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 4th of December,
and it is episode 140 of Plep Chain Radio.
It is 11.06 a.m. on the east coast of the United States
at the time of recording.
We have a fun one ahead of you today.
Our guest is Aaron of Essex,
the man behind New Music Nudge Unit,
heroically steering unmoored musicians to the shores of sovereignty to Bitcoin and to Noster.
And a reminder, folks, if you are listening to the show 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 some sats and support the value for value revolution
while you listen.
And while you're there, if you hit that subscribe button, we would genuinely appreciate it.
Your support goes a long way in keeping our mics warm and this podcast ad-free.
The show is streamed live on Zap.Stream and any other Nostra client that supports streaming,
such as Amethyst, Nostra, Fountain, and Primal.
Actually, there are a few more.
There's Nostria and a few others.
Anything that supports NIP 53.
July 18, the sequel to my first novel, 24, is now available for purchase.
This is not a book about Bitcoin.
It's a soaring philosophical epic disguised as an action thriller that talks about the world Bitcoin makes possible.
This is the most important and meaningful work I have ever created, and I do hope you check it out.
The link is in the show notes.
And if you are reading July 18 and you haven't read 24 and you're wondering how to get your hands on 24,
well, I would urge you to hold off for another two weeks because I am working on a second edition of 24,
and that should be out by mid-December sometime.
The Nosfabrica Wattathon is underway with the third group call taking place earlier this week.
We've had some excellent discussions so far on Web of Trust, and we're inviting builders, philosophers, marketers, you name it, from all walks of Noster and Bitcoin to participate and build out open source Web of Trust solutions with us.
These can be at the protocol layer, dealing with the underlying algorithm and delivery mechanism of trust scores, or at the application layer, such as a curated list of musicians to improve their discoverability on Noster.
The prize pool is 50 million sats, or 50 million bitcoins, as the kids these days like to say.
And this, I believe, is the largest Bitcoin prize pool that I'm aware of in recent memory.
You can find out more by going to nosfabrica.com slash whatathon.
That's W-O-T-A-T-H-O-N.
And for our sermon today, it is The Nudge.
There's a tension that any bitcoiner and Nostrich who's been around for long enough
has had to deal with when they step into the outside world,
one that I certainly have felt acutely.
On the one hand, there's the realization of the utter futility of trying to orange and purple pill normies,
which leads to the eventual conclusion that it's better to be a lighthouse than a tugboat.
Be a beacon through your actions rather than through your words.
The latter can feel like banging your head against a brick wall at times.
A lighthouse doesn't chase ships.
It stands where it stands.
it radiates. It says, here is solid ground, here is danger, and here is a way home if you want it.
The ship still has to steer. The captain still has to choose. That has always felt right for
Bitcoin, for Noster. These are voluntary opt-in systems. They're built on consent and curiosity.
Nobody wants to be dragged out of fiat like a car being towed from the wrong parking lot.
The point is to step out of the vehicle on your own legs and realize you can walk.
But to be honest, most people never even see the light.
They are down in the boiler room of their lives.
The glare of notifications.
The constant hum of like, subscribe, follow.
Musicians grinding for fractions of a penny per stream.
Creators pouring heart and soul into timelines that forget them in a day.
Even if the lighthouse is blazing on the horizon, their world is a narrow tunnel lit by apps and algorithms
Sometimes, before a person can respond to a beacon, they need a nudge
Not a shove, not a guilt trip, a nudge
A friend who says, here, let me show you how to get a lightning wallet on your phone
A little QR code on the bar next to the tip jar
Try this link, a low-stakes experiment
A tiny first step that proves the portal is real
The nudge is small in the moment
But it can tilt the entire trajectory of a life
Change the orientation by two degrees
And given enough time, you end up in a different continent
A different career
A different sense of what is possible
A lighthouse is a symbol
An orientation in the storm
The tugboat is raw force, dragging you where you did not choose to go.
The nudge lives somewhere in between.
It's a hand placed lightly on the shoulder, turning your gaze to the horizon.
It says, look, there, see that light?
You might want to steer towards it.
And this is especially true in culture.
Because music is so intimate,
it. Your favorite song knows things about you that you have never told another human being.
To ask a musician to change how they get paid, how they reach fans, how they survive, is to ask
them to rewire the nervous system of their life. That is not something you yell at people on Twitter.
That is something you walk with them through. So tonight, we're talking about the art of the nudge.
How do you gently guide artists out of the attention casino and into a place where sound and sats move in the same direction?
How do you help bands and venues and listeners cross that strange little bridge from,
I heard about Bitcoin once, to, I just got paid for my song, directly, instantly, from someone who cared?
There is still value in being a lighthouse.
There is still value in shining your light brightly.
But there are also pioneers who are quietly building the small boats, the ones who row out to the lost ships, knock on the hull and say, mate, there's a different way to sail.
Let me show you.
And we have one such champion with us on the show today.
Aaron of Essex, welcome to Plep Chain Radio.
Thank you so much for having me, Avi.
And before we start, I mean, can I just give a round of applause for that sermon?
That was one of the most beautiful things and considered things I've ever heard in my life, Avi.
So hats off to you, sir.
Well, I appreciate you saying that, Aaron.
Well, let's start here.
You're a bone to pick with you, Aaron.
Maybe not a big bone, but a small one.
Your profile on Nostra says Bitcoin is punk. I, sir, am of the belief that Bitcoin is metal. What gives?
I think metal, punk, I think they're all born from the same place.
You know, it's all kind of part of that anti-establishment feeling.
So, but yeah, I mean, punk is probably more the attitude that I have when I think about Bitcoin.
simply from the point of view
it kind of doesn't really care
doesn't really care what you look like
whether you've got tattoos, spiky hair
whether you've only got one limb
it doesn't matter
I think maybe metal
or certainly my appreciation of metal at the time
was a bit more kind of like long curly hair
wearing makeup in the 80s maybe
I don't know
maybe that's just a cultural thing
or that's just a timing thing
but yeah, if you want it to be metal
it sure can be metal.
Now, and also that was tongue in cheek, Aaron.
I am aware, I think they both,
both punk and metal embody, in my mind anyway,
that sort of raw, untamed energy,
the anti-establishment spirit
that I think a lot of us are here because of, right?
Like this is how we stick it to the man,
by taking control.
100%.
And it's at the end of the day,
it's a messaging system, isn't it? You know, Bitcoin and music tells stories. It's a kind
of messaging system in its own right. So the fact that we've got Bitcoin supporting musicians
and musicians now supporting Bitcoin I think it a beautiful figure of eight that we can all dance to at the same time you know Indeed And then you switch you tilt it horizontally and you get infinity
Yeah.
So, Aaron, take us back to pre-Bitcoin Essex.
Who were you before Sats and Noster entered the chat?
Promoter, fan, troublemaker?
What was your relationship with music and live gigs?
I'm just a fan really, Avi. I was someone that was brought up in the 90s, which some people could argue the 90s really was that last bastion of rock and roll, where we would actually go to the shops and purchase our CDs and stuff like that.
So I used to spend probably half of my weekly salary on buying CDs and records and things like that.
I left school in 94, got my first email address in 94 as well.
The internet was all of a sudden a big thing.
And it come from me as someone that never used computers at school.
We didn't have computers at school really.
So I never used them.
But my brother was heavily into IT.
So I was playing, you know, the Commodores and the Ataris and all of those things during the 80s.
So when the 90s come around, I got my own personal computer and the internet.
You know, it was just, yeah, that period of time where we wasn't quite aware that the new world that we was entering
and that the internet would shake up everything.
You know, I still remember back in like 95, 96, where people were just saying, oh, what does the internet do?
It doesn't actually do anything. You know, there was people skeptical on it back then.
So, you know, I was just a guy working in the city, spending many hours commuting in and out of London, listening to music.
Yeah. And like I say, Napster came out in 97.
So when I realised I could stream all this amazing music or certainly download it, you know, using Napster and those kind of things, it was kind of a game changer.
But even I wasn't aware of what that would actually do to the music industry in terms of the tightening of the noose of artists, you know, because it still seems to me that it's a very elitist thing where you've still only,
got you know the top 0.1 percent of musicians actually earning any money at all do you know
what i mean certainly certainly enough to kind of get by whereas 99.9 percent of the rest of them
um you know they're kind of doing it as a side hustle you know so early aaron was always a
massive music fan um and after a little stint in the city i worked as a hairdresser i still work
as a hairdresser now I've still got clients now um you know I've been a hairdresser for 20 odd years
um and in that time you get to work with artists you get to work with musicians
I've met a lot a lot of musicians along the way and you know when I discovered that music was
uh should we say being assisted by bitcoin and that these rails were being built um me as a
massive kind of bitcoiner bitcoin maxi um i just saw it as a perfect opportunity just to help out
all of these you know extremely talented people that i know um you know help them out with a a
savings um like a savings vehicle first of all you know i wouldn't go too maxi on them to begin
with just that you know um if if if you don't get this you know don't worry it might be too early
for you but you know your kids are gonna love it kind of kind of thing you know so yeah that's
pretty much pretty much me up until modern day now but yeah like I say I just was a fan
yeah I you know I'm a little biased myself uh Aaron uh I was all my teenagers happened in the
90s. And I feel like that was a, it was a point in culture that I don't know if we're anywhere
close to reclaiming. For several reasons, the Cold War had ended in the early 90s. And 9-11
didn't happen for another 10 years. So it was this almost this peaceful period in some sense.
and there was a lot of hope.
Minds were not corrupted by algorithms
because the internet hadn't yet become a thing.
But it was early days on the internet.
There was a lot of hope then, right?
And the internet felt like a warm place
of possibilities and discovery.
And yeah, you have things like Napster for sure, right?
I was using Napster in the late-ish 90s,
the second half of the 90s.
I never thought about things like, well, how do we actually compensate the artists?
I was just glad that I didn't have to hunt for cassette tapes anymore.
And I could download music on dial-up internet, which would take an hour per song, usually.
But it felt like it was earned at the end of it.
But do you look back at those days and then where we are now, right?
It just feels with social media where it is, I don't mean Nostra particularly.
In fact, I think Nostra harkens back to those days in some sense.
But news cycles are about war and pestilence and despair.
Social media is stealing your attention, stealing your eyeballs.
Do you feel like we can ever go back to those happy days of the 90s?
That's a really good question.
and I think we have to look at our teenagers.
I've got two teenage daughters who, that's all they know,
is the internet how it is now.
But I do sense there is a little bit of pushback from these certain teenagers.
Can we, you know, the genies escape the bottle, so to speak, hasn't it?
So can we kind of, you know, put it all back in the bottle?
I don't know.
But it's like what David Bowie says.
You know, it's exhilarating and terrifying at the same time.
And look at all of the extra connections, you know, we've all made through Bitcoin and through the Internet.
That, you know, had the Internet never been invented, we would never have made in a million years.
Do you know what I mean?
So, like every tool, you know, a tool can be used for harm and it can be used for hope, you know.
And I'm just trying to use the tools at our disposal, you know, just to shine a little bit of light and shine a little bit of hope on, you know, the people that I love and respect and that live around me, you know.
So, yeah, I'm not sure we would want to kind of put it all back in the bottle.
What I'm striving for is for all of that kind of attention grabbing stuff to kind of become irrelevant, you know.
And that is the hope of the value verse. Actually, let's talk about that for a second, because I was reading your website, bitcoinsx.co.uk, and you brought up a point which I think several of us have been grappling with, which is what the hell do you even call this thing?
there's no name that's sticking is it value verse is it demu which sounds demu is my the least
favorite of of the names for me by the way uh or is it value for value music which is descriptive
but a bit of a mouthful like do you think we're going to converge on a name that that actually
sticks and is pithy and yeah well i'd like to put it out to the chat you know what does people
prefer i mean like when you're researching any kind of name whether it's a business name or
whether it's a new handle, you know, typing it into Google and figuring out what Google says.
You know, when I put all three of those options into Google,
the value verse doesn't really return anything that gives you any kind of inkling what it is.
Demu certainly doesn't give you any return.
The only one that currently does is V4V Music.
You know, the AI on there will basically tell you this is a new music economy
that will aim to support artists and publish independently
in a self-sovereign way, et cetera, et cetera.
So yeah, it's hard to know what to call it,
but we do need to converge on something.
I mean, Valueverse is something I think Adam Curry
originally kind of coined,
and I called the first show that I did back in May,
we called that Into the Valueverse
because we was intrinsically aware that when you're going into normie land,
you don't want to lead with a Bitcoin first name.
Do you know what I mean?
We want to kind of lead with something that kind of puts Bitcoin underneath it
or behind it or in the weeds a little bit.
Do you know what I mean?
because of obviously all the negative connotations
that normies have heard about Bitcoin over the years.
You know, we don't really want to call it Bitcoin music
because we don't want to tap into their prejudices
that have been fed to them, you know,
for obviously over a decade from mainstream media.
You know, the usual stuff like, you know,
Bitcoin kills babies and creates earthquakes
and things like that.
So yeah it is important that we figure out a name I mean just it be nice for it to just you know when you describing Bitcoin you just I just call it money You know it be nice to just call it music Do you know what I mean It would be so much easier
But, yeah, we have got to figure that out.
I don't know what they reckon in the chat, though,
because we've got quite a lot of people in the chat being very active
on Zapstream, which I love to see.
Yeah.
So Daniel, the Daniel, has a new one.
It's called MuseApps.
I like that.
I think Heather referenced something that our friend Roger 9000, everyone's favorite Bitcoin, I'd like to say.
Roger 9000 recently said, I think he called it sats for sound.
I think that's what it is.
And he was talking more about creating a guild for artists.
So there are some interesting names out there.
They're all a bit of a mouthful.
I mean, they're descriptive and they're correct.
but I don't know if they'll stick.
Yeah, no, neither do I.
That's why I'm, you know, kind of using all three at the moment
in the hope that something comes up.
I mean, Joe Martin had one similar to Rogers.
He said, sats not streams, which is kind of something similar, I suppose.
But yeah, I think, you know, maybe, I don't know,
maybe like we get to a stage where we don't even need to say that it's different and we we push it
into the new world or we nudge enough people into it that self-publishing in a sovereign way is is
the norm and you know my our aim is to obviously topple spotify from being the top dog when it
comes to kind of you know anything streaming like you know do enough artists care so you brought up
spotify and actually let me take a step back aaron uh and just give some background the first time i
came across you was a week ago i think at bitfest um and and shame on me for that because after
reading about you you've been doing remarkable work here but you were emceeing the value for
value music event at BitFest, which was fantastic. And I think apart from the music itself, which is
great, the thing that stood out for me was Nostra worked flawlessly on that event. I mean,
there were people who were jumping across five different apps on Nostra, and the stream was
working, Zaps were working, everything was working. So that was my first introduction to
to you, Aaron. And I think one thing that and you and the reason I bring this up is you brought up
Spotify in when you were introducing one of the bands and you just you were talking about your
distaste for them. So my question to you is, you know, we have obviously we have a few musicians
who try to step out of that Spotify because they recognize the issues with it. There's obviously
Ainsley Costello, Just Loud, and others who've talked at length about all the issues with
Spotify. But I mean, we're going to need a mass migration event, right? And for that, we need
some kind of collective realization from musicians that this is just not okay. This is pure
exploitation. Do you see that happening? Oh, yeah, for sure. Especially in the grassroots
level because I think because musicians are the ones that have been in the industry for you know
a few years they're very distrustful of you know kind of any opportunities that come their way
they've been kind of stitched up and screwed over so many times in their career that I think we have
to get like the the the new guys um on board straight away and and for this to be like a
normal route do you know what i mean because i think there is still so many artists out there
that are still you know trying to get their record contract and trying to build up their followers on
instagram and whatnot do you know what i mean they're trying to kind of follow that old model
and there is a taste for you know this new way of doing things but you know without a marketing
budget and without the kind of collateral to take on like the big guys we have to do it as a more of
a grassroots movement and and um hopefully you know events like what we did last week at bitfest
even though it was a majority kind of bitcoin event um hopefully by doing these live gigs and
and live music streams and putting the videos up on normie social media,
it would just start trickling through so much so that this will be the first thing they do.
Because at the end of the day, they don't want the gatekeepers.
I know what it's like for me whenever I try and log into a website or sign up for a new account to do anything.
It's just barriers of entry. You've got to step over all the time.
So the path of least resistance, and I know enough musicians to know that they can't be asked to kind of do all that most of the time.
Do you know what I mean?
They just want to play the music and it's all about the music.
So I think once we show them how easy it is, then I think that they'll be onboarded very, very easily.
Do you know what I mean?
The next step really is for them to ditch Spotify, remove all their music from it and leave that sector altogether.
you know yeah and that's where the nudge comes in and you've created the so the new let's talk
about the new music nudge unit is that just a name for a social media account or is it an actual
legal entity or some kind of organization that you've set up yeah no it's literally just a name
just a name I've given um you know the social media account just so I can talk about just the
music side of what I do you know just don't want to get involved in any of the politics or any of
the net zero stuff that you know may happen on my Bitcoin Essex handle you know just purely for the
music just purely to release new artists you know preview videos things like that you know just to
kind of just keep it music simple so there's no legal entity it is just a an extra page on my
website bitcoin essex there's no legal entity in any of that because i don't believe any any any
any of that avi do you know what i mean i don't believe that i should register and do all that for
this you know this is without permission you know that is the punk element of what bitcoin is and um
Yeah, I want to kind of stay true to those values, you know.
And the goal of New Music Nudge Unit is to find musicians
who are potentially on the fence and give them that little nudge
into this world, correct?
Correct, 100%.
Like I say, the majority of musicians that I've got so far,
they're not necessarily interested in the tech or the journey
or the orange pill or the Bitcoin or the 21 million
or the censorship, they just want their music heard.
So I don't necessarily waste time with them
on orange pilling them about all the virtues
because when they hang around with me long enough,
they just kind of see it.
Do you know what I mean?
And I like to think that a lot of their attitude as well
is aligned to what we're doing.
So yeah, that really is the goal.
the new music nudge unit is just there to say if you want to dip your toe in cost you nothing
all you need to do is give me an mp3 a bit of artwork and i'll post it and i'll let people know
because these artists don't know that there's a a growing community of of people listeners fans
music podcasts and now shows they don't understand that that's already built they don't understand
that when I self-host one of their songs,
I publish it once
and it goes to about 100 different podcasting 2.0 apps.
I publish it once, it goes everywhere.
Now, normally they would have to publish it to Spotify
or to their distributor, their label,
and it would go like one or two places.
And it's, you know, that Fiat legacy system.
With this being open source,
I like to think that I can open their eyes to kind of like this new world that they had no clue that existed before, you know?
Yeah, that is the beauty of an open protocol like RSS, right?
I think it's a magic that you actually have experience and you can't be told about it.
Like you put something out there and before you know it, it's on like 20 different apps.
In some sense, you know, it's similar to Nostra for notes, right?
you post a note on Primal and then it shows up on Darmus and on Nostar and Amethyst and all these
other things. It's a similar kind of feeling where you actually need to experience it.
So this would work. I mean, there are some fear, obviously, apart from the Spotify's of the world,
there are fiat problems with music such as, I mean, other gatekeepers, right, such as record
labels. What you're saying, I suspect, would work for independent musicians. What if it's a musician
who signed up with the label.
I don't think you could just put,
I mean, you could certainly do it, right?
Put it up on RSS and it'll show up.
But at some point, the record label might get wind of that
and come after you.
Yeah, that's a great point.
At the end of the day,
these record labels have to adapt or they will die
because I do have one artist in the Valueverse that has got a record label and he in particular asked me to reach out to them and I spoke to them and they asked me about what I was doing and they completely gave us the okay
You know, they gave me their best wishes to do so, to publish all the music and to send all the
money to the artist. I don't know whether that's because they didn't quite understand the power of
what this is coming essentially that they're signing their own death warrant you know what i
mean but i do think when you look at labels and you look at bands and and the usage rights that
most bands sign away their usage for for everything um i think these record labels will
will probably have to figure out a way that they can let's go back to napster it took spotify 20
years after the naps the disruption to really kind of take back the entire industry again
what we're doing over here with self-hosting music and self-publishing music is we're making
that system completely obsolete so they won't necessarily be able to get away with taking 99
percent of the artist's royalties anymore do you know what i mean so we'll in a in a way even if the
record companies kind of you know congregate together and they kind of you know put all their
money towards all they can possibly do is give a better deal for the artists do you know what i mean
because having this as a viable alternative why would an artist go yeah okay i'll sign this deal
where you have 99% of everything I do for the rest of my life.
Do you know what I mean?
And that music that's already out there,
we've already either bought it all on CD,
we've heard it all before,
I think we have to draw a line in the sand,
and this is where all the new music should be going from now on.
Do you know what I mean?
Because, of course, I would love to get Radiohead and Viagra Boys
and the Beater Band and Doves.
I'd love to get all those bands over here.
But the thing is, all of their old music is so tied up with the record labels.
You know, what's the point?
You know, let's concentrate on the new.
Yeah.
And in this system, I think there is one assumption here that doesn't fully hold up.
And it's unfortunate.
I'm curious to hear your perspective on it, which is you put the music out there.
It's free and accessible.
the assumption is the artists will get value from appreciative audiences but a lot of times these
i mean just like back in our napster days well now we didn't even have a mechanism for compensating
artists but as a teenager i didn't even think about it i was just happy that i i had access to
to these songs right uh and i i suspect we're seeing a something similar now which is oh look
free music uh why do i need to pay anyone right so because value for value is predicated on on this
voluntary uh tipping if you will right uh of artists and are you seeing that play out though
that artists are actually getting something in return yeah they definitely are getting something
I suppose it's all about numbers, isn't it?
At the end of the day, I believe the donation ratio is only roughly about 2% anyway.
So you would argue that essentially 98% of your listeners or users are freeloading and they're having that stuff for free.
So yeah, it is a difficult one.
I mean, because obviously when you have a band like Radiohead, for example, who back in 2007, they used their album In Rainbows where they posted it online and they asked people just to give whatever they wanted.
They, I think, ended up earning over seven million pounds from that one record alone in donations.
So it really is up to the value that the listener gets from it.
It really does create a 1,000 true fans model that fans and artists can get behind.
And at the end of the day, people are still sending £15 a month to Spotify
or £15 a month to YouTube Music or £15 a month to Amazon Music.
At the end of the day, they're still spending that money on music.
but I think once we can educate them that the actual people that you know they're listening to
are getting literally nothing out of that 15 pounds a month then maybe it might make them
change their mind and change their listening habits a little bit I don't know it's it's really
all speculative at this stage Avi you know we are just using the tools that we've got to help give
more exposure to these amazing bands that are out there and you know it gives us new ways to stream
live shows as well so it's not necessarily just the published music you know we've got the whole
live angle as well um in the 90s you and i we would still go to gigs we would still love going
and watching watching our favorite bands perform so that's never going to change you know but
Obviously, having the ability to watch my favorite band, you know, when they're live streaming from, I don't know, say America, when I'm stuck in England, I would pay for that.
I would donate to that.
I would certainly send a message and say, great gig.
Thanks for sharing.
Do you know what I mean?
And that's what Bitcoin utilizes.
It makes everything easy, mate, doesn't it?
At the end of the day, if you wanted to send Radiohead a super chat or something on YouTube, there's a certain minimum amount that you have to spend.
Plus, you have to go through all the rigmarole of a sign-up to begin with.
When you're just displaying a QR code or doing it on Zapstream where you can literally just zap at the top of a button, you don't have to worry about sort codes and account numbers and this, that, and the other.
So I just think we're making it so easy to support artists.
I think that's the key, you know.
No, indeed.
The wrathful Buddha in the live chat has issued a rather ironic correction, Aaron,
which is that Spotify charges £21 per month.
You know what?
I never knew that, to be honest.
That's ridiculous.
That is ridiculous.
uh nick mauster from fountain told me he said over the last two years the amount of money that
the bands get to share between them or all the artists on spotty gets to share between them
goes down 40 every two years so what kind of like deflation inflation rate is that do you know what
i mean and presumably the rest of it goes into the i mean it's we're talking about digital goods
here right so there is no work other than the initial act of creation right the distribution
and everything else is just it's essentially free so the money is just going into the to the
shareholders of these megacorps 100 yeah 100 and that's the other thing that we don't give any
kudos to you know the cost for these bands and artists to get into a studio and to record you
could be looking at anywhere between 500 and a thousand pounds per song you know once it's mixed
once it's mastered once you've got you know backing singers in or extra vocalists or extra dramas or
paying session artists each song could cost a thousand pounds now it's a bit like solar panels
in the uk mate you're never going to get to see that money ever again you know if you put if you
pay that money out to to record a track and then you put that money on you put that track onto
spotify like a solar panel in the uk it's going to take you a hundred years for you to get your
money back that's if you do do you know what i mean with bitcoin uh and it's um you know finite
amount of coins when you earn in bitcoin you'll earn forever in in fiat terms do you know what i
So even if they was only to receive 10, 15, 20,000 sats for the lifetime of a record, you'd like to think that's more than going to pay for itself in four years time, you know?
Yeah. Well, I think it is this vulnerability that I suspect the record labels exploit, which is they find a band that they like and they're saying you need £500 or $500 per song and it's 12 songs, so you need six grand.
We'll give you six grand so you can record your album and then that's it. We take 99% of the royalties after that.
yeah that's that's essentially how it's worked for multiple decades multiple decades and then
this goes to um one of my best mates longy who's um been very very successful i don't know if you
saw him last week he was fantastic in in at uh at bitfest yeah yeah loved it um he you know he's
been offered all of these contracts and he's refused to sign every single one do you know
i mean because back in the uh to mid 2000s him and his band gospel trash they were supporting um
the who you know in london at uh i think it was either victoria park or hyde park festival they
actually paid played some massive massive gigs so he had that temptation of signing one of these deals
and never ever took it um and you know i i i hope that this way of self-publishing music means
most of these new bands and artists coming through will never have to you know kind of
make that make that decision you know because at the end of the day the what the labels are doing
and what they're paying them to do is to create an audience
forum if we can show that in the value verse and you know with bitcoin and nostr there is an audience
there ready and waiting and can't wait to hear new music do you know what i mean because the new is
is the kind of key for me um it's all very well like listening to you elvis presley's and your
beatles and the rolling stones of course they're all classics do you know what i mean and they'll
probably all play at glastonbury next year because the average age of a glastonbury performer is in
the mid 80s these days do you know i mean glastonbury's losing credibility fast um so we really want to
get new music out there and we want to draw this line in the sand and just say all right well fiat
legacy record companies and labels you know you go over there and you have your we're building this
ecosystem, this kind of social layer, this planetary outer dimension over here that everyone
can volunteer to get involved in. Do you know what I mean? There's no gatekeepers. There's
no contracts. There's no mucky gatekeepers in the middle. There's no satanic worship
just to get gigs. All of that kind of negative stuff. We just want the new stuff. We want
new artists we want those people that have never had any of that exposure before we want to show
there's a way over here and i think collectively you know we get enough people over here i say i
said it's always about the numbers you know for every band that i bring on board hopefully that's
a thousand people um would then potentially interact with you know value for value or
Nostra or Fountain, do you know what I mean? The next step is then getting the artist to say,
hey, stop giving your money to Spotify. Why don't you listen to my tracks over here? They're free
and yada, yada, yada. So yeah, I think first proof of work is we've built this system.
The second thing is like it's open source nature means it's getting better all the time.
And the third thing, you know, with enough kind of artists and credible people becoming involved
from the legacy systems and spying in over here.
Yeah, I genuinely think that it has potential
to do some amazing things in the future.
And we've just got to start small.
The conference last week at BitFest,
having our after party kind of tagged onto BitFest,
I think is like the first step of,
first of all, we can reach out to the Bitcoiners very easily.
Do you know what I mean?
I mean, to me, it's still scandalous that there's so many Bitcoiners in the world that don't know that this music kind of ecosystem exists yet.
So that's really my first goal, because I think that's the kind of easiest apple to reach on the tree.
Do you know what I mean?
Because the Bitcoiners already know how to use Bitcoin and what it's all about.
so get into the conferences next year and kind of spread in some like after party kind of vibes to
you know hopefully hopefully prague hopefully you know the film festival over there i know
we're talking to those guys so hopefully we can bring a little bit of that to the bitcoiners
and then i think you know six degrees of separation eventually it will start kind of
bleeding into the normie world, you know?
By the way, on that, Aaron, we are...
So I'm working with Open Mic and a couple of others
to do a Valley for Valley music event in Serbia
the week after BTC Prague.
So it's going to be three back...
So there's the Bitcoin Film Fest in Warsaw,
first week of June.
There's Prague the week after that.
And then we're planning to do one in Belgrade
the week after that.
Oh, my God, that'd be amazing. If we could have some kind of presence at all three, that'd be awesome.
Yeah, I think that's the plan. And we're hoping to get Scardust, which is a metal band.
They're Bitcoiners, by the way, and they're actually one of the largest Bitcoin bands that no one's, probably the largest Bitcoin band, actually, that no one's heard of, which is mind boggling to me.
they do have a label but a phenomenal prog metal band uh noah gruman's lead singer probably the
in my opinion the the best female rock voice today um so they they want to be there um so
we're working with them and a few others so maybe we can after this we could chat
at some point aaron and see if you're if you're interested in that but that promises to be an
incredible june warsaw prog and then potentially belgrade if we can work this
that would be phenomenal
I'd love to get involved in that
like I say it's fairly
simple
to do now
we did our first show back in May
we had support
from Fountain and Azteco
they gave us money
they gave us the vouchers
so that we could get
Bitcoin into Normie's hands
so they could take part in the venue
and
the process just to get us online streaming over fountain streaming on zap stream at the same time
has got easier since then you know when we did it at bit fest last week there was two steps less
do you know what i mean so who knows where we're going to be by next june mate i might be able to
just hold up my phone just press a button and we go live do you know what i mean so that that's
what's really it's the innovations how easy all of this kind of uh is is getting in such a short
time time uh in such short time that um gives me a lot of excitement for the future um in fact i
was just um just before i got on this um this pod with you i've been talking to a music venue in
South End and I've just orange peeled them so I'm going in there Monday to help them set up
accepting Bitcoin for drinks but it's also a music venue as well so we're going to have a few acts so
if anyone's in Essex next Wednesday we are doing a Bitcoin meetup at Peggy Sue's in Leon C and we
are going to have a couple of V4V performers there and who knows maybe I'll be able to stream a
little bit of it for you on NOSTA and yeah so like I say we're part of a very very tiny
grassroots movement but the technology is moving really really fast it's becoming a lot easier for
us to do these kind of things now it's about numbers now we've just got to spread out show
more people in the wild how it all works and and hopefully you know on board a few few more
musicians yeah actually on that i want to go back to something you you brought up earlier when we
were talking about can this voluntary donation model uh can we make it sustainable and you
mentioned the thousand true fans and i think that might be the key aaron which is which is taking a
step back and saying you know this this thinking of oh i'm going to put a song out there and there's
going to be millions of people listening to it and they're all going to pay me a couple of cents
That way I can make $100,000 on the song.
I think that's fiat thinking.
And maybe the way to think about it is, look, I'm a creator who's been completely unburdened from this platform and fiat nonsense.
So I'm creating for the sake of creation.
So I will find my niche audience.
And that's going to be – I want that to grow to 1,000 people, people who really care about what I produce because it's authentic.
It's not fiat.
and they will pay whatever for my work.
And maybe that's what it is.
It's a series of these little niches
of a thousand true fans for each of these creators.
Yeah, 100%.
I think that is the economic model going forward.
And obviously the better you are as an artist,
the more mainstream songs, I guess, that you write
and the more popular you become,
the more money you make at the end of the day.
most of the musicians that i'm speaking to um they're not necessarily into them interested in
the money side side of it they just want people to hear their music do you know what i mean and
i'm really trying to focus on the fact that you know unless you're with a big record company you're
never going to get exposure through spotify or youtube music or any of those normal avenues
anyway. You're never going to get exposure on normal radio either. So there really is nothing
for you to lose by coming over here and trying to develop this space with us, you know. So,
yeah, it's a fair, voluntary, meritocratic system, you know. At the end of the day,
someone like Ainsley Costello, who is like the queen of the value verse, she's earned,
for one of her tracks.
She's earned over a million sats
for one of her tracks.
So, you know, there is money there
for those who want to be more mainstream.
But then it always dumbfounds me as well.
You know, bands like you were saying earlier,
like metal and heavy metal bands
and your bands like Metallica
and your Iron Maiden, your ACDC.
I never used to hear any of them on radio
back in the day.
Do you know what I mean?
They never seemed to be mainstream,
but every time they played at Wembley,
they had 100,000 fans.
They would sell out giant stadiums,
but they weren't mainstream.
Do you know what I mean?
They were kind of dark underground.
I mean, look at Aussie.
Look at Black Sabbath.
Do you know what I mean?
So I think everything will find its level Everything will find its space you know And creating a system like this that rewards kind of quality
rewards consistency, I mean, it's what the 1,000 True Fans model is.
And, I mean, when you look at the T's and C's surrounding Patreon
and all of those other kind of systems,
where those organisations are taking a massive percentage
of that artist's like, you know, blood, sweat and tears.
This is just a much more fairer system, you know.
Yeah, indeed.
And then we have Condalorian in the live chat saying
the beauty of Bitcoin and Nostra is that the thousand true fans
can exist anywhere in the world.
And we're no longer constrained by the artificial limitations
of legacy payment systems.
That is it. That is it.
We are no longer constrained.
the shackles are off it's really up to us and our own creativity and how we want to project
the changes into the world we're responsible for it and and this is why whenever i do any show or
any kind of meet up or i could make any any appearance or on anything i always implore
everybody that's listening just go out and tell people about these things you know they're being
built for us do you know what I mean we're building them for each other so go out and
share the good news go out and let people know that there is another way and this this other way
is fair and voluntary and democratic and meritocratic and all of these other words that
you want to use to describe it but essentially it's a tool and a musician armed with you know
value for value music or NOSTA in their toolkit has connections all over the world immediately from day one, you know.
So I think it's important that people kind of embrace it and they get involved in the space.
And like you say, you know, starting with the conferences next year, just a way that we can just tap into a bigger audience.
because we need a bigger audience
because at the end of the day,
I'm seeing more and more zaps coming through for the artists.
I'm seeing more kind of streams happening.
I'm seeing more donations.
We're still in the very, very early stages.
We're probably only of a few thousand people
that know this exists.
And there's only about 7,000 albums
in the Valueverse at the moment.
Do you know what I mean?
So we're so early.
It's such a tiny, you know, tiny ecosystem.
that we just have to be patient, not get too frustrated,
but know that we're on the right track.
And what we're doing is, in my opinion, decentralising music,
and it's going to be the way forward, not just for us,
but for generations to come, you know?
Yeah.
Aaron, let's talk about the artists you've nudged into this world.
There's Longy, there's Nathan Abbott,
I think very recently a band called Hear My Roar,
and I think there are a few others as well.
Maybe pick one or two and talk about what that nudge story looked like.
Well, in early 2023, I'd like to say kind of like January, February kind of time,
I heard Joe Martin on a podcast and he was talking about Wav Lake,
about how he'd basically monetized his art by publishing it to Wav Lake.
And all of a sudden, someone listening to his music in middle America
was started sending in Bitcoin.
Now, I kind of knew this was coming,
so I reached out to Longy,
who's been a long-suffering friend of mine.
I've known him for like 20 years.
Every time I see him perform live,
I'm always dumbfounded with how he has never really gone on to make it.
Do you know what I mean?
Make a stir.
Because I genuinely believe,
and I wonder if anyone agrees with me in the chat,
but I think his songwriting and his vocal and his musicianship,
because he plays guitar, he plays piano, he can play everything.
I genuinely believe he's up there with your Noel Gallagher's
and with your Richard Ashcroft's.
He's inspired by all that 90s kind of alternative indie music.
I believe his songwriting and all of that is up there with them.
Do you know what I mean?
He's proper rock and roll as a person.
Quick point on that, Aaron.
So that was my first time listening to Longhi live at Bitfest.
And there were a few others as well.
Andre Loja from Free Madeira and a few others I was standing with at the front of the stage.
And when Longhi was playing one of his songs, and it has this beautiful guitar solo at one point,
our jaws hit the floor.
We're like, what are we listening to?
This is like we're back in the 90s.
This is incredible.
So I just wanted to put out that I was taken aback by how good,
and I wasn't the only one at BitFest, but about how good Longhi was.
Yeah, well, that's it.
And, I mean, I've seen that in him for, like, 20 years.
So I took it upon myself.
I spoke to him.
This was, like, two and a half years ago now.
Yeah, we're talking, like, May.
no March I think when I first reached out to him and being typical Longy he stood me up on the first
three occasions that I'd agreed to meet with him and talk to him about this thing do you know what
I mean I didn't want to like bamboozle him with the tech or like I say the orange pill the bitcoin
I simply asked him have you heard of bitcoin and he says well I know someone that's kind of got
Ethereum and stuff like that. And I'm like, well, you know enough. Do you know what I mean?
So then obviously I go into my script of, well, the point of difference is Ethereum is owned by
everyone, whereas Ethereum is controlled by, you know, a centralized figure. And it's, you know,
you really want to go with the one that no one can change and no one can manipulate. Do you know
what I mean? So I got him on board as a bit of a Bitcoiner then. But yeah, we literally met over
the park and I was walking the dog and we're walking around the duck pond and I was just
really explaining to him that look there's this new way coming I'd love for you to give me one of
your songs I'll post it for you I'll do all the technical stuff I'll post it I'll promote it
and we see what happens and basically he him being a little bit of a dreamer a bit of a space cadet
sometimes I don't think he really got it Jeremy didn't really understand the economic
side of it you know he just saw this as being another platform because that's the thing you
know most people don't understand the differences between platforms and protocols you know so rather
than bombarding them with too much complicated stuff i'm just like look you'll be a case study
give me one song we'll post it we'll see what happens then all of a sudden adam curry must have
heard Longy's song, Trawling Through Wav Lake, and he went and played it on his podcast in 2.0 show,
and then all of a sudden I've got Longy texting me saying, I don't know what's going on, my wallet
is going nuts. And then the rest is history. I then go and like screen record, and I didn't know
that Adam Curry had played it. It wasn't until like a few days later that I'm listening to his
show, his podcast, and I heard it on now. And Adam Curry gave a concise, you know, reason why
this technology disrupts an industry.
It doesn't disrupt a company like Spotify.
We're not interested in disrupting Spotify,
but we are interested in disrupting an industry.
And, you know, the rest is history.
Adam Curry played it.
Loads of sats got sent through to Longin.
I think, you know, the price was probably only around 20 grand at 20K at the time.
But he was being sent, you know, 100 and something thousand sats,
maybe 150,000 sats over the course of a few days.
Now, Longy's shared with me in the past
that his distribution that he normally gets
from Spotify and YouTube and all of that
normally only equates to about £100,
sorry, $120 a year.
Wow.
So this idea that this tiny little space,
this experimental thing,
and he's put nothing into it, do you know what I mean?
I said to him, your proof of work's done.
You've recorded the songs, you've written the songs, you've recorded them.
Your proof of work's done.
Now it's the time to get it out there and get people listening to it
so that hopefully you can pick up on a modicum of success
that I believe his talent deserves.
So yeah, it just snowballed from there really.
I mean, Longy really was the only artist that I had on there
for a good year to 18 months.
You know, he would give me more songs every week.
And I said, look, the key to this is consistency.
I'll post a new song and I'll tweet about it every week.
You know, we did a few podcasts together.
I know we went on Heather Larson's show and we went on Salty Crown's show
and, you know, doing interviews like that.
But like you, when people see Longy for the first time,
they are like, wow, this guy's talented.
Do you know what I mean?
It's not a fluke.
So yeah, so he carried on giving me songs.
And then it wasn't until January this year,
was it January?
Yeah, January this year,
an old friend of mine, Fable,
Vinnie from Fable,
I saw he was releasing an album on Facebook.
He put a post up on Facebook.
And I just simply just messaged him,
mate, you should check this out.
You should get your music over here.
And once again, it was typical musician.
It was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
oh, can you do that for me, Aaron?
And I like all right okay I creating myself more work now All right I do that for you So he sends me the whole album over And you know I drip feed that into the value verse
you know, like one song a month, every month,
until the album was done.
And then I bumped into Nathan Abbott.
Me and Longy was at a session.
We was recording at the chapel,
and we was recording a video,
which still hasn't seen the light of day.
I'm eager to get that out,
because I'm working on doing like a visual record.
It's a kind of music video,
but we want to release the video almost as the single,
if you know what I mean.
So we would release the video first
and then the single would come out afterwards.
Anyway, but we're making an EP
that we're recording all that for a long EP.
But anyway, we come out of this recording session
and then I bumped into Nathan.
And I'm like, Nathan, how are you doing?
you know have you got any music you want to try this thing and obviously having longy there next
to me longy's like bro it's so easy you know just give aaron your stuff and just things start
happening um and it really has been and obviously the more uh people i've onboarded you know from
nathan fable um you know the 54 plates which is nathan's brother nolan and that's his band
I got him involved in May
and then Hear My Raw
I've only brought them on last week
for anyone that likes Fleetwood Mac
and all of that
they're a beautiful sounding band
got some really really good tunes
Hear My Raw
I've been speaking to them about it for a while
and they've finally got in the studio
to record some new songs
and their song is actually an exclusive
it's only in the Valueverse
It's nowhere else.
Do you know what I mean?
So they need our support because, you know,
for this thing to kind of keep going.
And, yeah, and that's basically how it happens.
And then from here, my raw, there was Frankie Peroni
who got in touch with me because he was speaking to Stuart.
And then Stuart works at Southend City Radio,
and he's asked me to pop in there next week.
So now it looks like I'm onboarding an entire bloody radio station
to the Valueverse, Noster, and everything else.
So, you know, I've stumbled across this.
Do you know what I mean?
Simply because I wanted Longy to get more exposure.
Everyone's, like, tapping me up now as, like, I guess the man that can, you know?
Well, that's the – so Chad F. in the live stream comments says,
it appears we've found a solution to our onboarding problems.
Just have Aaron do it.
yeah basically in a nutshell i guess i've got i've got a way of showing it and obviously having
a track record now being able to point at someone like long and say look long is 30x
spotify earnings in the same amount of time you know not that for me that's a big deal but for
the artists they're like well it's not really bad i just want someone to hear it and i'm like
okay, how about number one in the RSS global charts?
Would you like to achieve that?
So Fable, one of my acts,
I think they've had four number ones in the RSS global charts now.
Do you know what I mean?
So whatever your currency is,
whether you want the Bitcoin or whether you want the dopamine,
I'll serve it up to you.
I've got it in spades.
You're the dealer.
Yeah. So I want to change tracks to something that we mentioned, Roger 9000.
He mentioned or he had a note on NOSTA a couple of days back where he and essentially it's a call to action, a call to arms for all Bitcoin artists or artists who happen to be Bitcoiners who get invited to play at conferences.
I don't think BitFest is the best example because I think BitFest honestly did a great job with the music night.
But there are several conferences that are realizing that they need artists to play at them.
Because, you know, having one music event with musicians is a great way of bringing people there.
However, and it's not just Roger, I've spoken to other musicians.
For the most part, they don't get paid.
They're expected to show up and play at these conferences.
And I think Roger's call to arms is, look, as a conference organizer, you clearly see some value in what I have to provide.
Otherwise, you wouldn't be inviting me to your conference to play at this music event.
However, you're not recognizing that value at all.
I'm having to pay for my flight.
I'm having to pay for my hotel.
I'm having to pay for my food, everything.
um what is that is this something you've come across as well with with some of these musicians
Aaron which is the expectation that they perform for free well my background is was in fashion
Avi and I must have spent the first seven or eight years of my hairdressing career because I was more
of a session hairdresser so I used to do lots of um photo shoots fashion shows things like that
and there is a certain right of passage where a lot of the work you do right at the beginning
in those creative industries, you have to do it almost like an intern would.
You'd have to do it for free.
But we're talking established artists that have a back catalogue of work.
It's not right that we're asking them to work for free
and shout out to Nat and Nind and Nathan and all the guys from Bitfest last week
because at the bare minimum, all of the musicians that performed last week at Bitfest,
they got all of their hotels paid for.
They obviously received plenty of boosts and zaps on the night,
and they got a share of the ticket price on the door for all the tickets that were sold on the night.
And I was stunned because Roger told me that exact same thing,
that he's been five years touring the globe, doing all the conferences,
and every single time he's had to do it and sacrifices his Bitcoin, basically, in order to perform.
And I just think that that's not right.
Do you know what I mean?
These people are bringing value to the space.
It is to do with Bitcoin culture and we need to get them rewarded
because at the end of the day, there's nothing more than a bit of rock and roll
or a bit of music or pure talent being up on stage
that gets your emotions going,
that tap into something, a frequency that's beyond
what a macro analyst economics guy can do.
Do you know what I mean?
And Michael Saylor is wonderful with his engineering metaphors
about what Bitcoin is.
But pure unadulterated rock and roll
where you can let your hair down, that's a higher frequency than just talking all the time.
Do you know what I mean?
It acts on our inner animals.
And music is a powerful messaging system.
It has the ability to repeat and you to memorize and lyrics can speak to you in a way that just spoken word may not.
So I think it's really important that the future of this is if you want us musicians to play,
then yeah, bare minimum is pay them a wage, put them up, give them a hotel room,
do whatever you can to make sure they get paid.
Because obviously they're going to get rewarded in sats.
But we're going to have to have some kind of guarantee.
We can't be going to the conferences and spending £1,000
and then only getting like £50 worth of sats back for them.
Do you know what I mean?
Because it doesn't matter how good a loss leader that is,
you know, it's not enough.
And you've seen a lot of these conferences, Avi.
I'm sure you've been to plenty of them.
I mean, I haven't, but there's enough advertising,
there's enough money going around these conferences
that we can work on getting the artists paid.
Do you know what I mean?
Yeah, well, there absolutely is.
especially the ones that take the big sponsors
they certainly can carve out
yeah, as you're saying
even if you're not paying them for the music
which I think they should be
at least cover their travel and their lodging
yeah, bare minimum
absolute bare minimum
because they're going to pick up some sats
from their performance
we'd like to hope
do you know what I mean?
so yeah, if they can go over there
with a clear conscience of this isn't going to cost me anything,
then, you know, that's a start.
So, yeah.
So, yeah, more of this stuff, you know, more.
We want more of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
So let's talk about the Into the Valueverse.
Was that the name of the event that you did earlier this summer?
Correct, yeah.
So we performed.
it was me, Longy, Nathan Abbott and Joe Martin
and the video is up there on YouTube
for anyone that wants to go and watch the whole gig
and it was pretty similar set up to what we had
at Bitfest the other night, Avi
where I was kind of a reluctant MC for the night
I had like my little script
and I had my little bits and bobs
and we live streamed it
you know, over Noster and over Zapstream
and on the night we had about three hours
and like BitFest last week, the technology worked superbly
but how this differed from a normal show
was we had a big screen to the right of the stage
that had the booster board
we had, like I say, Fountain and Azteco support
they gave us these vouchers where people could download the Fountain app and put worth of Bitcoin into their Fountain app ready to zap the artists
And it was the first time we'd ever had a Bitcoin gig, sorry, a music gig powered by Bitcoin in the UK.
and that was something I was determined to do
because we were disappointed earlier this year
because we was in conversation with Ainsley Costello,
Julie Costello, Phantom Power Music over in the States
about coming over and doing a live show in London.
We'd earmarked, I think, some big venues in King's Cross
and maybe the Water Rats
And we was going to do this show off the back of, I think there was like, there's a podcasting exhibition or trade show, you know, in May.
And we wanted to do it off the back of that because Fountain were appearing at this trade show.
Anyway, things happened.
The American guys who had already done the Booster Grand Ball previously in October.
So I think the first ever Bitcoin-powered live gig was the Booster Grand Ball that was emceed by Adam Curry.
And it had probably loads of the people in our chat room there, like Chad F. and Heather Larson, Ainsley Costello, Suzanne Santo.
They all had performing there.
Was that the one in Austin which Open Mic organized?
Correct. Yeah, correct.
I think it was like October, I want to say October 24, maybe.
so yeah so knowing that um julie and ainsley had that experience to do it um i was quite keen for
them to come over and get involved with us to do it here but when um when things kind of worked
against them they they um accepted that they couldn't make it over it it was kind of then up
to me to kind of go well you know what this is something i really really want to do and i'm
determined to do it. So I just put a shout out on Nostar, and I don't know if he's out there,
but INPC, who does a live stream every morning, he reached out to me because I didn't have any
idea about the streaming and the OBR and Zapstream. And I just put, anyone out there who can help me
live stream our first show? And he got in touch almost straight away, and he says, well, I'm doing
a morning show where I'm streaming every day anyway. So I was like, oh my God, that's amazing.
So he lived in the next county along to me and he got in the car, travelled up. I said, look,
you can keep here the night. You don't have to buy hotels. I mean, I can put you in the split
for the show. So literally, it was the first show that we'd done, went all over the world.
everybody that kind of contributed went into the split so the sound guy got a split you know
impc got a split the photographer was taking images got a split i got a split for running
around like a headless chicken for about a month like organizing it all and obviously the artist
got the majority of the split i think it went 75 i think it went 25 for each artist and then the
final 25 was for the crew and you know avi that that that um that event it raised on the night i
think it was around about 450 000 sats and it went out live on fountain uh as well as uh zapstream
450 000 sats we raised on the night in the room to the actual kind of you know artist wallets you
know it was probably a few more uh few more hundred thousand sats um and it was it was kind of seamless
and it was flawless it kind of just worked and we was having messages from all over the globe which
made everyone kind of feel good the majority of the audience was majority normies so they'd never
ever kind of seen bitcoin working in in real life before do you know what i mean so i'd like to think
it was everyone's first all the normies in there it was their first true experience of bitcoin and
and it being used as a tool for good you know um but yeah so from that one show we obviously got a
live stream we got an income from the live stream i then took the audio file we got that remastered
um and then i released that as a live album into the value verse which all of the guys with radio
shows you know homegrown hits upbeats mutton mead and music they all played live tracks from the
show which people who may have missed the show then boosted in so you know to to this day that
that event that show is kind of you know making us making us some bitcoin do you know what i mean
um and and the hope is that that will obviously continue to rise in fiat terms forever so it's
one of my little kind of idioms is, you know, when you earn in Bitcoin, you earn forever.
Do you know what I mean? And I think through that one show, I think we've kind of proven that, you
know? Yeah, I think if I remember correctly, Aaron, that we had Oscar on the show on this on this show
on that day. And he was taking the I guess he was joining the pod from his hotel room. And we had to
end a little early because he said, look, I've got to go. I've got to go to the into the value
show. So that that is my my one connection to that. Ah, OK. Yeah, no, that's cool. You know,
Oscar was in the room with us. He was there zapping the artists as well. Yeah, no, the
fountain have been like big supporters of what you know, what we're trying to do over here in
the value verse. And, you know, Bitcoin being open source and everyone building tools,
Fountain's great but still
a podcast player first
what we're seeing now
through Chad F
and through Sir Libre
is they're bringing out
these apps now which are
kind of value verse
music, V4V music
first players
so there's one at
v4vmusic.com
that's a
value verse player, that's being written
by Sir Libre. And I want to give Chad F a shout out as well, because he's got one called
Stablecraft. Chad F, oh, he's in the chat. He'll correct me if I'm not wrong. But I think
it's Stablecraft and he's creating one as well. So yeah, I think once we've got some
apps that are music only as well um i think that that will give us a another
you know a kind of another easier adoption adoption method method to it but ultimately
you know this is this is what space is all about every if it's not been built yet someone will
build it you know and then i've heard of uh apps being i don't know if these are uh stable craft
and the others you mentioned are NOSTA apps or not.
The one Surlibre, you said, is building.
I don't know if those are NOSTA apps or not.
I mean, I don't know.
I'll wait for them to correct me.
But I do believe there are people building similar things on NOSTA as well.
And hopefully with some kind of bridge between RSS and NOSTA
because that's somehow...
And this is something I don't fully understand.
Aaron, maybe you do.
There seems to be a schism forming,
and it's been around for a while,
between the RSS...
I guess, I suppose, the RSS first crowd
and the NOSTA first crowd.
And I think it has something to do with Keysend,
the flavor of lightning.
I haven't fully understood this.
I don't understand why there needs to be a schism.
We're on the same team.
But do you understand this, I guess, potential tension between these two groups?
Yeah, I try not to get involved in much of that.
But my understanding of it is, you know, when we first started this project about a year ago, there was probably about 12 to 15 music shows out there.
And Keysend is obviously kind of like linked direct to the nodes.
and it kind of worked beautifully.
But Oscar explained it to me that if we want true mass adoption,
we need to get Lightning URL in there somehow
because that's how Strike and Cash App and all of these other apps
will interact with the Lightning network.
It will be through Lightning addresses and whatnot.
So that really kind of...
I don't really know the schism, like you call it the schism.
All I know is that we just want interoperability and we don't want ideologies.
We just need something that works, that's kind of path of least resistance for the most people to get involved.
And obviously the changes from GetAlbi, because obviously a lot of things broke when they went to,
they changed their entire format as well.
A lot of people were using GetAlbi wallets in order to receive their sats and stuff like that.
So there was a few things that broke.
So yeah, I think the NOSTA only, the RSS.
I was talking to Derek Ross actually at BitFest last week.
And he was talking, and maybe this is where it comes from.
He was talking about, you know, let's do it all on NOSTA.
NOSTA is going to be the future and all of that.
But then Julie Costello brought up a great point.
and it's like, well, if we were going to get all of Ainsley's fans
onto NOSTA to listen to her music,
because it's censorship-resistant and because anything goes on NOSTA,
Is it really wise to get, like, you know, kind of young people, young adults, you know, surrounded by that content?
I don't know.
You know, these are problems and issues that I think will work themselves out.
You know, whether there'll be a filtering system, whether there'll be a NotzvCore thing on terms of, like, NOSTA, who knows.
But yeah, I think these are healthy conversations and I think they are fundamentally good because they give everybody the opportunity to kind of build their things how they see fit.
And like I say, for the normie, we just need things that work and are compatible.
And, you know, I wish everyone could get along.
But, you know, sometimes that isn't possible.
Sometimes you have to, you know, fight your corner a bit, you know.
Yeah, fair enough.
So, Aaron, what's next?
What is the next Valley for Value event that you're planning?
any musicians you've set your sights on to nudge into our world oh that's a that's yeah that's
really interesting you've asked me that because last week i was talking to shadrach and he was
telling me that his wife knows colin greenwood from radiohead all right said yeah he said to me
He said, maybe if you wrote a letter, I could maybe get it to him somehow.
So, yeah, set your sights high, mate.
So, yeah, I mean, that'd be amazing.
But no, really, my NOSTA's open, my Twitter feed's open.
If anyone wants me to help them get into the value verse in any way, I'm quite willing to do all that for them.
I've got a Bitcoin meetup planned this Wednesday.
at a new music venue that I've onboarded,
and they actually accept Bitcoin as well.
So that's going to be at Peggy Sue's this Wednesday night.
So if anyone's in Essex, Peggy Sue's in Leon C.
We'll be having a Bitcoin meetup,
and I am going to be getting a couple of value-for-value artists
in there playing for us for the evening as well.
So that should be good.
I know Longy has a gig planned just before Christmas also
I think December the 21st
I think that may also be at Peggy Sue's
so that should be a good one
I hoping to have another Valueverse event at the Fickle Pickle early next year q1 i not putting any dates on it just yet um i have to see what my calendar allows for in january um but yeah so i got
i want to do another value verse event um at the fickle pickle next year maybe slightly different
lineup um i'll keep that under my hat at the moment the conferences in june that sounds amazing
if we could do you know warsaw prague and belgrade that'd be phenomenal but no i'm just plodding
along mate you know i'm just plodding along trying to um bring as many musicians to the
value verse as possible and like i say i'm quite excited for next week because that was the news i
was going to drop the news i'm i'm dropping is south end city radio have asked me to go in and
not only get them on NOSTA, but show them how to tap into the Valueverse
and maybe using, you know, Valueverse artists in their daily schedule.
So, you know, that's probably the first example of, you know,
the Valueverse crossing paths with the Fiat Legacy system in a way.
So, yeah, more of that, please.
Oh, brilliant.
so you're going to be a busy man for the foreseeable future Aaron yeah I'm very lucky
I've been in Bitcoin for quite a while um so it's not like I need to like break my neck
mine in fear all day long so I mean I work part-time for um a hairdressing academy men's
hairdressing federation um so I work a couple of days a week for them I've got another side hustle
business which is an online business that I work it's a family business that kind of runs itself
in the background needs minimal minimal kind of interruption from me and then you know the other
I suppose two two and a half days a week that I've got left I mean because I used to be a stay-at-home
dad for like quite a few years now my daughters are kind of 16 18 ones at university they're flying
the nest so i'm basically garnering back my time and um yeah i i i just love doing this this whole
music side project thing um so yeah i'm going to be busy on board and as many many artists as
possible in the in the foreseeable so yeah long may that continue indeed and you and you Certainly doing an incredible job Aaron Do have a link for the uh event on monday you said right uh yeah it be on my nostre uh you can go to my twitter handle
as well if i put it on twitter i think i've just popped it on orange pill apps as well
yeah it's a free event
no tickets required
but yeah certainly give me a shout out
if you're going to pop along
excellent
anything else?
any last thing you want to plug Aaron?
yeah the last thing I want to plug really
is
I want to see
in 2026
the first UK
music podcast
there's a lot of people in the space that are all kind of you know oh I want to get a bitcoin job I
would love to you know earn bitcoin for doing something that I like to do well there's nothing
stopping you anybody out there creating a music podcast using all the music that's available
we need more of them at the moment it's mainly America that have got a kind of monopoly on all
the music podcast at the moment so it'd be great if if someone had you know half a day a week where
they could learn to how to do it and and then there's tutorials out there the guys you know
the guys chad f and sir lee brave they've all created um documentation shows you how to use
these tools like the split kit and sovereign feeds.com in order to make your show um
I would love to see somebody pick up the baton from the Americans and go into making a UK-based value-for-value.
And not just UK.
If there's anyone in France, if there's anyone in Germany, if there's anyone in Australia, you should be making your own music shows.
You can earn Bitcoin for it.
You can become a bit of a Bitcoiner on the scene.
I think the opportunity is there and you can do it without anyone's permission.
The music's there. Go and use it. Go and take it and go and share it with others.
So that's really what I'd like to see in 2026.
I'd love to see a few more music podcasts pop up in and around the globe.
Well, you heard it here, folks. This is a true call to action.
It doesn't take much. You just need a nice microphone.
there documentation out there on how to do the splits By the way Aaron something that I will look into now that you mentioned it because I have been curious and it not something I paid too much attention to which is playing music on this show
and then figuring out how to zap the appropriate amount
to the artists or when we get boosts or whatever it is,
how we redirect that to the artists themselves.
So some light homework reading for me.
Well, the guys in this space are very helpful.
So if you need any help with any of that, I'm sure Chad F., I'm sure Sir Libre, I'm sure Salty Crown,
they'll all give you a heads up how to do it, how to incorporate music in it.
I know this week in Bitcoin, which is one of the top supported shows on Fountains, regularly number one,
they played Longy last week and it's just right at the end of the show.
You know, they're just shining a light on value for value artists.
And Longy's tune got played last week at the end of their show.
So, you know, Longy would have earned maybe 10,000, 15,000 sats, I think, from making an appearance on that show.
And, you know, when you equivalent that to what he would have made in Spotify,
it would have taken him three months to earn that kind of money on Spotify.
Do you know what I mean?
So I think any exposure, any of the Bitcoin podcasts can get.
and it like i i believe it's it's it's pretty easy once it's like everything once you do it
once it becomes easy you know maybe i will aaron i've been inspired maybe i will feature one value
for value song per episode that'd be amazing yeah excellent well aaron appreciate you taking the
time and educating us,
you're one-man army
who's
nudging people gently
into this magical world,
and it sounds like you're about to
hit the motherlode
from the sound of it.
I hope that's true.
Yeah, appreciate you taking the time,
and to our audience,
I hope you were listening on a value-for-value
app like Fountain. If not,
it's never too late.
The next time,
you could do that
and our lively audience
on Nostra Streaming
Zap.Stream, Primal
whatever you were using to listen to the live stream
thank you for your vigorous
participation and all your comments
I think it added
a lot to the show
thank you everyone
and until next week
goodbye