Not only are we using less cash than before but the word "cash" is also appearing less frequently in text

Like most music, classical is also best listened to moderately loud

'My dear young fellow,' the Old-Green Grasshopper said gently, 'there are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that you haven't even started wondering about yet.'

"The Swedish music giant is pushing to make Africa’s biggest sound the world’s favorite sound" Let's all take a wild guess as to how this story ends

Rest of World

How Spotify helped turn Afrobeats into a global phenomenon

The Swedish music giant is pushing to make Africa’s biggest sound the world’s favorite sound.

Yo @manlikekweks you did it again 🔥

Wavlake

SPC • Man Like Kweks

Play, boost, and more on Wavlake ⚡️🎵

This is such a great chat between @PhantomPowerMedia and @manlikekweks They talk hip-hop, education, Tanzania... and so much more. Worth a listen

Fountain: Podcasts and Music

Phantom Power Artist Hour • Episode 5 - Man Like Kweks • Listen on Fountain

If you've only been around V4V & NOSTR for just a week, you've definitely seen Man Like Kweks. He is an educator, entrepreneur, Bitcoiner and Rappe...

There have been a lot of NIP proposals for sharing multimedia but none have really caught on. Can we figure out a way to change this so we improve multimedia interop between clients? I wonder if it makes sense to piggyback on the Open Graph protocol that’s already widely adopted and standardized. It’s in HTML but seems like it’d be relatively trivial to convert the standard tags to more Nostr-friendly JSON

Sometimes you eat the bear... and sometimes the bear, well, he eats you

"Filthy old technologies deserve to be destroyed. After all, they work and don't require permission." There's a great thread in the comment section here and this one in particular stood out to me. I know very little about Usenet but it seems like there are some lessons to be learned and hopefully not forgotten

The Rise and Fall of Usenet - Slashdot

An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Long before Facebook existed, or even before the Internet, there was Usenet. Usenet was the first s...

Y'all might wanna join the party right now 🎵⚡️🪩

tunestr.io

Live streaming music powered by Nostr and Bitcoin Lightning

The Wavlake Top 40 was always intended to be just one, introductory way to recommend new music to people. It seemed logical — just count how many sats each track earned within a certain period of time and show the results (we’ve been using a 30-day window since January). When we first launched, this seemed like a good enough place to start. The idea of putting your music everywhere on the internet for free was — and still is — a kind of crazy idea. The Top 40 was a familiar way to show people how this could work. I’m now realizing value for value is only going to succeed if fans are even more involved. With so much music out there, it’s impossible for casual listeners to discover new music without a little help. We need curators — true enthusiasts — out there showcasing the things they love for us all to hear. And those curators need to be a part of the value stream. Podcasts like Boostagram Ball, Sidestream Music, and UpBeats are some early, innovative examples of how effective this mechanic can be — where the curator is rewarded for their work alongside the artists they feature. This doesn’t have to take the form of a podcast, of course. We can imagine this playing out on blogs, videos, any medium… but right now, these new podcasts work. They feel like radio, which is familiar and proven. Only now, with zaps, it’s even better. 
Things have evolved a lot more quickly than we ever imagined and it's exciting. This concept — of a publicly available music library with a standard payment protocol baked in — is starting to show its power.

And now we wait

I used to work in public radio, where every few months we would launch a big, on-air pledge drive to raise money to keep the station running. These drives would usually last about two weeks and completely disrupted the usual programming people were used to. We’d cut in every hour for a few minutes here and there for a “pledge break”, during which we’d ask listeners for money. It was a whole production: there were daily goals, matching donations from big supporters, giveaways, prize drawings for iPads… all in the name of supporting what we were doing. These pledge drives were hugely successful. Granted, the station was a good one, we produced a lot of great programming, and we operated in a large market. But even though these pledge drives worked, we all knew how annoying it was for listeners. We would even say things on-air like, “We know these can be a drag but it’s how we make the shows you love, so if you love this station, give us a call!” One year, a manager came up with the idea to try and shorten the drives by raising money ahead of time. So, in the weeks leading up to the drive, we started running brief messages asking listeners to donate early, with the incentive that they could collectively shorten the length of the drive by doing so. We sold the idea like it was a reward. And it worked! Sort of. But it would only shave a couple days off in the end. Hearing these early value for value podcasters ask their listeners to send them some sats if they value a show is so reminiscent of the public radio funding model — which is promising because that model has been working incredibly well for decades. The messaging on these podcasts is almost identical in nature and tone to what we'd do at my old radio station (and what continues to happen today). The big difference is that these mini-breaks where hosts ask for money can be just a small part of every episode, like a reminder, and do not need to be as intrusive or disruptive as a full-on fundraiser. That’s a huge improvement in listener experience. And I think spread out over time, the earnings potential is at least as good as, if not better than, what’s possible with the traditional model. This can work. The concept is not new. It’s just the implementation that’s a bit different. Once people get comfortable with it, there’s no looking back. What’s exciting is it’s still just the very beginning, and we’re seeing some amazing results already. Waiting for the day when my old station adopts value for value and can give up the pledge drives… give it time.

"A fully interoperable, cross-platform messaging system would be a good thing for the world. I don’t think that’s particularly controversial." You don't say...

The Verge

Beeper vs. iMessage is a fight about how tech works — and who’s really in charge

Beeper is right about the world, and Apple is right about Beeper.

Trees are amazing