From stems to streams
Helping music artists connect, collaborate, and create.
What it is
A music sharing and collaboration platform built on the Nostr protocol — open, decentralized, uncensorable. Artists share stems. Listeners tip in Bitcoin via Lightning. No streaming payouts. No middlemen. 700 artists in 48 hours.
Why it exists
The internet democratized access to music and destroyed the economics underneath it. Artists earn fractions of a cent per stream. The social energy of making music together — the jam session, the collaboration — has no digital equivalent. Stemstr was built to fix both: direct compensation via Lightning, open collaboration via Nostr.
How it's built
The separation of social and sound.
“The social spark of jamming with others is missing in the physical and digital landscape of music today.”
Solo struggle
Music making is more accessible than it has ever been and more lonely than it has ever been. Producers work in their bedrooms. The communal energy of jamming with other people in a room — the thing that produced most of the music we love — has no real digital equivalent. Streaming platforms optimized listening. They didn't touch creating together.
Passion pays pennies
While the internet revolutionized the way we access music, it disproportionately gutted the way artists earn from it. Per-stream payouts collapsed to fractions of a cent across every major platform.
The sound of opportunity.
Connection and collaboration
Bring back the communal energy and raw creativity of jam sessions that has gotten lost in the digital age. Make it possible for someone in Brooklyn to drop a loop, and someone in Lagos to respond to it an hour later, and someone in São Paulo to stitch the two together by the end of the day.
Compensation, directly
Empower listeners to support and show appreciation to the artists they love, directly. Give artists a new revenue stream that doesn't depend on a platform's mood, an algorithm's whim, or a 90-day payout cycle. The moment someone hears something they love, they can act on it — and the artist receives it in seconds.
Designed around the artists who would actually use it.
Early explorations
I'm a musical artist, so a lot of this was self-research. But I also studied the workflows of producers, engineers, and DJs across genres. The exploration kept coming back to the same insight: software for creators only works if it slots into the tools they already love. Replace nothing. Coexist with everything.
Compact collaboration
Stemstr was designed to take up minimal space in an artist's digital setup, living harmoniously alongside Logic, Ableton, GarageBand, and the rest. It's a side dish, not a main course. The DAW stays at the center.
Share like you're there
From a single drum hit to a full track and everything in between, Stemstr aimed to make sharing feel like handing someone a tape — seconds from DAW to audience.
A call to create
Leveraging the decentralized power of Nostr, I assembled the team through Nostr itself. I posted the idea, posted the roles, and the people who showed up were the people who already believed in it. Designers and engineers from across the US and Latin America, coordinating across time zones on a decentralized social network, building software for that same network.
Setting up our system.
“Two important typefaces were featured in Stemstr. Satoshi, which honors the creator(s) of Bitcoin. And Onest, which speaks to the truth found in music and creation.”
Typography
Satoshi for headlines — a nod to the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, which Stemstr's payment layer was built on. Onest for body — direct, honest, no ornamentation. The pairing carried the values: open, plain-spoken, and unapologetic about its roots.
Logo and motion
Roberto Padilla brought the visual identity. The logo is a minimal waveform — simple enough to animate, true to what Stemstr actually is: sound made visible. From the moment you drop a stem, the waveform comes to life, an animated rendering of the audio underneath.
Browser-native, music-first
Stemstr is browser-based — your portable music studio on any device, wherever you go. Drag and drop the beat. Scrub through a clip and watch a phonograph spin in the background. Hover over a stem on desktop and see it light up. The product is full of small physical references for a fully digital tool.
Creative connections.
More than a tool
Stemstr transcends a traditional production tool by fostering a social and collaborative environment for music creation. The act of posting a stem is also the act of inviting collaboration on it. Other artists can like, comment, remix, or build on top — and the original creator gets credit and compensation for all of it.
Share in seconds
With a single tap, Stemstr removes friction from the sharing process — letting artists focus on what they do best.
Thanks at lightning speed
Built-in Bitcoin tipping over the Lightning Network. A listener who loves what they hear can send sats to the artist instantly. No platform cut. No payout delay. The economics are direct.
Stemstr is live.
“Stemstr successfully welcomed 700 early access musical artists in the first 48 hours.”
Beta access
Early access let us gather invaluable feedback on usability, features, and overall experience. Our early users became some of our most loyal artists — they created organic buzz from day one because the experience itself was the marketing.
August 4, 2023
Stemstr launched publicly. 700 musical artists in the first 48 hours. Sounds from the Stemstr community ended up on Wavlake and YouTube within weeks. The social proof wasn't manufactured. The community built it.
Building on a protocol
Building on an open protocol is different from building on a platform. You don't have an API contract or a roadmap to align with. You have a spec, a community, and whatever trust you can earn. The lesson I took from Stemstr — that an aligned community can do more in a weekend than a marketing budget can do in a quarter — is the same lesson I'm applying to vyb today.
