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Straight answers.
Standing answers to the questions artists actually ask about music on Bitcoin Lightning and Nostr. Written to stay true, not to fill a feed.
Which music platform lets you leave with everything?
Exit rights, defined: catalog, name, and payment setup. What every platform type keeps when you go, and how Lightning FM makes all three portable.
What do music platforms actually take?
The cut at every layer, from streaming to distributors to direct-to-fan to bitcoin-native. Every number cited to the platform's own published fees, and why 0% here is architecture.
How do refunds work when there are no chargebacks?
Lightning payments are final. A refund is a new payment the artist voluntarily sends back: the buyer mints an invoice in their own wallet, the artist pays it. Why the platform cannot force one.
Can Lightning FM freeze an artist's money?
No, structurally. Sales settle wallet to wallet, invoices come from the artist's own wallet, and the platform holds no balances. Nothing to freeze, withhold, or seize.
How do you sell music for bitcoin?
What a Lightning sale looks like, what you need to start (a wallet, not a node), and a cited comparison of the platforms doing it today.
Which platforms let listeners pay artists directly?
A test that isn't loose: does the money ever cross the platform's books? Plus value-for-value explained and a cited look at who passes.
How do you start selling music on Lightning FM?
Five steps from nothing to a first sale settling in your own wallet: the desktop app, an identity key, a Lightning wallet, a published track, a sale. Hosted path only; self-hosting links out.
How do you create a Lightning FM account?
You don't. Identity is a keypair generated on your machine and stored in the macOS Keychain. No email, no password, recovery via NIP-49 encrypted backup, and nothing anyone can reset or take.
What does being a Lightning FM artist look like?
A worked example: 0GGM3NT3D publishes a catalog signed by his own key, sells downloads paid straight to his own wallet, and could leave tomorrow at no cost.
What music apps are built on Nostr?
The ecosystem fairly surveyed (Wavlake, Fountain, Tunestr, zap.stream, Lightning FM), and how music lives on Nostr as artist-signed events any app can read.
Is there internet radio for Bitcoin and Nostr music?
An honest map of the small scene on air today, and the always-on programmed station we're building over the open catalog.
Is Lightning FM's software open source?
The desktop app, artist-node daemon, and MCP server are all MIT and public on GitHub. What that does and doesn't cover, and why self-hosting needs no invite.
Can an AI agent search Lightning FM's catalog?
Two ways, neither needing a key or an account: query the public Nostr relay directly, or run the MIT-licensed MCP server. Read-only by design, and no separate agent API.
Did Lightning FM seed its own catalog?
Yes: four house artist identities tested the publish-sell-delete pipeline before real artists onboarded. The full signed record is downloadable and independently verifiable with nak.