V4V Music Podcast Crash Course

Introduction to Valueverse Music

What Makes It Valueverse Music?

Okay, now that you understand V4V and are open to becoming part of the Valueverse, it’s time to jump into the technical parts needed to connect V4V music to your V4V music podcast.

The first element of Valueverse music you need to understand is where the music comes from. The simple answer is from the artists themselves. Bands, singers/songwriters, and producers, all of who have elected to participate in the Valueverse, have voluntarily added their music to the Podcast Index (podcastindex.org) via an RSS file.

Just like a podcast, music can now take advantage of Real Simple Syndication (RSS) distribution with the inclusion of a very specific tag: the medium tag. This one tag turns a podcast RSS file into a music RSS file.

If an RSS file in the Podcast Index labels its medium tag as “music”, then that RSS file is telling the Valueverse three things:

• I want to participate in Valueverse
• I want the Valueverse to know that I am sharing my music
• I want modern podcast apps to find my music

This is the power of the Podcasting 2.0 medium tag. A simple tag with the label of music now opens the door to an entire world of new possibilities – one of those possibilities being curated V4V music podcasts!

Tags to Rule Them All

Before any value transfer between the listener and the artist can take place, the artist needs to ensure that their songs are correctly set up to participate in a Value4Value exchange. While the magic of V4V music podcasting starts with the medium tag set to music, it still takes a few more Podcasting 2.0 tags to complete the connection between the listener and the artist. These additional tags include:

• Feed GUID – A channel-level unique GUID tag
• Channel Value Block – A channel-level value tag
• Item GUID – An item-level unique GUID tag for each
• Item Value Block – An item-level value tag
• Enclosure URL – Physical link to media

With these five tags in place (plus the medium tag makes it six), an artist's song is technically ready to receive Satoshis (SATS) from anyone at any time. In the next lesson I will get into how they actually receive those SATS, but for now, just know that the basics are in place for that transfer of value to take place.

Let’s go through these five Podcasting 2.0 tags so that you understand what each of them does.

Since V4V Music is a podcast under the hood, it uses all the same features as a podcast. This means a Globally Unique Identifier – or GUID – is the same 128-bit number used to identify an RSS file uniquely. It doesn’t matter if it’s a podcast containing episodes or an album containing songs, the function is the same.

You could also think of the Feed GUID as the RSS file’s fingerprint so that your RSS file cannot be confused with another. Without this tag, V4V music becomes very difficult to manage.

Channel Value Block

The Channel Value Block is a channel-level Podcasting 2.0 tag used to connect the owner of the RSS file with The Valueverse. It includes all the information needed to send SATS to the owner or as many additional people and organizations as they want in the form of splits.

While the owner of the RSS File can keep everything sent to them with a 100 percent share of the splits, many artist divide their splits among the various musicians, managers, and producers. You might also see splits that include a small percentage going toward the hosting company that helped set everything up or even third-party interests (e.g. app developers, statistics support, venues).

The only limitation to the Channel Value Block is that recipients within the split must have valid V4V information.

Item GUID

An RSS file’s structure is a channel. Inside a channel is one or more items. You could think of the channel as the parent and its item or items as its children. In that case, the Item GUID works the same as the Feed GUID; it uniquely identifies a single child item within the channel (e.g. episode, song). It doesn’t have to use a 128-bit number and is often customized by hosting companies to be unique to their organization.

However, just like the Feed GUID, the Item GUID still has to be unique within that RSS file so that it doesn’t conflict with any other Item GUID listed. Duplicate Item GUIDs cause chaos! Without the uniqueness of this tag, it would be difficult for V4V music apps to know which item you were referencing and show your audience the wrong information.

Item Value Block

The Item Value Block is an item-level Podcasting 2.0 tag that functions the same as the channel-level value block with one exception: if it appears in the item it will override the channel-level value block information.

When would you ever want to do this? One reason would be when one of your items requires additional split recipients or different recipient information for that particular episode or song.

Good examples of this would be guest appearances, featured artists, or highlighting someone who supported that episode or song. It gives you granular control over your item value block without having to continually change your channel-level value block every time.

When an item does not have an item-level value block, the Podcasting 2.0 specification states that it defaults back to the channel-level value block. This means that you are not required to give each of your items a value block if it contains the same information as your channel value block. However, you have the option to override the channel-level value block if you need to.

The only limitation to the Item Value Block is the same as the Channel Value Block; all recipients within the split must have valid V4V information.

Enclosure URL

Within each item should be a single Enclosure Uniform Resource Locator (URL) tag that provides an HTTP/HTTPS link to the physical location of the audio *.MP3 file. There should be only one of these listed.

This tag is part of the RSS file specification and not exclusive to Podcasting 2.0. However, it is essential to create a V4V music podcast because without the actual audio file for the song the artist doesn’t have anything to share and you don’t have a show!

Using Only Valid RSS Files

Having their song in a V4V music podcast does not prevent them from receiving SATS from other sources. However, having an invalid RSS file that does not meet the Podcasting 2.0 specifications for V4V operations will.

Fortunately, several hosting companies (e.g. RSS Blue, Phantom Power Music, WavLake, Buzzsprout, Oncetold) have tools for helping artists put the required Valueverse information into their RSS files.