Welcome to Pleb Chain Radio, a live show brought to you by Plebs for Plebs, which focuses
on the intersection of Nostra and Bitcoin protocols.
Join QW and Avi as they run down the weekly news and developments, breaking down the current
thing and the future frontier with the foundation of decentralization, the builders, thinkers,
doers, and plebs.
All right, we are live.
Welcome, gentle pioneers, to the Lightning Laced Airwaves. Today is Friday, the 24th of October, and it is 3.56pm Central Time, almost 5pm on the East Coast of the United States.
At the time of recording, this is episode 134 of Plep Chain Radio, and we have a special show today.
We're all live at Bitcoin Park in Nashville, recording in the studio.
Avi, Avi, we have five of us.
They haven't had harmony like that in the studio since Florida Georgia Line.
Let me just tell you that.
It's a sweet harmony.
If you can picture this, everyone, we're live from different rooms because that's just how we roll.
Very decentralized.
But yeah, carry on, Avi.
Yes.
So we have Ainsley Costello.
What up?
Open mic.
Hello.
And Heather Larson joining us today.
Hey.
As I said, live from the studio at Bitcoin Park.
and this show is being streamed live on zap.stream and any other Nostra client that supports streaming
such as Amethyst, Nostra, Fountain and Primal. And a reminder folks, if you are listening to this
not live and you're listening on Apple or Spotify, first of all, thank you for listening,
but I would urge you to hit pause and switch over to the Fountain podcasting app where you can earn
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there, if you could hit that subscribe button, we would genuinely appreciate it. Your subscription
and support goes a long way in helping keep our mics warm and the show ad free. And finding home,
The Prague episode is now available on IndieHub, and you can use the code PIONEERCHANE21 for 21% of the price.
QW, you've been paying attention to Bitcoin and Noster culture in the last week.
What have you witnessed?
Nosterville 3.0 is coming up, Bobby.
I don't know if you've heard of it.
It's in Nashville, October 25th.
That would be tomorrow.
Some could say that it actually started today.
Maybe this is a prequel or the pretty sambal or whatever the hell is pretty.
But, yeah, that's the big one.
Also, are you going to that bit?
What's it called?
Well, I know about Nostra Shire, the U.K.'s first Nostra Conference, 21st Street.
It's the 21st of November, 2025.
You know, it's funny because I read that.
In the Euro way, they put the number, I think they put, I always read it November 21st, 2025.
But I think they put the 21st in front of.
Anyway, so Nostra Shai, UK's first.
21st November.
It makes sense if you think about it, right?
You start with the smallest unit, which is of time and date, which is the day.
Then you move to the month, right?
So you put the day first, 21.
Then you put the month, 11.
and then you put the year.
So in some sense it does make sense.
But yes, that is-
I just don't like it, Avi.
Well, you're special, QW.
You know, some things like, I understand metrics,
but like something like, you know, metric versus Imperial.
But yeah, the 21st November, 2025.
So anyways, moving on.
Well, by the way, let's not forget QW.
So that Nostalgia is part of BitFest.
That's BitFest.
That's what I was looking for.
And folks can get 10% off tickets if they use discount code PlebChainRadio.
That's a scream of deal, Alvi.
It is a deal.
T.
Best one out there.
So one of the bigger things I would say that just happened this last weekend is Noster
Valley.
And three of us here were there.
So maybe Heather, do you want to talk about it a little bit
And then carry on with Mike and Ainsley
Yeah, Mike and Ainsley and I were out there
There was actually a spontaneous, as things happened in the Purpleverse
A spontaneous Ainsley-Costello performance
When we were out last Friday night
Oh, there was a couple of it
Yeah, a couple of guys were playing at this cidery
And we just threw Ainsley up on stage
Like, hey girl, grab a guitar and go
so we just you could just do things uh so we we hung out in state college pa which is derrick ross's
neighborhood and seth's neighborhood seth the homie from zap cooking and we had a good uh nostril
valley all day last saturday lots of panels good mix of talk about you know i talked about content
creators seth talked about zap cooking we had ian and mandana from next block talking about their
billboard attention marketplace which is going to be vertical video and you know you never have to
watch an ad again unless somebody pays you
for it. So there were some great ideas
that were coming out of there.
Like Nostra Git with BudaBit
from Dave.
Just such great ideas.
A good time for clubs to come together,
see what other people are building, and just
see folks that you wouldn't see
otherwise. Because we had to
go to the other side of the country, QW. We just had to
do it. You mean the
right side of the country, right, Heather? Oh, there
you go. The other side.
Because you know, QW
and I are Nostra Phoenix so had to go to the other coast for a chance chance to meet some some clubs
we hadn't seen in real life before that was fun and Mike was out there too I don't know if Mike
wanted to share some impressions from Nostra Valley yeah it was great we um I was out there
last year actually Avi and I were out there last year and it was um fantastic we had um very high
signal a lot of really you know I don't know smart people out in the world talking to each other
collabing a lot of brainstorming partnerships and people just working on cool stuff um we had
arkanox out there repping repping the midwest and you know it was people came from a long ways away
to um get out to the nostril ceo's main office oh yeah we have derrick ross we put him on the spot
had him talk about shakespeare and five coding i think he might do that again he's going to be
out at Nostarshire.
Nostarshire?
What do you call it?
Bitfest?
It's like multiple names.
Nostarshire.
Here's the funny thing.
We need to get one of our
English friends to clarify this
because, you know,
like the source,
when you read it,
it should,
it ought to be
Worsestashire.
But they pronounce it Wuster.
So is Nostarshire
pronounced Nuster?
Paging Nick and Oscar
from Fountain.
We need you guys to weigh in
yeah yeah we need we need a tiebreaker i say nostrilsire
well and derek's on his way here too so he's gonna be here before there he's all over the place
he's non-stop so ainsley you were there too what was that like yeah it was a lot of fun it was very
um low-key and just very much felt like getting together with um friends and it was uh really
informational and um I had a really good time listening in on a lot of the sides of the space
that I am not usually privy to like I think I'm very much always kind of the guinea pig for music
and social and whatnot so it was really cool to um to get to see like all the things that like
Arkenox was working on and like Ian and Mandana like that was just so cool I spent so much time
talking to um Mandana the night before um so yeah it was a great time it was just I'm and I'm always
down to take a weekend out of Nashville because I'm here, you know, 24 seven. So yeah, I had a
great time. And then I had to get right back to Nashville. Cause all this week I've been doing
this pretty cool writing camp here in Nashville where I'm writing for myself and other artists
and sync placements. And so we had to dash back. We got back to Nashville at 4am on Sunday.
No, absolutely not. Is there a direct flight from state college to Nashville?
I am sure that there probably is,
but we, my team and I,
we're just so used to driving everywhere
because when we're doing shows,
like my band will fly out
and then my mom and I,
we will nine times out of 10,
we'll drive with a trailer of all of our stuff there.
So it just made more sense for us to drive on this one.
How long was the drive?
Well, when we were going up there,
we stopped in DC to hang out with my aunt.
so that's about a nine hour drive
but we've done that one a bunch of times
and then up to state college
there's probably another two and a half
well it should have been three hours
from DC to state college
but it ended up taking us like four and a half
with traffic and what not
but I was actually surprised it really only took us about
ten hours to get back
so we left right when the event was over
nice
well that is certainly a long
drive
are you feeling good about
You're playing tomorrow, right?
I am, yeah.
Well rested, ready to go for that?
Yeah, absolutely.
I do love getting to do these kind of more intimate
and informal and stripped down performances.
I think it's fun to show another side of myself as a performer.
And I think Joe and I were really going to kind of lean into the
almost like VH1 storytellers thing,
which is, you know, that's a show that I grew up on,
like just as a kid who loved every music show
that I could get my hands on.
um so i think we'll really definitely be leaning into that tomorrow um but i i like to do these
events kind of sparingly because um you know i'm a full band sound like that is me at my core and uh
so i'm glad to do these like every once in a while but i just i want to make it uh feel really
special to those who are who are here yeah yeah and and joe of course is joe martin yeah friend
of the show so mike let's talk about nosterville that's why we're all here in nashville how did
this come about? There was the first Nostovil two years ago around this time, which was, you know,
mostly panels. In fact, almost all panels all day and, you know, a small party at night. And then
Nostovil 2.0 that happened last year was just a party and no panels. And I think with this one,
we're finding a middle ground. So talk through that, Mike. How did this come about
and what can we expect tomorrow?
Yeah, so it is a bit of a hybrid
for the third time around We had been planning Joe got a lot of surprises for us tomorrow He writing new music he working on a new album
and he's in town for a few weeks, if not maybe a month,
recording an album here in Nashville.
So, of course, we've got to get him on stage at the park
and do some value-for-value music.
And it started out by planning a concert with him,
or a showcase with him a few months ago and it's just gradually evolved into let's make it bigger
let's do more stuff and then it's getting to be the fall and that's Nosterville season so we
we decided to combine the concepts and it all kind of came together with some conversations
that took place at Imagine If last month.
And so the Bitcoin Park team and Phantom Power and Derek
and all of us just decided this is going to be a one big day bash
rather than a standalone music event.
And so Joe's working on the album here in Nashville
really was kind of the starting point of it all.
By the way, Mike, Joe's working really hard
because he was supposed to be on this show,
and he very politely declined because he's a busy man.
He's in El Paso right now.
I hope he's not getting too big for us, but it's possible.
I love his bigger intentions.
You might not have many chances to catch him in a small venue,
so get out to Nosterville tomorrow.
That's why I'm here.
We're a launching pad.
We are a launching pad.
Yeah.
So that starts at 6 o'clock.
We're going to do a little fireside chat with Joe.
I'll ask him about his album
He had some fundraising
With Bitcoin
For funding this album
And the studio time that he's here for
And then Ainsley and Joe
Will take it from there
And that'll be the evening
But the Nosterville daytime
Will be starting at 2pm
We have four presentations
Slash workshops
With Manny Me
We'll go in order
Avi
Yours truly will let you talk about yours.
You're kicking it off at 3.
Sean Yeager's doing a discussion after that.
Manny Mee is talking about Noster for Social Apps.
And Derek Ross is doing a Shakespeare vibe coding workshop.
So that'll take us from 3 o'clock to 6 o'clock.
And then, of course, the real fun part of the evening begins.
But I believe that first presentation is not really a presentation.
It's supposed to be a fireside chat between you and me.
What are we going to talk about, Mike?
Well, I think there's a really important TV show that's going on that somebody on this show needs to talk about called Finding Home.
We'll circle back to that.
Yeah.
Yeah. So we have a little five-minute teaser that you're going to be showing, and then we're going to be talking about what you're up to with that.
And I don't know. I'm excited about all this.
What I meant was we haven't really discussed what we're going to be talking about on that panel.
So we can wing it as we're doing it on this show.
Yeah.
Heather, what are you looking forward to?
Oh, God, Joe Martin.
I mean, that's why I YOLO'd into this trip.
I didn't know if I'd ever get another chance to see Joe Martin play in the States anytime soon.
He's got that album coming out next year.
That's why he's here.
He's recording right now.
So definitely had to come see Joe Martin.
Always looking forward to bothering Derek Ross.
That's kind of what I do best.
So tomorrow he's going to do a little vibe coding session with Shakespeare by Soapbox.
So that's our jam.
You know, we were always vibe coding on Hive Talk Monday nights
But this time we're going to do it in real life
Which will be fun because, you know, Hive Talk is great
But sometimes we can't always see people's reactions
Or see what people are doing when they're doing the vibe coding with Shakespeare
So that'll give us an opportunity to see that live and in person
And just hanging out with people
It's actually the first time I've ever been to Nashville
And so Ainsley's giving me the rundown
Ainsley knows it best, obviously, being a singer-songwriter in Nashville
The whole thing is a great vibe and I'm loving it so far.
Bitcoin Park, this place is just lovely and great and everyone's really nice here.
So it's already off to a great start.
Where is the park though, Heather?
This has been a head scratcher for me.
I love the Bitcoin Park, but where is the park?
This is the park.
There's some grass outside.
There's a little bitty lawn out there.
no joke on our show uh with odell uh and i was you know we're talking about nosterville and i was
thinking about the the original one and i was thinking about bitcoin park and i'm like oh i
wonder if there's gonna be a stage at this park uh if there's gonna be all these things at this
park and and that's when i realized it's not actually a park it was just a name that was a
was good vibes or something. So, um, yeah, you wouldn't, anyone listening, uh, you wouldn't be
the only one that thought Bitcoin park was just literally a patch of grass. So.
Ainsley, what are you looking forward to? Obviously you're, you're playing a small set.
Yeah, absolutely. I think I am always looking forward to sharing the stage with Joe Martin.
Again, the last time I got to do that was, um, over a year ago at, uh, the Bitcoin conference
when it was here in Nashville, Joe and I,
we had a couple of shows that week.
And so a couple of times we got to get up
and sing a couple songs together.
So I'm excited for that.
And yeah, I mean, unfortunately,
I'm not going to be able to be here the whole day like Joe.
I have some songwriter-y Nashville things going on
in the morning that I have to attend.
But I'm really just looking forward
to getting together with everybody
and maybe playing a new song or two.
Who knows?
Nice.
And yeah, I saw you and Joe perform the last, that was at the Vinyl Lounge, right?
Yeah.
So we had a show together last year at the Vinyl Lounge.
It was Joe, me, Just Loud, and then a couple of other bands that were on the bill as well.
And so Joe and I got up and did a couple songs together.
And then a couple of days later, we did the same thing with Phantom Power,
put on the Bands at Bitcoin stage
at the Embassy Suites across from the convention center.
And the last day was just,
I mean, there was three back-to-back days
like full of music,
but the last day, Joe kind of closed it out.
And so we got up and did a couple of songs together then too.
Looking forward to it, for sure.
So Mike, what's new in the,
obviously you've been working on Nosterville,
but outside of Nosterville, what's new?
You've been since it's been ages since you've been on the show, right?
What is it?
Three weeks now.
Yeah, it's been a it's been a real fun and busy 2025 between the conferences, the Toonster shows, Noster Valley last week, Nosterville this week.
and looking forward to
to planning out
a lot of these big events in 2026
there's a lot of fun
conversations going on here at the park
about music
activations and
value for value
creator economy
ideas here especially
last week at Noster Valley
and it's already starting here in Nashville
so
So I don't have any official announcements to break here on the show,
but it's lively and it's exciting and such a great community here.
What surprised you the most doing all these shows over time?
Because it's like a year and a half now, I feel like.
What was it?
December 2023.
So, yeah, I mean, we're almost two years.
Yeah.
I announced Toonstir in Austrasia, which was like two years ago this week.
That's crazy.
It feels like yesterday and also an eternity ago because so much has happened.
Were you on stage there with Sam?
Sam and Oscar.
Dude, shout out to Sam, by the way.
He was on Jimmy Fallon.
Yeah, that's right.
That's right.
and their uh their their format the man the the song um holy roller is like number one on the
alternate uh spotify alternative spotify type of thing it's a great song so much they're so
incredible yeah so i mean it's just crazy to see someone after 20 years uh come out with an album
and all of a sudden the energy uh there's the four shows they they announced to sold out it's
And then now they have a whole tour for a new album.
It's like, that's pretty nuts, man.
Again, we're launching pad here at PubChain Radio.
And they leave us in the dust, QW.
That's what happened.
And especially later, too, if you do an hour and a half with Sam just shooting the shit, then he really takes off.
And I haven't seen him since.
He's a busy guy.
That has been so fun to watch.
and I mean I'm seeing him
pop up in all of my
traditional music circles
and
artists that we've booked
in the Twin Cities
and sold out
our rooms are on the bill of this tour
that he's headlining
it's incredible
and I can't wait, he's going to be in the Midwest
and hopefully playing one of our
he
is going to be the one to have to tell you that
I see how it is
We're talking
You got someone to orange pill
Other people with when he's there
I know I won't be the crazy guy
On an island there
You could corner someone
But it's been so fun
It was surreal watching
Fallon
And it happened to be the Taylor Swift
Night when she had
she was the guest and just funny to think that i could have cared less about that musician on the
show i just had to wait until the format came up that's true like well can we cut to the music
section here this is enough of taylor swift i saw the format reunion show in phoenix veterans
memorial coliseum and lightning store played in a lightning storm so it was a particular brand of
magic but a sold out show absolutely insane uh an entire coliseum of people who knew every word
to every song it was just so high vibe uh i can't i can't wait to see him again and that that is the
original uh the madhouse on mcdowell is where the arena was where the old sons played that was the
original purple palace so well you know there was a little bit of purple and purple and orange merch was handed out of course That said Madhouse on McDowell in the format 25th reunion show It like a terrible towel but it was purple and orange though
So it was one of those subtle things that if you know, you know.
So Ainsley, you know where to take your tour.
There is a purple palace.
I'm working on it, I promise.
So Ainsley, when was the last time you were on the show?
Was that right before your first Valley for Valley concert with Mike?
I'm fairly certain.
I think it was when I was in Minneapolis,
like the day or so before the first Av show, yeah.
So that was December 2023, almost two years ago.
Almost two years ago, yeah.
So what's happened to your career since then?
Yeah, I mean, I released an album.
When we did the first Avenue show,
that album was basically pretty much done,
but because the whole Bitcoin alternate universe thing
kind of just fell into my lap. It really made me rethink some, some things about how to release
music and what release strategies look like. And so I finished up that album, I put it out,
um, and I've, I've gotten to play, um, some other incredibly legendary venues, um, since then,
um, that, you know, aren't really affiliated with the Bitcoin space, but I'm always going to be
grateful to open mic for, um, letting me come do my first ticketed show at first out of, cause
that definitely gave me some bargaining power to go back and play when I was in Seattle.
This July, I got to go back for the first time since I'd moved to Nashville from there. And I
got to play one of my all time like dream bucket list venues that I remember when that venue opened
when I was in middle school, the Spanish ballroom at McMinimins. And I just had always said to
myself, you're going to play there one day, you're going to play there one day. And we were able to
say, oh yeah, I mean, she's played at First Avenue, 7th Street Entry. She's played at Antone's
Nightclub. And that was definitely helpful when trying to sway the Spanish ballroom people to
let me come and crash their beautiful venue for a night. So yeah, I mean, I've put out an album.
I've basically written another one that I'm getting ready to go record in the next couple
of weeks. And I've, yeah, just continued to educate myself on how the intersection of
the music industry, the very, like the currently very broken music industry. And, um, Bitcoin is
really a great thing. Um, and, uh, and yeah, I mean, I've just kind of continued learning and
continued being open to any possibility that comes my way in any opportunity. Um, so yeah,
it's been a really cool two years. So, you know, there's, there's the music itself and then there's
everything around it and the operations, and that's where Bitcoin comes in, but let's just
talk about the music itself yeah do you find have you found that in the last two years you
what what has your evolution been been like as a musician are you are you still playing the same
genre do you feel like you you've improved as a vocalist as an instrumentalist yeah absolutely I
mean I think my genre it's funny that we're having this conversation now because um I was just telling
Heather um before we started um so I've reached out to one of my like favorite producers I've
worked with and um we're you know in the beginning stages of starting to plan out what um my next
album is going to look like um and I I you know I sent him a couple of reference playlists of what
I think this next record is going to sound like and then my overall reference playlist um that
I've had for the past two and a half years that hasn't really changed that's full of like
Paramore um Bank Meena a little bit of Carly Rae Jepsen like my my ideal image and my ideal sound
that I've had in my head has not really changed, but I think the evolution, um, comes from
continuing to write music and continuing to put out music. And it's, it's kind of this, like,
I kind of look at it as it's this, this lighthouse in the distance that you're never really going to
reach, but it's not, it's not a sad thing. It's just, you're, you're constantly swimming and
you're constantly trying to get better. And it's, it's the climb by Miley Cyrus. There's always
going to be another mountain. I'm always going to make it move uphill battle. Sometimes we're
gonna have to lose like it's it's just one of those things that like you're never like I don't
know if you're ever gonna um really get to a place and be like oh well I feel like this and I feel
like I've become the vocalist I want to be or I've become the songwriter I want to be it's a
constant like continuing to push yourself um and I think that's definitely what I've um been doing
the past couple of years you know I say a lot um and this is it this sounds kind of bad but I
promise it's not like I've gotten very comfortable with being uncomfortable and the sense of like
continuing to challenge myself with the songs I'm writing in the rooms that I'm putting myself in.
Because I think if you're comfortable, you're not growing. And that's good for me because I
haven't been comfortable since I moved to Nashville. So I think it's been a fun journey
of continuing to find what my sound is and continuing to hone in on the messages that I
want to write and that I wish that I heard on the radio when I was growing up. So yeah.
you know we were talking about grunge before we started recording do you find that because one of
the that sort of music seems to be on its way out or at least it's not as prominent as it used to be
back then do you find you incorporate those elements into your music yeah I mean it's actually
pretty ironic one of the things that I say about my musical evolution since moving to Nashville is
that. So when I was, um, 15 living in Seattle, um, you know, so X-Less, which is my record that
came out in May, you know, I say that it's my first album. Uh, it's kind of a lie though. Um,
so I put out a record when I was 15 called, you know, I am, and those were all songs that I was
writing like late middle school, early high school, um, kind of just showing myself that I
could write songs and that I had the stamina to make an album. Um, but when I was in Seattle,
I was making a country record, a pop country record, because that was a novelty there. That
wasn't something that a lot of people were doing. And I was like, okay, cool. This makes me stand
out. And then I got to Nashville and everybody's doing country. And I was like, oh no, this doesn't
make me different, different anymore. So geographically I did this weird kind of musical
shift where right now I'm making the music that you would have thought that I would make in Seattle.
And when I lived in Seattle, I was making the music that you would think I should be making
here. So it's, it's, it's been, uh, it's, it's been a little bit of an interesting kind of,
you know flip-flop of genres for me but um yeah I'm still very inspired by um you know the grunge
scene and um you know that genre of music I think it's it might like I feel like it might look like
it's on its way out but there are a lot of like really cool um like alt even salt I've seen that
um descriptor used as like a really kind of niche um you know genre defining word um so I think it's
still alive and well it's kind of just it's it's bubbling and it's doing its own thing uh here for
a minute but yeah i'm still very inspired by that music that's great mike uh let's talk about i mean
so ainsley just mentioned salt and and and these uh musical genres that are bubbling up
potentially right one of the biggest issues is discoverability because we're so saturated with
music from everywhere. How do you find the music that resonates with you as a listener?
And I guess, how does Nordstrom Web of Trust potentially help with something like that,
that discoverability of the music that means something to you?
Well, yeah, that's a loaded, complex one where the centralized platforms that we all love to
hate are providing a lot of service around, you know, discoverability and they're, they're using
the algos to try to, you know, either force you into discovering something that, you know, guide
you to discovering something specific or learning about you and pointing you into a direction of
things that they think you might like. Um, and that's what we need to really focus on in this
area is you use the term web of trust that I think that verifiability, that authenticity,
that that Noster and the tech that sits underneath Noster and Bitcoin.
I think that that is going to have a key role in identifying, identifying who these artists
are and helping us connect, connect their work to the artist, to, to other things that we like,
but we have to develop some, some tools to make it easier to find, like, where, where do you find
the next Ainsley and Joe Martin who are, you know, doing the work in this space, but also
out in the, you know, the fiat music areas, because we're all, you know, having to navigate
the traditional music space as well as pursuing our efforts here and spreading all of that
into Nostra and Bitcoin.
But discoverability really is the trick because when we're doing Toonster shows and we're
signing people up to Fountain and Wave Lake, the number one thing that matters most is
are these people getting results, right?
When they get into this new world that's totally foreign to them, are they going to see a little bit of that revenue that we talk about?
Are they going to get some zaps?
I think it was even yesterday or just the day before, a very prominent artist in Minnesota just sent me a text message saying,
hey, I just dropped a new instrumental EP.
And he put it up on Wavelike and texted me
and wanted me to share it out with the group.
And he's pumped about the technology
and he thinks it's a really awesome ethos.
But I think most people won't be doing that
if they do it a couple times
and they're not seeing any results.
So the discoverability and then the promotion
of our crazy nostrich plebs to promote it and get out and support
and be deliberate with that to ensure that these people are getting results?
I think one thing's for sure, Mike.
Discoverability is not going to change in any meaningful way
if we're stuck on centralized fiat platforms
because there will be a singular algorithm that's controlled
by that centralized entity.
that's going to make these recommendations for you.
And honestly, something like Nostra, in my mind,
is the only answer to it.
And the reason that is,
with a web of trust-based solution,
you have a personalized view of recommendations.
Or you can create that for yourself.
There's someone in your circle whom you trust
and they've liked certain kind of music.
and then that pops up on your feed,
saying, look, someone whose musical opinion
I value above someone else,
they've liked this music, maybe I'll give it a try.
That opens up the doors to discoverability
because it's from your perspective,
not a company or a platform telling you,
hey you might like this You through your network being able to see what the people you follow and who they follow what they listening to I think that actually solves the problem
But there's the other side of the problem,
which is the musicians need to be on Noster first.
Discoverability will be solved
through a meaningful web of trust layer that's built.
But how do we get them there?
I think that, to me, is the harder problem to solve.
yeah it really is it really is chicken or the egg in a lot of ways because the
you know the artist like laser beat comes on nobody knows who he is um i can i can talk about
how i've been going to his shows for 20 years and they sell out you know sell 10 000 tickets a
weekend and they're great um but getting that out into everybody's feeds and and having you know
It's a whole other story.
So having that, is it the artists coming in and bringing their fans,
or is it our fans bringing the economy that attracts the artists?
It's got to be some of both, because I think it really doesn't matter as much
until you get a situation.
Here's an example of a Toonstir event that I did with the Daniel and Manny, me, and Tatum out in Wyoming this summer.
It was called WhatFest.
And the organizers were really into everything.
They were just eating up everything that we were talking about.
All of the ethos were aligned, and they wanted to hear more about Noster and Lightning and all of it.
And so the organizers of the event were on stage over this multiple-day festival introducing the various bands, and they had it actually broadcasting on Wyoming Public Radio.
And they were talking about it on stage introducing the other bands.
And so that's an opportunity where we're not just having these private one-on-one.
I call it hand-to-hand combat.
it's actually somebody with the microphone on stage saying,
hey, if you like what you see here, this is how you should go support us.
And having them direct their, quote, normie fans to go choose this method of supporting us
rather than, you know, it's exactly what you'll say on the intro is,
thanks for listening if you're on Apple or Spotify,
but please join us on the Value for Value fountain apps.
and if the artists are willing to do that and say that to their normal fans who are not already in
this community that has potential to really hit the you know hit the flywheel effect
qw we're back at our favorite chicken and egg we were talking about this with merchant adoption
as well right you have much it's it's like a theme every three shows every three shows
I mean, I'll just give an example.
We're ostriches for a reason, right?
Flightless birds.
No, but...
We could run really fast though, Avi.
If you just find the right cliff, you know.
Right.
But just to refresh some memories here,
I think this was the BTC map,
one of the BTC map episodes we were talking about.
And there was the...
We're talking about merchant adoption
and you go to any merchant restaurant cafe
and you say, hey, why aren't you accepting Bitcoin?
And they say, well, there's no one to pay in Bitcoin.
No one wants to pay in Bitcoin.
And then you go to the people and say,
hey, why aren't you paying in Bitcoin?
Well, no one accepts Bitcoin, right?
Do you remember the other chicken and egg
that came out recently?
I'll be slipping my mind right now,
but that one comes to mind, right?
The merchant adoption one.
And the solution is you just hit the merchant's heart, right?
You just get them adopting and then the people will come.
So I wonder if there's a similar solution here to this type of chicken and egg.
Who is the merchant in this equation?
It's the fans.
Yeah, yeah.
But I think we've talked about like open mic.
I think we actually had this discussion.
We're mentioning it really needs to be the actual artist who, you know,
emails everybody and says, hey, we're doing this event, you know,
and kind of drives that way.
Well, that's one of the ways, I suppose.
But it just has to be more, I don't know.
I'm really hoping like the square terminals
where you have the option to buy Bitcoin
or spend Bitcoin through the terminals.
That's only going to work if people want to spend it that way too.
So it's like you have, we can bring you to the water,
but you're going to drink it type of thing.
It's like, it's that human nature.
How do you crack that?
I mean, you got to have, I don't know.
I mean, Nostro Adoption helps because it normalizes all of this.
Zapping is easy.
Zap the things you want.
And maybe that web of trust grows and it's just a perfect harmony.
But it's always the chicken and egg, the egg and the ostrich.
Heather you had
or have maybe
a show called Radio Detox
where you talk to different
musicians
right it's mostly musicians right
yeah mostly musicians
builders people building on Noster
there's been about 11
episodes and I got busy this year with
projects and I can keep up on Radio Detox
but it's going to come back
I've been going through old material
It's unique. Heather, you're so unique in your perspective because you come from the radio side, very legacy, which, you know, hey, shout out AM radio. I still listen to talk radio, so I'm like that.
I was still working on talk radio this year.
You're big into the legacy social media, so you have a very unique perspective and you're drawn to this new world.
Right.
For many more personal reasons, I would say.
Well, yeah, I mean, I've seen that dysfunction, you know, front row, front row seat.
You know, I started out 27 years ago working in radio and working in TV and then social media came along.
And so I've seen the evolution of this.
And I think people are kind of aware that it doesn't feel right.
You know, like my niece one day had a, my niece is an adult, by the way, but she had a little tantrum because Spotify sucked one day.
Like they changed their whole interface and she got mad and she was like, I hate this.
I stumbled download Wavelake and she was like, oh, this is cool. I already like this better.
And I don't know where she got beyond that, but it's just those little moments where the legacy
media fails you, where Spotify fails you, as it has obviously failed Ainsley. She's had her music
out there for years and clearly made more money doing it this way, doing it the Bitcoin way.
And so there's just, you get a foot in the door with people and it needs to be in tandem between
the fans and the artists but i think what you guys were saying a few minutes ago about artists
you know having the buy-in and artists getting on stage or artists sending out the newsletter and
saying hey i'm doing this new thing this is all technology maybe it's not well known yet maybe
people don't understand it maybe people don't understand lightning yet and i think sometimes
when we've done some of these shows where we've got indie musicians we're putting them on stage
or asking people to zap them in Bitcoin.
I think we've been a little bit hamstrung
by the HODL culture of Bitcoin
and people don't want to spend their Bitcoin.
We need people to want to take part
in the Bitcoin economy
so we can move this forward
and take part in a circular economy.
Otherwise, we're going to have to regress
back to U.S. dollars in order to move forward.
Because if you're looking at what Tidal is doing,
in Tidal, I can pay, and I have done this,
I can pay Ainsley U.S. dollars in Cash App
when I listen to a song on Tidal by her.
So it's the same principle.
Okay, it's just it takes the Bitcoin out of the equation.
And I've been wondering lately,
if we just do that.
Because if Bitcoiners don't want to release their Bitcoin
into this fantastic high-tech ecosystem that we've built,
are we going to have to have a fiat button too?
Because maybe I don't want to let go of my Bitcoin.
Maybe I do want to give Ainsley $1 in USD.
You know, maybe I want to give her that.
So I don't spend my Bitcoin.
You know, I think we've got to go into a time here where maybe people just have the choice and we're not browbeating them.
So you have to spend some Bitcoin because we've been doing that for a while and they're not doing it.
So maybe this could be the training wheels.
What Tidal is doing could be the training wheels to get people to understand, oh, here's an independent artist on a major app where I can listen to music called Tidal.
And maybe I can give some money to this artist in that way.
and then she can afford to go on tour, record her album,
and it doesn't have to specifically be Ainsley.
There's a bunch of independent artists on there.
It's just that they're not using the rails that we've been building for years now.
We've got this great system where you can boost and zap,
and you can listen to Radio Detox, and when you boost the podcast,
the Bitcoin goes to the artist.
What we're doing here on Noster,
it would be great if we could get the world to adopt nostr and zaps um it's just the more we can
build it out make it better take take it so there's fewer steps to onboarding people
dumb it way down i am in camp dumb it down we got to dumb it down and dumb it down a little bit
more make it super easy make it super slick make everything look like that wave lake interface and
I think we'll get there and all of these things.
There will be a moment when they all intersect and it starts to click and it takes off for the artists and it takes off for the fans.
And that's going to be a great thing to be a part of.
And right now, I think we're still building and we're still working towards it.
You mentioned Tidal and maybe for folks who are unfamiliar, you just sort of tell us what Tidal is.
Obviously, it's one of Jack Dorsey's companies, right?
But just talk a little bit about Tidal and then what do you think the issue is or the differences between people, quote unquote, zapping dollars, right?
Which essentially is on Tidal versus zapping sats on, let's say, Wave Lake.
Well, Tidal is part of blocks.
And so with Dorsey's companies, you've got blocks, you've got Tidal, you've got Square, which I've been a longtime customer of Square.
So I'm anxious to get that going on November 10th and start taking Bitcoin in that way.
But Tidal is just, you know, if you're looking at your big music streaming platform, you know, your mainstream popular music apps, you've got Apple Music, you've got Spotify, and then you've got Tidal.
And of those three, Tidal gives the biggest share to artists, which it's not saying much.
I mean, we're still talking about fractions of cents, right?
And this is the whole reason why we're doing what we're doing with Wavelake and Fountain and Zaps and Boosts is to get Bitcoin directly from the fan wallet to the artist wallet.
So, you know, Tidal being a part of blocks and then Cash App being a part of that as well.
It's just kind of built in.
I use Cash App for a lot of things as well.
So I use Cash App to zap on Wavelake.
You know, I use a lot of Cash App and Strike for what I do on Noster.
But you just, it's pretty seamless.
If I want to send Ainsley some money from Cash App, it's just really easy to do.
It works great with Tidal.
And so there's a bunch of independent artists on there.
And they maybe have never heard of Bitcoin.
And maybe they've never heard of Noster.
So I think what Tidal is doing is a step in the right direction. It's going to be training wheels, again, to get people to understand that like, okay, so I'm paying a monthly subscription to Tidal. I think it's like $13.99 a month I pay for Tidal, right?
So every time I'm spinning a song on Tidal, whatever artist that is, is getting, you know, that fraction of a cent just as they would if I were listening on Apple Music or listening on Spotify.
But then I can go, you know what, this song by Ainsley Costello has really, you know, gripped my attention.
I've listened to the song 20 times in a row because she never writes long enough songs.
So I got to keep putting it on repeats.
so you know I've really enjoyed this song so I'm just gonna I'm gonna send her some money for my
cash app because I can and it feels like you know I hate to use the word patronage because then it
sounds like that Patreon app that I'm not a huge fan of but it's it's a way to give back to an
artist when they their music really touches your heart or changes your life and you know just the
fact that there is one fiat place that that happens is kind of nice. And I don't know if
that's, you know, I don't know if that's taking off for title and cash output together. I have no
idea. I have no way of knowing that. But we know that people in our space, the Bitcoin and Oster
space, we know our people really enjoy Wavelake. They like to put their own music on Wavelake.
They love to use Fountain and Zap podcasts, and they love the social layer of being able to do
that and i think when ainsley ainsley knew when i sent her buddy uh on title with cash app like she
knew and it was kind of cool because she could she could see it coming to her phone right so it's
and in that way it's also the same principle right because when somebody sends you a zap on nostr
you're probably going to get a notification so if an artist is receiving some money on title by a
cash app they're going to they're going to get that notification amy maybe ainsley should speak
to this i just want to ask ainsley which is which is just putting your musician hat on forget the
fact that you absorbed all this from bitcoin as well just set that aside for a second as a musician
why would you choose nostr over title when you get a similar kind of benefit nostr over title
i think i mean it's hard for me to say like i would choose nostr over title because like we've
been having some pretty exciting like um you know secret conversations with the title team about
you know, how we can implement some of the Nostra functionalities and, you know, just the great
experiences that I've had in the Bitcoin and Nostra world and how, you know, Tidal could maybe
replicate that, whether it's with the same technology or their different technologies.
But I mean, with Nostra, and one of the things that I've said a bunch of times, but I'm always
going to keep saying it, is that with Nostra, it doesn't feel like you're shouting into the void.
You know, when I put up an Instagram post, I feel cringe. I feel like, oh my gosh,
I'm so sorry for like burdening, burdening my followers with like me telling them that I have
a new song out or that I'm, you know, just sharing a part of my life with Nostra. That's not the case.
You know, some of my best performing posts on Nostra are about, you know, when I have new music
out and that's not really the case on, you know, the traditional socials anymore. But yeah, I mean,
if I could kind of just like touch back on some of the things that Heather said a minute ago,
she really touched on, you know, the circular economy of using Bitcoin as money. Because,
you know, one of the things that I think I've, you know, noticed over the past couple of years
is I've been trying to bring my artist friends in, isn't it? And I need to backtrack a little
bit before I, you know, I start this. I mean, so I was really lucky that I came in at the right
place at the right time with Bitcoin. I was a really lucky beneficiary. I think you could,
you know, say the same thing. I don't want to speak for him, but you know, Joe, Joe was even
more of an OG in this space than I am. He was here long before I was, but you know, my success
and experience in this space needs to be the rule and not the exception. Every artist who comes into
this space needs to be met with the same, you know, amount of, um, excitement and love and, um,
zap payments. And again, it's not about the money. It's about the principle of like,
you know, I I've brought a bunch of, or I've tried to bring a bunch of my artist friends over here.
and they're like, hey, this is really cool.
I'm really glad that it worked really well for you.
But, you know, they put up a couple of songs
and they don't see the same reaction
that I was telling them about
that happened for me with Cherry on top.
And even the, you know,
that what still continues to happen to me
when I put new songs on Wave Lake and Fountain.
And I think, you know,
going back to the legacy platforms
in the chicken or the egg question,
like I think, and I have said this before too,
like the fans themselves
are going to be the heavy lift.
It's not the artists
because the artists, when they see this written out
and they sit down with me
and they have the three hour conversation
about why this is a cool thing, they get it.
They're like, okay, cool, sign me up.
But the fans are the ones who have been accustomed
to getting music for free for the past 25 years.
And I've been saying this forever.
Music is a service.
Music is something that we put so much blood, sweat, tears,
actual money into to really get nothing back
at the end of the day.
And, you know, with a platform like Spotify, like I really believe that Spotify is just Napster in better branding.
Like it's completely cheating artists out of our revenue under the guise of like artist equity and like, oh, if you can get your music on Spotify, then you're being heard.
But you're not being heard on Spotify because there are over, I think, 100 million independent artists on on Spotify.
I don't know if that's the correct number. Feel free to fact check me on that.
But there are a crazy number of songs that get uploaded every single day on Spotify.
And so when you think about the sheer amount of artists who are the ones who are making those songs and putting them on Spotify, I think it might be about getting to a point of drawing a line in the sand and saying you can't find me on these platforms.
Or, you know, the other alternative is like these, you know, legacy platforms just need to be brought down somehow.
And I think Spotify is doing a really great job of what's the right word?
Because part of me, like I'm always trying to remain diplomatic, but also like my inner
feelings on the matter are very much not diplomatic.
Spotify, I think, is doing a really great job of like, I think, tanking their credibility
right now with I mean, and I don't, you know, particularly this is not a political podcast,
but some of the, you know, the ads that Spotify has been running for their paid subscription
model have been, um, you know, really upsetting. They have a really awful track record of not
paying artists, um, and giving a big chunk of, um, the money pool to their top performing artists,
like the Taylor Swift's and the Ed Sheeran's and Beyonce's, um, and then not paying all the
little guys fairly when the, the actual music industry is, is off the backs of the artists
who are in Nashville, who are paying $1,500 a song to get it produced. And then another $300
to get it mixed and mastered. And then, um, you know, just to market it and get it out into the
world. So I think it's, it's about drawing a line in the sand and it's about utilizing these new
platforms. Cause I mean, one of the other things that like, I have been sending the emails out,
um, to my email list and to my friends and followers and, um, and Heather, this might be
a really great thing to chat about what we, you asked me on stage last week and Heather brought
up a really great question when, um, we were on stage and she asked, um, I don't remember exactly
how you phrased it, Heather, but how do we, um, how do we get Gen Z to come over here? Like,
what are some of the, I guess the PR tweaks that this, this space kind of needs to be, um,
be more palatable to a bigger audience. And I think we had a really great discussion about that
on stage at Nostra Valley last week, but, um, yeah, I mean, that's just, that's just my two
cents. Like, I think it's so exciting to be a part of this space, but I think the farther I get into
this, the more I realize that there is a long way to go until the mass populace adopts this. And,
you know, I think it's going to be a combination of right place, the right time for this space.
And then also it's going to be the downfall of these legacy platforms.
You know, you brought up an interesting point, Ainsley, and this might be an unfair question to
ask you because you're relatively new into your career, but you're talking about artists not
getting paid and and in some sense audiences expecting to get stuff for free right right i
mean that was the napster model right people say i deserve to listen to these mp3s for free
and art is really not just music right art period art period is is true and good art is true proof
of work because blood sweat and tears go into it it's people are are pouring their life force into
this act of creation.
And yet the people consuming it
assume or I guess it demand
that it needs to be for free.
Why do you think that is?
Why do you think audiences,
I mean, maybe I should make a blanket statement,
but there are enough people
who think they deserve to listen to art for free
and they don't actually value it.
Yeah, I mean, I think that you can accredit that
to the Spotify's and the Apple Music's
even the YouTubes and platforms like that.
And especially where social media is today
with the whole content creator mentality
where I think a good example of that is,
so every record label in Nashville right now
is not going to sign anybody.
It does not matter how good that they are
unless they have minimum 100,000 followers
and they are creating three to five short form
pieces of content every day.
And that's on top of all of the other content that music musicians create, because that's another thing that I feel like has the music industry has always been like pretty hypocritical of, you know, saying musicians need to be content creators.
Musicians need to be content creators. We have been content creators forever.
like the the albums are significant content the music videos are significant content and so you
know asking um artists to you know make 30 second videos on like okay guys help me pick my outfit
that i'm wearing or okay guys help me like not the makeup that i'm wearing i mean and there's
nothing i'm not particularly knocking that because i i understand that a lot of artists get a lot of
joy out of that. Um, but I think social media today is in such a, a state of, um, yeah, I mean,
give it all up for free and because that's how, you know, your fans are going to decide on whether
or not they, uh, want to continue investing their time and energy in you. And, um, yeah, I mean,
I mean, I think it's absolutely a fair statement to make that audiences do, um, expect, um, you know,
art for free because I think and we really saw that happen to the extent that it is today We saw it start happening with Napster in the late nineties and the two And you know the Spotify and Apple Music bundles that you know subscribers can pay for that I think has kind of not even brainwashed artists but brainwashed fans into that idea of oh I am paying for art
But they're not paying for art.
And especially Katie and I talk about this on our podcast in this episode will be coming out in a couple of weeks where we go deep into Spotify's Bundlegate program where they're now part of a bundle where you can buy Spotify and Hulu and Disney Plus, I think, and a couple of other things, which ultimately leads to songwriters and artists getting paid even less than what the current mechanical royalty rate is right now.
So, you know, the consumers are the ones who they they truly do believe. I mean, if I wasn't doing music and I was just, you know, somebody who liked to consume music and movies and whatnot.
And I'm sure that this is the same for the the acting part of the entertainment industry where you pay for Netflix and you pay for Hulu.
And, you know, we think, oh, look at all these great shows we get to watch. We are paying for the art, but we're not as consumers.
is we're very much not paying for the art.
We're paying for, you know,
Daniel Ek to have a really nice cushy office
at Spotify headquarters.
And look, I've said it once, I'll say it again.
If Daniel Ek has no haters, I'm dead.
He stepped on.
So yes and no.
I mean, so he's not going to be the CEO anymore,
but I believe he still has a majority
of his shares in Spotify
and he's just on the board of directors,
which means that he still has,
I'm fairly certain that he still retains
most of the voting control
about what happens to his company.
So Mike, I'm going to ask you the same question.
You've made a few more circles around the sun,
quite a few more circles around the sun than Ainsley.
And you've had a ringside view to several artists
in your long and storied career, open mic.
I'm saying you're an old man, Mike.
Yeah, I appreciate it.
We did the birthday comparison earlier.
Yeah, I know.
but you know having seen what you've seen in all of these years mike what what is what is
why do you think that is is that like why do fans and audiences not or just assume that uh this
should be and it could be for music it could be for other art as well right it seems to be a common
theme that they just sort of expect uh this their enjoyment to be for free yeah i mean some of that
is just human nature and not not uh anything music or art specific but what i will say is that
if you give if you give fans the chance and you explain to them what it means the one of the
things that I tell every single person that I talk to when I'm hosting someone at a live event
is if you care about the artist, if you really want to support them, go hit the merch table.
That's the closest thing you can get to a peer-to-peer relationship or a transaction
with your artists and that that really matters to the economics of touring the the the recorded
space that Ainsley spoke so um so well about just now is is uh it's so obscured and opaque and you
just you can't figure out how the formulas work and am I going to get a check for 27 cents in like
And it's purposefully designed like that to confuse artists and fans alike.
Yeah, I mean, as a venue operator, I have to remit those payments to the royalty companies.
So just every time we open our doors, if we're going to have ambient music on, boom, there you go.
You're going to get a minimum bill of X thousand dollars.
But we have no idea where that goes after it pays for the ASCAP, BMI, CSAC overhead and then eventually gets magically distributed to the artist somewhere.
So we don't know where that goes.
We just get the bill from the agency.
But fans, coming back to the question of free content
Fans inherently understand
I don't need my 87th black band t-shirt
But every time I see a show that moves me
That's where I go
And fans get that
And they're curious about how can they support, how can they be more involved.
And I think that is kind of partly why those social media videos matter.
They want to know what their artists are up to, what makes them tick, how are they doing on a day-to-day basis.
They're kind of in relationship with them.
And so I'm very bullish that when we get tools like this out there and have people understand what exactly this little zap button is doing and how profound that is, that you can just drop money directly into the living room of your favorite artist.
I think that has meaning.
I think that in the way that music touches people, I think that could force people to want to figure out how to make these payments happen.
Because there is, to Heather's point, we've got to dumb this down.
We've got to make this really easy.
That's a huge barrier because you can't take 45 minutes to tell someone how to give their favorite artist 20 cents.
but when we get those dialed in
and we can really have some clear talk points
and the artists are comfortable
that's the big thing for me
is getting the artists comfortable talking about the ask
you get somebody who says
hey if you want to support me
support me in this way
use this app and go through these steps
And it's kind of like what Adam Curry was doing 18 years ago.
He said, if you want to support the show, it's value for value.
And he's got his army of producers that participate in supporting the show.
And it's taken a long time to train that behavior.
But when the artists are comfortable doing that, then their fans will listen.
but then we get into the whole you know the the rest of our panel in in Noster Valley Heather
where we talked about some of the um why don't artists want to just you know this is if this is
so great why won't they just dive in head first and slap a Nostrich tattoo on the middle of their
forehead and a bitcoin shirt and there is we have to deal with the um the public the pr problems of
of what some of these some of these spaces get like if you go into if you go into nostor and
everything is about censorship and freedom like it's all we understand that we've been here
forever but to the outside it can look political and especially with the current administration
um love him or hate him um he's polarizing and orange man associated with orange coin
is not a good thing for talking to musicians it is not there's a stigma on like there is no
entertainment industry like myself included like we're all very like blue
left-leaning i mean not all of us but you know it's it's a good chunk of us for sure and so that's
i think a way that turns a lot of a lot of people off for sure like one of my friends who um you
know i tried to get into this space she was like ainsley i love that this works for you but
everything orange man is doing is making me anxious i don't know how much i can really
continue to be a part of this space and i was like you know what i can't i can't blame you for
that for sure you know on that on that narrow point mike or you yeah i mean there's i wonder if
there's a there's a there's an educational gap here because orange man also uses he drives a car
he also uses a mobile phone right we're not boycotting cars and we're not boycotting mobile
phones it's a neutral technology yes i wonder how that can be communicated somehow you know part of
the problem is part of what, you know, this community, I'll, I'll give you an example here.
So the, the national independent venue association is a group of thousands of independent venues
around the country that joined forces during COVID and, um, did a lot of great things.
Advocacy work, changed some laws, passed some stimulus, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. So, um,
One of the big efforts that they're working on
Is ticketing reform
And figuring, you know, solving some of these scalpers
Junk fees, tickets
And I don't know if you all remember
There's about 15 executive orders a day it feels like
But there was an executive order with Kid Rock
In the Oval Office a few months ago
and Trump basically signed an executive order for a lot of what we've been fighting for at Neva.
And you think we could just take the win, right?
And just be like, okay, well, I wish it would have been a different messenger, but here you go.
Like we got like, let's, you know, let's celebrate what we got.
And it divided the community.
It was a really strange thing to observe.
And that's kind of how I describe this spot where we're in is like this technology is agnostic.
I originally became, you know, Bitcoin, you know, ready, I would say, through like an Occupy Wall Street lens of like the big banks are screwing us over.
and much more from the left is how I was predetermined to be a Bitcoiner.
And as I've gotten into the community, I see both sides.
I see all sorts of uses, and I think it's just an amazing unifying technology
that really forces a lot of people who otherwise wouldn't hang out together
to hang out together because we're doing something more important than stupid politics
and fighting about this or that.
And to an outside musician
It's really complicated to understand
That just because Trump is into Bitcoin
Or his sons are like, you know
Seeking out exit liquidity for the next few years around the country
They
That doesn't mean that this technology is associated with any of that
and it's a hard, it's a pretty nuanced conversation to have with people, and I would say that
almost all musicians are not willing to take up that discussion with their fan base and they don have any interest in dividing their fan base by publicly going out there and saying give me Bitcoin And then they say why And you know
it just opens up larger, seemingly irrelevant conversations for traditional musicians if
they're not, you know, really based and been doing their 40 hours per week.
so how do we
well let me ask you Mike
how much is
Richard Greaser's
new album coming up
going to change the game
adoption
Doomsday DJ
I know you're a big
big listener
I mean I fanboy all over
I mean I'm always
you got any predictions
on the billboard chart
well you saw they just the billboard charts just made that announcement yesterday i posted it on
nostr how they're rearranging how the top 100 i think that's probably in response to some of
greasers actions oh my god you know i was thinking about you though uh mike uh i went to a shoot my
buddy came into town from florida last weekend or week and uh we had a show at um a venue and it was
on Ticketmaster.
But the day before the show,
I didn't buy the ticket yet. My buddy's like,
dude, they sold out. You can only get them on
second hand now. I'm like, okay.
And of course, they're on SeatGeek.
And they ended up being
cheaper on SeatGeek
after it was all said and done. But it just shows you how
close they work together,
I suppose.
It's like the same
ticketing agencies,
but just with different veils.
It's worse.
If you would have had the full Live Nation experience, they actually own their own version of SeatGeek, their secondhand verified resale market.
And I think they just had to suspend it.
Don't quote me on it.
Something came up in the news in the last month.
Yeah, I think your normal fan experience would be you click on the show and instead of going to SeatGeek, it goes to the Ticketmaster affiliated resale market where you get to pay them your fees again at a higher price.
But they're in trouble in Washington, D.C. with antitrust laws.
So I think they literally took it down in the last week or so because of what's going on in that lawsuit.
Yeah. And then Heather's point, talking about the title in that, I was thinking about it because we're talking about, you know, we need to have the artists or maybe it would help to have the artists kind of launch some of these events.
But, you know, title in 2015 was the co-owners of it were Beyonce, Jay-Z, Rihanna, Madonna, Kanye West, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Alicia Keys, Daft Punk.
So these are all these like it was almost like they took the biggest people at the time to launch this, trying to get people away from Spotify.
And it's just like if they can't do it, you kind of have to like think, OK, maybe it's not the artist.
Maybe it's something we need to, maybe it's the Noster is everything.
You know, it's an everything app.
It's a protocol.
It's got to be maybe the technology standpoint, the convenience standpoint, the freedom standpoint.
Maybe more testimonials from artists who everyone loves, but then they realize, oh my gosh, they got pulled through the ringer.
Maybe we need to fix this system.
I think about like Sam, you know, with his album 20 years ago.
So he had a bitter, he was very bitter about it.
And I asked him, you know, when I first met him, I think it was our first Nostra PHX.
I'm like, how much of what you're doing is because of what happened then?
And, you know, he said a lot of it.
And maybe that's kind of the, you know, when we talked just loud before the Minnesota event, you know, those stories of, the true stories of, you know, successful people.
or you would assume are successful musicians in your eyes
and realize that they're just getting,
they signed something and they truly didn't own their art.
So it's like, I don't know,
maybe having more testimonials helps too.
Well, you know, another way to look at it is we have a big three.
We have Apple Music, we have Spotify, we have Tidal, right?
So there's your mainstream.
And then in the indie music department, we've got your Wavelake, we've got your Fountain, and we've got people on Nostra, people just logging on to Nostra, like Matthias McIntyre posting a video every day of, you know, classical music.
And so what we're doing, we're fighting something that started with Bill Clinton in 1996 in the Telecom Act, and that was supposed to create competition and innovation, and obviously it didn't, because now we're here.
So, you know, what we need is a lot of Wavelakes, a lot of fountains. We need a lot of Ainsleys. And there are a lot of Ainsleys. That's the thing. There are so many Ainsleys out there who could benefit from the fact that we have a Wavelake and a fountain.
so you know we need to be popping things up like hydra you know and giving alternatives and reaching
people in different you know different cities different musical genres you know like when
mike went to wyoming for what fest you know you're reaching it completely you're you know
the hippie jam bands who are out camping in wyoming you know you got it to them right so
each one teach one each one reach one it's it's really a grassroots movement you know
derrick ross vibe coded zap tracks right so he's pulled together a way for for wave lake tracks
and fountain tracks to coexist on zap tracks and i think it does actually play ainsley's music as
well so like we need more people just vibe code and apps you know or take the app and fork it and
make it you know a different app a different version of zap tracks and you know sam's always
said as long as i've known sam for the last couple of years you know it's open source go build on
wave like you know keep keep building solutions we just need more competition we need to do the
opposite of what happened in 1996 and we just need more alternatives more ways for indie music
to be discovered for fans to enjoy the music for to reach them and touch them in a way that they're
like hey how do i how do i be a good fan because you know we do live in the subscription trap
now or it's like am I a good fan if I listen to Apple music and Tidal all day you know like now
I'm more conscious about my consumption and I go well I gotta go on Wavelake and see what's you
know some of my friends are making because I know some of the people who are uploading music to
Wavelake you know and I see the people on Nostra doing it and I get to have a conversation with them
and zap them and then people see in Wavelake or Fountain you know what I sent to somebody and they
see it show up on Noster and then they go oh what's she listening to oh cool let me listen to
the song Heather's apt if she liked it maybe I'll like it or maybe I'll hate it maybe I don't like
what Heather likes you know maybe go get in there and find some heavy metal song that I want to
listen to but it's just the the more we get it out there to more people like I just I want an army of
Gen Z people out here just you know discovering songs on Wavelake discovering podcasts I want
more people to come and podcast you know come make your own radio detox you know come do your
own plug chain radio like there's there's no reason we oh that's not good kind of radio
but we we just we need we need more people joining the movement and taking it out to their fan and
their community or fans i should say you know we just need more participation so people are getting
their feet wet and seeing how it works because there's i think there's really no other way to do
it you know we have the technology we just need the people we just need the community that's all
you know the more i'm listening to this the more convinced i am that the way for nd artists to be
discovered is getting them on boarded on nostra and through the web of trust through your own
personalized view there's no central recommendation engine your recommendation engine is your friends
the people you trust.
That's how you get
to find the people you like.
And I think maybe
the answer was
in what you're saying, Heather,
which is
just start forking
apps on Nostra.
It's all open source, right?
If you don't like
one music app's working,
just make your own.
You can vibe code it.
You have hundreds of these
micro music apps
floating around.
They all interoperate
because they're all on Nostra.
Each finds its small niche.
And then the web of trust does this magic after that because it's all Noster.
The thousand true fans, Avi.
And by the way, I love the fact that she started off with Bill Clinton
and then somewhere weaved it to Derek Ross.
So kudos on that.
It's amazing the little web that I can weave, isn't it?
The water found its level, Heather.
I'm good at talking.
What can I say?
But yeah, I mean, I'm looking at, so I was looking at the milestones or the time, the time, the timeline of just title.
It was really launched in 2010.
So that's year 15 for them.
And there, you know, it doesn't seem like, and maybe that is, maybe you decentralize, maybe it's a thousand true fans for every small micro community.
And, you know, it creates this, this network effect.
But yeah, I mean, you've been to enough, Open Mike.
You've seen enough communities.
Granted, there's a lot of the same people because we are those.
We're a thousand true fans of our own people.
But has any communities seemed like they were a little bit better fit versus others in your explorations?
Fit for Noster?
Fit for Noster, live events.
the support, actually asking questions, seeming more interested in the mission.
I mean, I'll tell you, I was a private anon Bitcoiner for many years before Noster.
And if you just replace a couple of words in some of the basic sayings that we have about
like transparency and proof of work, all the stuff, you know, all the stuff that Bitcoiners
and ostriches talk about is really just straight out of an independent venue operator or an
independent.
I'm not obviously a musician.
Ainsley can speak for musicians, but the messages are just so in line if you can make the connection.
And so I believe firmly in the independent music is got to be one of the most logical spots to break Nostra and mainstream And that why I here So that that my that my deal Isn that funny though It just it just sometimes it it trigger words
just like it's trigger colors of orange men. It's just those little triggers that completely
derail a valid point. Yeah. I mean, it's completely contra. Yeah. It's for how
blinking red in the middle of the stage obvious it is to me it's just i always i stand in awe of
how hard it is to get other people to have that same experience of just you once you see it you
can't unsee it but like i just the the tiktok ban in january is the one where i just i my jaw was on
the ground for like two days that like these artists who had spent they'd done their 10,000
hours on on this platform that had no they had no control over and then boom rug hits even if
even if it only lasted for 48 hours or 36 hours whatever it was the wake-up call that this is a
possibility i i just i'm shocked that it didn't have a larger effect and maybe you know everything
happens for a reason i'm not a it's happening on a schedule that you know we we probably weren't
ready for that volume of of nostril attaching at the time but like yeah we were definitely not ready
back then but we're getting there why is that mike i mean not not why we're not ready for
that's fairly obvious that most is not funny why is it that when slapped in the face so obviously
people still don't see what's what's in front of them i mean i was literally in in rooms where
people were having meetings about tiktok alternatives that included the the ccp version
of tiktok it's like red what what was it called red note it was red note we were like we were gonna
like we had a marketing meeting about like do we need to get on red note and i just laughed i
literally laughed out loud and i was like you got to be kidding me like we're talking about red note
um and and that's when you know that's when blue sky and all that you know all the swifties went
to blue sky when elon did his elon thing and and there's been there's been several of these
occasions just in the last year.
Brazil banning Twitter.
Is this some kind of
collective Stockholm syndrome?
People are so in love with that
little cage.
You know what it is?
It's kind of like what Ainsley was saying
about the music, where people think
that they're in the
subscription plan and they're not going to spend
real... I mean, in the 90s, we used to go to Tower
Records, my old ass, would
buy... CDs were like $20
dollars a pop right so it's like for my generation paying 13 a month for unlimited music is like an
amazing advancement right but then you're locked into the subscription thing and you're you're used
to getting a lot for a little you know like she was mentioning that you know you get disney plus
and this that and the other with your subscription now you you're getting a lot of bonuses right
and so people they're they're not really spending the money to buy in as fans because it's like for
one low monthly fee, you get all this entertainment. And when it goes to social media, for nearly 20
years, you were getting your social media for free, right? You weren't paying for verification,
you weren't paying for a LinkedIn plan, you weren't paying for Twitter premium, you weren't paying for
all those things. And three years ago, when the Twitter handoff happened and went to Elon,
one thing I, you know, I worked in social media marketing at the time, I followed this really
closely and one thing i realized that people feel entitled to social media because for so many years
it came out of nowhere we got it for free before they ruined it and put all the ads in
and started charging subscription fees we got the internet and we got all the fun for free you know
and so nostor brings that back because it's free and then we're paying money to people who post like
memes because we can because there's lightning and we can send zaps uh but look at how how long
were you on nostr before you either received a zap or sent a zap or joined a zap-a-thon see there's
i think there's really an entitlement that the consumer has especially right now in in the way
the job market is and the way the inflation is i want to get more for less and i want my
entertainment i'm entitled to my entertainment i'm entitled to my internet i'm not gonna pay for
all this you can have my 13.99 a month or whatever it is you you can have my you know 18 a month for
for netflix but no more you know but so it's it's kind of a a tough sell but if you if you want art
you want to support independent art and not have a love island forced down your throat or whatever
that show is you know if you want to watch avi burra on indie hub and you want to watch finding
home, yeah, you know, that's not going to be part of your monthly
Netflix, you know, but do you want Avi on Netflix?
You know, you want Avi to remain independent.
It depends on how much they pay me, Heather.
Well, you know, if you go get that Joe Rogan-
It's generational wealth, Avi.
Yeah, yeah.
Lower your time profits.
Just do that, yeah.
That's up to you.
I think you'd get him to put the zap button on there for you.
He would, right?
You know, it's funny when you kept saying, I want, I want.
And I was thinking about that song, Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits, I Want My MTV.
And the whole song was about the hair band.
The hair band craze back in the day.
R.I.P.
It was like we were talking before we got on.
I want more.
Pour one out.
Pour one out for MTV, though.
It was all the hair bands taking over the time.
And look at that yo-yo.
That's the way you do it.
Money for nothing.
and chicks for free and it was kind of like that it was the whole production of it and you know he
was a real artist i mean i think he played seven different guitars uh and my favorite actually
mark knopfler but uh it's it was he was kind of his little war uh in the 80s you know but uh it's
funny because we've developed so far to where it's uh it's you literally get no money and your music's
for free so and and everybody wants their spotify mike i heard you saying it did you see the mtv
finally went off yeah i said pour one out for mtv sorry oh man institution 40 years yeah i was
curious i wonder what the vmas are gonna look like uh next next time if there is going to be a vmas if
like they're just going to be putting it on a name partner ship only well maybe a nostrich can buy the
IP for pennies and we can take it over.
Hey.
For sats.
No, we'll give them pennies, though.
They'll want pennies because they
don't get it. I think pennies are going to do
with MTV as well.
There's a whole
Nostra can fill. We can make music
videos and create our own new
Nostra MTV.
Somebody can vibe code that.
all right um that was like kind of a you know obby it's funny because we're right at uh i mean
we're 20 seconds away from 90 minutes and there was a very natural stop for us wasn't that oh yeah
and then it just it's like we knew and i didn't look at the clock it's uh we we're beaten we're
We got the Stockholm syndrome, Avi.
We know our times.
We wound down just naturally.
So before we wrap up here, Ainsley, anything you want to plug that's coming up?
Coming up, I mean, of course, we have our event here in Nashville at the park tomorrow night.
If you are in Nashville and you want to come to Nosterville or if you feel like spending a ridiculous amount of money
and getting a red eye to Nashville tonight,
that would be cool too.
But yeah, I mean, I would just say like,
I love how you guys always start your podcast
and the podcast I have with my friend, Katie,
we try to say the same thing.
We appreciate you listening anywhere,
but please, we really encourage you to support the art
and the podcast and the music that you love
on platforms like Wave Lake and Fountain and Indie Hub
that actually promote artist equity
and promote us getting paid
and being able to make a living
off of the art that we create
because I'm a firm believer.
I think everybody in this space
has heard me say it,
but artists can and should be able to live
off of the art that we create.
So please, please, please consider
supporting your favorite artists
on value-enabled platforms.
So yeah, I guess I'm just plugging
for the whole space right now.
I'll be back with new music to plug soon enough.
That's great.
And folks will be listening to this episode,
again hopefully on Fountain
on Saturday morning
so there's still time
because the event begins
at 2pm
at Bitcoin Park
in Nashville so if you're in Nashville and you're listening to
this Saturday morning come on over
Open mic
any closing thoughts?
No
thanks for having us this is great
it's great to be out at Bitcoin
Park with everybody here
what Ainsley said
and for those of you who aren't able to make it
the Zaps and the active chat room
on Zapstream, on Toonstir, on Primal
all the streaming fountain
that's what artists see who don't come in person
and so it's really important
that if you believe in this stuff
if you want to see this succeed
just get in there and talk shit in the chat room and send some zaps and interact with the artists
and it it really matters because these are all recorded these are all archived and and this is
what you know these are all models for for um other artists to to see later on so
love it and just a quick shout out here kw we we got a very generous zap from julie costello
Ainsley's mom so thank you
Julie for listening and also
a zap from Richard
Greaser who I met you
mentioned him earlier QW
I had the chance to meet him today
and I've got to say he looks exactly
like his profile picture
and he sounds
exactly the way he sounds
I mean have you ever been
can you feel the credentials
when you talk? Oh they're emanating
they're yeah they're
radiating from him
But that voice, it's unmistakable.
And that face.
Avi, there was another launch after our show.
Noah Grumman.
She's joined Sabaton, the legendary tour.
She's actually going to be a lead singer, host, conductor, and choir leader for the legendary orchestra.
She is the.
Orchestra QW, she is leading the hell.
It's amazing what happens when you come on
Plugchain Radio.
Yeah, that's what happens.
Heather, any closing thoughts?
What Mike said, spend your Bitcoin.
We need participation for this thing to fly.
You've got to show up and show out
and spend that Bitcoin
and be a part of the community.
And if you don't want to spend your Bitcoin,
we're going to regress back to US dollars
to spend your Bitcoin.
And, you know, participation means this is open source and that the future of Nostra is up to us.
There's no big company, no big CEO other than Derek Ross driving this whole thing.
So open source of things, you know, build the next big app, bring the next big idea.
You know, the ecosystem is dependent on you showing up and taking part.
So please do that.
Stop spending war bucks, the war bucks, you know, defund the war, fix the money, fix the world.
anything from you Avi
no it just like I said
if you all
is there going to be a book
wait let's talk about it
is there going to be
any book signings
tomorrow in Nosterville
no no
the sequel to 24
is still
a couple of weeks away
a little over two weeks away
I am hoping
I am lined up
for a book signing
at Bitfest
in Manchester
so but that's
that's about
a month away from now very nice yeah And then did you mention the promo code for the Finding Home episode two
Yes, I did.
But I will mention it again.
You can watch Finding Home on India.
Go ahead.
Yeah, finish that thought.
And you can get 21% off by using promo code
Pioneer Chain 21.
Also, since I mentioned BitFest,
you can get 10% off tickets there.
It promises to be one of the highest
signal conferences of the year.
For using promo code
PlepChainRadio, one word,
there will be a Bitcoin Film Festival
that's being organized by our friends
Azar and Tomek as part of that,
as well as Nustashar.
Nusta.
So I don't know how you pronounce it.
Nostaschershire.
Yeah.
No one knows how to say Worcestershire.
Worcestershire.
Yeah.
Anyways.
Yeah.
Sorry.
We're just so, I know you are, Avi.
You're very humble.
So I just wanted to make sure you had your chance to spill the beans some more.
So thank you everyone for coming.
Thank you for tuning in to Pleb Chain Radio.
If you appreciate us as much as we appreciate you, listen on Fountain App and consider hitting the subscribe.
Thank you very much. See you next week.
Goodbye.