Pure Craigslist, but structured. Not playing man in the middle.
The services marketplace is one of Musiquay's core platform pillars — alongside the scene graph and the event calendar. It turns Musiquay into the place where the scene not only listens and goes out, but also works.
Every show needs a sound engineer. Every tour needs a road manager. Every release needs a mastering engineer, a designer for the artwork, a photographer for the press shots. Every venue needs techs. Every festival needs riggers, stage hands, caterers, security. The entire music industry runs on freelance and gig work — and right now, finding that work (or finding those workers) happens through word of mouth, Facebook groups, and cold DMs.
Musiquay's marketplace structures this. Not by becoming an intermediary, but by making the connections visible and searchable on an open protocol. Pure matchmaking. Zero middleman.
This distinction matters and it defines every design decision.
What Musiquay does:
What Musiquay does NOT do:
People connect. People handle their business directly. Musiquay is the bulletin board, not the broker.
The music scene has always run on trust, reputation, and personal networks. Musiquay digitizes and opens up those networks without replacing the human relationships at their core.
Nostr already has a specification for classified listings — NIP-99 — and it fits the marketplace model perfectly. Reuse first.
NIP-99 provides:
| Event Kind | Purpose | Musiquay Usage |
|---|---|---|
| Kind 30402 | Active classified listing | Service offerings and hiring needs |
| Kind 30403 | Draft/inactive listing | Unpublished drafts or closed listings |
Key NIP-99 features already built in:
["price", "500", "EUR", "day"] for a day rate, or ["price", "2000", "EUR"] for a flat fee. Supports any ISO 4217 currency plus btc/sats.t (hashtag) tags for role, skill, genre, event type.NIP-99 was designed for exactly this kind of open, unmediated classified listing. Musiquay layers scene-specific structure and discovery on top of it.
A freelancer, crew member, engineer, or creative posts their availability.
Examples:
A venue, label, artist, promoter, or production company posts a need.
Examples:
Unlike actual Craigslist, marketplace listings on Musiquay are structured Nostr events with standardized fields. This enables filtering, search, and integration with the scene graph.
{
"kind": 30402,
"pubkey": "<author-pubkey>",
"content": "Full description in markdown. Detailed requirements, context, portfolio links, etc.",
"tags": [
["d", "<unique-identifier>"],
["title", "FOH Engineer Available — Weekend Festivals, Lisbon Area"],
["summary", "10+ years mixing live rock/metal. Own console. Weekend availability."],
["published_at", "1735851600"],
["location", "Lisbon, Portugal"],
["g", "eyckc"],
["price", "400", "EUR", "day"],
["t", "sound-engineer"],
["t", "foh"],
["t", "available"],
["t", "festival"],
["t", "rock"],
["t", "metal"],
["image", "https://blossom.musiquay.com/<portfolio-hash>"],
["status", "active"]
]
}
Musiquay defines conventions for how t tags are used in marketplace listings to enable structured discovery:
| Tag Category | Examples | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Role/skill | sound-engineer, photographer, designer, roadie, tour-manager, producer, mastering, rigger | What the person does or what's needed |
| Listing type | available, hiring | Which side of the marketplace |
| Event type | festival, tour, studio, one-off, residency | What kind of work |
| Genre | rock, electronic, jazz, punk, hip-hop | Genre context (where relevant) |
| Commitment | freelance, full-time, contract, one-off | Duration / commitment level |
These are conventions, not rigid schema. The t tag system is flexible enough to evolve with how the community actually uses it.
Marketplace categories map directly to the scene participant types from the scene graph:
| Category | "Available" Examples | "Hiring" Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Sound Engineering | FOH, monitor, studio, broadcast | Venues, festivals, artists needing engineers |
| Production | Record producers, beat makers | Artists, labels seeking producers |
| Mix / Master | Mixing engineers, mastering engineers | Artists, labels with recordings to finish |
| Live Tech | Lighting, backline, staging, AV | Venues, festivals, production companies |
| Road Crew | Roadies, tour managers, merch sellers | Touring artists and management |
| Rigging | Stage riggers, truss specialists | Festivals, venues, production companies |
| Design | Album art, posters, merch design, branding | Artists, labels, venues, festivals |
| Photography | Gig, press, studio, portrait | Artists, labels, venues, publications |
| Film / Video | Music videos, live recording, documentary | Artists, labels, festivals |
| Management | Artist managers, booking agents | Artists seeking representation |
| Promotion | PR, marketing, social media | Artists, labels seeking promotion |
| Spaces | Studios, rehearsal rooms, venues for hire | Artists, bands needing space |
| Equipment | Rental of PA, backline, lighting | Anyone needing gear |
| Other | Anything the scene needs that doesn't fit above | Open-ended by design |
Organizations and companies post too — production companies, rental houses, studios, rehearsal spaces, booking agencies. They're all just Nostr identities with profiles and listings.
Here's where the marketplace becomes something Craigslist never could: your reputation is your history on the protocol.
There is no separate rating system. No star ratings. No "verified" badges issued by the platform. Instead:
This is earned reputation, not manufactured reviews. It emerges from real activity on the protocol over time. It can't be faked by buying reviews, and it can't be taken away by a platform deciding to reset your ratings.
The scene graph enables queries that a traditional marketplace cannot:
All of this is derived from existing events on the protocol. No special reputation system needed.
Like the event calendar, the marketplace is location-aware via NIP-99's geohash and location fields.
The marketplace and calendar feed each other naturally:
Every marketplace interaction reinforces the scene graph:
The marketplace creates work. The work creates credits. The credits build reputation. The reputation generates more work. The flywheel spins.
Musiquay does not process marketplace payments. Participants handle their own transactions — cash, bank transfer, Lightning, whatever they agree on.
However, the Lightning infrastructure is available for those who want it:
Clarity on boundaries:
The music scene ran on trust and personal networks long before the internet. Musiquay makes those networks visible and searchable without replacing the human relationships that drive them. It's the bulletin board at the rehearsal space, scaled to the entire scene, running on an open protocol that nobody owns.