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33 sats \ 5 replies \ @k00b 21 Mar 2022 \ on: Is “Value for Value” fatally flawed? bitcoin
IMO The part of v4v that is broken is the donation aspect. Donations suffer from a bystander effect - "I could donate but I don't need to because someone else will." Bitcoin makes it easier to donate proportional to value received, e.g. I only pay you while I'm actually streaming your podcast, but it's still a donation albeit a more efficient one.
If you expand v4v to mean making it easier to pay content creators for what you consume, then I think there's definitely a there there. There's a lot of content locked up behind inefficient payment methods - I have to pay HBO Max a monthly subscription even if I don't watch anything that month. If instead I could steam content and stream payments back at a reasonable price, I would prefer that.
The only existing v4v model right now is streaming donations and that's why I think it feels tentatively worthwhile.
Do you think podcasts would work if they sold their episodes instead of taking donations? For what price?
The problem with that is that some people were willing to donate 3x will now just pay x and be done with it -- while others would donate 0.5x but won't pay anything now and won't listen.
On the other hand many people who would have paid nothing will now pay x.
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I think so. Many podcasts are on Patreon that make $10k+/ mo by releasing half the episodes for free, and the other half on Patreon. If they made half the podcasts mandatory v4v at maybe 100 sats/minute it'd probably yield comparable revenue.
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comparable revenue
... If all listeners adopt Bitcoin that is. They'd most certainly lose money in the short term, especially if their podcast wasn't a Bitcoin podcast.
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Part of the value for value model involves giving the content away for free. This may in part come from the networking affect allowed by free content dissemination.
When putting a price on the episode you know keep anyone only willing to pay x-y sats for the content out of your audience, or push them to "pirate" your content.