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Fountain 0.7 AMA / Feedback - New Library, Transcripts, Performance & Live
5005 sats \ 28 comments \ @MerryOscar 29 May 2023 bitcoin
We've just released Fountain 0.7 with a bunch of new features and improvements to the core listening experience:
I wanted to post an AMA to go over the new features and ask for feedback, suggestions, and feature requests.
🎧 New Podcast Library
We've completely overhauled the podcasts library architecture making it even easier to manage your queue, episodes, shows, clips, and playlists. We also now support show-level settings so you can configure things like automatic downloads, auto-queue, playback speed, and sats-per-minute on a show level basis.
📄 Transcripts
We now support the <podcast:transcript> tag allowing you to read, search, and follow along with the transcript if the podcaster has included it in their RSS feed.
Transcripts are great because you can quickly search the episode for the part of the conversation you want to listen to and play right from that block.
Even better - if the podcaster or hosting company hasn't adopted the tag - you can purchase the transcript right in the app for small amount of sats (1000-3000) depending on the episode length. Fountain Premium users get unlimited transcripts for free.
The cool thing about this is that if one Fountain user purchases / requests the transcript - it becomes available for all other Fountain users. Having this kind of on-demand purchase feature at such a low price point (~$0.2) is only possible thanks to Lightning.
💪 Performance Upgrades
The new library architecture also drastically improves the loading, caching, and syncing times for podcasts so navigating around the app should feel much faster and smoother.
We've improved the syncing time for new episodes too as we know this was one of the biggest issues people had compared to other podcasting apps.
🔴 Live (beta)
We've added support for the <podcast:liveItem> allowing you to listen to podcasts live as they're being recorded. Of course Boosting, Streaming Sats, and Comments all work in the same way as regular episodes.
Whilst the live feature is very much still in beta - we're really excited about more shows and hosting companies going live.
Please let me know below what you think could be improved with the Fountain app experience - I'd love to hear your feedback!
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105 sats \ 1 reply \ @SantaNotSanta 29 May 2023
nice one on the release! feels so much quicker!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
🙏
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13 sats \ 6 replies \ @kr 29 May 2023
love the ability to pay sats for a transcript within the app, also excited about the faster upload speed.
it seems like AI has unlocked a whole new set of transcription/voiceover experiences for summarizing and creating content in the last few months… are there any AI-related features you are thinking about building?
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299 sats \ 5 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 29 May 2023
Whilst there is a lot of hype around ChatGPT and other AI chat interfaces - the progress over the last year is also incredibly beneficial for more 'hidden' AI based features like the transcripts in Fountain.
6 months ago - producing transcripts in Fountain was:
  • 2x more expensive
  • 8x slower
  • much less accurate
this trend is only accelerating and cheap AI based features will be easier to offer
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @FiRHos6 29 May 2023
What ASR engine / service do you use?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
We use Deepgram - https://deepgram.com
We'll be releasing a blog post today on how transcripts on Fountain work in detail - will share when it's out!
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
https://fountainpodcasts.substack.com/p/what-are-podcasting-2-0-transcripts
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @kr 29 May 2023
awesome, what do you think about allowing users to generate podcasts directly in the app by inputting a blog post or written document?
is AI good enough today to generate realistic, expressive voices for long-form content that sound better than Siri or Alexa?
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183 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 29 May 2023
Yes this is definitely possible - the benefit of the audio medium is that you can listen in your dead time - commuting, chores, etc and this benefit could apply to audio sourced from anywhere
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70 sats \ 1 reply \ @m00ninite 29 May 2023
How much adoption of Podcasting 2.0 are you seeing? Are things accelerating, going up at a steady pace, or otherwise?
Hoping to see this catch on. I think we've "made it" when we start seeing more non-bitcoin podcasts
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
Adoption is still slow - but we have to take responsibility on that partly because if we're honest Fountain has not yet fully delivered from a user experience perspective. We hope this update is a big stride in the right direction in terms of giving users an incredible listening experience as well as the newer Podcasting 2.0 features.
One thing we are seeing is the activity feed on Fountain is incredibly helpful for Podcasters as a discovery tool. If someone sends a large boost on Fountain many people will see it and because you can save the episode to your library in one tap it leads to many people listening to episodes they might not have. This benefit has nothing to do with bitcoin and mainstream podcasters understand it - we just need to double down on making it easier to get started.
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70 sats \ 1 reply \ @nout 29 May 2023
How do you decide when to prioritize infrastructure versus when to prioritize user facing experience?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
It's a difficult balance because podcasting apps are quite developed at this point and there's a long list of features that users expect - but building these out doesn't necessarily help adoption of the newer features like Boosts.
Ultimately we should always prioritise user experience - but sometimes that does require a lot of infrastructure work for example the new library architecture also enables us to serve live streams.
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40 sats \ 3 replies \ @KwesiAngel 29 May 2023
for almost 3 months now i have not been able to earn sats on fountain podcast app. Can someone help out on how to get my account earning sats again?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 29 May 2023
What's your Fountain username?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KwesiAngel 7 Jun 2023
I have not gotten any fitback from you after you asked for my username. @MerryOscar. The username is kwesiangel
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @KwesiAngel 29 May 2023
@kwesiangel
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30 sats \ 1 reply \ @fixthemoneyfixtheworld 29 May 2023
I have tried the app on my phone and find it really awesome but after 2-3 days of usage, the app stop earning sats while listening to new podcast. I tried to update it and listening to different podcasts without success. Any ideas what could be causing this issue?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
can you share your username and I can investigate?
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @not2crypto9 29 May 2023
Yesterday I used the app and it was impossible to
  1. Open the podcast that I want
  2. Earn SATs when I am finally able to put one of the podcasts
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 29 May 2023
Can you share your Fountain username please and I'll investigate?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitcoinfreedom 29 May 2023
The new release Looks nice but l am no longer earn SATs!!
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @beorange 29 May 2023
Nice, didn't know the app. I will give it a try one of these days.
One question, based on some comments here it seems an account/username is required, why? Can't we use it with LNURL, just like we do here on staker news?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 30 May 2023
We do have this on our roadmap but tbh we're more focussed on making it easier for people with no experience of bitcoin / lightning to get started and the email based login is so familiar.
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @premitive1 29 May 2023
When will that LIVE button work for my friends? While broadcasting Saturday Night LIT on Saturday, one of our audience members couldn't pull the live stream up through their app. Does it work for some people but not others?
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13 sats \ 2 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 29 May 2023
It should work if you have 0.7 installed and you follow a show that goes live.
*Edit - just saw your edit with the show name - 0.7 went live on Android Saturday evening so it may be that they didn't have the latest version installed.
When are you next going live?
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @premitive1 29 May 2023
how does one install 0.7? I can test it next Saturday. My show is called Saturday Night LIT, and we go live from about 9pm-10. Fountain is currently the most popular v4v podcasting app, it will be exciting when more of the audience can listen live.
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13 sats \ 0 replies \ @MerryOscar OP 29 May 2023
0.7 is live on iOS and Android so you should be able to update from the app stores. I'll also make sure to tune in next Saturday!
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