How to support podcasts on Fountain

On Fountain you can support your favourite podcasts as you listen. This is possible thanks to The Bitcoin Lightning Network, the payment system which allows us to send and receive small units of bitcoin known as sats. 

In this article we will cover:

Why support your favourite podcasts

Many of us would agree that our favourite podcasts have had a transformative impact on us. Just think about everything you have learned from the podcasts you have listened to regularly over the years and how they have inspired you. Since most podcasts we listen to are available for free, they rely on income from many different sources - including advertising. By supporting podcasts on Fountain, listeners can show their appreciation and send some value back in return. This is what we mean when we talk about Value for Value

You can learn more about Value for Value here.

Which podcasts you can support

There are over 12,000 podcasts you can support on Fountain with more joining every week. You can support any podcast with a yellow Lightning Bolt on the show or episode pages (we refer to these as Lightning Podcasts). If the bolt is not yellow that means it’s not set up to receive payments yet. You can tag the podcaster in a tweet and tell them to claim their show so you can start supporting them.

When pressing the bolt you will see a button labeled Splits. With splits, podcasters can share income with guests, contributors and good causes. Whenever you support a podcast, the money gets divided and distributed to all the splits.

You can discover the most supported show and episodes on Fountain here.

How to top up your wallet

Simply go to your Wallet, press Fund Wallet and you will see two options:

  • Deposit with Lightning: Top up from another app that allows you to send payments over the Lightning Network such as CashApp, Strike or ZEBEDEE. Select your top up amount to generate an invoice which you can pay instantly.
  • Deposit with Bank Card: Top up with Apple Pay or a debit or credit card. You will be taken to our payment processing partner Moonpay to enter your payment details and complete your purchase. After a short wait, your sats will arrive in your Fountain wallet.

You can learn more about topping up your Fountain wallet here.

How to support a podcast

When listening to any Lightning Podcast, you will see two options on the player screen:

  • Stream: Send sats to the podcaster for every minute you spend listening. The minimum is 10 sats per minute to ensure that each split gets their share. You can toggle streaming on or off from the menu and update the number of sats you want to send every minute.
  • Boost: Send sats to the podcaster along with a message. Boosts get displayed as comments so that other listeners can read and respond to them. When you send a Boost it will appear on the show and episode page under activity. You must send a minimum of 100 sats per Boost but the more you Boost, the higher it appears on the episode page. It will also be seen by other users who follow you on Fountain in their Discover feed.

To set the default the number of sats for streaming and boosting, go to the Main Menu and press Settings.

Fees when supporting podcasts

Fountain charges a 4% on top of all streams and boosts but you can join Fountain Premium to reduce your transaction fees to just 1% and get access to other advanced features. Go to your wallet to see a summary of how many sats you have sent as well as a detailed transaction history which shows the fees.

You can learn more about fees on Fountain here.

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