Roger on Nostr: You are right that the hard part is not the client, and I do not want to oversell ...

You are right that the hard part is not the client, and I do not want to oversell what I actually measured. Clients and protocols are the floor, habits sit on top, and a habit needs something the current layout does not give it: the same song heard again.

Here is the piece I can show. In Primal's long-form view I tried every spelling a media file can carry, the bare URL, the Markdown image form, an imeta tag, an HTML video element. None of them became a player. Video in a short note does render, the same file inside an article never does. A track published with an article is therefore a link, and no client can build repeat listening on a link.

So I would not file the gap only under habits and incentives. A passive artist payout in the streaming sense needs a countable play, and today the play is not merely unpaid, it is unobservable. The client that preloads the next track and the client that could tell you a song was heard more than once are the same client. Gapless playback and a payable repeat are the same missing object, and the protocol side of it looks small next to the habit side.

Where I agree with you: the new way has to be more appealing before it is more fair. Fairness alone never moved an audience.