FWIW I love the app- earning sats just for listening to podcasts I would otherwise be listening to is unreal, and I love being able to boost/tip podcasters for their awesome work.
I agree the app is buggy though, I’ve noticed the “reset” thing before as well, I don’t think it’s a big deal or anything as it doesn’t happen too often.
For me the main issue is the app crashes a lot, or gets to a certain part of an episode after which it won’t play anymore. These are common bugs I’ve encountered but I just keep restarting the app and trying again. Still love it, but looking forward to updates in the future!
I would love the app too if you did indeed "earn sats just for listening" and were "able to boost/tip podcasters". As it stands for me the reset occurs on every listening session and it happens for the duration of the whole session (accrue, reset, accrue, reset, etc). At the end of the day the summary shows 0 sats or something much lower than it should be. So the key reason for loving this app is non-existent and instead you're left with just a buggy app.
I have referred 5 friends and have the 5x multiplier. The first day I used the app I noticed that the sats accumulation seemed to mirror the multiplier pretty well (getting 5 sats per increment of the sats counter during listening). Here's a screenshot of my wallet tab showing the 5x multiplier as well as how much I've earned today (60): https://imgur.com/5neWML9
After that first day however, the app started acting suspicious. For starters, the sat counter at the top would only increment by 3 or 4 (less than the first day after I got the 5x multiplier) and even worse, the sat counter would go up to some value and then reset to 0. It kept doing this over and over to the point that I would have 0 earned sats in a day when I used the app for over 2 hours. Here's a screen capture of this sat counter reset: https://imgur.com/H2cxsGc
And here is a screencap of my wallet (https://imgur.com/SoJLo3A) showing that my "Earned Today" is showing the same 60 sats as it did before I started listening to this one episode which proves the counter reset is not merely a display bug but it's an accounting issue that's not crediting my account correctly.
Whether this is a bug or it's a purposeful accounting trick in the app to not have to do what they claim they do is unknown to me. I've waited for multiple updates to pass by before reporting this since Fountain had originally claimed they were having issues with their "bot detection" but after three updates, it hasn't been fixed. Fountain is luring users in with what at this point is misleading incentives since their app is not doing what they have stated their app will do.
As a side note: Darknet Diaries is an AWESOME podcast show worth listening to!
I reached out to them on twitter when I had these issues. They told me that their policies have been updated. You now earn more if you contribute and interact with the community by making clips and boosting podcasts. If you don't participate, you earn less. You will only earn sats from promotional ads at the maximum rate while others will be drastically reduced or down to nothing. It's a bit bait and switchy.
Bait and switch indeed if that's the case. Also, you're talking about reduced earning. Seems like it's not reduced, it's eliminated if the counter resets and you earn 0 😆
Whether it's a bug or it's purposeful, I feel cheated hence the title 😉
I put up with their suboptimal UI compared to Spotify's because of their promise to provide sats. They are not holding up their part of the bargain and I've held up mine.
I can only apologise for the issues people are experiencing and the lack of communication around this.
Here are some details that hopefully will help people understand where we're at with the various issues and what's going on:
Audio Cutting Out When Streaming
For the past couple of months we have been working on a complete re-write of our audio library that will fix this issue. We're currently testing it in beta and it's almost ready - a few weeks away. In the meantime just download episodes before playing and you'll have no issues. If you'd like to help us test out the new version please join our beta group on telegram - https://t.me/+ZMnGthLREYQ3N2Rk
Not Earning / Earnings Counter Resetting
There are a few things going on here:
You won't always earn on Fountain. You'll only earn if you are contributing to the platform by creating clips, liking clips and comments, and supporting podcasts. We have done a very bad job at explaining this especially in the app UI - so I apologise for that. Again we are working hard on some UI updates that will give an indication of how much you are contributing which will directly relate to your earnings.
Bots / gaming prevention. We need to protect against bots / people gaming the earnings system. The better job we do at this the more you will earn on Fountain as a legitimate user. Currently we are seeing a number of false positives on some of our systems which are causing legitimate users to not earn. Please email me oscar@fountain.fm if you are not earning and I can investigate.
Payment Failures when Boosting / Streaming to Podcasts
Many podcasters are self-hosting their own lightning nodes - so when you boost or stream the payment can fail if:
the node is offline
the node lacks inbound liquidity
Even some of the biggest bitcoin podcasts regularly see their nodes go down or run out of inbound liquidity - and this is by far the majority of the reasons for failed payments. If you see a failed payment when supporting a podcast. Please reach out to the podcaster. Again we are working on updating the UI to give more granular info on why the payment failed.
HOW YOU CAN SUPPORT FOUNTAIN
If you like what we're trying to do with Fountain - please subscribe to our premium subscription - only 2% of our users currently are and this really helps.
We are a small team and working hard to address everything - please be patient.
Happy to answer any additional questions in this thread.
My fountain sats have never worked. It always says "earning xx sats" while listening but I have never got them in my wallet. Probably a few dollars by now missed.
I think the thing is just incredibly buggy. Or there is some logic behind many things that are just unclear to users.
After a certain number of updates to the app you have to wonder if it really is a bug or not. I cannot foresee any logic behind the scenes that credits you with 0 sats for 2 hours of listening. Even worse if you have a 5x multiplier. Although I guess 5x0=0 so the multiplier wouldn't matter at that point 😆
Audio Cutting Out When Streaming
Not Earning / Earnings Counter Resetting
Payment Failures when Boosting / Streaming to Podcasts