How To Discover Music on Wavlake
So you found Wavlake. Welcome!
You’ve arrived at a great time, as we’ve just launched our long-awaited Playlists feature on our mobile app. This will make new music discovery even better. You’re a fan with great taste, so how do you find your next fix of great independent music?
The first thing you’ll notice is there’s nothing mainstream here in the way of music or algorithms. We’re not going to try and predict your next favorite song because we don’t want to take that experience away from you.
Hit the “Home” key
This gives you the simplest option to start listening. You get our trending top 40, which is influenced by the amount of zaps the tracks receive.
Zaps are Bitcoin micropayments made over the lightning network. These not only influence the Trending chart but they go directly to the artists.
The Wavlake Trending is an ever-changing report card of what songs people love the most. It changes daily.
Above the chart is the horizontal scroll bar of songs that are newly added to Wavlake. Take a chance and see if you like any of them. Then, help them chart by sending zaps.
Don’t want to think?
Hit the radio button in the bottom menu. It starts playing tracks randomly.
Already Know What Type of Music You Want to Hear?
Hit “search” in the bottom menu and you’ll see the list of genres on Wavlake. Let’s say you select “pop.” You’re served up a randomized set of pop tracks. (If you back out and select “pop” again, you’ll get a whole new list of songs).
How to Get the Most out of Wavlake
Once you hear a song you like, click on it to bring it up to fullscreen. Hit the little heart on the lower left side and it’s saved to your library under “songs.” This way, you can keep track of every song you like.
Then, you can sort them into playlists, learn more about the artists, and not forget a song once you get into it. When you make a playlist, share it.
Of course, the most important thing is to make yourself a part of Wavlake by influencing music discovery for everyone else. You do this by zapping artists. It’s better than requesting a song on the radio or giving a song an upvote on a music streaming service with a heart or star. That’s the old system; our system directly benefits artists with the hardest money on the planet—Bitcoin. It's more than just money – it's a scarce, digital asset with value you can send anywhere.
The Quick & Easy Way to Set Up a Lightning Wallet
Do you have Cash App? Then you already have a lightning wallet set up. If you haven’t used it yet, all you need to do is get some Bitcoin into it. Just click the “buy” button in the Bitcoin menu. Now you’ve got some sats to send to your favorite artists. Wavlake also works with lightning wallets like Strike, ZBD, Phoenix, River, Wallet of Satoshi, and more. You can set your default zap amount as high or low as you want. For example, you can literally give your “two cents” with 29 sats (at the time of this writing). If you really love a song, send 1,000 sats or more—that would be around $1.00.
When you fall in love with a new song, click on the artist’s name. This brings up their profile page to show you their top-zapped tracks. You’ll also see messages from fellow fans to the artist. Keep scrolling down all the way to get the artist’s website, socials, and npub so you can show them even more love.
That’s it! Wavlake is about discovery, openness, and experiencing music in a more free way—for both listeners and creators. It’s like we ripped the walls down between you and the artists to make music friendly again.