latest Kevin Rooke episode with Gigi touches on the opposite side on that argument - https://fountain.fm/episode/8907579245

I don't like the app at all. As a podcaster, I tried a few times to put my cast on there, but the authentication and settings always failed. The app itself is horrible imho. They need a lot of work to get this thing off the ground. Maybe hire some software testers or something. Really loved the idea, but the actual product is not for me to say the least.

I have my doubts too. I've been using since day 1, and I only see the earnings decrease. Either they are not getting as much ad revenue as they expected or they are getting more demand from earners than they expected.

Detecting bots vs not annoying people with false positives will be a challenge (a couple times that earnings stopped for me they said I was flagged by their system).

Here’s another perspective…

Do you think Spotify’s business model is sustainable in the long-term? How about Reddit?

Spotify & Reddit earn enormous sums of money because they’ve built a captive audience of listeners and readers.

But how much do they pay their listeners and readers? Zero. (Spotify does pay small amounts to artists, but zero to listeners).

Yet without listeners and readers, their platforms would be worth nothing.

Fountain and Stacker News are flipping the script, by giving revenue earned from advertisers to the people who are making the platform valuable in the first place… the users.

I suspect many companies will take this approach to bootstrap a user base and disrupt Web2 competitors who don’t pay any money back to their users (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc…)

Rather than asking whether or not it’s sustainable for companies to pay the users who make the platform valuable, I think the more important question is whether it’s sustainable to extract all the value a platform generates and pay users nothing.

I think it can work as long as you make the system resistant against sybil attacks and implement some kind of bot detection.

I am really asking that myself for sometime also.

I am not sure it is. They are burning lot of money to attract new users. There is a serious engineering challenge to stop the bad actors to take advantage of this model.

But who knows they can work out some amazing working model in long run.

Rhetorically, how do you know what their business model is? Has their full plan been revealed yet?

As is, absent change, I don't think it's sustainable. But the only thing guaranteed for a startup is change.

Sure, they set up the plumbing so that all users get paid, but what if they are about to switch to a model where podcasters can opt into paying for their own show temporarily, as a one-off-surprise, as a one time thank-you? What if it's a reward only for users who call into the show (ie the prize is "get money if you keep listening for the next 5 shows"). What if they build a tool for podcasters to pay for audience building based on region or demographic? Maybe they turn it into a prize for the podcaster who attracts the most users to other shows (ie, if your sub growth is highest, fountain will pay your users the most next week). Maybe it turns into a sponsorship tactic "Hey listeners, this week's sats are coming from Tesla, anybody who also clicks this link, gets double the sats for listening". What if they charge 10K sats per month for a premium account, and you can earn back your subscription fee by listening?

Zooming out, the economics just flow into the CAC, ROAS and Product Market fit for everybody involved. Some companies pay a referral fee, run spammy email blasts, or put ads on other platforms. Fountain doesn't have to do that, do they?

Have they found a sustainable balance between the CAC, ROAS w/ PMF...doubt it...but VCs throw money at bootstrapping CAC all the time for years sometimes.

Guaranteed, they will be iterating from here.

I think Fountain is an excellent idea, but from my point of view users are only interested in stacking sats and not consuming the content.

I think that in the long run they will have to add something else, a kind of filter like Sphynx.

I have literally seen a tutorial on TikTok on how to earn bitcoin using Fountain.

The trick is imho that each person has some "bottom limit" of where they don't care about that money below that line and are happy to send it to a good cause.
I don't mind sending hundreds of sats to a podcaster, because it's smaller than a number I'd consider for a tip in a restaurant... but then I get urge to use boostagrams, because it's convenient...

I think there is a potential for a business models in this direction - and as an added benefit it will train users to be ok with paying micropayments for things as they use them.

I personally think it would be sustainable as podcasters pay to get promoted or have ads for promotions. That's always going to provide a healthy stream of revenue. They're paying a couple pennies to listeners. While, yes this adds up over time, I would assume that their cost analysis would allow them to charge appropriate prices for ads and promotions. Plus, they probably sell user data like every other company. This is all speculation.

Value-for-value is almost the definition of "sustainable".

"Action-to-earn" is not sustainable unless you verify the action intended is actually performed (nearly impossible since all information can be spoofed).

The intention is to pay PEOPLE for LISTENING to ads. But the reality is they're paying DEVICES for PLAYING ads. Not the same thing and certainly abused.

Yes I think it can work. If it's not fountain, it'll be someone else.

This is like asking "will bitcoin work?".

The value for value model is a natural extension of Bitcoin and goes along with what is talked about in the sovereign individual. You will be paid based upon your talent and intelligence.

Gigi's article does a good job of laying out value for value which is basically like digital busking: https://dergigi.com/2021/12/30/the-freedom-of-value/

I do not.

It should be sustainable if they get ad revenue and dynamic sat structure.