Earn bitcoin for music.
I caught up with my old friend Longy the other day—a proper rock ’n’ roll soul, with grit, heart, and a back catalogue that deserves way more than scraps from Spotify. Like so many artists, he’s spent years pouring himself into his music, only to have platforms take the lion’s share while fans are left disconnected from the person behind the songs.
This is the sickness of the industry: artists create, corporations extract. The internet was supposed to free us, but instead we ended up funneled into a few giant platforms where we rent back our own audiences.
That’s why decentralisation matters. And why Bitcoin, RSS, and Nostr change the game.
To learn more about my case study with Longy click here
Why Bitcoin for Music?
Bitcoin isn’t just “internet money”—it’s incorruptible, borderless, and built for direct connection. RSS & Nostr (podcasting 2.0 apps like fountain & podverse) run on top of it, letting fans stream sats (micro-payments in bitcoin) directly to artists wallets as they listen. No middlemen, no ads, no waiting 90 days for a payout.
Bitcoin as the monetary layer of the internet – it’s open source protocol which means any app developer can plug their product into to the network without asking anyones permission. Instantly!
Real support, real money. And because bitcoin is finite, what an artist earns today could be worth many times more tomorrow. That’s not hype-that’s monetary reality.
The Bigger Picture: RSS + Nostr
But it’s not just about money—it’s about freedom. RSS already gave us a way to publish without permission. Podcasting 2.0 showed what’s possible when you mix RSS with bitcoin. Nostr takes it even further, giving artists censorship-resistant distribution, identity, and community—all without relying on a single company. (Think of nostr as a decentralised social media layer of the internet)
Imagine uploading your track once, and it spreads across apps and platforms automatically, with bitcoin payments flowing back to you wherever your audience listens. That’s not a dream—it’s happening now.
Platforms vs Protocols
- Protocol (e.g. RSS, Bitcoin, Nostr): An open standard anyone can use to publish and share music. No gatekeepers, artists own their content and connect directly with listeners.
- Platform (e.g. Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud): A company-controlled service that hosts music. Artists depend on its rules, algorithms, and revenue splits to reach audiences. Wavlake even though it uses bitcoin payment rails – it is still a platform and potentially could be become the parasitic gatekeeper we hate Spotify for becoming.
Artists Need to Know
Take Joe Martin: his earnings on Wavlake are 20x higher than on Spotify. That’s not because he’s gaming the system, it’s because he’s finally outside of it. Fans value his work, and they can show it directly—no gatekeepers clipping the ticket.
To message an artist – you can send them a boost
What is a Boost? A Boost is a small bitcoin payment that goes to the creator of the track. Boosts are denominated in satoshis, or sats, which is equal to 0.00000001 bitcoin.
All podcast 2.0 and nostr run ontop of bitcoin payment rails – Boosts or (its known on Nostr as a ZAP!)
see how it works on fountain here
Meanwhile, Twitter is full of musicians complaining about micropayments from Spotify. They don’t know another path exists. Outside our bubble, most artists haven’t heard of bitcoin monetisation, RSS, or Nostr. And that’s the tragedy—because unless we keep sharing this knowledge, the same extractive industry will keep repeating itself.
To get a feel for how it all works – I recommend you downloading the fountain.fm podcast player and listening to one of the music shows. My favourites are Upbeats and homegrown hits
Once you have done this you are 50% way there – Fountain gives you a bitcoin wallet and wallet address that you would receive your bitcoin into, it also will give you a login for Nostr.
The Shift We Need
The conversation with Longy reminded me: artists are curious, but the leap is big. Bitcoin flips every assumption we’ve been trained to accept—scarcity, value, ownership. It takes time to absorb. But the alternative is to keep playing the same broken game.
We don’t need another Spotify. We need tools that give us back ownership of our music, our communities, and our future.
Bitcoin, RSS, and Nostr are that toolkit. They don’t ask permission, and they don’t take 30%. They give artists a direct line to fans, and fans a direct line back.
That’s the internet we were promised. And it’s already here—if we choose to use it.
In a way what you are looking at here is the internet in 1995 – the tools are still being fleshed out and developed but you can be one of the first to take advantage, be ahead of the curve and adapt how you publish your music forever.
- The easiest route to be guided into the valueverse would be to work with the New Music Nudge Unit
they take care of publishing, hosting, promtion and have a great track record of getting artists in the top 10 of the RSS music charts. more here - The next best route is through wavlake.com – they host your music and create the feed for a 10% split – however it does require a little more work on your end with uploading and curating your feed.
- The most difficult route is for you to self publish onto your own website and create the feed and publish yourself. You can keep up to 100% of the bitcoin using this route
Whatever route you choose, you have a bunch of enthusiastic supporters that would never discover you under the algo’s of Spotify YouTube et al.
What’s in it for me?
Money, Discovery & Dopamine.
Money – To be able to monetise your engagement with your network. Is not a new concept. However, earning the hardest money ever discovered from your passion no matter where you are on Earth or even Mars, is.
In the last 90 days over £15,000 has been sent to podcasters and musicians via RSS. Due to the increasing value of bitcoin this number is almost certainly guaranteed to go up over time as new people discover the network.
Spotify in comparison pays artists between $0.003 – $0.005 per stream on average.
That works out as an approx revenue split of 70/30 – so that’s 70% to the artist/rights holders and 30% to Spotify. And this revenue goes down 40% every two years because of new material being added to the platform. 87% of music on spotify does not earn one penny!
Wavlake gives you 90% – But you have to do it all yourself. Discovery is limited to their own artists hosted on their platform and listeners miss out on a huge amount of music if you listen there. There are even music podcasts that will not play music from wavlake. Which further damages your discovery.
New Music Nudge Unit gives you 80% and does it all for you plus promotion on X, YouTube and Nostr. Content creation for new songs such as: Fable’s The Whip –
Discovery Publishing this way gets you more discovery as every app built ontop of RSS and Nostr will be able to play / link to your music.
Dopamine – Your tunes getting to the top of the RSS charts is a fantastic incentive – this also drives new discovery as apps like Fountain include the charts on their home page – including trending tracks etc.
Using these protocols allow your fans to message you directly with a small boost or bitcoin payment that you will be able to read and respond too.
One of NMNU’s artists Nathan Abbott recently hit the top of the RSS charts.
Wavlake is still a platform.
If you want to be sovereign and discovered by everyone.
Get in with the New Music Nudge Unit
Publishing your music in a sovereign way means taking back control from platforms and building your own direct line to listeners. Instead of relying solely on Spotify or YouTube, you can use tools like MusicSideProject.com to release your tracks via open protocols, while also hosting them on your own website.
This way, you own the publishing, the distribution, and the connection with your audience—no gatekeepers, no hidden algorithms deciding who gets to hear your work.
By pairing open tools with self-hosting, you ensure your music remains accessible, censorship-resistant, and fully under your control, while fans can support you directly without a middleman taking the cut.using this method you can keep up to 100% of all the bitcoin sent to your track.
When you host your music on your own site using open protocols like RSS, you make it discoverable everywhere—not just inside one company’s walled garden. Anyone with a podcast app, music app, or even a simple browser can find and play your tracks. In contrast, platforms like Wavlake only surface songs that live inside their ecosystem. That’s great for their community, but it limits discovery to whoever happens to use their app.
Owning your own feed means you’re not locked into a single platform’s audience—you’re part of the wider, open internet where anyone, anywhere, can connect with your music. And if you’re not technical, services like New Music Nudge Unit make this even easier.
They take care of hosting and promotion (creating videos/content and posting socially on your behalf) while you keep ownership, giving you the benefits of sovereignty without the complexity. In other words, you don’t have to hand over your career to closed platforms just to be heard—you can stay independent and still reach everyone.
The splits work like this –
- 78% to the artist
- 20% to New Music Nudge Unit
- 2% to musicsideproject.com
Here is an example of one of our preview videos that we publish to nostr, telegram, x, tiktok and youtube,
It’s about Live Music too
In May 2025 – We produced the first ever bitcoin powered gig in the UK. Which was a brilliant success. Called “Into the Valueverse” we brought together three acts Joe Martin, Nathan Abbott and Longy. And we put on a ground breaking show, live streamed it across the planet and people were able to send support via bitcoin direct to the show. One supporter from the USA sent a 67k sat boost (approx $75) on the night of the show. Boo-bury you are a legend and I still tell people about this.
We also released the live show onto RSS & published a live album which is still making the artists money today
Check out how it works here by viewing the fountain page of our last show!
Experience the New Music Economy being built on top of Bitcoin
To experience the music within this new bitcoin powered music economy go to one of the new podcast apps like podverse.fm or fountain.fm and check out the music tab or music shows like this one from Upbeats.
UK Takeover show features a number of the artists we publish via New Music Nudge Unit.
Illustration below is The Growth of the Podcast Index plus number of transactions being sent over podcasting 2.0
Artist Case Study – Longy
Can I get Longy to embrace a Bitcoin standard?
I’d arranged to meet up at the duck pond. Longy rocked up 30 minutes late. (this was the 3rd time I had arranged to meet him) So, whatever. It wasn’t raining. I could enjoy my time watching the newborn cygnets get used to their new home.
After the opening pleasantries, it was time to elevate the chat to the hard talk of Bitcoin, satoshis and time preference.
Bitcoin is hard to get your head around and I’m always conscious about how to communicate its numerous elements. Bitcoin’s entire ruleset has complete opposite values than what normies in FIAT world are used to.
Whenever discussing bitcoin I find it’s best to leave a lot of the groundbreaking concepts out for a later date. As according to the famous book by Robert Greene One of his 48 laws of power states “too much innovation at once is traumatic.”
So I usually start with the biggest concept and then let the conversation generate itself from there. “Bitcoin is the worlds first incorruptible money” oh and it’s finite.
“What do you know about Bitcoin?”
Longy mentioned he had heard about Ethereum, I cut him off and began to speak. (If he knows about shitcoins he knows enough.)
It gave me the runway to emphasize why Bitcoin is not Crypto. And this point always helps hammer home the concept of scarcity.
Cue my script about money, inflation, currency manipulation, banksters and Fiat gatekeepers. In one month Longy received over 135,000 satoshis in boosts (approximately £115 in 2025) for more on Longy’s journey click here
Earnings in perspective
Let’s Look at Joe Martin music
He has fully embraced this way of monetisation. His earnings from his top 10 above is 500k satoshis in a couple of months. Joe has shared on podcasts that his earnings from bitcoin have multiplied his Spotify earnings by TWENTY times
Whereas on twitter all you hear is musicians complaining about spotify and the menial revenue they share with the artists on their platform.
In 2020 you could get 500k sats for £15
Today (2025) 500k satoshis is almost £500.
It’s going up forever.
Aaron of Essex
Short term, this may not enable him to quit his day job, But over a long enough time frame this is his pension and as as the space continues to evolve, this will be the best way to do things.
Bearing in mind that I have not told Longy about publishing his music directly to RSS.
I’m conscious of saying too much, as this is next-level stuff.
Adam Curry & Dave Jones
So I’ll leave this blog with some final words from the podfather himself Adam Curry as he explains exactly what this means to not only the music industry but individuals themselves.
“Unfortunately no-one outside our little bubble knows about any of this stuff. This decentralised universe is emerging before our very eyes. And unless we persist in sharing it with others IN REAL LIFE, it’ll be futile.”
If you know of anyone that would like to be shown how to earn real money from their passion. Send them our way.
Aaron x