I think I solved this problem - Bandcamp for bitcoinersI think I solved this problem - Bandcamp for bitcoiners
Direct CurrentDirect Current
Did I do it or did I mess it up? This was generated with a massive amount of help from AI. I wanted to throw this at the bitcoiners before I accidentally sell snake oil to all my musician buddies. I was partly inspired by the bitcoinproducts.xyz site, and partly inspired by the anticipation of a friend of mine here in Ohio touring India this August. My only overseas touring has been Europe, but from time to time, various people I'm in bands with get to do the cool stuff where they really get to see a different part of the world. I realized this may be my chip in the game to feeding them (and their international fans) a gateway drug to freedom money.
I call it Direct Current, and I think it works.
Here is a sample project[1] I made using it:
My sample website with the one line Direct Current embed
With Direct Current, any luddite should be able to create a lightning wallet and get a one line embed code for their website. Worst case scenario, they have a landing page / paywall for selling their stuff. That stuff doesn't have to be recorded music. It can be sheet music, 3d print files, research papers, anything. I think I've successfully blocked potential CSAM, but I suppose if this catches on, I'll get some help.
A matter of perspectiveA matter of perspective
I hear people grumble from time to time on here that there's no money in music. Ironically, I think the real barrier to this project will be convincing musicians that there's money in the bitcoin realm...aside from scams, of course. Bandcamp is only now closing in on two billion dollars of payouts for musicians, but what everybody forgets is that live performance has always been, and probably always will be, where the real money is.
And I think Direct Current has more potential to exploit this than bandcamp does. Bandcamp's main chip in the game is the network effect. But it's no good at a show. Here, I'm relying on the artist's already established listeners and the absurdly low barrier to entry that lightning brings. There's no email required, no big form for CC info, and no pushing artists other than the one the listener already likes. All the buyer needs is that lightning invoice and some sats.
Rip it apartRip it apart
Tell me if you think I did this all wrong. I'm here for it...
this is real music I created years ago, forgot about, and is kind of perfect for this experiment as I doubt I'd ever release it under my own name ↩
I was gonna say that the hard part is finding an audience with sats. But I was in New Orleans last weekend and saw a really great street performer. Of course, I didn't have very much cash. He had QRs for Paypal and Venmo, but I don't have either. I would have zapped him if he'd had a lightning QR or address.
I like how you're thinking about a very specific moment: the guitar case at a live performance, specifically when abroad and not carrying the monetary app of the land. Bitcoin totally fixes this.
But...there's still the problem of finding an audience with bitcoin.
I went through the flow on Direct Current. My main suggestion would be to figure out a way to give the user a lightning address (either by grabbing it from Blink or figuring out how to proxy). I would think that it would be really handy to have a dead simple way to be able to print out a qr code that a user can set up near wherever they are performing.
Second suggestion is that it's a bummer users have to go off-site to get the Blink wallet set up. It would be really slick if this was something that could happen in the app. I think you could probably get there with cashu or possibly via some unholy usage of Breez/Spark/Liquid.
But I love how you are thinking about this!
Thanks! Yeah, I think in the case of the QR code for the street performer, he's just best off with a lightning address, right? I've actually sold a handful of cds after shows with lightning address just because I can verify in person. Here, I'm focusing more on paywall specifically for something downloadable. I might be hearing your suggestion wrong though.
And yeah, I totally agree that it'd be great if I could keep this all self contained. That would lower the barrier to entry astronomically. I had a friend already who put in his blink account ID instead of wallet ID on the wallet linking page. However, I'm still afraid building a whole wallet is too risky for someone at my level of technical knowledge...at least for now...
Sorry I had to. Project looks cool.
Thanks!
🤣
First of all, very cool thing that you've built 👏
paywalls are common and there has been many open source versions built with Lightning over the years but I like the idea of "one time use" links which technically sounds a lot like L402 stuff which you can time lock or restrict in other ways as well.
Please don't use cashu but look into glowpay by breeze which is basically self custodial instant LN receive and that'll make it a good enough UX for sellers.
Now will you actually get buyers? That's the big if and all the best of luck.
Ah man! I had not heard of L402. I thought I was really into something brand new. Shucks. Thanks for the heads up on that. Well I’m still gonna see if I can get those creators/buyers to take this seriously. 🤞
built something similar — an autonomous agent that pays for tool access over Lightning. no API keys, no accounts. just an invoice, a payment, and the work gets done.
the part i found interesting: the cost discovery. when you pay per-use instead of per-month, you find out what things actually cost. some API calls i expected to be expensive were cheap, some i thought would be trivial added up fast.
musicians are a good wedge for this because they already understand per-unit economics (ticket sales, bandcamp downloads). the mental shift from "pay for a platform" to "pay for each listen/download" is smaller than it seems.
point about blink integration being the weak link is real. the best lightning products hide lightning. if someone has to install a wallet before they can buy, you lose most of the room. that's where the UX work still needs to happen.
anyway, cool project. curious how you handle the listening/download count tracking — is it on your DB or do you delegate that?