Fountain Podcast App - Discover, share and support podcasts - powered by Bitcoin

Hey Product Hunt! Today I am sharing my favorite new podcast app by @merryoscar and @nick_malster 🙌 I publish and promote my podcast 'Bitcoin for Millennials' via their platform and also get connected with my growing community in a way that I could never before. Listeners can support me through Bitcoin donations and boost episodes they enjoy. I absolutely love it and think you will too!

Hey Product Hunt - Oscar here from Fountain! Why are we building Fountain? The podcast listening experience hasn't really changed in any meaningful way in the last decade. Podcast players look and feel the same as they did - and the mechanics of discovering new episodes still happens outside of the app you listen on. A big reason for this is that the RSS Feeds - the spec that defines what a podcast is and how it's distributed - have not changed. The Podcasting 2.0 movement changes this. Setup by Adam Curry (one of the inventors of podcasting), Podcasting 2.0 is pushing the RSS Podcast Spec into the future with new tags that enable the features you see in the Fountain App: - direct support payments from listener to creator without leaving the app - music podcasts that let you listen to the full songs and save them to your library - streaming money per minute - with wallet switching that directs the money to whatever song is currently playing - searchable transcripts that follow along with the audio - social clipping that lets you save and share the best insights - playlists that let you save any kind of content - in-app micropayments that surface the best content based on a value signal rather than an attention signal Fundamentally we believe that attention-driven content discovery algorithms are bad for both consumers and creators. Youtube videos keep getting longer, creators need to feed the algorithm with regular content to stay relevant, and outrage generates the most views. Media platforms use the attention signal for their algorithms because that's all they have. With micropayments we can surface content based on a value signal that we believe will fix these broken incentives. On Fountain the content that gets surfaced is the content that other listeners find valuable - nothing else. If you're interested in helping push forward open podcasting - or want to see how value driven discovery works in the context of podcasts and music - please checkout Fountain and give me a follow! https://fountain.fm/merryoscar If you have any feedback about the app or think we're missing something in terms of features please feel free to comment here or DM me on Twitter! Thanks! 🙏

Can you explain a little more about the whole "listen to earn" business model? Why/how do I earn?

This seems a solid step forward in the new micropayments era we are going to. The fact that you have to pay (10 sats = $0.002616) for commenting is an interesting way of enhancing quality over quantity. The value-for-value concept is a necessary development too. I don't think it will be an enough financial source for content creators alone, but together with well-targeted ads and cherry-picked sponsors it can improve the general scenery. Would reccommend anybody to check the app. And congrats and best of luck to the Fountain team ⛲️!

Super cool! I'd be very interested to see what your Fountain Wrapped analytics look like at the end of the year :)

It's refreshing to see a forward looking podcast app. I'd love to see the addition of a skip silence feature! Many thanks to the Fountain team.

Awesome podcast player and great support. Fountain is modern and supports transcripts, chapters, people, Value 4 Value and much more. It's a great podcast listening experience. Give it a try.

Fountain has been my default podcasting app for a long time now. It's a sleeping giant for podcast enthusiasts. The value-for-value model of paying podcasters directly, including at the point in time that they said something that resonated with you, is incredibly cool. It feels like the future of content monetisation and UGC. Don't skip this app!

Fountain for sure one of my favorite podcasting apps and THE app that drives innovation in the podcasting space! The new podcasting 2.0 features are huge and everyone who likes podcasts should follow this closely an must try Fountain - it's clearly a game changer in the space!

Like other commenters here, I've never really been much into podcasts, but having heard about this app (I've forgotten the source), I gave it a go, mainly while walking the dog. I've enjoyed the massive range of topics available, including improving my French (through news and comedy), my understanding of CSS, and listening to a Dad & Daughter show that's hilarious, @merryoscar , @nick_malster are active in improving both the back-end technology and the UX. I'm not sure the sats-earning process is optimised yet (for weeks on end, I was unable to earn, despite clearing the cache and reinstalling the app, but it seems to have improved in the last few days). Value4Value (V4V) is a great concept to reward content creators for their work, and using the Lightning network means that sats can bounce around at little to no cost to either party. Excellent work so far. I highly endorse Fountain Podcast App