RSS 3.0: The Music Platform We Never Built
Everyone complains about Spotify, yet everyone uses Spotify.
Meanwhile, RSS — the open, creator-friendly protocol that has powered podcasts for more than two decades — is sitting there like an unused superpower.
So why isn’t music distributed well over RSS?
And why aren’t Fountain or Wavlake the revolution we hoped for?
Because RSS is perfect for freedom, but unsuitable for proper music distribution.
Spotify gives listeners: • search • discovery • artist pages • playlists • stats • recommendations • frictionless UX
RSS, by contrast, gives creators… an XML file.
Great for ownership. Awful for user experience.
That’s why musicians stay on Spotify: listeners never left it.
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Where Fountain and Wavlake fit in?
These apps took podcast infrastructure and stretched it toward music.
They stream audio from RSS feeds, then add Nostr features on top — zaps, boosts, comments.
It’s clever, it’s promising, and it’s absolutely the right direction.
And yes, they do show something like an artist page — but it’s still a podcast-style profile, not a true music-native artist page.
What’s missing? • no album hierarchy • no discography model • no track-level metadata (ISRC, credits, roles) • no royalty splits • no music discovery layer • no native grouping of singles / EPs / LPs
Close to the future — but not quite the future.
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What’s missing?
A new standard: RSS 3.0 for music.
Imagine an open music feed that finally understands how music actually works:
RSS 3.0 Music Spec: • ISRC • credits & roles • lyrics • artwork • stems • structured discography • split payments • LNURL for instant payouts • artist pubkeys • real track/album hierarchy
Then imagine Nostr as the distribution and discovery layer: • follows • reposts • playlists • comments • zaps • personalized discovery feeds
And imagine that the audio itself stays under your control: S3, Backblaze, your own server, IPFS — whatever you choose.
The money arrives instantly over Lightning. The social layer lives on Nostr. The catalogue belongs to you, not to a corporation.
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The bottom line?
Fountain and Wavlake are important prototypes.
They point in the right direction.
But the real breakthrough — a Spotify-class music experience built on RSS + Nostr + Bitcoin — hasn’t been created yet.
Call it RSS 3.0. The music internet we should have built from the start.
If this means one thing, it’s that there’s a demand.
Reply to magnolia_mayhem…
Oh and by royalties you probably meant ASCAP type stuff, but there are tags for that. When I hear “royalties” I just think value splits determined by the artists, for the artists rather than legacy music industry stuff. 😅 Been enjoying decentralized music for 4 years so I’m wired different.
Reply to DuhLaurien ✌🏻👽💨…
Once you’re familiar with the tags in the Podcasting 2.0 namespace, you can add whichever ones you want (like tracking) to this DeMu feed. But this contains most of the specs you’re looking for, most importantly royalties in the form of value splits along with the roles for contributors listed as the credits for each track.
https://github.com/de-mu/demu-feed-template/blob/master/feed-with-comments.xml
Reply to DuhLaurien ✌🏻👽💨…
Where have you been. We’ve been doing most of these things for years
ISRC - The license tag
credits & roles - podcast:person
lyrics - podcast:transcript
artwork - podcast:image
stems - podcast:alternateEnclosure - see https://v4vmusic.com/?song=cmhn308yg0017od0ih7wm1v3m for an example of alternate enclosure for video but it could just as easily be a stem (click the TV icon to see the video)
structured discography - podcast:publisher see https://v4vmusic.com/publishers
split payments - podcast:value, podcast:valueRecipient, podcast:valueTimeSplit> LNURL for instant payouts - <podcast:valueRecipient type=“lnaddress” name=“Sovereign Feeds-TheSplitKit” address=“steven@getalby.com” split=“5”/>
artist pubkeys - We don’t have this but it would be trivial to add to a feed using the podcast:text tag
real track/album hierarchy Feed=album, item within feed=song
Also shareable cross app playlists vie the medium tag see https://v4vmusic.com/playlists
For IPFS See https://ipfspodcasting.net - Every single one of my published feeds use it
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg there’s a ton more things that RSS can do.
I recommend you learn more about the podcasting 2.0 spec to see what already exists https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/main/docs/1.0.md
You can also learn a lot about all the cool things that rss can do by listening to episode 1 of the v4vmusic podcast https://v4vmusic.com/?song=cmixpr1fm00f2od0imec2b4ud
Reply to Sir Libre…
Said artist page based off of the podcasting 2.0 publishers feed. All the info come from it and I’m just displaying it. Wavlake supports these and I used theirs to build this out in my apps.
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