Sunday Brunch 9: Budtender (Hash Power Music)

Sunday Brunch #9 is a classic “coffee + record player” decompression session with Budtender (Hash Power Music) as guest-DJ, running on the house rule: 90% of sats streamed during songs goes straight to the artist, and boosts during conversation keep the table stocked.

Budtender shares how a chain of Nostr serendipities pulled him from a “silent Bitcoiner” life into hands-on music onboarding. He revisits Nostrville 2023 as a hinge moment, including the funny full-circle detail that a Plebchain Radio shirt photo ended up embedded in an album context, tying his early V4V journey to the first song Avi ever played on the show (“Closer to Somewhere” by The Retrograde).

The conversation then zooms out into Budtender’s broader mission: Hash Power Music as an “end game” vision for the music world, built to merge what worked in legacy labels with artist sovereignty and V4V rails, avoiding the predatory incentive drift that corrodes centralized platforms.

Playlist-wise, they spin and react to a set of tracks chosen to match the Brunch arc, including The Velvics’ “Favorite Child” (a stadium-sized, Pink Floyd-adjacent slow burn), Abel James’ “Live While I’m Alive” (a buoyant “do the thing anyway” anthem), The Trusted’s “Spin” (acoustic live version), Mooky’s “Shotgun” (a quirky new-to-V4V drop), and Survival Guide’s “Blood Perfume” (dark, cinematic mood, paired with a clever “Death Drinks” cocktail-book concept).

A major mid-episode highlight is Budtender’s plug for South by Worldwide: a Bitcoin/Nostr community-built, Lightning-enabled variety-show-style music festival running alongside SXSW, with zaps/boosts dynamically routed as acts change, plus shoutouts to the crew making it happen and an open invite for artists to submit sets.