In the beginning of 2023, Fountain Podcasts, the podcasting app that streams money as well as audio, was integrated with ZEBEDEE to provide seamless Bitcoin Lightning transactions to its users. In only a month after the integration that optimized how the listeners pay for shows and how creators can advertise their content efficiently, the total number of both nearly doubled.
Not only did Fountain attract more users, it also achieved a sizeable boost to earnings on both sides, as listeners and creators experienced a notable boost in average payout sizes. And it all comes down to the extremely efficient and flexible payments technology provided by ZEBEDEE.
🎧 Fountain Podcasts after integrating with ZEBEDEE
- Active user count increased by +90% in the month after launch
- Podcast creators earn +21% more on average
- Users’ earn rate was boosted by +31%
How Fountain uses Lightning payments
ZEBEDEE tech allows Fountain Podcasts to send users rewards per-second or per-minute as they listen to audio. Listeners get paid by listening to promoted content from podcasters and brands. Payments up to 50x smaller than a single US cent are streamed alongside audio. The earning rate is set by the advertiser, who now pays only for the advertising content that has actually been consumed. Because if you stop the audio stream, the money stream stops alongside it! And we, for one, think that's super cool. It's a perfect example of what we mean at ZEBEDEE when we say we make money move as seamlessly as information.
The "pay-per-second" way of streaming money employed by Fountain gives advertisers a very efficient way to get in front of an interested audience, and the listener is only getting paid while listening to the ad. Stop listening to an ad, stop getting paid. This is important because, in audio advertising, users not listening to an entire ad used to be a big problem. Now the user’s incentives are aligned with the publisher, the advertiser and the ad network enabling this functionality.
This wouldn’t be possible without ZEBEDEE tech. We’ve built our payments rails on the Bitcoin Lightning Network, which makes it possible for such minuscule transactions to be sent at a rapid pace, in real time and without overburdening either the sender or the recipient with fees.
Double users after integrating with ZEBEDEE
To make the experience rewarding for listeners, Fountain shares a small chunk of their revenue with them to let them earn rewards during the first hour of their listening every day. That's right, instead of making them pay for the podcasts they listen to, Fountain pays users for the first hour of listening. Every day, on any podcast in the world.
Instant nano-transactions flowing both ways turn the whole pay-to-listen idea on its head, and they’re a very efficient proposition for increasing market share in the crowded podcasting market: Fountain doubled their user count in a month after integrating with ZEBEDEE and announcing it to the world!
Notable boosts in earnings for both listeners and creators
Additionally, listeners get paid even more by listening to promoted content from podcasters or ads on Fountain. This earning rate is set by the advertiser (creator or company buying ads), who now pays only for the advertising content that has actually been consumed. The model that pays users only while they listen to an ad gives creators a very efficient way to get in front of an interested audience and advertisers a mechanism where they know their ad spend is actually getting them focused attention.
By employing a highly-efficient payments system provided by ZEBEDEE, Fountain can stream money in continuous nano-transactions and allow its users to deliver and receive exact tiny amounts, per-minute or even per-second. This resulted in the earnings experiencing a notable boost platform-wide, as both creators as well as listeners now earn +21% and +31% on average, respectively.
If you think streaming money in real time would supercharge your product or service too, don’t hesitate to open a free developer account and start testing out ZEBEDEE immediately.
