Direct podcast payments gain adoption - one year in review
2023 was an incredibly successful year for Podcasting 2.0. Adoption grew broadly across hosting services and podcast players. Dozens of apps are now supporting the value tag as one of the most transformative features allowing listeners to support podcasters and podcast hosts to generate income.
We have depicted some highlights:
Direct podcast payments for every podcaster thanks to Blubrry
The podcast hosting service provider has rolled out podcaster wallets across three of their products. On the Blubrry Publisher platform, any podcaster has the ability to establish their own podcaster wallet. The team has incorporated a "value for value" system into the PowerPress WordPress plugin. Additionally, Podcast Mirror allows enhancing every podcast RSS feed with Podcasting 2.0 features. Blubrry's products boast extensive reach, enabling nearly every podcaster to effortlessly accept direct payments from their audience without the hassle of manual RSS feed adjustments.
Podcast hosting services doubled down on the value tag
A completely new podcast hosting service entered the scene - Podhome. Some might call Podhome a native Podcasting 2.0 hosting service as it comes with so many P2.0 features. Podhome lets every podcaster connect their Alby podcaster wallet. An integration of wallet like this is a matter of days not weeks.
LetsCast.fm automated the wallet creation for podcasters on their platform. RSS.com has introduced the capability to designate multiple payment recipients at the episode level. Captivate has incorporated a form for manually inputting wallet credentials into the RSS feed.
2023 the rise of Podcasting 2.0 player apps
There is now doubt about that. 2023 was the year of podcast players adopting Podcasting 2.0 features.
Podfriend and Castamatic allowed listeners to connect their Alby accounts to their apps.
Fountain 0.8 came out with a lot of performance upgrades and support for two new tags: <podcast:medium> and <podcast:valueTimeSplit>. LNBeats and Podverse delivered new features.
Moreover, let’s welcome Podcast Guru and Truefans (prev. Podfans) to the community. Podcast Guru, a major podcast app, enabled podcast payments in the first half of 2023. Since then they have been shipping one update after the other. In their recent update they streamlined the payment experience even more. Definitely worth a try.
Truefans continues to push the boundaries by consistently expanding the range of supported Podcasting 2.0 features. They've seamlessly integrated payments into nearly every functionality within their podcasting marketplace, further enhancing the user experience and monetization options for podcasters. Listeners can support their favourite podcasters and get rewarded for actions on the platform - a promising concept for organic user growth. Sam Sethi, founder and CEO of Truefans gave a short interview about the integration of micropayments.
Innovation on the spec level continues
Paid audio content without barriers
One-time payments for "Pay-per-listen" experiences in podcasting have not been feasible across podcast apps because premium podcasts are locked in silos. What if you can make premium podcasts easily accessible and discoverable across apps via RSS. The solution called Open Content Payment Spec has been presented at the Podcast Movement Evolutions Conference in Las Vegas as collaborative effort between Breez, Conshax, Podverse, Truefans and Alby. Podcasters are able to distribute paid content with public podcast feeds making it visible and easily accessible to any user of any podcast app.
Value time split
The value time split is the latest innovation in Podcasting 2.0 allowing alternating payment recipients and cross referencing of content.
This advancement sets the foundation for a new economic model driven by a direct relationship between consumers and publishers. The value time split enables alternating payment recipients even during a single podcast episode. Every time a new item is played a new value tag can be defined. All payments from listeners at this moment can be attributed and programmatically sent to all recipients being part of it. This innovation sets the stage for music shows distributed as podcasts such as The Boostagram Ball.
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