Key Takeaways

This episode of TFTC dives into the interconnected worlds of Bitcoin, tech, and the music industry. We discuss the intricacies of the music business, ticketing issues, and the evolving landscape of social media and payment platforms.

Sam and Michael touched upon the challenges artists face with the current ticketing systems, dominated by large corporations like Live Nation, and the frustration fans and artists alike experience due to ticket scalping and exorbitant fees. In the backdrop of these discussions was a broader conversation about Bitcoin, Nostr, and the potential for these technologies to disrupt traditional models.

We also discussed the launch of Wavlake's Ticketbot, an open-source ticketing solution that leverages Nostr and the Lightning Network to create a fairer ticketing system, potentially circumventing the grip of monopolistic entities. They mused about how Nostr could be used for various purposes beyond social media, like highlighters for content and creating a portable identity across the internet. The conversation concluded with enthusiasm for the upcoming Nashville event, where Ticketbot would be used, and speculation on the future of Nostr's development and adoption.

Best Quotes

1. "Music is such a bonding thing, isn't it? It's cool to just be able to connect with people on music."
2. "The idea of being able to even have a microscopic role in potentially changing the way things are is mind-blowing. How lucky are we to even be talking about this right now, that these are even options?"
3. "We're trying to build this music service, so inevitably, we end up geeking out about this kind of stuff."
4. "The biggest challenge right now is that a lot of these applications we're building, both for Bitcoin and Nostr, everything is sort of on par with what a typical American consumer can use today, which I don't think is enough."
5. "If we're going to change the Internet, because I don't really think of Nostr as a Swiss Army knife thing. I just think of it as how the Internet was supposed to be."
6. "It's only a matter of time till someone hits on something really kind of magical and unlocks all that potential."

Sponsors

Conclusion

With the introduction of Ticketbot, the episode highlighted a pivotal moment where the promise of Nostr's decentralized identity and the Lightning Network's efficiency could pave the way for a new era in ticketing and fan engagement.

Timestamps

0:00 - Intro
0:14 - Opening riff
3:21 - Kendrick vs Drake
10:19 - River &Unchained
11:35 - Stories about music
32:34 - Gradually, Then Suddenly & Zaprite
34:12 - The Live Nation problem
47:29 - Ticketbot
1:05:17 - Nostr’s pace of progress
1:21:30 - Overlooked elements of Nostr
1:28:46 - Come to Nashville!
1:32:46 - Wrapping on best concert

Transcript

00:00:01:15 - 00:00:10:29
Marty
However, starting off with the riff Thursday's making, Thursday's your busiest day makes Friday a little bit better. This is what I've learned. It was an intense nothing.

00:00:11:02 - 00:00:21:16
Sam
There's nothing more than an open Friday, especially in New York, walking around on a Friday and in New York. Can you beat that? That's that's always fun.

00:00:21:18 - 00:00:37:09
Michael
I feel like it never works out that way for me. I always hope for Friday to be my relaxing day and what inevitably ends up happening is things just pile up at the end of the week and I'm like, Oh crap, I can't do anything but work.

00:00:37:11 - 00:00:38:10
Sam
Yeah, yeah, that.

00:00:38:10 - 00:00:38:21
Michael
Happens a.

00:00:38:21 - 00:00:40:01
Sam
Lot.

00:00:40:04 - 00:01:03:12
Marty
It's not to say that doesn't happen to me either, but without fail, I'm doing this because we have a habit of recap on Thursdays. Do another podcast on Thursdays sometime. Now this Thursday mixing in a Tootsie episode. I just know going into the week. All right, can I make it two and get through Thursday and then Friday will be that much better.

00:01:03:15 - 00:01:20:22
Sam
My jam is I have a calendar that I just called BLOCK and sometimes I just have to physically block out the entire days and nobody blocks anything. It's the only way to to ensure that I have a I have an open, open day to myself. Yeah, it works. It works pretty well.

00:01:20:24 - 00:01:28:19
Marty
But speaking of Fridays in New York, I had one a few weeks. Oh, yeah. During the Having was in New York.

00:01:28:22 - 00:01:46:27
Sam
I was too, but I missed it. I thought it was. It was around this other event that I had to do. And I actually I somehow missed that. It happened that Friday night. I thought it was happening Saturday, so I thought I was going to miss it anyway. So then I just stopped paying attention, I guess. And then I saw everybody having fun Friday night and realized I totally blew the whole thing and.

00:01:47:00 - 00:01:47:28
Marty
It was a fun event. I'm here for it.

00:01:47:29 - 00:01:53:16
Sam
But yeah, I'm here for Pizza Day, though. Hey, that's going to be fun.

00:01:53:19 - 00:01:54:23
Michael
When is that?

00:01:54:26 - 00:01:56:17
Marty
It's going to be a few days, right?

00:01:56:20 - 00:02:07:22
Sam
Yeah, I think it's. I think it's next. Next week, maybe sometime in 20 seconds. And somewhere in there. There's a cool nostra thing happening there too. At Old Pokey in the 30th. Lots of action.

00:02:07:25 - 00:02:18:07
Marty
Location. I was able to visit some one of my favorite dive bars. It's one of my favorite dive bars. It's got a good playlist. Automatic Slim's.

00:02:18:09 - 00:02:28:08
Sam
Who wears that at OSL age? I don't. I love West Village. Yeah, I like I like WVXU. They have a cool jukebox. Do you. Have you ever been there? No.

00:02:28:11 - 00:02:31:08
Marty
That is one of my favorite bars.

00:02:31:10 - 00:02:42:21
Sam
Nice. That's great to hear. Yeah. West Village gets some. Doesn't get a lot of love. For some reason. I feel like a lot of my friends think I'm a dork for, like, in the West Village. But I like it. I think it's great.

00:02:42:23 - 00:02:46:28
Marty
So you bar was top three bars for me in New York and a there.

00:02:47:01 - 00:02:58:24
Sam
The place ruled it's cash only. There's a sign on the back that says cash only. No Red Bull. I love that about it. Yeah, I don't know why, but I just think it's funny. It's just printed on a piece of paper wooden boots.

00:02:58:24 - 00:03:01:28
Marty
If you get there early enough, you get. Oh, yeah. That's a good time. Yeah.

00:03:01:28 - 00:03:08:21
Sam
Right by the window to get people watching down a down a Hudson. That's a great spot. Yeah.

00:03:08:23 - 00:03:18:29
Marty
I mean, before we jump into what we came here to talk about, which is ticket bought, which is incredibly cool, what are our thoughts on this Kendrick Drake beef.

00:03:19:01 - 00:03:26:01
Sam
I'm dude I mean I'm I'm Tim Kendrick on the way and like there's no doubt about it I haven't.

00:03:26:01 - 00:03:29:17
Michael
Been following it that closely but I've always been a huge K Dart fan.

00:03:29:23 - 00:03:31:02
Sam
So I have this.

00:03:31:04 - 00:03:35:13
Michael
I would have to take his side over Drake just by default.

00:03:35:15 - 00:03:45:08
Marty
I suck. I've never seen Drake. I've seen Kendrick in 2013, I believe. Good kid, Mad City at a festival, one of the best live performances it ever seen.

00:03:45:10 - 00:03:58:11
Sam
I bet. Yeah. I mean, there's to me there's no there's just no. I mean, it's Kendrick that's a Drake's opposer. I don't know. That's my personal stance, but yeah.

00:03:58:14 - 00:04:29:10
Michael
And I'm a huge a as you say, I'm a huge little brother fan. You guys know that hip hop group there out of North Carolina now. So there's a the it's a duo they used to perform with Ninth Wonder. But he kind of fell out. So now it's two guys, Phonte and Big Pooh and it's starting to come out of the woodwork that Drake has essentially ripped off his entire delivery and flow off of.

00:04:29:12 - 00:04:33:00
Sam
Phonte That sounds very tangible.

00:04:33:00 - 00:04:40:27
Marty
It's Soulja Boy first. Phonte Now, Yeah, this. So this whole beast started because of some other rapper that Drake ripped off as well.

00:04:40:29 - 00:05:00:21
Sam
Right? Yeah. Who was it was I forget who it was. Yeah. Drake's been ripping people and he's stealing people's girlfriends and stuff like that. So that's, that's his move. When I started digging into friends. Yeah, he's been, he's been going into DMS, this dude, we got to get rid of Drake. He's, he's done this. Drake can move on to something else.

00:05:00:21 - 00:05:01:22
Sam
And.

00:05:01:24 - 00:05:16:13
Marty
Well, the reason I bring it up to start this conversation, how could something like Wavelike Napster value for value disrupt the the rap beef rap? Well, the beef and rap market.

00:05:16:15 - 00:05:19:02
Sam
People, I mean SAPS is absolutely.

00:05:19:02 - 00:05:21:18
Michael
The true voting signal, right, for who.

00:05:21:18 - 00:05:32:01
Sam
Wins? Yeah. Like when you go to a coffee shop and there's two jars and it's like Drake or Kendall, who can do that? You did that. And we like that could be a little economical or just build like a digital tip jar thing.

00:05:32:03 - 00:05:34:11
Michael
Right?

00:05:34:14 - 00:05:36:02
Marty
Yeah. I mean, that we just got.

00:05:36:02 - 00:05:39:23
Michael
To get we just got to get those two guys involved.

00:05:39:26 - 00:05:46:00
Sam
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if we can get see if we can get Kendrick on way, they probably won't be a problem.

00:05:46:02 - 00:06:18:02
Marty
That we've got some people connected. We can reach out to them. Okay. That if you're listening now that is in in the somewhat serious so like getting on the like it is like a rough consensus around who won the rap battle. It wasn't really rap battle, but the beef back and forth, if you will, multiple songs. The consensus was highly dictated by Twitter commentary and YouTube channels that were essentially dissecting everything.

00:06:18:04 - 00:06:18:29
Sam
Yeah, yeah.

00:06:18:29 - 00:06:23:20
Michael
And in the end, both of them won because everyone's talking about them.

00:06:23:22 - 00:06:40:21
Sam
It's true. I thought for a second I was like, Is there some some way that this is fabricated, you know? But then yeah, there's just, there's not the more you dig down. I didn't, I didn't get to deeper when one day on an airplane I'm like, okay I'm going to catch up on all this stuff and figure out what's going on.

00:06:40:21 - 00:07:02:08
Sam
Listen, all these songs in consecutive order and yeah, there is no question that it's absolutely real. And this goes deep in people. Yeah. I mean, I think people seem to have always kind of been annoyed by Drake, but there he was, I guess kind of good. And so people were putting up with it just because the music at a at a point was okay.

00:07:02:11 - 00:07:14:02
Sam
And now he's now the music sucks. I mean, I've never been a fan, but, you know, some people liked him, but now the music just straight up sucks. He has no past. He's done. Yeah, I always assumed.

00:07:14:02 - 00:07:23:20
Michael
That the whole rap battle thing was always a publicity driven thing, hasn't it? Like, I get that there are some, you know.

00:07:23:27 - 00:07:25:26
Marty
Going way back to who shot you.

00:07:25:28 - 00:07:27:21
Sam
There.

00:07:27:24 - 00:07:30:15
Michael
But that was a way to get attention, right?

00:07:30:18 - 00:07:55:06
Marty
Yeah. Well, again, I mean, diving in and like, plugging wave like into this when you guys are trying to do it. It did acutely highlight just how insular the music industry is and how much influence is dependent on influence or proximity to influence is dependent on your overall success. And I think that's what was laid bare in this back and forth, particularly coming from.

00:07:55:06 - 00:08:20:15
Sam
Kendrick Yeah, I really liked how fast it happened to it, just how it was just happening in real time, unfolding day after day. It's just really cool that that can happen today, that you can just release the, you know, record and write record and release music. So unbelievable, believably quickly. I feel like some a couple were even released in the same day, like within hours of each other.

00:08:20:17 - 00:08:22:09
Sam
It's kind of crazy.

00:08:22:11 - 00:08:36:20
Marty
I think the Graham family matters or whatever. Yeah, to be honest, I only listened to two of the songs and I posted about one on Twitter and got yelled at for like, Oh, why you? Or you listen, it's better since it was like.

00:08:36:22 - 00:08:41:17
Sam
So cozy. You listen to music every once in a while. Marty Very loud too.

00:08:41:20 - 00:08:47:02
Marty
I was watching UFC and I saw like 100%. I listened to the one song I, I was pretty good.

00:08:47:04 - 00:09:07:15
Sam
Yeah, I love it. I love listening. I mean, it's like the I have sort of a short attention span for lyrics often because I'm a I like my brain just automatically goes more towards instrumentation and things. But I really focus on Kendrick's lyrics when he's when he's talking the dude I watch a bunch of, I forget who it is.

00:09:07:15 - 00:09:10:24
Sam
There's like this guy that does break down videos of.

00:09:10:26 - 00:09:11:25
Marty
Of.

00:09:11:28 - 00:09:21:12
Sam
Primarily like rap and hip hop lyrics and always pointing out just how unbelievably smart and clever that Kendrick lyrics are. It's pretty fascinating.

00:09:21:14 - 00:09:30:05
Marty
He gets it talking about like the cadence of his raps and the bars and the alliteration, the particular words he gets like mathematical.

00:09:30:08 - 00:09:40:19
Sam
It gets incredibly mathematical and like, yeah, lots of callbacks within verses and stuff. And they're just, you know, Yeah, really smart stuff, dudes and super smart.

00:09:40:22 - 00:10:00:03
Marty
And good Command City came out when I was in college, so a very memorable album for me and I think that's one of the best American biopics that's ever been written in an album for just how I describe Life in Compton. And it was a story throughout very creative way, too, to piece together an album.

00:10:00:06 - 00:10:01:15
Sam
Yeah.

00:10:01:17 - 00:10:09:21
Michael
Yeah, that's a great well, that was the first meeting for me. I love that one.

00:10:09:24 - 00:10:25:15
Sam
I love music. I love music of all kinds. And it's so cool. Music is such a bonding thing, isn't it? Isn't it cool to come on a bit on a I don't want to this isn't a Bitcoin podcast any. And you talk about all kinds of stuff, but it's cool to just be able to connect with people on music.

00:10:25:21 - 00:10:27:08
Sam
That's the most fun part about it.

00:10:27:10 - 00:10:51:15
Marty
Yeah, let's see. My wife and I went out to the a bunch of other Bitcoiners last Friday night to an album release party for a smaller artist here in Austin. It was just a really cool experience going to what the heck small venue all the way down South Congress. There's probably about like 150 people there. And the artist Scott played his album.

00:10:51:21 - 00:11:06:03
Marty
It was just really cool to be in that environment. It was like a honky tonk bar. That's fine. Nas releasing his album 20 Bucks Get In the Door, Drinking Ranch waters, listening to good music that's not mainstream.

00:11:06:05 - 00:11:22:12
Sam
It's a good I like that. I feel like the album Listening Party is coming back. That was I've been noticing that a lot. I mean, maybe it didn't completely go away, but that was a that was a thing a while ago. And now it's I feel like it kind of fell off the map for a while. But I've been saying a lot of that.

00:11:22:15 - 00:11:26:09
Michael
So this was just to listen to the album. It wasn't a live performance.

00:11:26:13 - 00:11:27:22
Marty
It was a live performance of the other.

00:11:27:23 - 00:11:34:18
Sam
Oh, I thought it was a oh, because, yeah, I've been seeing these. Like you just go like seven. You ever get into MGMT?

00:11:34:21 - 00:11:37:19
Marty
Oh, yes, I did. I've been on a big MGM kick.

00:11:37:21 - 00:11:38:24
Sam
Okay, cool. Yeah.

00:11:38:27 - 00:11:41:20
Marty
Little Dark Age radio has been my go to now.

00:11:41:25 - 00:11:56:22
Sam
I love it. I love that band. But they did. They did a whole like a whole run of just like you just go and listen to their record at a record store and hang out. And they had some fun stuff is really cool. Yeah, I think they wanted summer movie theaters and I just think it's a cool idea, you know.

00:11:56:22 - 00:11:57:10
Michael
That was get.

00:11:57:10 - 00:11:59:21
Sam
Together and listen.

00:11:59:23 - 00:12:22:07
Michael
Yeah, that was my that was how I heard Radiohead's kid A for the first time. I was in college in Madison, and there's a there's a beautiful old theater called the Orpheum. And it was it was like a record listening party. And people just sat people just sat in the theater, basically in the dark with a looping video on the screen.

00:12:22:07 - 00:12:42:02
Michael
And like all heard kids for the first time, which was really weird. Like the first time you heard it. I mean, for me, it was like, what? This is the band, you know, was singing Creep a few years before. And now they were doing like weird avant garde prog rock. But that was a really cool experience.

00:12:42:04 - 00:12:52:05
Sam
I just flash back to the first time I heard that I was standing outside of someone's car near my friend's car. They're like, You have to hear this weird ass radio them like, What is this?

00:12:52:07 - 00:13:11:20
Marty
Well, I'm having flashbacks to driving in the car of my dad in Philadelphia growing up. And like Creep originally dropped in the nineties and he he was young. He was in his twenties at the time we were in the car. But that guitar riff that don't want to move like he to, like turn the radio all the way up and get jacked up for that was.

00:13:11:21 - 00:13:26:10
Sam
Like, wait for it. But it was so cool and you could listen to the real one too, and not the radio at it because it was a little, a little grittier, more explicit. Yeah, a little more explicit.

00:13:26:12 - 00:13:46:11
Marty
By the way, one of Patrice O'Neal's best wasn't even a joke. He was on a radio show talking about Creep. Oh, it's just like the epitome of, like, white people hating themselves. That's amazing music, man. It's. It's powerful.

00:13:46:14 - 00:13:49:11
Sam
It is. It really is.

00:13:49:14 - 00:14:14:06
Michael
Yeah. SAMINI. SAMINI have gotten into some deep conversations about bands and stuff in our in our couple of years. We're working together now and yeah, I mean, it was it it works out because, you know, we're trying to build this music service. So inevitably we end up, we end up geeking out about this kind of stuff.

00:14:14:09 - 00:14:32:26
Marty
Well, it's like that story I just told about my dad in the car. Too many songs, right? I can have flashback memories of of time with my dad in the car just because music I'm able to connect. Oh, yeah. That moment with the song that was playing at that particular point in time, there's really something psychological about that.

00:14:32:29 - 00:14:50:16
Sam
Yeah. Yeah. That's my that's where music started for me. Was riding in the car with my dad, like road trips, buying cassette tapes and stuff. Driving to we had family that lived in Oklahoma. It's my dad and I would just drive there for a couple of days and, you know, it's like a 16 or eight hour, 18 hour drive or something from Arizona.

00:14:50:19 - 00:15:08:08
Sam
And yeah, I mean, that's I mean, that's like a little listening party for you. So used to be used to actually just like listen to an album, you know, that's that's an art form that's being lost. But it was so fun to just sit there and discovered like the Beatles and the Beach Boys and all kinds of cool, you know, my dad's music.

00:15:08:08 - 00:15:28:02
Sam
But now it's mine. Now I love it. Yeah, it is. It is cool. How much of an impact on those early years of your life? You really do remember? Like, I can I can almost see it, you know, like, close your eyes for a second. You can just picture driving through the desert listening to, like Joan Baez or something.

00:15:28:05 - 00:15:45:01
Marty
Yeah, we had a the albums of the car, The Who's greatest hits, Supertramp Greatest hits, Soundgarden, Black Hole. So. Wow, Diverse. What else are we get? And so, uh, Pete Yorn.

00:15:45:03 - 00:15:50:26
Sam
Uh, Mickey Hart, Luvvie, Lindsay, Michael. Were we just talking about Pete or not that long ago, or is that something we have?

00:15:50:26 - 00:15:51:10
Michael
We have.

00:15:51:10 - 00:15:53:06
Sam
Before? Yeah, not recently.

00:15:53:09 - 00:15:55:17
Marty
I have a great feeling story.

00:15:55:19 - 00:15:56:08
Sam
Something very.

00:15:56:08 - 00:16:10:14
Marty
Live. The House of Blues in Atlantic City. Before it went under, I was 16. I was a massive Pete Yorn fan at the time and had the opportunity to meet him and I completely just muffed it. I was like 16.

00:16:10:16 - 00:16:14:26
Sam
Hey, what's up? Hey, Pete. Yeah.

00:16:14:29 - 00:16:25:14
Marty
That's cool. I worked at a hotdog stand at the Jersey Shore that was on that was one of the albums that I would put on, like when I got to when I got The Oxcart of the Guy or Pete or not.

00:16:25:16 - 00:16:51:12
Michael
Yeah, that that actually, that reminds me. I worked as a lifeguard through like the second half of high school and first half of college. So naturally, like, we're, we're listening to stuff on the, on the speakers during our shifts and the guys that were a couple of years older than me were all into Jimmy Buffett. Like, they were huge austerities.

00:16:51:15 - 00:17:02:23
Michael
Yeah, Yeah, for sure. I had never been exposed to any, like, you know, any of that Margaritaville type stuff. And man, that stuff is those songs are seared into my memory from.

00:17:02:23 - 00:17:04:10
Sam
Sitting on a chair.

00:17:04:13 - 00:17:08:02
Michael
For like weeks on end through the summer listening to Jimmy Buffett.

00:17:08:02 - 00:17:12:26
Sam
I don't know if there's a better place to listen to Jimmy Buffett than on a lifeguard chair. That's good. Yeah.

00:17:12:28 - 00:17:14:01
Michael
It kind of made sense.

00:17:14:07 - 00:17:15:01
Sam
Yeah.

00:17:15:03 - 00:17:41:23
Marty
I guess last summer I feel like there was some cosmic intervention into my family's life around Jimmy Buffett is we listen, we go to the shore, back to the shore from Texas to Jersey in the summers and my wife's parents are gracious enough to let us use one of their cars and it didn't have an oxcart anything. So we're force the listen to serious radio and that was our radio station in the summer is Margaritaville.

00:17:41:23 - 00:17:43:06
Sam
And nice.

00:17:43:08 - 00:17:49:21
Marty
We listened to it all summer and then literally right after Labor Day he kicked the bucket.

00:17:49:23 - 00:18:08:07
Sam
You know, I love that video, that tribute. Have you seen the tribute? They did like a tribute concert, you know, kind of in honor of him after he passed away. And there's just like a video of Paul McCartney on stage with a margarita and he just like, hammered beyond belief, just sort of like walking in and out of like to the microphone.

00:18:08:07 - 00:18:15:05
Sam
And I think he's standing next to Woody Harrelson. And Woody looks over at him like, Dude, what what is partly wasted right now is.

00:18:15:06 - 00:18:18:04
Marty
Paul McCartney blacked out next to me.

00:18:18:07 - 00:18:22:15
Sam
Incredible. He's just doing his like, Paul McCartney groove. You know, It's pretty funny. You got to go find it.

00:18:22:17 - 00:18:51:28
Marty
That's that's actually we're going to get to the over our next hour music stories, another live music memory from a firefly. I think it was 2014 or 15 when I saw Kendrick first. That was Firefly 2013. And that was an incredible experience because one of my good friends in college, she worked for the the event company that actually threw the the festival.

00:18:51:28 - 00:18:53:23
Marty
And so we got VIP passes.

00:18:53:26 - 00:18:54:21
Sam
It was the first.

00:18:54:21 - 00:19:04:21
Marty
Experience with this festival was VIP backstage. And then I went back the next year and my friend did not get us access to.

00:19:04:24 - 00:19:06:25
Sam
Us, but.

00:19:06:27 - 00:19:07:15
Marty
It's tough.

00:19:07:17 - 00:19:10:28
Sam
It's tough going back to the real world after you've had VIP experience.

00:19:11:02 - 00:19:44:14
Marty
Yeah, exactly. And I had that embedded in my brain. So the Friday night, the first night of the festival, the next year that I went, I remember that experience and knew I didn't have the wristband. But as soon as I saw my opportunity where there was a security guard not guarding the VIP section, I grabbed my friends, started back there, and we were able to successfully remain incognito in the VIP section all day, which ended with me like semi blacked out, sidestep carpet.

00:19:44:16 - 00:19:51:03
Sam
That's amazing. Yeah. I always tell people just you just walk with intent, walk with intensity.

00:19:51:05 - 00:19:53:03
Marty
You're meant to be there. You're meant to.

00:19:53:03 - 00:20:20:12
Sam
Be better by a case of water. Guaranteed you are. Can you walk us through the case? Very like. Look, man, I got water. These just go. This guy's got water. He's fine. It works every time, man. Yeah, I've finagled my way into many shows. Just. Just doing that. Just walk with a case of water. No, not that it gives you water, but you can literally just walk there.

00:20:20:12 - 00:20:23:03
Sam
You realize that, like most of the security guards just really don't care.

00:20:23:08 - 00:20:23:24
Marty
You know?

00:20:23:26 - 00:20:32:26
Sam
It's like they truly don't care. Yeah, like they don't they don't want in no one no one wants to be confrontational now. The other occasionally you'll find the guy that does.

00:20:32:26 - 00:20:48:11
Marty
But maybe I maybe have a thriller sneaking into places. But another great concert, September 29, Blink one, 82 at Susquehanna Bank Center in Camden, New Jersey. I thought I bought a ticket, bought a fake ticket from a scalper.

00:20:48:13 - 00:20:48:21
Sam
On.

00:20:48:22 - 00:20:54:20
Marty
A got denied and then quickly just like walked 50 yards back and then just like walked in.

00:20:54:22 - 00:20:55:26
Sam
Nice.

00:20:55:28 - 00:21:00:27
Marty
People were flooding in. That was a great concert. Weezer open for them.

00:21:00:29 - 00:21:25:13
Sam
Oh dang. Yeah, I did that first two concerts that I like went to with my friends, like by myself. Without any parents. It was I think it was Weezer on the Pinkerton tour, which is my favorite album. So that just like locked that into place for me for the rest of my life. And then the I saw Blink 182 on the Dude Ranch tour.

00:21:25:15 - 00:21:31:15
Sam
Oh, shit. Yeah, I'm that old. So yeah, that was pretty great.

00:21:31:17 - 00:21:38:00
Marty
Yeah, this was I think this is like the first one of their first concerts back from one of the Times. The time when Wall and.

00:21:38:03 - 00:21:46:15
Sam
Yeah, they had already broken up and got back together. Back? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This was like pre Travis Barker Blink 182. You think they said oh.

00:21:46:15 - 00:21:48:28
Michael
Right he wasn't original drummer.

00:21:49:00 - 00:21:55:15
Sam
No, no. Right. Well I want to hear more.

00:21:55:15 - 00:21:59:01
Michael
About this scalped ticket.

00:21:59:03 - 00:22:03:03
Sam
Yeah. Yeah. How did you get scammed. That's. That's so weird. I've never heard of that happening before.

00:22:03:07 - 00:22:21:04
Marty
Yeah. When you're 18 and drinking underage in the parking lots of Camden, New Jersey, there's many people who are looking to take advantage. You think? Yeah. I got to take it for you to get into the concert and you hand over some cash and they give you a fake ticket and you get to the door. They're like the stick, it's fake.

00:22:21:04 - 00:22:26:29
Marty
And then you have to improvise, turn around, and then just bum rush the the entrance.

00:22:27:01 - 00:22:32:16
Michael
And in hindsight, how bad of a ticket? Like, how bad did it look?

00:22:32:23 - 00:22:41:19
Marty
The ticket, I mean, at that point, like this was 29. So that was when you were literally printing, printing out like a piece of paper with a QR code.

00:22:41:19 - 00:22:43:08
Sam
And you didn't have an Apple wallet.

00:22:43:10 - 00:22:43:23
Marty
No.

00:22:43:24 - 00:22:44:25
Michael
Right, Right.

00:22:44:28 - 00:23:17:27
Sam
Yeah, I pretty legit. I mean, if we got time for one more bad music story when I was when I was like 16, my friends and I there is like Arizona Republic was the still is the main kind of newspaper in Arizona and we made some fake press passes that said we were working for like the teen section of the Arizona Republic and we just went to Kinko's and and laminated them that to make them more legit, we cut out the hologram from a baseball card in the second bag, and it worked.

00:23:17:27 - 00:23:32:10
Sam
We got it. Like, we fully we we got into like two festivals. We got into Rage Against the Machine and U2. And then the very last time we used them, it was at a another Rage Against Machine and Foo Fighters were opening up and we were getting real.

00:23:32:14 - 00:23:34:12
Marty
Foo Fighters was opening for Rage.

00:23:34:15 - 00:23:53:02
Sam
Yeah. And we were getting really, like, cocky with it because we were at work so well. And so we went for a soundcheck and we were sitting in this amphitheater. We're the only three people just sitting on the stage watching Foo Fighters soundcheck, and at the end of the soundcheck, this security guard came and got us and he was like, You guys got to come with me.

00:23:53:02 - 00:24:13:19
Sam
And he brought us backstage. And Tom Morello from Rage Against Machine was standing there and he's like, What are you guys doing really? We're with the Arizona Republic team or whatever. And he's like, No, you're not. What are these? He's like, What are these parts? Did you get to see top hologram? He was he was like, Is this from like a hockey card or something?

00:24:13:19 - 00:24:27:04
Sam
Really? Yeah. He's like, Get out of here. And he's like, Do you guys need tickets? And we're like, Yes. And he gave us tickets. He put us on the guest list, but he's like, You guys got to get out of here. Don't come back until tonight. But it was super cool because, yeah, we thought we were like dead meat.

00:24:27:04 - 00:24:29:19
Sam
And then he was actually really cool.

00:24:29:21 - 00:24:32:05
Marty
Tom Morello called out by Tom Morello.

00:24:32:07 - 00:24:36:10
Sam
I mean, we were raging at some machine. What's he going to do? Like where? You know?

00:24:36:12 - 00:24:37:21
Michael
Yeah, it's true.

00:24:37:24 - 00:24:43:11
Sam
Yeah. Yeah, we're. We're young punks. We're going to break in. We want to see you guys play. But you do that.

00:24:43:14 - 00:24:56:16
Marty
I don't want to assume any thoughts on the current state of Tom Morello, but it is pretty interesting. The Rage Against the Machine has a I think it's become a story of a die hero long enough to see yourself become the villain.

00:24:56:19 - 00:25:07:17
Sam
Yeah, you never know. You never know how things end up with with as people get older, maybe some things change. I haven't kept up with Tom Morello that I'm not really sure.

00:25:07:19 - 00:25:17:27
Marty
I mean, that that a my dad was a massive Chris Cornell fan. So this time at Audioslave. Yeah. And a lot of Audioslave as well.

00:25:18:00 - 00:25:25:06
Sam
I never saw that band that that was like the the bass player from Rage was in it was basically on the drummer from Rage were in that band. Terry I thought.

00:25:25:06 - 00:25:26:14
Marty
Tom Morello was yeah.

00:25:26:16 - 00:25:44:18
Sam
I was it like they had so many side bands. What was that? Is that Tom relevant too, with like Chuck D or something? Wasn't there like a Public Enemy crossover? Yeah, that sounds familiar. That. Did I make that up in a fever dream or something? Yeah, there's something like that.

00:25:44:18 - 00:25:49:26
Michael
No, that sounds right. It totally sounds right, but I can't remember it.

00:25:49:29 - 00:25:55:09
Marty
The kind of make sure putting out good information here.

00:25:55:12 - 00:26:13:07
Sam
Yeah, that's probably. That sounds accurate. I know there is a band at least where a couple of the two dudes from Rage were in Audioslave. I feel like at least that bass player for sure. The guy that I don't ever mean.

00:26:13:09 - 00:26:15:02
Marty
Yeah, he was in Audioslave. All right. Yeah.

00:26:15:09 - 00:26:18:14
Sam
Okay, good. Good. Fact check. And Marty.

00:26:18:15 - 00:26:18:29
Michael
Checks out.

00:26:19:02 - 00:26:22:14
Sam
Checks out. Sorry.

00:26:22:16 - 00:26:31:10
Marty
Guys. It's hard, but you start telling stories. Zynga down many rabbit holes, many different types of shows. Festival shows.

00:26:31:13 - 00:26:32:01
Sam
Yeah.

00:26:32:03 - 00:26:35:15
Marty
Huge stadium shows. Yeah. Theater show. I guess I.

00:26:35:19 - 00:26:37:14
Sam
Could talk for hours about this stuff.

00:26:37:16 - 00:26:43:01
Michael
Sam Scott, Like touring stories, too. He's gone on the road, and I've heard a couple of those.

00:26:43:06 - 00:27:01:05
Sam
They're pretty good. Doug It's we do our Waveform podcast and sometimes it's like, What are we going to talk about? We tried it and then we just end up, you know, talking about whatever, and then an hour goes by. And so, yeah, I guess we're, I guess we can just talk anything more people about music or last week I think we talked about toast for 20 minutes.

00:27:01:05 - 00:27:04:27
Sam
I don't know that happened, but that's my fault.

00:27:05:00 - 00:27:11:00
Marty
That's what I had a good buddy, one of my best friends from college. He was in a pop punk band, Knuckle Puck. He was actually the replacement.

00:27:11:00 - 00:27:12:04
Sam
I remember that band.

00:27:12:07 - 00:27:30:18
Marty
Yeah, he was their replacement basis and they went on tour and apparently they were massive in Japan, so they went on like a Japan tour. The stories that one of my best Nickelback stories, when they they came to New York when I was living there, they played at Webster Hall as the only in first time I've done a staged I was at the knuckle puncture.

00:27:30:18 - 00:27:31:26
Marty
Nice.

00:27:31:28 - 00:27:49:12
Sam
Nice. Yeah. I've never done a stage dive, but in my in my old age I've been wanting to I've been going to these shows with my kid and they're like, you know, punk, pretty rowdy punk shows. And I'm just like, I'm feel like I need to while I still can. I have I haven't done a stage dive yet.

00:27:49:12 - 00:28:02:02
Sam
I feel like I still have a window of time where I can embarrass my daughter and stage time at the same time, really find I haven't done it yet. Had it how to feel? Great. Did they? Did they catch you? You did.

00:28:02:02 - 00:28:10:24
Marty
They caught me a drop. I mean, you know, pop punk Batman audiences. Yeah. Yeah. On there to motion into to everyone.

00:28:10:29 - 00:28:26:06
Sam
Everyone's like, you see? Yeah. It's like you see a kid kind of jump off and people just weren't paying attention to you. You hear like, oh, crowd music and you'd hope you'd see a head pop up and make it out of right. But yeah.

00:28:26:08 - 00:28:45:03
Marty
No, I mean I think knuckle puck is a great example of like a small band that had like a very good like under the radar success was able to tour, make some money but all their money was made like touring and doing things like that. I don't know how much they Yeah, we used FI over the years.

00:28:45:06 - 00:29:04:25
Sam
Yeah. It used to be able to make money touring even in a small I mean yeah, that's there. I grew up was the, I worked at a punk venue where there were still $5 shows and you could pay the bands, you know, few hundred bucks and that would get them to the next town, no problem. And they'd come home at the end of the tour and have enough money to get them through to the next one.

00:29:04:27 - 00:29:29:03
Sam
Maybe they worked at a coffee shop or something too, but it was still totally manageable and now that's almost impossible. You know, you really have to. Well, first of all, you can't even I mean, a lot of those bands would just book their own shows. It was pretty easy to just there is a there was a book. They just had every single small venue and it's like book your own life or something.

00:29:29:05 - 00:29:43:16
Sam
Maybe there's another word in there too, but it was just easy. You could just call, you know, they're like ten places in Texas and you just would do your own routing and you could book your own show. And it was really fun. That was my my first tour we did that. We got on with a few of our friends shows.

00:29:43:18 - 00:30:05:15
Sam
We played Austin The first show I think I played in Texas was it was that EMAs and it was just like calling them out and, you know, people used to let you do that. That's probably some places still can't. But like so many of these venues now are owned by bigger corporations and they don't allow you to do that anymore.

00:30:05:20 - 00:30:09:05
Sam
You know, you have to come in on a package or something.

00:30:09:08 - 00:30:13:19
Marty
What are the types of corporations is like Ticketmaster or like Live Nation.

00:30:13:22 - 00:30:52:20
Sam
Like in in Phenix? Live Nation bought up most of the small venues there. So there's a couple I mean, there's some there's I mean, you play bars and stuff but you know it just I don't think there's the same network of independent band that used to exist and there's still some and there's still there's never and there's a lot of there are some, you know, but I don't know even that I mean, like also openers, like the venue that I worked at, even if it was a package deal, you know, like a three band tour tour, they would allow openers and stuff or regional openers and so you could call in and just get on

00:30:52:20 - 00:31:08:05
Sam
a bigger show like lag wagons coming through, you know, to open spots. We'll get someone from this band from New Mexico that's been calling us for two weeks. And then this band from from down the street. And it's kind of sad that I don't think that happens as much as it used to either.

00:31:08:07 - 00:31:15:19
Marty
Yeah, and I'm not checking my text here. Looking at the ticketing service. I used to go to this show last Fridays. You ever heard of that?

00:31:15:21 - 00:31:35:15
Sam
Oh, yeah, I actually. I actually kind of like dice. I brought that up a couple of times, I think, when in sort of the the concept of this thing we just did because it's sort of a similar vibe. I've used dice out here in New York a couple of times. They use it for this record. So Rough Trade has a lot of events and they use it.

00:31:35:17 - 00:31:37:05
Sam
It's pretty cool. It's not bad.

00:31:37:07 - 00:31:55:26
Marty
Yeah, So let's let's dive into that. I mean, a perfect segue way. Not that you didn't pick out a perfect segue way earlier, Michael, with the what was your fake ticket looking like? But it's described like like looks like Live Nation is coming in and boxing out the ability for smaller bands to actually get out there and get in front of people.

00:31:56:03 - 00:32:13:25
Marty
And then you have competitors like DICE that are offering services and then you guys just launched Ticketbot. So let's first describe the problem that is entering the market via Live Nation, how people are trying to compete with it now like DICE and then what you guys are doing.

00:32:13:27 - 00:32:48:03
Michael
Yeah, there's a lot I mean I would say it the the monopoly of Live Nation and other ticketing agencies like that probably spans even beyond just small artists. It probably affects large artists too, but in different ways. So like in the case of Taylor Swift, we, you know, all heard the stories about fans not being able to get tickets because scalpers were buying up all the all the seats and then going to the secondary market and selling them at exorbitant prices.

00:32:48:05 - 00:33:12:23
Michael
But yeah, in terms of like smaller acts, you know, like Sam was saying, there is no there are no options if you don't if you don't go through one of these larger ticketing brokers because they own a lot of the venues and they own the box office and they own the website and they own the secondary market where all the transactions happen.

00:33:12:27 - 00:33:21:25
Michael
So yeah, I think, you know, ticket bought is a kind of small, modest.

00:33:21:27 - 00:33:22:22
Sam
Step.

00:33:22:24 - 00:33:35:16
Michael
By us to try and like reimagine what ticketing could look like using the technologies that we have like lightning and Napster.

00:33:35:19 - 00:33:56:09
Sam
Yeah. Yeah. This is yeah I mean this has been like an I just I referenced this every once in awhile, but this video just keeps popping up. It's like a video of Kurt Cobain in probably 94, 95 or something, because on MTV and someone tells him, I always forget what the show is, but he's talking about how someone's like, Can you believe the tickets for that show are $50?

00:33:56:12 - 00:34:29:08
Sam
And he's just like, flabbergasted. It's like, what? Who would ever charge $50 for a concert concert ticket? And now, like for some shows, especially, you know, higher priced tickets, fees can exceed $50, which is totally, totally nuts. And Michael referenced the secondary market to me. I feel like that's the where these ticket companies are getting and probably going to get in the most trouble is that they're buying they're starting you know, they're buying these the companies that are the secondary markets for their ticket.

00:34:29:08 - 00:34:55:24
Sam
So, you know, there's even some question. I feel like some double dip cases have been but yeah busted on double dipping and that's I mean that's that's one of the oldest tricks in the books for venues like venues used to do that they would have scalper tickets, promoters. It was like a promoter trick. You know, the promoter would buy 100 tickets and then and then scalp them out in the parking lot and not tell the band and you know, that was, that was that, that's where that idea kind of originated from, I would say.

00:34:55:24 - 00:35:21:17
Sam
But it's pretty messed up when like we just as tell Michael the other day my daughter wanted to go see this this band play and there was just a theater show. It's not you know, it's like I'm sure it should have sold out, but the the the ticket on the resale market was like $36. It was a cheap ticket to begin with, but the fees were $20 on a $36 ticket.

00:35:21:19 - 00:35:44:21
Sam
And that's because it was you were paying the you're paying the premium, you're paying for the resale so that the ticket reseller made some money and the the person reselling it made the money. So in some cases, it could have even been triple dipping. Like if you think about it, like if they if they're selling the tickets, they could hold tickets, get fees on that.

00:35:44:21 - 00:36:02:09
Sam
Get fees on the second. I don't know. It just is just crazy. Like I think it's the whole thing is getting so convoluted at this point. No one even knows what to do. People just this is I mean, we're talking about like a decade old problem which just keeps getting worse and worse and worse and worse and the price of tickets are going up.

00:36:02:09 - 00:36:22:27
Sam
And so that allows the fees to get even more absurd, because if a tickets now $250 or sometimes, you know, you're going to like a Taylor Swift show or something, it's like $2,000 or more. Yeah. And then it's not that weird if the fees $150, you know, because it's a $2,000 ticket, if you really stop and think about it, that's actually totally nuts.

00:36:22:29 - 00:36:24:22
Sam
Well.

00:36:24:25 - 00:36:45:25
Marty
Like shifting this like a Bitcoin or adversarial thinking systems mindset is this essentially is the core of this problem, like cyber attacks in terms of like bots just being able to sell a ticket sales and as it's live acquire them, let even bots maybe made ticketing companies themselves doing this.

00:36:45:27 - 00:37:24:14
Michael
I mean that might be one. Yeah that's probably one avenue of attack where it could be bots. It could be I mean there could be just, you know, scalper farms where they just have a bunch of people with like 90 browser tabs open and they're just waiting to pounce to get ticket the first round of tickets. But yeah, I think, I think, I think like I was saying, I think it goes a lot deeper than just an issue where, you know, there are people out there just trying to make a quick buck by buying a ticket and then turning around and selling it at a higher price.

00:37:24:14 - 00:38:06:27
Michael
I think, you know, I think at it's like every step of the process is now owned and operated by, you know, a large entity, a single entity. And it seems like the prices of tickets keep going up at their benefit at that companies benefit. But, you know, everyone who's putting together the show, you know, from the band to the crew to the venue, you know, and the and the fans like they're all losing out and not seeing any benefit from those higher prices.

00:38:06:27 - 00:38:45:21
Michael
So yeah, I think I think it's it's it's ripe for change. I don't know how that changes. I know there's some legislation being, you know, moving through Congress that is trying to regulate the market a little bit more. But yeah, we'll see. I mean, I saw like at the latest White House Correspondents Dinner that that live nation, like Live Nation had a bunch of napkins that they had printed for all the journalists and the politicians that were at the event, basically, you know, kind of making the case for Live Nation being a good company.

00:38:45:23 - 00:39:14:13
Michael
So it's it's difficult to see how, you know, how like the the legal political approach really improves the situation when when you have a company like that that just has, you know, financial ammunition to basically make the rules as they see fit. But um, but yeah, I think I think most consumers and artists are aware of this problem.

00:39:14:13 - 00:39:28:27
Michael
So like now that, now that like it's blatantly obvious that, that there's something wrong. It seems like people are open to looking for alternatives to try and make it better.

00:39:29:00 - 00:39:58:15
Marty
Yeah, it's almost poetic. It's like quite literally a gatekeeping problem. You have a company really putting a gate between the audience, the venue, the artists and charging like a toll and obscene toll to get into to the experience. And it's again, again just like thinking about the whole experience, the audience connecting with the art, the artists and the venue, creating an environment for the artists.

00:39:58:15 - 00:40:07:27
Marty
And you have something that should be mundane. The ticket to get you access to that experience, actually controlling the whole thing.

00:40:08:00 - 00:40:28:00
Sam
Yeah, there's other elements too. I mean, there is a huge this, this, this is nothing new but like merch cuts within the shows that that was a thing typically that started I mean that started because just bigger venues I mean merch wasn't always a thing You could get a T-shirt at like a Led Zeppelin concert, something, but it wasn't an industry like it is now.

00:40:28:03 - 00:40:46:04
Sam
So a lot of people, a lot of bands didn't have merch sellers or merch infrastructure, and a lot of the merchandise was was licensed and being manufactured by other companies. So in the early days, like if there was a bigger band and they would get to a big venue and they would need to sell merch, the venue would sell, they they'd have a staffer and the venue would sell their merchant.

00:40:46:04 - 00:41:07:22
Sam
They take a cut of it and then it over over time they're like, Oh, we can just get we can, you know, make some money here. And that was fine, I guess, for the venue. I am I always sort of rebelling instead and, and any deal I ever had with the venue, we just had a pretty strict rule, like we just won't pay, we won't play a venue if there's a merch cut, but it's gotten so bad now.

00:41:07:25 - 00:41:32:21
Sam
I mean, talk about double dipping and triple dipping and Live Nation owns the venue, then they own the company that's promoting the show. So they're getting the promoter cut, they're getting the venue cut, they're getting the rent and they're getting, you know, parking. And then they're taking upwards of like sometimes 30 to 35% of the merch cut as well, which is like that's the lifeline for most artists, especially small artists.

00:41:32:21 - 00:41:59:12
Sam
So I mean, think about like a small band and, you know, opening on on a tour that's opening up for a bigger act. They're also having to give those large merch cuts to the venues. And, you know, they're following in a van, they're following a bus, know a bus tour in a van and having to do these long drives and, you know, keep up with everything.

00:41:59:12 - 00:42:18:16
Sam
And if you're ultimately taking that away from them, too, I mean, that's like it's more like people just a lot of people just think it's the tickets, but it's like it's so much more, you know, there's just all these layers. It's always every single time the band that ends up getting screwed, like there's they've dreamed up all these different ways to make money.

00:42:18:18 - 00:42:23:05
Sam
And in every single situation, the band makes less, the band makes less money.

00:42:23:07 - 00:42:24:26
Michael
And the fan pays more.

00:42:24:28 - 00:42:42:21
Sam
And the fan pays more. It's it's I mean, it's genius. They keep people keep getting away with this stuff. I guess. I don't, you know, hopefully, hopefully the tides turn here at some point in time because I think at least hopefully people are starting to wake up to all this stuff because it is just total insanity.

00:42:42:23 - 00:42:56:08
Marty
You mentioned Taylor Swift's earlier. I've seen Shane Gillis, the comedian, complain about this, and I get to come out and apologize to his fan base like there's nothing I can do. I don't know what's happening. We're releasing the tickets. Somebody's buying them. Sorry. They're so expensive.

00:42:56:11 - 00:43:06:09
Sam
Yeah. Yeah. And people are doing like Maggie Rogers is is doing, like, physical ticket outlets for her tour this summer.

00:43:06:09 - 00:43:12:19
Marty
I think there's actually a there's a billboard like on my way in the work.

00:43:12:21 - 00:43:28:27
Sam
Yeah. And it's cool. I mean, I mean, it's cool to see somebody sort of like trying you know people have over the years, like, I remember like Pearl Jam were huge advocates against Ticketmaster back in the day when things really kind of got rowdy in the nineties and probably even in through the 2000s with them probably still there.

00:43:28:27 - 00:43:41:05
Sam
But I still fighting that battle. But it is cool to see when people are you are taking some sort of unique approach to how things work you know or like I mean talk about Paul McCartney.

00:43:41:07 - 00:43:54:13
Marty
Is that a fish that I went to a couple of their shows with their baker's dozen tours that were they're based Baker dozens residents at Madison Square Garden. I know you needed the physical donut ticket to get in.

00:43:54:16 - 00:44:16:26
Sam
Yeah, some bands do that, I think. I think Paul McCartney even runs his own. Someone's got to fact check me on this someday. But I feel like Paul McCartney's Empl Productions. I think he runs his own ticketing as well, which is kind of cool. It's like he's big enough, so he just rents the arenas as it's like he's the production company, which is a really cool way to combat that, you know?

00:44:16:26 - 00:44:27:15
Sam
But not everybody can do that, obviously. But there are ways to get around it. It just seems like everything else, it just kind of sucks that you have to do that, you know? Yeah.

00:44:27:18 - 00:44:49:22
Marty
And so, I mean, diving back to ticket, but and you guys are making small steps and thinking about solving this problem. I think you guys made it pretty clear that, hey, we're releasing this product for some shows or to be happening around or for a specific show happening around the Bitcoin conference in Nashville. And you were very clear, like we're just testing this out.

00:44:49:24 - 00:45:17:19
Marty
What's going on? So you guys are have released something you're communicating to the market that we're trying to solve this problem and using the Lightning Network and Master, um, bear with us as we try to solve this. So what is the MVP that you released and how do you think you guys can begin chopping away to solve this, this massive problem that's really ruining the experience for both the audience and the artists?

00:45:17:19 - 00:45:19:11
Marty
At the end of the day?

00:45:19:14 - 00:45:59:06
Michael
Yeah. So I think it sort of starts with the the basic concept for Napster, which is everyone has this portable identity. You have your own pub and you can use it on any client you can use it on any app, and you don't need to be locked into any kind of particular garden. And so we built the wave like mobile app, which is just a music listening app and an app where you can zap any of the artists that you like.

00:45:59:08 - 00:46:33:09
Michael
We built that in a way so that essentially the zaps become a signal for the artists and your friends. It becomes a kind of signal to show who you're into, what music you're into, what artists you're supporting. And we're able to link that for the artists as well. So essentially say like, here are the, you know, the top ten people who are zapping your songs, for example.

00:46:33:11 - 00:47:12:12
Michael
So that's something that we're still developing in terms of making music, sharing discovery and zapping more of a social experience. But it kind of goes nicely into this problem of how do you get tickets for concerts to actual fans of artists? And one of the ways we think we could do that is to use that social data on what people are zapping to then essentially create a kind of filter.

00:47:12:14 - 00:47:42:17
Michael
If an artist wanted to, say, sell the first hundred tickets to their concert, to their top 100 supporters, an artist could do that with something like Ticket. But where you essentially would just lock out sales to anyone except those 100 identities. And then once you know, some amount of time passed or those tickets sold out, then you could open up, you know, the next batch to another group of listeners and so on.

00:47:42:17 - 00:48:28:24
Michael
So the way we designed the the ticket pop tool was to try and just make it as Napster native as possible. So it is just a calendar event that we stuck a fee on. We just put, you know, the price of the ticket on the calendar and roster event. It's just one set I think is the minimum. And essentially if you zap that note, that calendar note, our Ticketbot agent sees issues, the ZAP request to the user or the payment request to the user that zapping the note.

00:48:28:24 - 00:49:12:24
Michael
And then if the user pays the ZAP request or sorry, pays the ZAP, uh, pays the payment request for the zap, then we give them a ticket and it goes to their DMS. You can see it in any of the Napster clients that support DMS. And that ticket is attached to their end pub. So while right now you can only really RSVP to this Nashville event through the way like app, because as we just which is built the integration for this theoretically anyone any client could support it by just allowing a user to see the event and then zap it if they want to to RSVP.

00:49:12:27 - 00:49:27:29
Marty
Yeah. And to be clear, because it wasn't clear to me when I was buying, but the one set quote unquote price for this particular advantages, you could set different prices if you wanted to. It.

00:49:28:01 - 00:49:59:12
Sam
Yeah, we went back and forth on what to do there for this event because there's the you know, there's the argument that was made of, you know, we should make it like a thousand SATs or 10,000 sets or something. But that's the in the value for value world. And it's like, do you set a suggestion? If you set a suggestion, will most people psychologically just go with the suggestion or if you have some if we had something so low like one set, maybe people would understand that it's not just one, you know, that you could just put in whatever.

00:49:59:12 - 00:50:08:29
Sam
But if it was still confusing, we probably need to update the description there. But yeah, the idea is just the well.

00:50:09:01 - 00:50:40:15
Marty
Confusing like. Yeah, so I, I did 10,000 sets. Yeah, I did what one set? Or I might have done more than that, but I know it did at least 10,000. But I'm thinking like the technical mechanics, like for the ticketing issuance. So like doesn't need to be one set and then you're asked to do more. Yeah. As a value for value model or can you literally just set a price in like here if you do this will mechanically give you a ticket?

00:50:40:17 - 00:50:56:05
Michael
Yeah, I mean, for this event we just set a minimum of one set. So if you zap at least one, you can get a ticket. But you could also you could set any sort of minimum and not issued the ticket unless the zap is for that amount.

00:50:56:07 - 00:50:56:13
Marty
Yeah.

00:50:56:14 - 00:51:13:18
Sam
Yeah, yeah. You could have an actual ticket price. And I mean, Michael is talking about something the other day that I thought was cool I didn't even really think would be possible, but it made as soon as he started saying it's like even on, on a resale market, I mean, this is getting like way further down the road.

00:51:13:18 - 00:51:45:23
Sam
But since that is assigned over Napster to each identity and it's issued by one, I'm probably going to be probably in a box describing this. But you could even set like the max amount that a ticket can be sold for. So if there were to be a recent market, you could say like, hey, this is a $20 ticket or whatever the equivalent is in SATs, but if you resell it, you can only resell it up to 5% above the face value or going in L.A. or even deeper.

00:51:45:26 - 00:52:05:04
Sam
You could resell it. If you resell it for more than 5% above the face value, then it has to get split back with the original issuer so that whoever took it to begin went back to them. So that's like way next level stuff, you know. But that blew my mind when we started talking about that, I was like, Oh my God, this.

00:52:05:04 - 00:52:06:03
Marty
Is holy.

00:52:06:03 - 00:52:09:06
Sam
Shit. So hey, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:52:09:06 - 00:52:33:11
Michael
It's it's a it's I mean, some of this was inspired by a lot of the some of the E cache implementations that are out there for Mints and Federated Mints. You know, the way I understand a lot of those to operate is the mint issues you like a token and that's sort of equivalent to some amount of SATs or is 1 to 1.

00:52:33:13 - 00:53:04:05
Michael
But ultimately that Mint is like the centralized authority on those tokens for that particular Mint, I think these tickets could operate in a really similar way in that, you know, whoever's issuing the ticket is sort of the central authority for that particular ticket. But people able to interact with the issuer of the ticket in different ways. So, you know, not only can you just buy a ticket and then the issuer gives you a ticket in exchange for that.

00:53:04:05 - 00:53:30:06
Michael
But if you wanted to sell that ticket to someone else, like Sam was saying, the issuer of the ticket could actually burn your old ticket and then issue the new ticket to the person you're selling to and tie it all together using your identity. And then also, you know, on top of that, create rules like you can only sell it for 10% above face value.

00:53:30:09 - 00:53:54:21
Michael
And then because, you know, the idea is we want to be working with artists on this, we could say like, yeah, if you sell this for 10% over face value, like the artist gets 90% of that, you know, that increase, for example, things like that. I think, yeah, there are a lot of possibilities and yeah, it's exciting.

00:53:54:23 - 00:54:16:25
Sam
The other thing that's cool too is the idea of creating a split on the ticket itself. So at the you know, you're not even having to wait for that. Like the split could be issued to everyone involved. The promoter can get the 15%, artists could get their cut, the venue could get their car. I mean, everything could be could be split in real time, just like we're doing with with music.

00:54:16:25 - 00:54:21:26
Sam
There's no there's really no difference. Yeah. And you just would have to set up the infrastructure for it.

00:54:21:28 - 00:54:41:10
Marty
Well, that's what I'm just going to get at and to think about like trying to do this via Live Nation. Not that they would, but responding to the hypothetical like for that split to be possible, you'd at that the venue set up an account that's connected like a traditional fiat bank account or stripe account, whatever it may be connected through all that.

00:54:41:10 - 00:54:56:03
Marty
But with this implementation is literally just been up in Nostre private public key there. Yeah. Attach a lightning address to it and then put your um, your m pub in your m.

00:54:56:05 - 00:55:20:04
Sam
Yeah. It's going to, it's, it's going to be on the venues I think. I mean there are other people that are well more way more qualified to talk about this than I am, but, you know, like in my experience briefly as a promoter and selling tickets through e commerce for, for punk shows and stuff, it the venue ultimately decides what ticket company they want to use.

00:55:20:04 - 00:55:37:02
Sam
And a lot of them will sign these deals for very little money just for like an advance. You know, I don't know how much things have changed in the last ten years, but I remember talking to a friend when I was just trying to put together. A friend of mine wanted to start promoting punk shows again, and I was like, I'll help you.

00:55:37:02 - 00:56:05:14
Sam
And we can sell the tickets on on Hello, my, my other company. And just like, I'll just do simple PDF tickets and we can figure it out. And I started asking my friends who owned venues in Phenix and yeah, you know, it's like, well we're, we're, this sounds really cool. It'd be so awesome to be able to just control our tickets like this and, but we can't because we signed a five year deal for, you know, $5,000 and like a website or something like what you see what you get out of it.

00:56:05:16 - 00:56:33:24
Sam
Um, but this just, I mean, just like the merch problem in with touring and ticketing with venues and, most other problems is it's going to take action. People are going to have to actually do this. And the, the bright side here is that there are plenty of event sites. You know, there's Eventbrite, there's meet up and things like that where anyone can just issue a ticket that's not like the it's not that that's the problem.

00:56:33:27 - 00:56:58:16
Sam
It's it's just there's no there's no feature out there that is solving it. So it's like it's just a necessary thing. It's like, well, we may as well to see this take. However Ticketmaster or, or whatever, because it's just where everybody goes. It's what everybody knows, and none of these other things are really solving any problems. And they don't they're not they're not really helping us out in any way.

00:56:58:16 - 00:57:29:14
Sam
So we're just going to use them. But just like with the music stuff, like it's going to, you know, people are going to continue to use Spotify, they're going to continue to use traditional platforms and things like that. But some people won't. And some people will start to discover Waverly and some of these other concepts. And when those things start working for them, I think it'll start a trickle effect that other people will see and other people will take action and just start to decide like, Hey, maybe this is the better path to take.

00:57:29:14 - 00:57:51:25
Sam
Like we don't have to do this necessarily. And I think in order for ticket bar to work or something like this, really to work, venues are going to have to get on board with it, you know, and hopefully they're able to, you know, I mean, there's there's always going to be independent venues. And if some of them take a stance and just decide not to use these bigger ticket companies, they'll have a better option.

00:57:51:25 - 00:58:06:25
Sam
Because in the past there have been other options like there have been. A friend of mine hijacked a company that was really cool and very fair, but then it just got by it. You know, that that's what ends up happening is you will get sort of like a cool solution, but then it just ends up getting gobbled up.

00:58:06:28 - 00:58:32:00
Sam
And that's the difference here is this is just an open source thing that anybody can build and anybody could can take what And, you know, it's on GitHub right now. Like you want to go build a standalone ticket site and start dabbling in this a little bit and making it a little bit more feature. Rich, You can, you know, so I don't know, I think there's it's like all these things that are that everyone in this space is working on now.

00:58:32:00 - 00:58:47:09
Sam
Like there is actually hope because you're able to do things where the rules actually have changed a bit enough that you can probably you can see how you could break away from these old ways and move into something new.

00:58:47:12 - 00:59:02:10
Marty
Yeah, I haven't been too idealistic, naive, optimistic, if you will, but I think like the ember. So I wish ticket bought dropped a week before it did not for pressure.

00:59:02:13 - 00:59:03:18
Michael
Sorry we're already.

00:59:03:20 - 00:59:03:26
Sam
We're.

00:59:03:26 - 00:59:24:02
Marty
Drawing a live we're throwing a live event Nashville Matt and I Rabbit will recap in collaboration with pub key and I don't know if we could get the venue on board. I'm pretty sure Tom is, particularly from Pub. He could convince the venue to get on board, but you can see it like that would have been like for the beauty of Napster too.

00:59:24:03 - 00:59:49:24
Marty
It's like we're a podcast. We know the fountain is implementing Napster capabilities and with ticket, but since it's interoperable, Napster is and we can literally go into the boost for Rabbit hole recap and anybody that's boosting via their pub, we could create a a list of the top 100 boosters of Rabbit Hole recap and send them out the opportunity.

00:59:49:25 - 00:59:54:06
Marty
Buy a ticket to our live show. Yeah. In Nashville.

00:59:54:09 - 00:59:55:12
Sam
Yeah.

00:59:55:15 - 01:00:05:25
Marty
And like that. I mean, we will definitely do this in the future. Not thinking to the next time. Well, next time, maybe we do something business on air.

01:00:05:28 - 01:00:07:09
Sam
We're going to do.

01:00:07:11 - 01:00:15:28
Marty
We should do comedy show at Pub Key and test us out like TJ miller is really close with Thomas and those guys. I know they've been doing comedy shows like we get. TJ.

01:00:15:28 - 01:00:20:18
Sam
I just went to an open mike there on a couple days ago. Yeah, it's cool.

01:00:20:21 - 01:00:22:16
Marty
Yeah, they're going to NASIR like the like.

01:00:22:21 - 01:00:23:27
Sam
The.

01:00:24:00 - 01:00:39:04
Marty
Ease of on board. The hardest part of the onboarding for the venues will be setting up a lighting address. I imagine it's very easy to create a private public key pair on after then, like figuring out how to create a lightning address and add it to your profile is probably New York central.

01:00:39:06 - 01:00:43:11
Sam
In New York. That's a huge hurdle. Yeah, pockets of massive hurdle.

01:00:43:14 - 01:01:28:02
Marty
Yeah. And like if you can get over that, the biggest hurdle which is like figuring out how to incorporate lightning they can easily see this for bitcoin forward companies like Pub Key being implemented and now the apps like Primal, you're making it very easy to do onboard via their integration with Shrek. And you think it's weird to even say because I've been talking bad about the Everything apps, the Alipay, the the Wechat's of the world, but you could literally build like the Everything app that actually preserves your sovereignty, your autonomy and your control over your money within the app.

01:01:28:05 - 01:01:47:22
Sam
Yeah, because those apps are just tapping into things. They're not centralizing it on one spot. It's just connecting to these things. That's the that's a cool thing. I mean, I I'm, I'm most interested to see how that plays out because because you can connect everything to everything. It's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out and who does what and who experiments with what.

01:01:47:22 - 01:02:05:25
Sam
And is there going to be the like ultimate Swiss Army knife app that just has all your shit in it or or is that going to be annoying for people? You know, I don't know. But it's it's definitely I mean, that's what we're working on with the, the mobile app hopefully just to at least be able to onboard to Nostr and to Bitcoin in one one swoop.

01:02:06:01 - 01:02:11:20
Sam
You know, just make it simple. It's going to have to be if we're going to expect any normal people to use it.

01:02:11:22 - 01:02:48:06
Marty
Yeah I at that I read the rabbit hole recap right before this and we were talking about particularly the the RF bounties for Charming mints and nicer clients and they were paid out. They were released. The bounties were announced 18 months ago. They're paid out last couple of weeks. And Matt told us sort of how he reflecting with Alex Gladstein, how quickly everything's progressed over the last 18 months, like going back from like what Dom was eight months ago.

01:02:48:10 - 01:03:18:21
Marty
That was the predominant client and it was very clunky and the only like use case was these Twitter like social media apps and now seeing like you guys really take about the integrating Nostr sign in and everything else that's happening Blossom prism all these things coming to market within the last 18 months, not even two years. It's crazy to think what can happen if you fast forward and push this into the future.

01:03:18:21 - 01:03:24:08
Marty
And it seems like a lot more developers are getting to open their eyes to this as well.

01:03:24:10 - 01:03:53:24
Michael
Yeah, it's really exciting, I think. I think at the same time, you know, the biggest challenge right now is that, you know, a lot of these applications were building both for Bitcoin and and Nostr, everything sort of on par with what like I guess a typical, let's say, American consumer can use today, which I don't think is enough.

01:03:53:26 - 01:04:30:12
Michael
I think like these these things that we're building, these tools that we're building, um, need to be better, need to have a significant advantage over what people are using today, whether that's, you know, just frictionless payments or whether it's being able to, you know, speak freely or connect with whoever you want without any sort of anyone deciding who you can and can't talk to, whether it's, you know, being able to find music without, you know, a centralized algorithm telling you what you should be listening to.

01:04:30:12 - 01:05:10:19
Michael
I mean, all these things I think we were able to improve on with these these tools that we have. So, yeah, like, I don't know, I just I'm just hoping we can keep pushing these products and experiences in a way that makes them a just a better alternative to what people are using today. Because that, I mean, that's to me that's the that's the adoption sort of I don't know, the the way to promote more adoption of of all of this is just it's got to be, you know, way better for people.

01:05:10:21 - 01:05:33:25
Sam
I think it's the identity thing is what's going to it's what you know being able to take your identity and own your identity and take that anywhere is really what's going to turn heads when that starts happening, at least when I'm explaining it to people, that seems to be the thing that perks up their ears the most. You know, when you're especially if you're talking to anybody that creates anything or has ever built up an audience and been burned by a social media platform.

01:05:33:25 - 01:06:03:12
Sam
You know, I have a lot of friends that are journalists that were heavy on Twitter, and that was their spot. You know, like they they built up a huge following there, just like someone might build up on YouTube or influencers and Instagram or TikTok or whatever. And then, you know, ultimately, you know, that that's a bad idea. You know, you're if history is going to repeat itself and at some point in time, that thing is going to monetize and you're going to have to start feeding an algorithm in a very specific way and you're going to lose all the power that you had on that thing.

01:06:03:14 - 01:06:23:26
Sam
And, you know, hopefully this wave can keep going so people have enough time to see the potential of building up an audience. And but again, it's going to take action. People are going to have to people have to stick through it. I mean, it's tough. It's tough to go through my my feed on roster sometimes and just see people trying.

01:06:23:26 - 01:06:57:11
Sam
I mean, you know, I try I have other projects and stuff to do that I post on there and it's like the engagement stuff, it's it is growing. It seems like, you know, slowly, at least the stats, I mean, the information seems to be up and down a bit there, but at least the screenshots people are posting last week show that it's growing somewhat down, though, it's incredibly small, you know, So and it is such a powerful thing, especially just its connection with bitcoin and lightning.

01:06:57:13 - 01:07:22:09
Sam
For us, it seems like a no brainer, but obviously, um, you know, luckily everyone's building so fast, but going to have to maintain that too, because you did see a slowdown in development because I mean development in the first part of last year, it was just like exploding. There were it went from nothing to everything. And in a couple days it felt like, you know, and then a lot of those projects just end up getting abandoned.

01:07:22:09 - 01:07:48:19
Sam
But it is cool to see that people like well, and Dom has an and a primal and highlighter and all these things are starting to really blossom and become full fledged apps that people can use and around the world and that they'll work for them. And just I think once they start integrating some of these other things too, that's really going to be cool.

01:07:48:23 - 01:08:10:23
Sam
You know, that's going to be something that's going to be a head turner for people as well when they can interact with their music or they can buy a ticket or they can do any of these other things, maybe it's not. I mean, I'm hoping it's it's not done in an annoying way, but it would still be cool if you could just buy a ticket on the note on a note, you know, directly within within a client without it having to be like a full flight, have a full fledged ticket service in it.

01:08:10:29 - 01:08:16:06
Sam
I think that's that'll be the cool part of the interoperability between the features.

01:08:16:08 - 01:08:39:12
Marty
I mean, go back to what you were describing earlier with the choppy events, Michael. It seems like that would be possible if you could just have a button on a note in your event that issued X amount of tokens representing X amount of tickets and you just whoever pays the invoice to claim the first token dock that it seems like a simple accounting thing.

01:08:39:19 - 01:08:40:28
Sam
It's possible. Yeah.

01:08:41:01 - 01:09:28:02
Michael
Definitely possible. Yeah, I think, I think that's the that's like the real unlock. I think, you know, there's, there's the sort of use case specific applications that are being built on Nassau right now, like whether it's social or in our case music or like highlighter I think is a really interesting application as well. But I think it's it's once all those things start linking and sort of playing off of each other, like Sam was saying, once you have that portable identity and then you have sort of this this, I don't know, this plethora of ways that you can use that identity to interact with everyone on the Internet and interact with all these services.

01:09:28:05 - 01:09:59:10
Michael
And, you know, like, you know, something we've thought about as like seeing your music feed like in a regular Napster client or seeing social feeds in a music client. I mean, that's just kind of the tip of the iceberg, but you can see how that could be really powerful. I don't know if it's if it opens up like that all in one app world or if it's or if it's even something better than that, something that, you know, we're kind of not imagining fully just yet.

01:09:59:13 - 01:10:01:10
Marty
Yeah, I'm sensing.

01:10:01:10 - 01:10:04:07
Sam
A a.

01:10:04:07 - 01:10:07:22
Marty
Real a trough of disillusionment with, with Napster.

01:10:07:25 - 01:10:38:01
Michael
Um, I'm in a place right now where I I'm I think it's still it's still has a ton of potential. I think it still has a lot of potential. I think, yeah, maybe. Like generally speaking, we are kind of in a trough where development is tapered off a little bit. There isn't that like fever, dream hype, you know, mentality that's surrounding it.

01:10:38:01 - 01:10:56:15
Michael
But it seems like all the fundamental pieces are in place and it's just a matter of like grinding away, polishing and like really honing in the user experience around it for it to be able to do what we think it can do.

01:10:56:17 - 01:11:19:18
Sam
I think that's what it is for me is knowing how much potential it does have. It's going to be so disappointing if it doesn't maintain some, you know catch some steam somewhere and start working because it really I mean, for us, it may seem like we were sort of jumping pretty heavily into Napster, you know, right out of the gate, because it relaunched on January 23.

01:11:19:18 - 01:11:45:09
Sam
And that was just we had nothing to do with Napster. And then within a month, it was like, okay, I think we have to start thinking about this because the main reason for that is because it enabled so many of these things that we thought we weren't going to be able to get to for years. Like, you know, the idea of being able to do a ticket or have a I mean, even the mobile app, we we weren't going to do a mobile app, really.

01:11:45:09 - 01:12:10:09
Sam
That wasn't that real. At least not at least not when we at least not now. But it just started making so much sense that we were just thinking about the social potential, like future social elements of this. And then it's like, Oh man, we can we can make this app and then we can make the app social and then we can sell tickets and we could do livestreaming and we could there's all these, we can implement merch and all this stuff just works together.

01:12:10:11 - 01:12:31:07
Sam
This is exactly what we were dreaming of and it's here right now. So that gets mostly just like, you know, being cautiously optimistic is a good term. I like using a lot in my life where you just you don't want to jinx it like, you know, you have a good thing, but you also are a realist, you know, that it's going to take it's going to take time and it's going to take action.

01:12:31:07 - 01:12:58:15
Sam
It's going to take adoption. And people are going to have to if anything is going to change. People got to believe in. I mean, it's like bitcoin's been gone for how long now, you know, And it's like luckily there are enough people to just weather the storms over the years to get us to where we are today. And it's going to take I mean, if we're going to change the Internet like because I, I don't I don't I don't really think of Napster as a Swiss Army knife thing.

01:12:58:15 - 01:13:18:12
Sam
I just think of it as like how the Internet was supposed to be like, you're supposed to be able to interact with things. Exactly how someone would describe the future of Napster. So it just seems like such a no brainer. But people have short attention spans. That's the problem. You know, So.

01:13:18:14 - 01:13:49:09
Marty
Yeah, they do until they're they don't have the luxury to have short attention span. I mean, that's something about behind the scenes with people working on Napster. That's Matt and I have talked about this behind the scenes. I think he'd be comfortable with me disclosing the contents of the conversation, which is it's going to be similar to Bitcoin in the sense that it comes in waves where you have events that happen in trad trad fi social media that force people over to master.

01:13:49:11 - 01:14:11:02
Marty
I would argue even like you have a use case like better ticket sales and distribution warfare, that to market and who knows, you get one artist or comedian somebody that actually yeah they totally into it and that brings people to it ease of access and I mean that's what I've learned with Bitcoin specifically over the last 11 years.

01:14:11:02 - 01:14:27:02
Marty
It's just like keeping your head down and working during the bear markets and not the Napster has bear markets from a price perspective, but from a attention and hype perspective, there's going to be those troughs where it's just like, keep your head down fucking building.

01:14:27:04 - 01:14:31:10
Sam
Yeah, Yeah. Amy, I really sorry. Go ahead, Michael.

01:14:31:16 - 01:15:19:19
Michael
I was just going to say, like, I think that's just why we're committed to these kinds of experiments and products like ticket VOD and the mobile app. Is that like, I think someone's going to hit a killer application at one point and maybe it's already out there and it just hasn't been honed in yet. But what I like about that for Nostre is if there's a sort of there's a sort of, I think, product network effect for Napster where if one of those applications does take off, then it makes every single other Napster application that much more valuable to people because you have an installed user base then that is bought in to this portable

01:15:19:19 - 01:15:52:07
Michael
identity. And now, you know, you look around and, oh, look, there's just ten other applications that do other interesting things that I can do with this same identity. I think that's why it's important that you we keep pushing. And, you know, that is the reason why I love seeing other developers continuing to push on things that they can do in this ecosystem is that, you know, it's it's I think it's only a matter of time until someone hits on something really kind of magical and unlocks.

01:15:52:07 - 01:16:17:18
Sam
I mean, potential. It very easily could be us. I mean, it's like music, you know, we spent the first part of the show talking about how powerful music is. And I was talking to someone earlier today, and I reference this all the time, but these social media are social media. Traditional streaming platforms have have tiers. And, you know, even having a million monthly listeners on a traditional platform is really not that impressive.

01:16:17:21 - 01:16:57:28
Sam
That's pretty like middle of the road artist. And if one of those artists comes over and even brings 10,000 monthly listeners with them because someone like us that we built an easy way for them to do that, that's I mean, right now we have like 13,000 daily users on us or something overnight that, that could double just from one artist, you know, and then that effect that you just described is now happening and then and then those 10,000 people tell their friends in that you know over the course of the next several weeks starts grow and compound and then now it's a news story and some other artists hear about it and people start jumping

01:16:57:28 - 01:17:16:27
Sam
on and then someone with 10 million monthly listeners comes over and brings 100,000 people or something. You know, just it's going to be. It does, yeah. So I we just have to keep building the foundations. What we always tell people we're kind of playing the slow game, which a lot of people, not a lot of people some people don't like to hear, but and we have to build that solid foundation.

01:17:16:28 - 01:17:27:03
Sam
We have to make sure it's really easy for that to actually happen when it clicks for somebody, you know. Yeah.

01:17:27:05 - 01:17:52:15
Marty
We need to rappers to say, Hey, we're going to decide this meritocratic way. These apps, there's a 1010 set zap limit and you have to have it's 1 to 1 amp up and the winner is going to be the one who has the the best sets at the end of the day, meritocratic. We're not going to let the YouTube influencers dictate.

01:17:52:17 - 01:17:58:24
Sam
Especially that is so incredible someday. Someday.

01:17:58:26 - 01:18:07:06
Marty
No, it is a it is daunting, but it's also fun to think about those problems. I think it's like it's so fun.

01:18:07:08 - 01:18:26:14
Sam
Yeah, so fun. Yeah. I don't think there's any way we would be doing this if it wasn't fun. I mean, just the the idea of being able to even have a microscopic role in potentially changing the way things are is is mind blowing. You know, how wealthy are we to even be talking about this right now that these are even options?

01:18:26:16 - 01:18:27:09
Sam
Yeah.

01:18:27:12 - 01:18:50:07
Marty
With all of this in mind, like what are some of the things that you see working within Napster that maybe are being a little bit overlooked or things that people should be leaning into, whether that's Nips particular use cases outside of social media, Like what do you think is being overlooked or things that need to be explored more in depth?

01:18:50:09 - 01:19:25:00
Michael
I mean, brought up highlighter earlier? Um, I think that's a really, I think that's a really interesting application of Napster. Um, that I don't think has been fully exploited yet. I think and you know, not for a lack of work and development on it, but I think, I don't know, I just don't see as many applications of that particular feature being used much, so much as I would expect.

01:19:25:02 - 01:19:29:07
Marty
Anybody who's unfamiliar with highlighter, what it is, how would you describe it?

01:19:29:10 - 01:20:00:22
Michael
Highlighter As, as I understand it, is essentially a way to like tag or bookmark something that you find interesting on the Internet. It can be anywhere. It can be a blog post, it can be a link to, you know, a site. It can be like a particular line or paragraph of an article. And it essentially is an event that describes that particular piece of content and allows you to share it to anyone on.

01:20:00:24 - 01:20:23:05
Michael
And then people can, you know, zap you for it if they like it too, and they can, you know, gain visibility that way. But um, but yeah, I think like and I'm sure other people have thought about this, but, you know, like text highlighting is one thing. But you know what I'd really love to see? I mean, I've if I had more time, I would build it.

01:20:23:07 - 01:21:00:08
Michael
But, you know, like, uh, highlighting podcasts, excerpt or YouTube video excerpts. Um, I think podcasts are probably the, the best use case because podcasting is open so, you know, if I wanted to highlight, like, you know, the two minute story about Martie buying the scout ticket from someone back in the day and share that out, like you could pretty easily do that in a highlight in a NASCAR highlight and just clip out the 2 minutes of the podcast where you were talking about that.

01:21:00:08 - 01:21:16:18
Michael
And then, um, and then I think a client could easily be able to show that to a user and share to everyone that's just like, you know, one example. But um, yeah, seems like a great way for people to be able to share content.

01:21:16:20 - 01:21:21:04
Sam
Yeah, Yeah, I think it's.

01:21:21:07 - 01:21:29:02
Marty
Well, I've tried to think of the, what it was the one women like this, uh, social media, Pinterest.

01:21:29:04 - 01:21:46:17
Sam
Pinterest. It's similar. It's similar to Pinterest. Yeah. Yes. And then the clip thing like found you can do Fountain has a really cool clipping service and it's like, you know, they're dabbling in some Napster stuff. And so I think, you know, you probably will see something like that. I think you even can use highlighter for for podcasts too.

01:21:46:17 - 01:22:24:22
Sam
I don't know to it to what extent, but I think that's I think the biggest problem right now is just the thing, at least my my opinion of it is just these develop everyone's so busy, you know, we're so busy with what we're doing, everyone's so busy working on their own thing and there are so many options and there it's, you know, when you have open source stuff and you have all these nips and you just want everybody to kind of unify on something, I think that's probably where one detriment has just it's everyone has their own opinion on how things should be and it can be tough to unify some of that stuff.

01:22:24:22 - 01:22:47:24
Sam
The same goes for what's happening in our access to it. Just, you know, it takes a long time to get everybody on the same page with a particular idea. But I would I would like to see more social clients just implementing basic stuff. You know, like our embed, I don't I don't understand why every single nostre client doesn't have a we have our way of like embed in their feed.

01:22:47:24 - 01:23:01:09
Sam
It's like such a basic thing that you would, you would want, you know, I don't know. It just would be cool to see that there's lots of stuff like that, you know? But I mean, I understand. Yeah. Like, um, prime the note.

01:23:01:15 - 01:23:02:11
Marty
And yeah, like.

01:23:02:11 - 01:23:19:09
Sam
Um, prime on, on the desktop. If you're, if you're looking at a, at a note with a wavelike link in it, you see this like fully embeddable player that you can zap immediately on the note, you can add it to your can, maybe you can add it to your library. Yep. You could do. Yeah, we want, we want and you could.

01:23:19:09 - 01:23:38:00
Sam
You could easily. But there's like only one other client really using. I think coracle does it in then Primal desktop does. I don't know why it doesn't work on the mobile, but you know something like that. Or even just this someone I think it was in Japan asked me about the library and if it was open. And I was like, Oh yeah, it's right here.

01:23:38:00 - 01:23:55:00
Sam
Just go. How about it? And they were working on a couple of days later, like send a note and that a full music player happening. It's like you click on something. Then a music player popped up in the bottom as you're just scrolling through your feed and it just starts playing like it's so easy to do stuff like that.

01:23:55:02 - 01:24:21:21
Sam
Just add these additional features. So yeah, I think, but you know, that's just going to take more resources. I mean, so many of these developers are spread then with their workload and then financially. So it's cool to see things like open sites, funding projects and, you know, getting some keeping these guys keeping food and is in the mouths of these developers because it's it's tough out there.

01:24:21:23 - 01:24:28:29
Sam
Yeah yeah it is a.

01:24:29:02 - 01:24:50:25
Marty
It's having you walk through all this is like and again it's open source project so base of what you both just said it's like is there like a spreading to send problem that Nasr has? Is it even a problem is just the product of on it nation protocol.

01:24:50:27 - 01:25:05:09
Sam
Yeah it's it's a symptom of just having all the options. It's like we have all the options and that's how it started. It was like this explosion where everything has to be a map and everything. Everyone has to do everything just because you can. I mean, that's something I used to say to my wife all the time. She said, You should do this.

01:25:05:09 - 01:25:26:27
Sam
You know, you're really good at that. And it's like, just because I can doesn't mean I should. You know, there's I can you have to, like, curate your life and, you know, like to to optimize it for you. And I think that's one trend I'm starting to see, which I think is ultimately great, you know, starting to see developers be like, okay, guys, that's cool it with the school, with the maps here.

01:25:26:27 - 01:25:36:20
Sam
Let's start to get on the same page with some of the stuff because it's just it's going to get it's just will be impossible at a certain point. Yeah.

01:25:36:22 - 01:25:48:06
Marty
So yeah it's there you can feel it. It is magic buying the ticket. Buying the ticket was magical. They go buy a ticket.

01:25:48:09 - 01:26:06:24
Sam
It's so fragile. That's the that's the hesitation is like because it is there and you just want to be like I have it don't guess. Here it is. Here We have to be very careful with this. You know, like we're walking it like a like a plate through like a I don't know, you just have to it's got to keep going.

01:26:06:27 - 01:26:42:18
Marty
And I think for you guys, particularly, um, out wave wavelike, I think the it was for my arm's length observation of what's going on in the ticketing industry, in the music industry, comedy. Like I think people, um, the artists, the comedians are comedians, artists, um, lumping them in together are getting to the point where, I mean, again, go back that Gene Gillespie, I know he was genuinely pissed off that his fans couldn't get access to his tickets at a reasonable price, and he just had to throw his hands up like, like, sorry, it's nothing I can do about it.

01:26:42:20 - 01:26:43:19
Marty
Yeah.

01:26:43:21 - 01:26:47:16
Michael
Yeah, That's unfortunate.

01:26:47:18 - 01:26:59:13
Marty
And I mean, on that point, we do have a lot of them talk about the positives. We sold some tickets, ticket bought works. I've got my ticket. All right, we're going to. We're going to.

01:26:59:13 - 01:27:00:27
Sam
Looking forward to it, man. We're going to.

01:27:00:27 - 01:27:04:04
Marty
Get, I think, our rating in Nashville.

01:27:04:07 - 01:27:07:19
Sam
I think our events seamlessly roll into other.

01:27:07:22 - 01:27:10:20
Marty
Yes, we had that seven you guys are start.

01:27:10:22 - 01:27:27:26
Sam
Start of seven. Yeah. Both on the 25th. Right. So I mean, if you're in Nashville on July 25th two, you get your whole day planned. You know, you pop in in Industry Day, you walk around, you shake some hands, and then you go see Marty. Can you pop over and you see see our show? We shell our show for a second.

01:27:27:28 - 01:27:29:04
Sam
Yes, please do.

01:27:29:10 - 01:27:31:07
Marty
Angel.

01:27:31:09 - 01:27:49:14
Sam
Yeah. Joe Martin, Andrew Costello. Just loud The higher low and yeah, go RSVP on the Waverly Gap if you don't have it yet. I we didn't have a waitlist app last time we were on this show I don't think. Right. So no go to app wavelength dot com and download that thing and RSVP for the show.

01:27:49:16 - 01:27:56:27
Marty
It's very easy. It's going to be a great night. It's going to be a great day leading up to phones.

01:27:57:00 - 01:28:01:05
Sam
Yeah, I'm excited. Very excited.

01:28:01:07 - 01:28:06:05
Michael
Yeah. And we should have copies of the the Bitcoin record at that event too.

01:28:06:08 - 01:28:06:21
Sam
Oh yeah.

01:28:06:21 - 01:28:09:14
Michael
My interested.

01:28:09:17 - 01:28:12:18
Marty
Well the other thing, I mean, we like radio.

01:28:12:20 - 01:28:14:28
Sam
Um, the.

01:28:14:29 - 01:28:20:04
Marty
I have been playing around with that, that is a cool user experience as well being able to curate.

01:28:20:04 - 01:28:22:27
Sam
Hopefully you weren't playing around with it yesterday. It was broken.

01:28:22:29 - 01:28:25:18
Marty
What happened was not.

01:28:25:20 - 01:28:30:12
Sam
Fully stopped working. It's working and that's good. Yeah, maybe some changes.

01:28:30:12 - 01:28:31:28
Michael
Broke a few things, you know?

01:28:32:00 - 01:28:50:28
Marty
I mean, you have like a live chat and, you know, people competing to get their songs in the playlist. So that's one thing. I like the experimenting with these interactions, these incentive systems. That's the stage where in and it's been incredible to watch how you guys been developing it.

01:28:51:03 - 01:28:52:04
Sam
And.

01:28:52:07 - 01:29:08:08
Marty
Really not being afraid to experiment with different things like this. I think for ticket art particularly, that could be like, imagine if I was able to like Dice instead of going to dice, I was able to just go in a primal like, Yeah, yeah, plug in.

01:29:08:08 - 01:29:30:26
Michael
That's that's the that's exactly the hope. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we have a lot of these ideas floating around of tickets for a while, merch for a while, you know, other things as well. Um, but that party just gave us a really good excuse to get off our butts and build a ticketing system again.

01:29:30:26 - 01:29:36:23
Marty
I was great watching a week earlier because we would have two back to back ticket bought events.

01:29:36:26 - 01:29:42:00
Sam
That would have been really cool. Yeah, well, we'll definitely next time. Yeah.

01:29:42:02 - 01:29:50:17
Marty
All right. We started with it. We're going long here. Um, best concert you've ever been to. Best live show.

01:29:50:20 - 01:29:51:22
Michael
Oh.

01:29:51:24 - 01:30:06:27
Sam
I mean, I'm going back to that Weezer show in 96 that was, like, life altering. I was in the front. I was being, you know, like, held together by bodies. Just sort of, you know, how you know, what that's like when you just not even at some point in time you look down, you're not even standing on the floor anymore.

01:30:06:29 - 01:30:22:26
Sam
Yeah, they're just bouncing. And that was yeah, I mean, Weezer has gone a bit off the rails lately, I would say. But that album, so, you know, one of my favorite records of all time. So to be able to see that tour was really cool.

01:30:22:28 - 01:30:26:25
Michael
Yeah, I think mine would have to be David Bowie.

01:30:26:27 - 01:30:29:00
Marty
I saw you got to see Bowie.

01:30:29:03 - 01:30:35:25
Michael
Yeah, I saw some. On What was the album? I think it was the Hours tour.

01:30:35:28 - 01:30:36:28
Sam
Uh.

01:30:37:00 - 01:31:08:18
Michael
Yeah, that. That was the most I don't know. I mean Bowie is kind of like an alien from outer space. And that performance, I've never seen anyone carry a room like that in my life. It was. It was so it was like, hypnotic the way he performed. So awesome. I got to put my money on David Bowie.

01:31:08:21 - 01:31:10:10
Sam
Yeah. What about you, Murray?

01:31:10:12 - 01:31:20:25
Marty
Well, before we get to me, as I said a word, but I'm curious, since we're asking about Logan, what was your favorite live show of all time? What is your favorite? I've been to very few. Oh, God damn it.

01:31:20:25 - 01:31:27:13
Sam
Probably the one time I went to ACL, it was the only time I was like right in the front of something.

01:31:27:13 - 01:31:29:14
Marty
In What was it? Uh.

01:31:29:16 - 01:31:39:16
Sam
I don't even remember the name. Remember? I was one of the first people at the beginning of the day. One time I accidentally fumbled into a concert.

01:31:39:18 - 01:31:56:19
Marty
One so many. It's hard for me. Uh oh, that Kendrick one was really good. I've seen Red Hot Chili Peppers, like, four times. They've always been really good and nostalgic reasons. I saw Guns N Roses, Fat Axl.

01:31:56:21 - 01:31:58:01
Sam
Oh.

01:31:58:03 - 01:32:16:10
Marty
Yeah. And they crushed it. I was a then I think it was the best concert because I wonder what the lowest of expectations. They absolutely crushed it. They played the secret by the Who during their encore, played all the hits. Uh, Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, I think seven years ago.

01:32:16:13 - 01:32:22:03
Sam
Nice. I bet that was cool. That that was quite the show. Yeah. I mean.

01:32:22:05 - 01:32:25:10
Michael
Yeah, if it's, if it's Slash Axl.

01:32:25:13 - 01:32:28:27
Marty
Yeah. It wasn't Buckethead. It wasn't like Buckethead against the Roses. Slash Yeah, yeah.

01:32:29:01 - 01:32:30:28
Sam
That was real, real Guns N Roses.

01:32:31:00 - 01:32:32:15
Michael
Oh, Duff McKagan was there.

01:32:32:17 - 01:32:34:21
Marty
Yeah, that's a.

01:32:34:24 - 01:32:40:09
Sam
Close enough. Yeah. Yeah. Was Uh.

01:32:40:11 - 01:32:52:16
Marty
And many others. I'll go with, uh, Guns N Roses. Gentlemen, thank you for this. And this one we started. It took us in many different directions, but I'm happy with where it went.

01:32:52:18 - 01:32:55:15
Sam
Um, this is fun. Thanks. Thanks for having us on again.

01:32:55:15 - 01:32:56:04
Michael
Martinez.

01:32:56:04 - 01:33:01:00
Sam
Appreciate it, as always. The support is very appreciated.

01:33:01:02 - 01:33:09:06
Marty
No, I think what you guys are doing is incredible important and I think it's going to work in print. I think, uh.

01:33:09:08 - 01:33:15:04
Sam
This is we're going to get there. We're going to get there. We're going to push through whatever it takes. We're getting there.

01:33:15:06 - 01:33:18:23
Marty
Yeah. All right. Let's blow it up in Nashville in July. Yeah, I'm going to be there.

01:33:18:26 - 01:33:19:12
Sam
And Nashville.

01:33:19:12 - 01:33:19:25
Michael
Sounds great.

01:33:19:29 - 01:33:22:23
Sam
So fine. Big party it up.

01:33:22:25 - 01:33:24:03
Marty
Peace, Love for the game.