ARTISTS
How Streaming Forgot the Social Side of Music
Streaming disconnected artists from their biggest fans. Open protocols offer a path to rebuild that connection.
1 August 2025
•
5 min read
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The Missing Layer: Why Discovery and Fan Connection Are Broken
Streaming may have made music more accessible than ever, but it has done very little to bring artists and listeners closer together.
Most artists have no idea who their biggest fans are. They don’t know who’s streaming their music, who’s most engaged, or who would be willing to support them directly.
For fans, listening is often a solitary experience. The platforms don’t encourage sharing, conversation, or real interaction around the music itself. You can’t leave a message for an artist. You can’t connect with other fans. Even if you wanted to pay to support your favorite artist or join a fan community, there’s no built-in way to do that.
Streaming platforms have prioritized catalog size, algorithmic playlists, and passive consumption, but they’ve left the social layer of music completely underdeveloped.
The Real Cost of Closed Platforms
Here’s the reality behind the numbers and dashboards: DSPs (Digital Service Providers) have built walls that keep artists and fans apart. Yes, you get distribution and reach, but everything meaningful is locked down.
Here’s how it plays out:
- No real fan data: You see play counts, not people. You have no idea who your most loyal supporters are.
- No social interaction: Fans can’t message you, and you can’t reach them. There’s no native way to have real conversations or build community where the music actually lives.
- Sharing happens elsewhere: Fans talk about your music in group chats or on Instagram, but never on the streaming platform itself.
- No direct support: Even if someone wants to pay to get a message through or tip you, there’s no way to do it natively.
- Locked-in audiences: Your audience exists inside the platform’s walls. You can’t move them, contact them, or bring them with you.
All of this is by design. Platforms keep communication, data, and monetization tightly controlled because it keeps you dependent on their ecosystem. They want to own the relationship between artist and fan. You get analytics dashboards, but not ownership, and not real connection.
Meanwhile, other creator industries, especially podcasting, have quietly thrived on open infrastructure. RSS lets podcasters publish everywhere and own their audience. No central platform decides whether you succeed or not. For music, the technology exists, but the business incentives have always favored closed systems. This needs to change.
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The Solution: Open Discovery and Direct Fan Access
The problem isn’t just that platforms hoard data. It’s that they’ve never really built spaces where fan interaction can happen in the first place. This is where open discovery starts to change the equation. Instead of music consumption being a solitary, one-directional experience, apps like Fountain are building features that pull fans and artists much closer together.
When someone streams your song on Fountain, they’re not just a passive listener. They can send a payment while listening. They can leave a comment alongside that payment. As an artist, you can see who supported you, read their messages, and even reply directly. These aren’t faceless streams. They’re real people choosing to support you in real-time.
Beyond that, Fountain has started to rebuild the part of music discovery that DSPs mostly abandoned; the social layer. You can build and share your own playlists as an artist or listener, you can curate radio-style broadcasts, and crucially, fans can discover new music based on what their friends and favorite artists are listening to and recommending. Discovery becomes something human again, not purely driven by an algorithm optimizing for maximum time spent on the platform.
Nostr: The Protocol That Ties It Together
This open approach doesn’t stop inside one app. Apps like Fountain are now tapping into Nostr, a decentralized, open protocol that acts almost like a global social feed.
Without getting technical, Nostr allows users to post, follow, and share across different apps without being locked into any single platform. If you post a playlist or a track you’re listening to inside Fountain, it can also appear on your Nostr profile. Other people on Nostr can see what you're listening to, reply, boost it, or recommend it, all without needing a central social network in the middle.
It’s a bit like email. You don’t need to be on Gmail to message someone using Outlook. Nostr works the same way. Your posts, playlists, and interactions aren’t trapped inside one app. They’re part of an open network, so no matter where your fans are, they can see and engage with what you’re sharing.
In simple terms, it lets music discovery start to feel more like how we actually talk about music with friends. You see what people you trust are listening to. You share your own finds. And as an artist, you don’t need to build a separate following inside each app. Your identity, content, and audience move with you across the open ecosystem.
Where This Can Go
The social layer of music has been missing for years. The major platforms chose scale and control over depth and connection. But with open protocols like RSS, Lightning, and Nostr starting to layer together, you can start to see what a very different music ecosystem might look like. One where discovery is driven by people, not algorithms, where artists know who their fans are and fans can support, interact, and engage with artists directly, in real-time.
None of this requires artists or fans to understand the tech underneath. The infrastructure is quietly being built in the background. What matters is the experience on top: better discovery, better connections, and finally, a way to bring the artist-fan relationship back to the center of music.
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