Sam Sethi: 0:12

Hello and welcome back to Pod News Weekly. I'm joined by a very good friend of the show. His name's Oscar Merry. I'll just simply say hello, Oscar.

Oscar Merry: 0:20

Hey, Sam. Great to be back on. Thanks so much for having me.

Sam Sethi: 0:23

You're very welcome. Now, Oscar's the co founder of Fountain, which is one of the podcasting 2.0 apps leading the charge. And you've got a new release out. Oscar. So come on, tell me what's in this new release.

Oscar Merry: 0:36

Yeah, thanks, Sam. So we just released Fountain 1.1.5. There's a massive amount of really cool updates in this new version building on the 1.1 release which came out last month. So I'll go through it really quickly and then would love to just get into some of the more, you know, the deeper reasons on why we're building what we're building in Fountain 1.1.5, we have a completely new content library architecture and this essentially makes the app way more performant, especially for online playback. So it took a lot of hard work to make this change that we've removed over 40,000 lines of code in the app. But yeah, now Fountain is way more performant, especially in an offline playback setting. We've also added the ability to pay any lightning invoice from your wallet in the app. What's really cool about this is it demonstrates the interoperability of the Lightning Network and the payments within podcasting 2.0. So you can imagine paying for a coffee with the earnings from your podcast, which I think is really cool. And it just shows how an interoperable payment system like lightning can, I think, be the future of monetization within podcasting. The final thing that we've added in 115 is music artist pages. So I think everyone who listens to pop news regularly will be aware of the new music podcasting features that are starting to be built out thanks to the introduction of the medium tag. So we've supported music podcasts for a long time and fountain so you can listen to the show, you can see the tracklist and you can actually click through to the track and save that to your library. That's really great, but we're missing a few things in terms of making Fountain a really great music listening experience. So with the addition of artist pages now, wherever you discover that music in Fountain, you can click through to the artist page and you can see all of the tracks for that artist and you can see all of the social activity and payments related to that artist as well, which is really, really cool because finding one track on a music podcast and then viewing the whole collection is something that's really important. So yeah, there's a lot in 115, but we're really excited about it.

Sam Sethi: 3:00

Called lots and lots of hard Work. As someone who builds an app as well, I know that takes a lot of time, energy and effort, so congratulations on that. Now let's unpack some of that. So let's start off with the offline capability and the core library stuff you did. Why did you feel you needed to make that change? And is that universal across both Android and iOS?

Oscar Merry: 3:25

Yeah. So this is universal to iOS and Android and essentially this comes from our desire to make Fountain a multi content medium app. We want people to be able to listen to their favorite podcasts, but also listen to the new music that they're discovering on podcast. Listen to live streams, which we're seeing a lot of new activity on. So we want Fountain to enable listening to any content type. And over time, as we've added these new content types, it's kind of building one thing on top of the other, whereas this new system is much more performant in terms of the organization of your library when you have all of those different content types. So that's the main reason behind it.

Sam Sethi: 4:12

Can you, when you're offline, also still boosting stream? Well, I think when I go back online.

Oscar Merry: 4:19

Not right now, no. The payments are not cached offline, so you have to be online in order to stream sites.

Sam Sethi: 4:26

Okay. Moving on to Bolt 11 now, this has been a big change from what I read, both the ability, obviously, as you said, to fundamentally buy me a coffee using your own stats, not just the link to buy me a coffee, but it's the withdrawal element as well that you've added. Tell me more about that.

Oscar Merry: 4:45

Yes. So, you know, Bitcoin and lightning is gaining adoption. You know, with every month that goes by, there's more and more traditional financial companies that are adopting Bitcoin and lightning. For example, we had new Bank, which is a huge financial entity. ADD support for the Lightning Network recently, and Fountain has an integrated lightning wallet. So when you sign up, you create a wallet and you have access to all the payment capabilities. But for a while the withdrawal mechanism was using something called Elon. You all withdraw, which is quite a niche thing that not all of the other payment apps support. So we wanted to make it easier for podcasters and now musicians to withdraw the stats that they earn from their audience in Fountain and supporting the Bolt's 11 Lightning Invoice specification was the easiest way to do that. So now you can really easily withdraw to any other Bitcoin Lightning app or any banking app that supports lightning, and there'll be more and more of them that come online. So it's just a quality of life improvement that makes it really easy for creators to withdraw the money that they earn on Fountain to whatever their preferred kind of banking app of choice is. And a lot of these other apps will support splitting the payments into your local currency and Bitcoin. So you could choose to have all of the sites that you earn go to your local currency, or you could choose to maybe split 5050 or whatever is up to you. So it's a quality of life improvement for the creator, but it's also very cool. Next time I want to pay for coffee, I can just use my podcast app, which I think is quite cool, an it shows the future of interoperable micropayments between all of these different apps.

Sam Sethi: 6:42

I want the video next time you go into a coffee shop, I want you to post the video of you using Fountain to pay for that coffee. Two or three questions. And around that one is, is there a minimum withdrawal limit that you've set or is it just take what you want out when you want out?

Oscar Merry: 6:58

Yeah. So we do have some limits with the wallet which are available on our Facebook page, so you can go and check them out.

Sam Sethi: 7:05

Okay. And one of the questions I saw because I was reading on X, your announcement of it, and somebody in there went, Oh, when are you going to put NWC? And I'm like, Well, when but maybe you are. So NWC stands for not a Wallet Connect. It's a feature of the all big network, which is a different network from the one you use, which is apathy. So my thoughts are, no, you're not going to implement NWC, but maybe I'm totally wrong.

Oscar Merry: 7:34

Yeah. So we do actually have plans to support Nostra Wallet Connect and I'll kind of explain the reasoning behind this. So I think we will see over the next few years many, many more apps and services and platforms adopting the Lightning Network. And ultimately it doesn't really make sense for you as a user to have a balance across all of these different apps and services that you use.You might have a balance on your main roster client. You might have a balance in your podcast app, a balance in your live streaming app, a balance, and you know, the list goes on that doesn't really make that much sense. And what Napster Wallet Connect allows you to do is have one balance in your main lightning wallet and connect that to all of the different apps you use and share the balance and set limits. So I think it makes a lot of sense. So we do plan to offer support for Nostra Wallet Connect. I'm hoping we can get that in this year. Obviously, the one downside to it is it does add a little bit more friction in the onboarding because as a brand new user, a fountain, you don't just have to download forms and and press the create wallet button. You need to go and figure out, okay, what's not the wallet connect, How do I find my main wallet? Who do I choose? So we're definitely keeping the embedded fountain wallet because that's the easiest way for people to get started, but not a wallet. Connect is something for those more advanced users that are regularly using lightning across all of these different apps and services, it makes it easier for them.

Sam Sethi: 9:10

I agree. I think it has to be an advanced feature. I think any newbie trying to understand that would just, I think, blow their minds. The last one is you're very well up on this more than I am probably. Bulk Well, where is that within the lexicon of timeline?

Oscar Merry: 9:25

Yeah. So from what I can see, Boat 12 is moving along very nicely. There's more lightning wallets that are supporting it already. I think in terms of podcasting 2.0 and how we can look to adopt Boat 12, there's been a lot of discussion in the podcast index GitHub discussions around how we change the value block, which is the thing that podcast use in that RSS feed to tell apps like found and where to send the money. Essentially, we need to change the way the value block works to have an options file that allows podcasters to say, okay, I accept keys and I set both 11, I accept boat 12 and that way we don't need to keep changing the RSS feeds Each time the lightning protocol changes, we can just have the podcast app update the options file which will be generated for them by whatever wallet service they use, whether that's fountain, whether that's Audi, whether that's strike cash app essentially. So yeah, I think it's on the way and getting that options file into the value box back is the first step.

Sam Sethi: 10:32

I'll leave you to do that work be great I'll just copy it now what is different with Bolt 12?

Oscar Merry: 10:38

Oscar Yeah. So the key difference between Bolt 11 and 12 and both of these are just the specification of how you make lightning payments. Bolt 11 requires generating an invoice for every single payment, and that adds friction for the user because every time you want to send a boost or you need to go request the new invoice, whereas Bolt 12 is essentially a reusable invoice. So it optimizes the payment flow quite significantly. There's also a bunch of other technical benefits to Bolt 12, which are probably above my pay grade in terms of the Lightning Network. But the key example for what we're doing in terms of supporting Creative supporting podcast is a great example I like to use. As for live stream, so obviously we've seen all the concerts that have been happening and live streamed out through our into all of the podcasting 2.0 apps. They've been amazing and artists like Ainsley Costello have done a massive amount of money through this way more than the traditional streaming platforms. One thing we've always wanted to do at these concerts is have QR codes so that people can just, you know, support in the actual venue or like, you know, if they're walking past, they can just scan the QR code and pay. Now that doesn't work with Bolt 11 because obviously when you pay about 11 invoice, it's paid and you need to generate another one. So Bolt 12 enables you to have those static QR codes, and that's really useful for live events. So you can imagine inserting that static QR code on the livestream video, for example, so that anyone tuning in can just scan that if they're watching it on a web platform and they don't actually have access to the app. So for me, that's the main benefit of Bolt 12 is the static invoice, which will make it easier for people to pay creators.

Sam Sethi: 12:36

Now, one of the things you announced that was really impressive was the you've already paid out 1.6 Bitcoin. For those who don't know what 1.6 Bitcoin would equate to, that's just over $100,000, which is really, really cool that you've seen that go through. Fountain Tell me more about what you're seeing as the flow has accelerated.

Oscar Merry: 12:58

Yeah, so we see regularly quite high payment volume being sent from listeners to podcasters and this is recurring revenue for the podcast is because people love supporting their favorite podcasts. And if you can make it easy for them and if you can build these social elements into those payments as well, like we do with Fountain, then you know, people love to do it and podcasters love receiving it. Not only the payment but the message and also the interaction that's generated off the back of that. So yeah, this is a credible way for podcasters to generate an income for their show. And I would encourage any podcast that is listening to try out obviously with new technology like the Lightning Network that comes with, you know, additional things that you need to learn and it also comes with additional friction for someone that's brand new to this. You know, what is a lightning wallet? How does it work? But we've tried to make that as simple as possible in Fountain. And with every release, it gets simpler, you know, withdrawing via boats 11 is an example of that. And I think that as we continue to solve the onboarding issues, as more of the traditional financial service companies adopt lightning, which they are doing, then, you know, paying lightning invoices and sending stats from one app to another and back to your main banking app. This will just become a normal thing. And when that happens, I think the payment volume on apps like Fountain and the other podcasting 2.0 apps will really, really increase. So yeah, I would encourage any podcasters listening to get in now and check this out and figure out how can I do all of the things I need to do to increase that payment volume. The shows that are regularly successful every week on Fountain and on a significant amount are the ones that do all of the things that Adam Curry voice talks about. They get the ask right in the show. They read the boose, they reply to the boose in fountain or noster, which is, you know, happy to talk more about that recent change. But yeah, this thing is working. There is onboarding challenges whether but I think it's the future and the fact that you can have these payments flow between the different apps and also the comments, the replies flow between the different apps. This is the solution for the podcast industry because there's no other payment technology and there's no other social interaction technology that enables this. So yeah, I'm really excited to see what the number is next year, as I'm sure it will increase a lot more.

Sam Sethi: 15:39

Well, as you mentioned. Oster Let's cover that then. So for those that don't know, let's start off what is noster and then we'll go to how have Fountain integrated with it.

Oscar Merry: 15:51

Yeah. So Noster is a decentralized identity protocol. And what Napster allows you to do is have one social identity on the Internet and bring that with you to all of the different apps that you use. You don't only bring your identity to the different apps, but you also bring your entire social graph and all of the content that you've created. You know, I won't bother getting into the technical details of how the please.

Sam Sethi: 16:22

Please, though, because I was listening to you interviewed by Max and the last 10 minutes of that, even I thought, Wow, I have no idea what you two are talking about. It went from DNSSEC to something else and I'm going, Yeah, don't need to know. But anyway, let's go back to the practical cities of Noster.

Oscar Merry: 16:41

Yeah. So you don't need to worry about any of that as an individual that wants to be social on the internet, which is most of us what Napster enables you to do is use all of these different apps and services with one profile, with one set of followers, and with everything tied back together. So taking a step back to why we wanted to do this with Fountain, actually the number one feature in Fountain, that podcast is Love was our activity feed, because when someone sends a boost to an episode that would go into the activity feed and not only do the podcasts get paid, but they generate discovery for their show for free because everybody else would see that boost in the feed and they think, Wow, 50,000 SATs, This must be a good episode. Let me check it out. And we have heard time and time again that listeners have discovered shows on Fountain through the activity feed. So it was a feature that was working really well. But we had an issue, which is the fundamental issue that every news social app has, which is how do you bootstrap the social graph, How do you get people following people with similar interests? And the feature doesn't work unless you follow people that you care about. In terms of that interest. What Napster allows us to do is have people bring their existing follower growth into fountain, and then it also allows those boos and those episode comments to leave the Fountain app and go and be discovered in other places. So these boosts in these episode comments can be discovered on the main roster. Clients like Primal Timers and Amethyst. They can also be queried by the other podcast apps pulled into the podcast apps and used for cross out comment. So Napster essentially super powers the social features in fountain and makes the discovery primarily way more powerful. And since we launched this feature a month ago, it was a big change to fountain. And it's not a trivial thing to rip out your existing social graph and replace it with a new one. It was a lot of work, but we're already seeing this work incredibly well. So somebody is in the fountain, they're listening to an episode, they send a boost because they love the episode or they just leave an interesting comment that adds value to the content of the episode that appears on the episode page in Fountain Like Normal, it goes into the fountain home feed like normal, but it also spreads out onto all of these other Gnostic clients where people can see it, they can repost it, they can quote it, they can reply to it, tagging people that they follow, saying, Hey, this was an interesting comment. So it just massively increases the discovery that the comments and the boost generate for podcasters and ultimately that's what they want. They want new people to discover that show. And I don't think we've ever seen anything like this in terms of a podcast app being able to generate conversation, but then continues to happen on a regular social app like Twitter or something like that. So it's really cool. There's a lot still to do to polish the experience. You know, the other podcasting 2.0 apps on board. So you were using not that I know there's other ideas, but yeah, I'm a massive believer in it and I think that as more and more apps join the master network, there will be even more of a reason to adopt it and even more discovery opportunity for podcasters.

Sam Sethi: 20:20

I think Wave Lake of Gold down a very similar road to you. They supporting the Noster Wallet Connect. They're supporting obviously lightning payments. They're doing a lot of similar work it and I can see I think they've also joined the Zebedee network as well They've moved away from Get Old Bay so they're on the Zebedee network as well so I can see this strong synergy between the two. I'm, you know, I'm talking of nostalgia. I think probably a year ago there was a whole conversation in the podcasting community about why don't we support Nostra? It seems like a very, very close cousin to what we're doing with lightning payments within the post, within the capability. I think you've taken the bull by the horns and gone and done that implementation. So there is a strong link between the two and I can see the value in it where you publish a boost or some listening data from fountain out to noster. Somebody then sees that because they follow that podcast, they then have the ability to reply, comment or give a micropayment backend and then you expose that back inside all found. And I see that lovely loop of information discovery and I think that's really cool. And I think the challenge that we all have is post X and Elon Musk is which platform is the majority of the market going to go? Is it blue sky, is it going to be Mastodon, Is it going to be Noster? Is it going to be another right threads being one? And I think that's the one challenge that we all have to do. You and I had lunch together and we talked about it in more detail, but fundamentally my platform through funds has gone down the activity bulb road. You go down the Noster road and you know, there are pros and cons and I think the activity pop stuff has some pros, but it has a lot of cons as well to it as in it doesn't have lightning payments, it doesn't have that loopback feature that you built into noster, but it does have a larger adoption curve of individual users today. And so it's where do you go and how do you do it? And can you talk to me about what we were talking about, which was how you and I might be able to still use Cross ARP comments. Even though we've gone down separate protocols, we're still both doing the same thing, which is social discovery of podcasting apps through boosts and comments and stuff. But one nostrum once was activity pop, but that doesn't preclude both of us. And Mitch a pod verse and Jason and I podcast guru and others connecting back all the comments and tell me how you think that.

Oscar Merry: 23:04

Mike Yeah, that's a really great point. Sam, Because Noster is an open protocol and because activity path is an open protocol, these things can work together and they can be bridged together. And in fact they already operate together through services like ditto, which is a really cool activity pub server with Noster integrated. So there's no real issue there. My personal belief is that Noster, in terms of its capabilities and potential, is just way more powerful than activity. Bob However, we can bridge back to Activity pub and we can display activity pub posts in Fountain as part of the nostre content that we already have. So I'm not concerned about that at all. The bridging can happen and I'm sure it will as we work out the details. But I think what noster offers, which I don't think I've really seen in Activity pub, is the ability to do the kind of reverse connection, and that's a bit of a vague term. So I explain it. I talked about how when you send a boost on fountain or leave a comment on an episode, it gets broadcast out to the rest of the Noster network and discovery and conversation can happen on those other Gnostic lines. You can do that with Activity Pub as well. But what I haven't seen a way to do on Activity Pub is the reverse, where Fountain can pull in activity from the Noster network and show that in the Fountain app. So I'll give you a great example. And honestly we built this and when I first experienced it in the app, I was actually amazed by it, which is because we can query all the noster relays because their data is just open and out there. We can actually go and look for podcast activity that exists on the Noster network and show that to you in Fountain, even if it has nothing to do with Fountain or even podcasting 2.0. So what we actually do in the home feed is we look for anybody within your follower network that is talking about podcasts, and we do this just by some simple link matching on the popular podcast thing, apps like Apple Podcasts. But an example that I saw the other day was there was someone I follow on Noster and he shared an episode via an Apple podcast episode link. And what we were able to do, because we can query the entire Noster network and find posts like this was detected, It was an Apple Podcasts episode link, reverse engineer, the show and episode details. And then when we display that post in the fountain, hopefully not only do we show the Apple Podcasts URL just as a hyperlink, but we can show the content card in Fountain. And I was able to just see that and add the episode to my queue because I thought it looked interesting. So that kind of like reverse querying where any developer is able to go out to the full must the network and find any content they want and use it in their app. I haven't seen a way that you can do that with activity and that's like one of the reasons, along with the fact that it's got lightning integrated, that I think noster, although you're right, the user base currently is a lot smaller than activity. I think it has more potential for growth.

Sam Sethi: 26:32

And I don't disagree with you. I think the potential for growth, given the integrated lightning payments is really exciting. To answer your question around the activity pop stuff, the activity pop structure is a name box out box metaphor, a bit like your email. And so what we're doing is taking what's in your outbox. So your activity on True funds, for example, is your outbox. So I listened to OSC on this show for 10 minutes and that's published out. And anyone who follows my account will see that in their activity pipeline. What you've got is the metaphor which doesn't exist right now, as in no one's really belt. It is us doing what you're doing, which is to find the counts that we want to follow and then bring any podcast related content into an inbox inside true funds to then expose it. That's a much longer play that we're not into yet, but you're doing it, which is very cool. And I think the email outbox metaphors, how active people work. And it sounds pretty much what Noster has as well. You're publishing out content and then you're bringing in content from the noster relays. And I think that's going to be a natural evolution for the way that it goes. As I said, I think you're right. Noster has got the micropayments, which is an extra bit on top, and I don't think there's any conversation I've seen anywhere within the activity pub community about it, you know, Ghost for example, or Flipboard or Threads or Pixel Feed, none of them are talking about it. They're very much in the old metaphor, if I can use that of a payment wall. So pay£1 to access this private area. And that is not, as you and I know, a micropayment that is just a paywall. So I think that is a limitation and I think it's going to be interesting to see how blue sky goes. I don't think that will make much difference. So I guess you've taken the huge leap that I would take right now, which is to prove that you think Nostra is the long term winner of the protocol integration. And look, no one knows. Time will tell. I think one of the things that I would love to find out is what are your thoughts, though, on how we cross the chasm to the mainstream? Because looking at your user base, you'd probably say you've got the geek borrows more than anything else who are comfortable in jumping through the hoops of understanding what a wallet is, finding what an invoice is, how to open an account, get money into the wallet, then make micropayment, and then withdraw that at the other end through an invoice that is very, very geeky. And so I don't expect my wife or anyone else to be doing that yet. So how do we get to that next stage to increase the overall user base?

Oscar Merry: 29:28

Great question. And something I think about a lot. I think that the answer to this is discovery and ultimately people are not going to use your app unless it's ten times better than Apple Podcasts and offers something the Apple Podcast doesn't offer. And I think that discovery is that thing that we can offer. And my view is that nostalgia is the thing that enables that discovery. Another example I love to think about is for many years podcasters have been told and in my view is the right advice. Post your episodes on social media. Talk about your episodes on social media, repurpose part of the episode content on social media so that it generates conversation and people discover you episode and that works. That is how you grow your podcast audience on social media. But that is a painful experience, especially when you're using a platform that you don't have control of the algorithm because you don't know what kind of content is going to exist there. And also you're competing for that user's attention with the clickbait rage that exists on the feeds in apps like Twitter. So as a creator, you're stuck in a space where you're like, I know I need to promote this on social media, but I don't want to. And also it just doesn't feel good. I think what Gnostic can do is it can provide that same discovery which we know works in terms of growing an audience. But shift, I guess the work or the act of generating the discovery from the creator onto that audience. And I think if we can build tools that do that and actually show that it works, then for podcasters and creators it will become a no brainer. So why would I encourage my audience to listen on a podcast that that doesn't generate me free discovery and free audience growth? That's what we want to do with Fountain. I think Napster is the solution to enabling it. And also it's kind of like rising tide lifts all boats with every other app or service that joins in. It just accelerates everything for everybody. So yeah, I think it's all about discovery and I think that trying to build podcast discovery in a single app is incredibly difficult. And we have this opportunity now with open social protocols to rethink how podcast discovery works. So yeah, I think that it's all about discovery.

Sam Sethi: 32:05

Yeah, I remember from many years ago because I'm much older than you, the browser wars, and there was that moment when the web browser took off and I don't know what that moment is going to be for people to understand the wallet metaphor, because I've often said in the past it's the Internet, that's the web, it's a browser, it's called HTTP, that's a URL. And I remember people looking at me thinking, I was talking Swahili. And in many ways we've got that same problem now. Vocabulary. It's a wallet. They're called micropayments that is SAS. That's a boost. Therefore, you can stream this as the Lightning Network. That's how you send money using it. I mean, when you talk about it in that terminology, it does sound geeky and quite awkward, just as the early ways that we use talk about the web and now nobody actually goes, Oh, what's your web URL? They go, What's your address? And it's a throwaway comment. It's like no one says, Oh, on your email is an IMAP or a POP3. You just say, What's your email address? And I think if we can get to what's your wallet address and I'm just going to send you some money, I think that simplicity of language will be much better for people to adopt and all the hidden underlying. It's on the Lightning Network and it's a bold 12 and it's an invoice and it just disappears. You should never have to know any of that logic.

Oscar Merry: 33:36

And I think as well, it's a great analogy going back to the early days of the Internet and content creators back then had a choice. They were like, Do I experiment with this new thing, this new platform called the Internet? And the ones that did would have seen huge, huge benefits for them. It's the same with the legacy social apps like Twitter, The podcasters that were on Twitter early talking about their podcast massively benefited from it. And so you have a choice as a creator, do you experiment with what's new, knowing that there is a risk that it doesn't go anywhere? But I think the potential reward from being early to these new trends is huge because you can find new audience, you can grow with the with the protocol as opposed to trying to enter a space that is so incredibly crowded and where you're competing with the absolute trash clickbait attention headline content that you see on every other centralized social media platform. So I think it's time for us to escape those platforms. I think noster is the solution to all of these problems. And if you're a content creator or podcast, to start experimenting now and believe me is incredible. You send a boost on fountain or you leave a comment on an episode, someone sees that on some other random app and they send you money for it. It's a pretty profound difference in terms of how social media is going to work on the Internet. So yeah, check it out and if you have any questions, happy to talk more about this directly with anyone that's interested.

Sam Sethi: 35:15

Cool. So what address would I send that to? Are you on x or are you on not A How would I find you?

Oscar Merry: 35:22

Yeah. So you can find me on pretty much all the platforms. I'm on Twitter or X monster. You just search for my name on any gnostic line or summary or feel free to just send me an email or fountain.

Sam Sethi: 35:37

Oscar, thanks so much. Congratulations with this launch. Look forward to the next one speeches you make.

Oscar Merry: 35:43

Thank you so much. Say bye.