted.
You've had all your music deleted.
So, but you still trust that.
I don't get it.
That's the position when you're in that position and you have no trust left.
That makes sense.
And my boss and I were talking about this on Radio Detox 2 where it's like, there is such skepticism right now.
And it's about all of tech.
It's about AI.
It's about the big tech has ruined any level of trust.
And, you know, this woman has had her deep platforming of her music.
And I think that even happened to Sarah Jade, who you might know.
Sarah Jade had one song deleted randomly with no recourse off of, I think it was Spotify one day.
And it was like, what makes it okay for these big platforms to do that?
And you guys are real musicians who actually pay money to book recording time.
You write these songs.
You play your instruments.
You're not AI people at all.
you know and that that's another problem i mean the stigma and the skepticism right now i think
is warranted given where we're at and that's also kind of why we created things like bitcoin and
nostril over time yeah i think so and yeah all the terminology as well it kind of i don think it taking off like the phrase value for value i think it just leaves people like looking at you like you got two heads like what are you talking about I don know The thing is and because it is like a decentralized movement there not like a
committee, like we need to call it this, we're going to call it this. Everyone's going to like,
you know, these terms are just going to like naturally evolve and kind of like become part
of the vernacular as time goes on. But yeah, it's kind of strange. I don't really know.
I like the zap term that has been adopted by Nostra and, you know, that kind of like is easier for people to grasp.
Like zap, you know, is your music zappable?
I don't know.
Like, is your music value enabled?
There needs to be like, you're asking, we should be putting the question on other people.
Like, how can I pay you for your content?
because at the moment like i think the best that artists have is like oh well go to my band camp
and order a cd or go to my website and order a physical merch which you know i'm pushing that
because i've got this album i need to sell some albums i got some vinyls done as well because
vinyls are cool again they're back in fashion so i've i've got a load of physical merch that i need
to sell so i am definitely pushing people to my website to buy physical but not not everyone has
the CD players and the vinyl players anymore.
They want digital and they want to be digital,
but they still might want to contribute.
So I don't know.
Like I said, I think someone is going to have to create a bridge
for people that are never going to maybe have sats,
but go and buy sats.
Like they're not going to buy Bitcoin.
I can't convince someone who likes me to go buy Bitcoin,
somehow get it onto the Lightning Network in exchange.
I've all joined the KYC to send me like $5.
Like it's just never going to happen.
It's never going to happen.
And as long as that is the case, it's never going to take off.
It will just remain a niche community on the internet, which is fine,
like if people want that to be the case.
But if it wants to reach some sort of broader adoption
and actually help real musicians that are needing the help,
there's going to have to be an easier way to do it.
And I think the whole problem is that to be that bridge, if you will,
if you want to call it that, you just get labeled as an exchange
because you're basically taking people's dollars and switching them for sats therefore you are an
exchange that that just opens like the whole can of worms of all the regulatory issues that would
come along with that and it just makes it impossible for anyone that's not already starting
off with a massive you know funding behind them to do it so and then the people that are that have
that kind of money are kind of benefiting off the whole system they don't want to disrupt themselves
like Spotify I don't see Spotify ever adopting you know a kind of baking lightning and direct
payments into their platform because that would just be completely undermining their business
model I mean there's an inherent conflict in Spotify itself because it is it either pays
artists like quote properly or like more at least and then it has to answer to its shareholders it
can't do both it's contradictory to its whole existence so um yeah I don't know I could talk
for ages about this rant on about it but which is good and as a person who has you know participated
in this space for a couple years it's i i could say a lot that i wouldn't say in a recording
about it i could i could say volumes if you and i were just like sitting in a bar like unrecorded i
could i could speak volumes as to why the space hasn't taken off you know you i could give somebody
i could give you 20 worth of bitcoin and sign you up for fountain and put it on your fountain wallet
But at the end of the day, to grasp it, right?
But then they don't come back.
Like it doesn't stick because part of the problem is that culturally we have become attuned to paying for a monthly subscription to get all of the music we want.
And, you know, that's the very mainstream view where what we're doing is something completely different, which is if I can get the Joes, the Ainsleys, the Sarah Jades, the Ben Jonesy Jones, the Longies.
If I can get all of you guys in here and you're bringing your fans.
And ideally, if we had the network effect of Spotify for you guys who are indie artists with original music, nobody's got a record label.
But you have this ability to make money.
You have this ability to get discoverability through this, you know, alternate system that we have created that keeps you in control as an artist, keeps you open and free.
and it doesn't really involve,
there doesn't need to be too much effort
on the part of the fan.
It's just, here's, you know,
the artists that I like are here in this ecosystem
and I can pay them directly.
And I'm such a big Joe Martin fan
that when I send him like some stats,
I actually get to have like a one-to-one relationship with him.
Like I actually get to, you know, talk to him,
at least on the internet.
And that's such a cool feeling.
And if we can get this to the point
where there is a broader adoption,
then that actually would work for you.
as a career. And then we talk about the 1,000 true fans model, where if you have 1,000 true fans,
and maybe they're spending $100 a year on being your fan because they pay to go to your concert
in London, or they also buy a CD and they buy a vinyl, or they aren't in London like me. They
can't see you, but I can watch you online when you have an upcoming show. I can watch you on
all of the streaming platforms that work with Nostr, and I can zap in whichever one that I'm
choosing to use at the moment. You know, I could probably, you know, watch your next show on Ditto
if I want to, or I can watch it on Toonstur. I can watch it on Nostr, which is N-O-S-T-U-R,
that app. Like, I can zap you on Primal and watch you live there. And then I don't get to miss a
Joe Martin show ever because we have the technology. But I just need 999 more of me
who like Joe Martin and to get involved in being a Joe Martin fan. And it just flips the system on
its head to where we were back in the 90s as a music fan in the 90s. I'm buying the $20 ticket
to see Korn at the Warfield in San Francisco, you know, and then when Korn's new album comes out,
I'm dating myself, Joe. I'm getting old here, right?
And then the next Korn album comes out and I'm running down to Tower Records to pay for my $20 CD to get the new Korn album because there was no other way for me to get it, right?
Now we do have a lot of choice and it really does have to be a conscious choice to support an artist.
And I know that we've been doing this for a couple of years and it's such a tough sell because, you know, we either lose them in the Bitcoin conversation because people have stigma around that or we lose them in the technology conversation because look at how hard Joe's working.
He has traveled across the pond.
He's got to be on social media and band camp, et cetera, et cetera.
He's got to do all these things.
And then he's got to get on a podcast with me on a Friday night and pump his album and his tour here.
this guy never stops working so then the conversation becomes like okay so now i've
got to be on another platform like i'm on distro kid and i gotta make a freaking tiktok and i gotta
be on heather's podcast and then i gotta run a nostor account too and a fountain account and
then i gotta understand rss like it becomes kind of like it's it's like why should i care about
your one more thing that you're adding to my pile yeah completely i think all the artists that i
know and i move in circles where they're just at the wits end with all the technology they're just
overwhelmed by it and it's kind of feel suffocating they i think they feel like they can't pour the
time that they have into what they do best which is their craft because they're so distracted with
all these things that are designed to steal attention in a way and designed to keep you
kind of sucked in to their platforms i think what you described the thousand true fans thing i've
said it before but really is kind of the only thing that's keeping me going with it like the
promise of that one day because um i think if value for value doesn't work it doesn't work out
um i think the whole thing is completely screwed whatever's left of the industry i know that
sounds really blackpilled but spotify has done irreparable damage to the music industry because
firstly it's basically made the populace at large think that music is free which you know we can
debate about well if it's a digital file it technically is free the marginal cost of replication
is zero but the actual cost of producing that file in the first place recording it in a studio
getting the musicians the years that go into it that's not free so unless you want ai slop to be
your musical diet for the rest of time as opposed to real living breathing human beings then it's
Kind of like people have to take this seriously or it's going to be over, I think.
Like maybe I'm just particularly blackpilled at the moment because like I don't want to sound too down.
But yeah, I was at a gig last night.
I got given a ticket to go watch a tribute act.
You know, I don't, I never really, I don't watch tribute acts.
But just out of morbid curiosity, I went down and saw this tribute act who was a Luke Combs tribute act.
Now, I'm not a fan of Luke Combs really to begin with, but it was more of like market research.
I want to see how many people are there.
I want to know their demographic.
I want to see their reaction to this tribute.
And the show was sold out, £28 a ticket, which is like $35 a ticket, thousand people pretty much.
And this guy does 150 gigs a year to that size of audience.
And he's not even the real guy.
So I worked it out.
his tour grosses uh 3.2 million or something every year obviously like that's the total gross like
that's not the profits you know probably booking the venues themselves and then they've got a crew
and everything and the travel but it's he's making a good what he's making a good living that is well
especially in the uk it seems that is the only kind of people that are making money in music
anymore a tribute axe it's either like legacy bands that are still around you know you're
Paul McCartney's in your Elton Johns who are clinging on,
or it's the tributes.
And then, like, the kind of grassroots original artists
are just, like, kind of fighting over the crumbs that are left over
and are not really making anything.
So I think the only way to return to, like, some sort of healthy,
like, organic music scene, whatever that might look like,
is through disintermediating these massive monopolies, you know,
digital monopolies and ticket monopolies and all this stuff.
So I don't know how that's going to happen, what it's going to look like, but I think this is part of the answer.
And I just wish I could get more people to care about it.
I've reached out to music podcasts in general, like just, you know, music podcasts to talk about my album and as a musician and a songwriter, just to try and sneak this into the conversation, just to bring it to people's attention that probably don't know it exists.
But I haven't been successful as of yet.
If I just send a thousand more cold emails, right, like one will break through.
You know, that's kind of where I'm at with it.
And I spend time, you know, I work full time in this space.
And so I'm always racking my brain how to tweak the messaging, you know, to get through to people.
How do we speak their language?
How do we meet them where they're at?
Because it and then I'll always circle back to like, oh, we just need to educate people more.
And then it's like, no, we don't have time for that.
We've been doing that for two years.
We just, who is going to be the, you know, the person that sends it over the edge?
Because we think, oh, if just the right famous, you know, famous person comes in and adopts this.
But then when you talk to those people who do work in the music industry, who are a bit bigger, maybe they're not like household names, but they're, you know, they're making a living as musicians.
And, you know, they might have a record label and they definitely have a manager.
And when those people say, hey, but I love this, but my manager has really told me that it's absolutely career death for me to ever mention the word Bitcoin or for me to, you know.
But we're also very close to this tipping point because you see this like you see the cancel Spotify hashtag on social media.
And then you see that like there are people who are ditching Spotify and then you watch the thought process.
I forget which blogs. This was like months ago that I read about the ditching Spotify movement because here in the United States, people are getting mad because ICE bought ads on Spotify. So people are trying to listen to their music and they're getting fed, you know, customs enforcement ads that we all hate. We all do not like what's going on in this country. Joe, like, don't judge me for being American. None of us are for this. We were just we're stuck here with this thing.
And so just, you know, let me clear our American name here.
But people don't like it.
And so they start looking for alternatives.
And then they start looking at the big name alternatives.
And then those big name alternatives are big names because they're companies that have money because they're doing the VC model.
So they have VC money, which is, you know, I say this probably on every podcast now.
VC money is the most expensive money you are ever going to accept because you have to turn that around several times over.
You have to provide value. And so we're taking the traditional business of creating value. And instead of a company creating value, we're allowing people to be valued. We're allowing your art to be valued. And there's no company. There's no shareholder. There's nothing to give me a headline in TechCrunch or Forbes, right?
Like we have created our own alternate universe where I have my own path for journalism I can write for Lightning News I can write for my own sub stack and probably five people read my sub stack But if I can write about this for lightning news it can get some attention right
If I can make the radio detox podcast, it can get some attention.
But I'm still kind of in my bubble, right?
I'm still not getting my normie friends interested.
I have a friend who is on fire for AI, right?
He's just in love with it.
And he's becoming that influencer-y guy who's like, I'm going to be your AI solution.
I'm going to teach you all about AI.
And I'm like, dude, I can literally teach all your prospects how to do this quicker and cheaper.
You have nothing special going on here.
I can open source it for everybody watching this and falling into your trap where you become the guru, right?
All these online gurus, these influencers.
And it's like, just give people the skills, right?
Like it's there's there's an alternate path to like anything going on right now.
And that's what people don't know because they're still fed into a system.
Right. We are fed into kind of this trough.
Right. This funnel that takes us to, you know, big name tech.
Like, oh, you want to work with AI? OK, we're all going to work with Anthropic.
We're all going to work with Claude because that's the big name thing.
And sure, it's the best product out there.
But there are also alternatives that aren't getting any place.
So that's kind of where we're at, where we're like, we're the independent thing.
We're the open source thing, whatever you want to call it.
I'm just starting to call it kind of the alternate universe, like the parallel universe where, yeah, we're not following the model.
Like we're the misfits.
We're the renegades.
We created our own model where I can literally, me here in Arizona, America, you know, I can send Joe money for his new album.
And he gets it instantly because of the Lightning Network.
ago. There's no intermediate. There's no like, I don't have to go have my bank talk to his bank
and it's the weekend. So he'll get the payment next week because it's the weekend or maybe
there's a holiday and then I'm sending my American money to his British account. Like, no, we don't
need to go through all that when I can just like, boom, I'm zapping it right now with the tools on
my phone and you've got it. And we're done here. And he knows that like, oh, Heather likes my music.
Heather sent me a zap or who's this Heather person?
Like, it's kind of magical what we're doing here, but getting it to people, that is where we're at.
It's like you're saying, it needs to be easier.
The messaging needs to be clearer.
And every time I have an argument or a discussion, we'll call it a discussion, Joe.
Every time I have a discussion with somebody about what to call this, nobody agrees with me.
And that's okay.
But, like, I think the last thing I landed on was it should be called open music, right?
because I live in an open source world.
And then Julie, Julie Costello, shout out to Julie, Ainsley's mom said,
well, that's not really correct either,
which brings me back to something that you said,
which is people expect music to be free.
But what we're asking for is people to value music again.
And so if I call it open music, then that leads,
and Julie's right about this, that leads down another lane
where music is not free.
Joe did spend money to make it,
And he is an artist who deserves to hang on to his IP.
And this is where I get heat in this space is I still believe that you should have your intellectual property ownership, right?
You should be able to own that.
That is your genius at work.
And yes, it's a legality, but the publishing has always been the thing in the industry where artists kind of, you know, park their value.
You know, if you look at the publishing catalogs and the value of them that have been sold over the years, look at the Beatles.
You know, look at what their publishing was worth. You know, there's there's such a sovereign individual aspect to this space. And yes, I want to be sovereign. Yes, I want to be free. And yes, I want to be open source. But the work that I create doesn't mean that you get to pirate it and profit off of it, too.
And that to me, like, I want to call it open music, but I also don't want to give people permission to just pirate the hell out of my hard work, you know.
And then there's a small portion who are very loud in this space, kind of a vocal minority fallacy that say, oh, well, everything should be free and open and I should be able to pirate it all.
And it's like, well, let's not go to that extreme either, you know, because that's going to scare the musicians off from this space, too.
100% yeah um I don't know I just think it should be left down to the individual themselves how open
they want to make their music and how accessible they want to make it and if a musician says go
ahead pirate my music listen to it or whatever um they can do that you know there's a difference
between that and then someone stealing your song idea and making their own slightly adjusted version
and then claiming right to it and make trying to make money off that I think that's a different
argument to be made but i don't know i think as well musicians you don't like a lot of them that
they don't want to go against the grain and they don't want to break away from the pack so if all
the musicians are over here doing this that's kind of like the expected thing to do they don't want
to break off and do something like that kind of seems a bit crazy and different so there's that
inertia to try and get over um yeah like the this maybe stigma that comes with like bitcoin and well
Nostra people don't even know what it is yet because it's still so new but um like I kind of
I'm past caring really like I don't care I think at this point I've been touring for 10 years now
and you know I've toured extensively around the UK like most of the venues I've been through at
some point and I know the venues that and the venues know me that like me and I go back to them
and we have a good relationship and you know very slowly been building up a fan base that's been
really supportive over the past few years like i don't know i'm not gonna kind of like not what's
the word i'm not gonna like toe the line or not say anything that might be deemed controversial
just so that i can maybe possibly be allowed to to progress to whatever the next level is
like all i care about is making good music while making the best music i can and what i care about
is the people that listen to it enjoying it like and and them showing up for a gig or them buying
a CD or them zapping me some sats you know like that's all I want like I just want to like make
it work because they're living and that's all I'm asking for but like a lot of artists they
they're looking up here they want to be doing the stadiums and they want to be on a record label
which is great you know it's fine but obviously a lot of strings come attached to those dreams as
well yeah um so it it just depends what kind of personality you have and where you see your career
going for me like i kind of it's because i think i can see the potential in all this stuff in the
long term that it kind of gets me excited but just kind of seeing the slow progression and sometimes
the two steps back it feels is is a bit frustrating but hey it just proves that you know it's a market
test at the end of the day the tech isn't sticky enough it's not it's not sticky enough to keep
people here so we can keep pretending that oh it's all fine or we can ask the hard questions why
why are people leaving you know why why are people trying it once and then not coming back i mean the
big part of it is the catalog for the music side people people just want to be where the catalog
of music is so i don't really know fully how it works but a friend of mine recently ditched spotify
and he's on a platform called qbus which i hadn't heard of but but it's got all this all the same
catalog as spotify so i'm guessing that there's like a massive license that these platforms can
buy to be able to have access to the catalog, I imagine. Yeah. So I guess that's expensive.
I guess people like Nick and Oscar and Sam from Waverlake will know more about that than I do.
But that's a big part of it. If the catalog's not there, why, you know, if a few indie artists are
there, you know, that's cool. But at the end of the day, trying to convince people to download a
whole app just to listen to like you and a couple of other people is very unrealistic. So the catalog
needs to be there with all their favorite bands and their playlists that they can move across
if they want to make that move it's just got to be super seamless and just easy and then the value
prop has to be really compelling for artists to want to you know that are already stressed and
like fatigued with it all to want to you know take the time to try and understand it i don't think
they should need to understand it and again this is going to get me some hate from people but
it should just work it should just work and it should be seamless and it should the ux and the
The onboarding flows should just be that seamless that they don't even need to know how it's working.
They just know they're getting paid and it's better than Spotify.
There you go.
I'm going to work on that.
I've got some smart big galaxy brains on the team.
And, you know, if we can tackle that.
And you just said like about 300 important things there.
So, like, just to kind of back up, like, I think the most important thing that you kind of said there was that, you know, like artists should be deciding, you know, how their IP is used.
You know, like, let's just start there. Like, that's meeting artists where they're at is very important still. And I think that there's a small cabal of loud podcasters who think that they know best in this space. And they don't, which is why I ask these questions. Like, what do the artists want? Right. What do the artists want with the music, with the IP? And like, so what I'm hearing from you is like, we just want this to be easy.
And probably the best thing that could happen is if one of these big tech platforms that we hate, but that has the VC money that can pay for the PRO, you know, pay for the music licensing.
Because like this is an important distinction to make here is why I can play music on this podcast is because I get it off of Fountain, which is, you know, RSS.
And that's where Joe's music is.
And it's not like Joe and I had this meeting where Joe was like, OK, Heather, you can play this, this and this song because it's on my upcoming album.
Like that's like radio stuff from back in the day when I did radio.
I could play songs on the radio because we were part of a big corporation and the big corporation would pay for the music rights so that I could play the new Wiz Khalifa song at seven in the morning on Power 93.5 in Wichita.
Right. Like that's how I could do that on the radio.
And that's why I can't play Wiz Khalifa on Radio Detox.
And I can play Joe Martin because he's made his music available for me or anybody else who wants to start a podcast and a podcasting to app, a.k.a. modern podcasting app, an app that is open to where when you're listening to the podcast, you're zapping me and Joe.
And then when we shut up and we start playing a song by Joe, then the music, you know, is playing.
And I've used the technology to make sure the money goes directly to Joe.
So make sure that you're sending money when the song is playing on Fountain and then Joe gets that money.
Right. That's that's the whole point is for to make it worthwhile for the artist to be here.
And yes, it does need to be like that stripped down and easy of like, hey, you listen to the podcast.
You can give Joe money. That's kind of the whole point of like, if you like the song, vote by giving it money.
And however that looks on your end, I always tell people to use the Fountain app because I think it makes it that plain.
If you were signing up from the Fountain app, I think Fountain kind of walks you through it a little bit better.
You're already probably open to doing this thing because you downloaded the Fountain app.
And I think you're there and you're kind of like pushing the buttons and going, okay, so if I like her as a podcast, but I don't care about Bitcoin and I want to support her as a podcaster,
Or I'll just sign up for her five buck a month, you know, subscription, whatever.
Or I'll find another way to give her, you know, kudos or whatever.
And like, sure, go share it on Twitter or whatever, you know, whatever you want to do.
But then if, you know, for the purpose of doing this with Joe here, I want to give Joe a voice.
Because I think the musician voices, when you guys start to talk about the business end of things and how much work you put into this.
Like you literally travel to the United States to get album art done in Valentine, Texas, like to shoot music videos, like recording studio time costs money.
Like Joe wants to eat.
Joe wants to pay his rent.
And I took a lot of heat from a small cabal of really unfriendly people in podcasting for saying that like artists should be able to eat and pay rent and pay bills and not have to have like a day job.
Like you should just be able to do your art.
You should be able to do your music. I think the world would be an incredibly less happy place without music in it and without Joe Martin music in it specifically because you have such a unique talent and voice and gift for songwriting that people need to hear it.
Even with all my sad songs.
Even with all the sad songs, which you need sad songs. You got to process your emotions, man. You got to be sad sometimes.
But, you know, and it doesn't matter if it's like, you know, the sad songs are cleansing, man, but they're not all sad.
OK, there's there's, you know, the Jetsons.
They're just they're good music.
And I know I'm a sucker for like one of your favorite artists, Jason Isbell, too.
I mean, like imagine a world without Jason Isbell in it.
And the only difference between you and Jason Isbell is that you're just not a household name.
You're just like anybody who knows music knows Jason Isbell.
Right. OK, we can agree on that.
But, you know, this isn't a world where anybody is going to be a household name anymore.
You know, this is that we have fractured.
There was a time when I grew up, I kid you not, Joe.
I'm going to date myself again.
But when Thriller came out from Michael Jackson, that was like the biggest shared cultural moment in the United States because it was going to debut on network TV at a certain time.
And I kid you not, Joe, in my house, we like had to have dinner and dishes done.
and everybody gathered around the TV because you couldn't freeze it. You couldn't pause it. Like,
if you wanted to see Thriller come out, I lived through this moment, Joe, from the 1900s. But I
This was a big deal in my childhood, the day that thriller hit the television.
And, you know, if you missed it, you missed, you know, like you you didn't want to miss that.
Right. And of course, you know, over time now, a lot of these things like you could you could watch Purple Rain on the Internet Archive.
I mean, like these are classic moments, but we actually had to live them, you know, live.
And now it's like, OK, well, if I miss Joe's show, I could probably catch the recording later.
And like that appointment to sit down and catch that cultural moment, it doesn't exist anymore. We're not all consuming the same thing at the same time like we used to.
I think that that's a massively understated thing that you just said there. The asynchronous medium now, you know, everyone's not sharing those moments together in the same way that they were. And yeah, like you say, everyone can be in their own world, listening to their own podcast music on their own time. And it has fractured everything.
But I think that's why these big festivals are so popular, maybe even more now than ever, because people want that sense of being in a big crowd, being part of something bigger that they're experiencing together.
Festivals and stadium gigs as well.
I'm always baffled by people that will pay 250 300 pounds to go to a stadium to like not be able
to see the artist because they're a speck in the distance and they're watching them on the big
screen and and then when you know when a great band is playing down the street for 15 pounds 20
pounds they won't pay to go and watch them up close yeah I think sometimes it's like maybe it's
something to do with with this go ahead sorry go on sometimes you just don't know what's going on
you know like you don't know that there's like yeah i got walked into an open mic night by accident
last weekend and that was it was like it was awesome it was people doing slam poetry and i
was like holy shit i had no idea this was happening like nobody how do i know what's going on anymore
and it's it's like how would i have known that this is going on did i need to be on the mailing
list uh would i have known if i were following one of the like 30 you know events in phoenix
tiktoks that i follow and then i don't get them in my feed because tiktok changes the feed so even
though i followed them i don't get to see it anymore how much how was i supposed to know like
this dope slam poetry night was happening at this this place i just kind of like walked into it
like here's a guy on stage who's absolutely eviscerating trump and this is awesome and
people are going crazy and it's a it's a room full of live you know entertainment i'm like
i i should have known about i would have gotten here on time but like this is amazing yeah like
People don't, how do we, how do we get to a place where we actually can, can break through and get it to, you know, get people to like know one, the event is happening.
You know, Joe's doing a show.
You got to go to Joe's show.
Like, I think we went through this in Nashville when you guys were doing songwriter rounds.
Like, we worked really hard to publicize that show.
And like, we could have fit, you know, a hundred more people in that room.
But it's like, where are they?
Do they not know about this?
It's Nashville.
Okay.
There's a little competition in Nashville.
Yeah.
it's hard to i forget what night of the week we did that is true but yeah yeah like we how do we
even like get people to show up anymore i don't know i'm i'm hoping that like we've reached peak
centralized things in general and like people wanting to know what's going on at the other
side of the world because they can just look at x or whatever i hope that you know the younger
generations as well are going to like swing back to more local things and in this space anyway we're
always talking about support your local butcher support your local rancher support your local
whatever like support your local artists as well because there's a great art going on in in your
town that's probably right under your nose like you said that isn't expensive to go to and you
know you'll be out there like actually with people rather than than doom scrolling yeah maybe i could
take some of that advice as well some of my own advice but we used to say this a lot i don't know
In Wichita. We used to say in Wichita, Wichita is like the most populated part of Kansas. And people don't know that because they think it's Kansas City, right? And these things are four hours apart on the map. But we used to say this in Wichita a lot. Support your local anything. Support it, whatever it is. And so like Wichita was really adamant about buy local, support local before you go to Amazon, Walmart, etc. And this is a whole community kind of like upheld this support your local anything ethos, right?
so that I get now I'm in a big city, 5 million people.
Like, it's harder to support local.
And this is a very spread out city too.
This is not like New York City.
This is just a massive...
I have to work to support local where I live.
Whereas in Wichita, it was just, you know, an arm's length away.
Yeah, I guess it's easier said than done
because the burden lands on the individual
to go out of their way to seek out local stuff
that might not be promoted as well
as the budget that the stadium has, you know,
you know at the other side of town with all the billboards they're paying for that's in everyone's
faces you know everyone knows Ed Sheeran's coming to town or whatever because they see it everywhere
you know on all the buses and all the underground but yeah so it's kind of it's a similar thing to
to people seeking out genuine like genuinely good like underground music like where do they look for
it because now everyone's just used to being fed with the algorithm what to listen to we don't work
for it anymore. I think we're just, yeah, we're kind of paralyzed in a way by too much choice,
if that's possible. Because imagine walking into a supermarket with every type of food
in the whole world and every ingredient in the whole world and someone saying,
what do you want for dinner? You wouldn't know. You could have anything. You could have anything
you wanted. But if you walk into a shop and it's got three items, you know what you can make with
those three items i don't know i'm not i'm not advocating for less choice i think choice choice
is a good thing it's just kind of uh it's it's hard to uh make yourself heard through the noise
these days yeah for sure i an advocate for you know the name of the podcast is radio detox you know detoxing off of the big tech system the fiat system Like you know I was part of this problem
I was part of how we got here because I started working in radio in the late 90s, you know, started.
I survived all of that corporate consolidation.
You know, I worked for what is now iHeart.
It was it was Clear Channel back then.
Before that, it was J-Core.
And I think before that, it was like CBS.
Like the big company just keeps in and keeps buying the little company and Live Nation.
Like big companies, they are too big to fail.
They keep swallowing up the little guys.
And the little guys have no choice because at some point the business bottoms out because people get used to, I can buy everything on Amazon.
Like we have to become stewards of kind of what we're doing here and get people out of the homogeneity.
You know, and that's why I do radio detox is to get people out of the experience of like, well, I may not zap five bucks to Joe Martin today.
but I'm going to spend $700 on Taylor Swift tickets and travel and hotel and getting the outfit together.
And, you know, like to me, that doesn't like go you if that's your thing. Right.
You know, like nothing against Taylor Swift. I'll listen to her music every once in a great while.
You know, but I find personally more value out of Joe Martin's music just because to me, you're a real singer songwriter.
No knock on her. But when I think of singer songwriter music, I think of Joe Martin music.
Like I think of Jason Isbell.
I don't think of Taylor Swift.
I think of Taylor Swift as pop.
Crowd pleasing to like, you know, every common denominator.
Everyone knows who she is and they will spend a ton of money to go see her.
But like what is the – we have such a disconnect in the culture of where like, you know, I'd rather spend my money going to the like open mic night of slam poetry, you know.
And I'd rather support somebody who's willing to like entertain a group of strangers in a small bar on a Friday night.
Like, to me, it's like I've got to actively take an interest in creating this alternative universe where, OK, I can go see a small band here in Phoenix at the Rebel Lounge or I can go to a small venue or I can just be surprised because I went somewhere, you know, close to home on a Friday night and got surprised by some great entertainment that I didn't expect.
Like, you know, the more we kind of create a movement where we're creating these spaces where, yeah, there's a night in Nashville.
You can see Joe Martin and Ainsley Costello do songwriter rounds.
And we also had to kind of train the audience about what songwriter rounds are.
Like, hey, this isn't like a bar on a Friday night where you're going to talk through the performance.
Like, they're here to debut new material and go back and forth.
Like, this is a cultural thing in Nashville.
Like, somebody explained it to me.
And then we're like, OK, so now we have to explain this to the audience and what we're doing.
And, you know, it's not about going to the stadium show and being like that means having that mainstream lifestyle and being that mainstream person who's like, yeah, I'm just going to go to like the biggest concert that comes to town.
And that's going to be entertainment to me.
Like, please, like if you're listening to this, like stay open to the fact that there's probably an honestly amazing musician in your town.
You could probably go see this weekend and spend a little less, but more of your money is going to go directly to that artist, probably to the small venue, to the small business, the independent place where you went to see the show.
Like, it's a better use of funds.
To me, it's like a non-toxic way to use my money rather than give it, you know, I hate it when I have to, like, log into Live Nation because I do want to, I'd still, I want to go see some of these artists.
Just, you know, like I'm still going to buy some of those tickets to some of those shows or venues or whatever.
And then I get sucked back into like the Ticketmaster app.
And then I'm sucked into the Ticketmaster wheel.
Now I get like Ticketmaster travel emails and stuff.
So like I just continue to kind of be the product every time I deal with Ticketmaster.
Like they keep selling me over and over again to, you know, whatever Ticketmaster travel is involved with, whether it's Marriott or whatever the fuck it is.
It's just, it's, it's, you become part of this endless system where you're the product.
Whereas like with what we're doing with Bitcoin, Nostra, Found, Wave, like independent music,
being able to make, you know, some independent money.
It's like, okay, it does require a little more effort on my part.
It does.
It's going to require, you know, curating a Nostra feed so I can just get like music stuff
in my feed and, and, and not whatever else is out there.
And, you know, it's going to take a little bit of effort to, I guess, learn the system.
But you're right.
People shouldn't have to learn a whole bunch of stuff.
It should just work.
It should just be easy.
There shouldn't have to be a discussion about what's Bitcoin, what's a wallet, what is lightning.
You know, like that's where I think we, you know, you're definitely right.
We made things too complicated over the last couple of years.
And now I'm trying to, like, you know, pull back on the messaging and clean it up for people so they can kind of really, I guess,
hear what we're trying to do. And I think when people are listening to you for sure, like they're
going to be like, oh, here's a legit musician who's like put in the proof of work, who actually
wants this to work. I think people should, that should pique their curiosity, you know, especially
you're obviously awesome. Your music's obviously awesome. And, you know, you haven't gone anywhere.
Like you haven't given up on us yet. You know, thank you. Thank you for staying around, Joe.
hey i'm in it now i want to see i want to see how it how it all turns out yeah i don't know what the
answer is really i think the um it's abstracting away the complexities it's always getting less
complex which is good i mean nos is kind of giving us so much more choice because well it
looks that way it's very simple at its foundations but it looks like there's a million clients
blooming which is great but uh it's yeah it's i don't know what how it's going to look but i think
it'll get ironed out in the end
and yeah
it's going to be exciting
to see, to take its final form
whatever that will be
sometimes being too early
being too early
feels like being wrong
so at the moment it like are we wrong about this I don know I don think so because the principles if you just look at it from first principles it all makes sense as why it should work But yeah I don know
Yeah, we're definitely a first principles thinking kind of zone. I think it's one of those things
where I think we realized pretty quickly that this was going to take a long time. And I think
we were two years ago, I was like, this could take off at any moment. And then you kind of like
expect that. And then you start talking. The more people you talk to, the more you realize it's not
going to take off at any moment. It's going to be a slow burn until maybe it is just a small
community of people who go, OK, we're just all kind of doing this our own way. It's still very
democratic because you can build an app if you want. I mean, Julie Costello built the Epic Music
app, which actually takes fiat payments, believe it or not. Like she went, you know what? This is
great. We've talked to normies so much, you know, the uninitiated, the people who are not yet
Bitcoiners or who may never be. I mean, it shouldn't be a sticking point. Like we shouldn't
have to turn people into Bitcoiners. We shouldn't have to turn people into sovereign individuals who
build their own node and build their own server. Like, that's not what we're trying to do here.
We're just, we're, I'm here anyway, for the musicians and any content creator who is going
to want to do this and have a way to reach an audience and have a way to get paid directly for
it. Because, you know, as somebody who's been a creative person, you know, making stuff on the
internet for a very long time, like there should be a way, you know, for you to do that. And like,
okay, I'll make a Patreon. I'll make a sub stack. Okay. But then we get back to the de-platforming,
like what happened to your friend where one day you wake up and everything that you worked hard
for was deleted because you built it on somebody's backyard and they have the control over you.
They have the control over your ability to make money and career. We see this over and over in
space and like I've had bad experiences and you find a lot of people who are Bitcoiners and who
are on Noster and who are you know podcasting here rather than there you see a lot of us can say like
oh we had a bank account shut down or oh we were deplatformed or both like both things have happened
like over and over and then those are the people who come in here because it's happened to us or
people like yourself who are like wow I found success and I found a community here yeah I don't
think it should people shouldn't want to come to it because they've got nowhere else to go or
they've been deplatformed from everywhere else i don't think that's a good a good measure i think
people should come to it because it is genuinely better but i think what would be kind of left of
field and but they would have definitely have the resources to make it accelerate this whole thing
would be jack dorsey's title teamed with the cash app because i mean the cash app yeah is already
lighting native so they could have a way nostal wallet connect or something to connect the lightning
wallet and cash app with the title account um and then just generate you know lightning addresses
for all the people on title um and stream saps from cash app or whatever um and it'll probably
work out cheaper than a spotify subscription and every other kind of subscription because you'll
be paying as you listen you'd be paying for what you use i mean that like something like that would
be so huge but it would take you know big company like that to really get behind it and yeah we
really i i think that that's like that's the way you describe it it's so possible like we have the
technology like that's the kind of thing to where you know i think people know that jack's a bitcoiner
you know that wouldn't be shocking to the world whereas like if spotify did that it would be like
people be like oh you know all the mainstream people be like bitcoin oh you know the clutching
of the pearls would begin but that that that would be i like we have the technology why don't
we just use it like we can just build the bridge why don't we just build the bridge you know that's
that's of course it takes time and effort but not as much as it used to no it'll get easier i think
i think jack's got a lot more to deal with than than that at the moment so a lot on his plate so
yeah he keeps making the news pretty recently well thank you joe for talking to me today i think it
was an important conversation to have to kind of like pick your brain and kind of like see see where
you're at you're one of i think the top artists in the space one of the most well-known and and
putting out new music and continuing to show up i mean that's that says a lot yeah i mean like i
truly believe in the movement and and this tech and and the promises it can bring eventually you
can get jaded sometimes because you know it just feels like it's taking a long time to be picked up
and I haven't really had much luck getting anyone to take a serious look at it in a way.
I mean, I had a few artists that came across because I did a fountain radio takeover
and basically I just DM'd a load of my friends and said,
hey, I'm doing this radio show.
I'd like to play your song.
You can get paid for it, but you need to go and upload your music here.
And they all did, you know.
Yeah.
And I've since sent them some sats myself just listening to their songs
because I love them as artists as well as friends.
And I don't know if they've done anything with that,
but they're now in the ecosystem.
But again, they're not engaging
because it's a chicken and egg problem, I think,
of getting, you need the audiences to get the artists.
You need the artists there to get the audiences.
It's a catch-22 sort of thing.
But I hope I haven't been too doomerish on this podcast.
No, I don't think so.
Well, you know, I think we need to go in this direction.
I'm still bullish on it all.
It's just going to take time.
Same.
I think the conversation probably two years ago was like,
oh yeah let's fucking go this is great you know we got this we're gonna we're gonna do like where
are you come do this thing and i think that there may have been some smoke and mirrors over the
years i think there may have been like too much rose colored glasses over the years i think we
need to kind of like take it down and go hey let's talk to the artists let's talk to fans let's see
what people really want here and let's be realistic about you know this is not going to replace an
income yet i think that's where everybody wants it to go certainly the artists deserve that i think
Like, we need to be like, hey, this is an alternate route.
It's an augmentation.
It is another route to find discovery find fans It another route to bring artists and fans together It probably I be honest probably not ready for prime time yet But I mean we are so close because I think
we are hitting a tipping point where the consumer public is like, hey, we're kind of tired of a lot
of shit. And then we're over here like, hey, we're building the thing to get you off of this shit,
or at least augment your entertainment to make it feel better so that you don't feel like you're
giving all your money to a big corporation while an artist makes none.
Like, I think the morals and the ethics are there.
Like, the public has that.
They have the desire for something different.
And then we have the something different.
We just have to make it more desirable for them.
And when these two things do finally converge and meet,
or, hey, when Taylor Swift finally puts her music on Fountain,
you know, like something has to happen here.
But I think it's just we have two separate camps where, okay,
everyone's bitching about the problem,
And then we have people who like have the solution.
So we just have to bring them together and have them kind of coexist in a way that is appealing to everybody.
Meaning like what you said earlier, it has to be easy and it has to actually pay off for everybody.
And I think once it's a win-win for everybody, because it's easy and it's fun and I feel like I'm getting more Joe Martin music in my life and I'm getting more independent music in my life.
while also not losing the fact that like, hey, maybe I do want to listen to that new Luke Combs album and that new Fray album,
which I do when I listen to those.
And then I go, OK, well, now I want to go like back to my happy world where I want to listen to some Bitcoin podcasts
and interact with what's become my community that I directly interact with.
And I do want to listen to Joe's new song.
And then I'll, yes, get on YouTube and watch Joe's new music video.
And it's just kind of the lines blur for me because I can still I can be in two worlds and I know how the two worlds work.
And I just know that it's better in the long run for me to make the new world work for everybody.
Now that I spent decades screwing things up in the old world, like let me come detox off of that, deconstruct that.
That's kind of where on. That's my thoughts. I'm glad we got to just kind of like talk shop today.
Amen. Well, thank you for being so supportive of my music and championing my music. I really
appreciate it, Heather. Yeah, like I say, the album's coming out in a few short weeks. I
trekked to Nashville and Texas to make it happen. And I'm really proud of this album. I worked with
such incredible people. I was so fortunate to work with the people I did on this. It's been the album
I've wanted to make all my life and I hope people enjoy it. And if you do, you can zap me some stats
if you like it, listen to it where you get your music.
I have a lot of vinyl to sell and CDs,
so if physical is your thing,
then you can buy a copy from Shopster
and take my sats, I think it's called,
and just the website, joemartymusic.com.
So yeah, I appreciate all the support.
Every zap keeps you going.
Thanks to everyone that's been with me on this journey
and continues to support.
Appreciate it.
Spent Kodak camera roll
Ain't a mile's worth of telephone poles
Dirt track don't know where it goes
But we're going to find out
Finting map up on the dash
Making memories made to last
If I had me one last wish, I would be this
Would you be my backseat driver, baby?
Tell me which way to go
You could gaze all night through the sunroof
Counting the stars as they glow
Well, I've climbed the highs, I've seen the skies
Nearly every shade of blue
But my best adventures, they all start with you
The valleys brought us close together
Loving our hearts running like a river
In the mountain air went to our heads
And we got married in the spring
That desert sunset, I'll never forget
The way you looked in that light
When the night time comes and we're all alone is when you show me that you're mine
Could you be my backseat driver, baby, tell me which way to go
We could gaze all night through the sunroof, counting the stars as they glow
I've been to the end of continents, living cities old and new
But my best adventures, they all start with you
Will you be my backseat driver, baby?
Tell me which way to go
We could gaze all night through the sunroof
Counting the stars as they glow
I've been some crazy places
Seen a million faces
Lived a lifetime enough or two
But my best adventures
They all start with you
Oh, oh, oh, oh