To start receiving bitcoin for your music:
1. Make an Alby wallet through Podverse, Podcast Guru, or another value enabled app at newpodcastapps.com, or make a Fountain wallet by downloading the Fountain app and creating your profile. It’s a simple process like creating any online profile. You should not have to enter any banking or payment, so skip that, and you can receive btc. https://getalby.com/ https://fountain.fm/
2. Upload your mp3 files and album covers to a hosting service.
If you already have a website or a podcast, you may be able to use your current hosting service.
(I’ve used Libsyn, RssBlue, and WordPress/siteground. There are ways to use your own server as well).
3. Go to musicsideproject.com, enter info and download links to your now hosted mp3’s. (Skip this if you’re using rssblue; they do this automatically.) Music Side Project has a helpful tutorial tab that you’ll likely benefit from.
4. When ready to publish album, download the.xml file from MSP, then upload it to your hosting.
5. Open your hosted .xml in browser, copy url, paste it into MSP, and publish.
-If you ever want to edit your album, you can upload and link new files, edit descriptors, and create a new xml file. YOU WILL NEED TO HAVE NEW .XML FILE WITH EXACT SAME NAME AS OLD ONE. This may mean deleting the old xml file from hosting service, and/or changing the name of the xml file.
Alternately, I can upload and host your music for you. You’ll still want a Lightning wallet to receive payments and messages from listeners. I’ll take 5% and give another 5% to MusicSideProject.com, leaving you with 90% of income.
https://thunderroad.media/ is another place where Boo-Bury does the same thing for you, and you can keep a higher percentage of income!
It’s helpful to have more than one lightning wallet, or to have a friend with one, so you can test your payment mechanism.
I use Blue Wallet app on iPhone to connect to my Alby wallet. There are other phone apps to connect to your Alby wallet and use lightning btc across multiple apps.
Fountain may be the easiest place to start with a lightning wallet, because last I checked you could just download the app, create a profile, and have a Lightning wallet along with your podcasting 2.0 app.
A Letter to my Fellow Musicians:
I’m writing to tell you how to make bitcoin for your music, and likely get your songs played on podcasts!
It’s a long story though, and can’t be summed up in a brief paragraph.
So:
I started playing with crypto in 2020, when I had some spare time.
I’ve been listening to podcasts for longer.
And long before I discovered podcasts, I was playing, recording, producing, listening to, loving music.
Recently, these three parts of my life have come together in a way that is inspiring and exciting!
I’m now releasing my/our music as podcasts, and receiving small amounts of bitcoin in return. Listeners and producers tip any amount of btc (tiny fractions of a cent, even) through the lightning network, and with these tips they send messages directly to the bands!
Since joining Distrokid a few years ago, I’ve paid them a lot of money to distribute my music throughout the Spoti-pan-flix-azon-tuneses networks. In return for thousands of plays, I have but a few meager bucks of earnings over those years.
Yeah, like $5.
It costs way more to have my music on those platforms than I get back! It’s fun to have my music out there, available to my friends on their preferred platforms. But how fun is it really, and how much does it cost?
So thank goodness I’ve found something better.
It’s a lot more fun to hear my own songs played on the radio! Ok, not exactly, but the modern version, which is Podcasts! My teenage dream has finally come true, of hearing my own band on the radio, announced by the dj. And not just once, but many times!
And I’ve been able to return and pass on the love reciprocally, in the form of Boostagrams, btc tips complete with messages for the artists and dj’s.
Through Podcasting 2.0, and sites like https://musicsideproject.com/ and https://getalby.com/, I’m now publishing music, receiving tips and messages directly from listeners, and also consuming music and shows, and tipping back, in true v4v fashion.
One of my favorite podcasters, Adam Curry, aka, ‘The Podfather”, played a crucial role in creating what we now know as podcasts and rss feeds.
In the years since, he has seen his creation turn into something amazing, powerful, and therefore quite valuable to humanity. He sees it being used for both good and evil. He sees corporations and governments attempting to monopolize and control the market of podcasts.
Adam has seen these developments, and reacted by continuing to innovate around whatever those darker entities attempt.
To avoid being influenced by advertisers, he and his No Agenda podcast co-host, John C. Dvorak, started the Value for Value (v4v) funding philosophy: asking the listeners to return whatever value they get from the show in whatever form they like- time, talent, treasure.
So rather than offering more content behind a paywall, reading ads, or playing generic adverts (barf), they play the music that people send in, acknowledge and honor whatever monetary gifts come in, reading notes and dubbing titles to the high rollers, using listener art as the thumbnail image that goes out to podcatchers, and more.
It bears mentioning that many others have contributed greatly to these developments, such as Dave Winer, who’s worked closely with Adam from the beginning.
Here is an article about the beginning of rss and podcasts:
https://podnews.net/article/the-last-yard-adam-curry
Learn about the Value 4 Value philosophy: https://value4value.info/
Lightning wallets:
you can also set up your own lightning node and connect to it using Zeus wallet. I’ve not done this yet.
V4V Music Publishing Platforms:
wavlake
File Hosting
research self-hosting!
Podcasting 2.0
Onboard your favorite artists, send them to: