Audio version:
I switched to podcasting 2.0, which allows you to send micropayments to a content creator over the Lightning Network, a long time ago. In my Slovak language podcast, at the end of the recent episodes I also discuss the “boosts” of previous episodes from value4value apps such as Fountain.fm.
The flow of bitcoins (“sats”) in this new podcasting paradigm comes in two forms – if I listen to the podcast, I can send the creators a few sats per minute. If I really like the podcast and want to praise the creators for something, I can send a “boost”, which is a bit more sats with an optional text message.
I switched to Fountain as the only podcasting app I use as a listener too. It’s a good podcast player, fully comparable to Casts, which I was using until then. Support for podcasting 2.0, decentralized music (DeMu), and value4value standards is key for me.
The importance of value4value
The first thing I realized is that we have this great technology, but we’re sending ourselves “pennies”. Is the value of the hourly podcast I listen to really worth 600 sats to me (about €0.38 at the time of writing)? Probably not, or I wouldn’t be devoting an hour of my time to it. At least that’s what I thought.
If something has value to me, and I demonstrate that by actually listening to the podcast (i.e. I don’t turn it off after five minutes), I want the podcaster (or musician) to continue making it.
Recently, I have set the amount in Fountain to 200 sats/min. Thus, I send the podcaster about €7.5 for an hour-long podcast at the current Bitcoin price. That’s already an amount that even if only 1% of listeners are sending, it could be significant enough to the podcaster and they could be incentivized to continue producing it. Skin in the game is clear – if I’m bored, I switch it off, the stream of sats stops too.
I get my own time back
But besides feeling good about supporting the creators, I’ve also gained back my own time. For example, I listened to a podcast about open-source AI. After a few minutes of listening, I tell myself that even though the podcasters have a good flow, I already knew everything they said. Normally, I would have continued on, hoping to learn something later in the podcast. Now I tell myself “I am paying for this, I’m not going to pay for what I already know” and skip ahead half an hour. Then I listened for a few minutes again, I found that I’m still not learning anything new, so I turned it off and switched to something else.
That’s not to say that every podcast has to have informational value. Maybe I’m having fun even though I’m not learning anything, maybe it’s good music; we pay for concerts too, right? But the thought of “I am paying for this” should have a good vibe.
The cost of inactivity
An hour of my listening has a cost to me – at the very least, a cost of missed opportunity. If I wasn’t enjoying the podcast at all, I’d stop it even without value4value, but if I just can’t make up my mind, the decision to “turn this off” has a cost, and “wait to see if it gets interesting” requires no further action – I continue loading the dishwasher or driving, the player plays on by itself.
But with value4value, the cost of “no action” is very real, visible money. “Do I really want to pay 2000 sats – over a euro – for another ten minutes of this?”. I’m becoming a picky customer. As an indirect effect, I’m giving the creators a market signal which says “I do enjoy this, but not this”, but more importantly, I’m managing my own time better.
Interactivity and feedback in value4value podcasts
Additionally, what I’ve found is that with value4value podcasts, many podcasters read messages that come with the boosts. If I want them to comment on something in the podcast, I’ll send them a few thousand sats and add my question or comment – and very often the podcaster will read it and respond to it.
Everyone involved is connected to the flow of sats
In one of the episodes, I included the guest in the splits as well. But then I thought – I got the room where we recorded from Michal Tomek (who does a slovak podcast for fathers with me), so I also added splits for him, because without the room (“studio”), there would be no podcast. So everyone involved gets feedback – they see the boosts as well. So both the guest and the other participants are still connected via value4value to the podcast they contributed to.
If someone helps you with editing, if you play someone’s music, this can all be set up. For each episode differently, you can even set it up differently for each episode – do you have a music? Send all splits (both streamed sats and boosts) to the musician – if they occur in that particular part of the podcast where that music is playing. Do you do a music podcast? Boost goes to the musician, the producer, … Learn more about it in this bitpunk.fm unwound episode.