Monetization

Funding tag: The easiest way to help podcasters get paid

Matt Medeiros

Matt Medeiros

— 3 min read
Funding tag: The easiest way to help podcasters get paid

There’s a very simple piece of “podcast technology” from the Podcasting 2.0 movement called the “Funding tag” that helps podcasters get paid.

If you’ve spent anytime unpacking the open source movement, you might have discovered its more advertised older brother feature streaming Satoshi’s — Bitcoin’s smallest denomination. It’s the real techie, but cutting edge, means for listeners to pay and support creators.

While V4V is the star of the Podcasting 2.0 show, it doesn’t define the entire stack of open features that podcast hosts and app makers can choose from.

The good news is, you don’t need to adopt all of Podcasting 2.0 to be a supporter. The funding tag should be the most agreeable tag to support after chapters & transcripts. It simply gives the podcaster a link which directs their listeners to a support page.

No bitcoin, not magic tech, and it needs more support from everyone across the podcasting space.

The Funding Tag

A tag is just a bit of code that defines a place in your podcast’s RSS feed.

Much like there are tags that point to your podcast website or your author name, the funding tag does this without any real tech overhead or complexity.

You can place a link into the funding tag which points to your Patreon, PayPal, Stripe checkout, or whatever URL you deem as support.

In order for this tag to be useful, a few things need to happen:

  1. Your podcast hosting company needs to support it.
  2. Podcast apps need to support it.
  3. Everyone needs to encourage it.

The welcoming part of an open ecosystem that makes up podcasting is that it spurs innovation like the tag itself.

The more challenging piece is getting people to pay attention to it. Most of this space has followed lockstep with Apple for the last 20 years, now with Spotify and YouTube trying to shoulder their way to the head of the line.

Apple, Spotify, and YouTube have massive distribution and awareness factors. I don’t blame the app creators and web hosts for following them closely — they have our listeners attention.

Don't forget that open innovation and communication is what got us here.

The challenges of an open source ecosystem

A few stars need to align to increase awareness and adoption of the funding tag.

Step 1: Check with your podcast hosting company if they support the funding tag in your podcast’s dashboard. If they don’t, ask them to support it, and point them to this article. I’ll even talk to them for you!

Step 2: Your favorite podcast listening app also needs to support the funding tag, while putting it front and center for the user to see. The app that does it the best will be the one that more podcasters will likely recommend to their audience.

Can you spot the funding tag icons in these 3 iOS podcast apps?

We find ourselves in a real chicken or egg scenario — while the weight of the advertising world bears down on us.

If no one is asking for it, podcast hosts won’t support it. If podcast hosts aren’t supporting it, podcast apps won’t build it in. If podcasters are defaulting to ads or more commercialized schemes, the whole podcast space ignores it.

Open choice to use the funding tag is powered by your grassroots movements.

There’s nothing hard about this

I can’t reinforce this enough, especially for the old guard of podcasting and those that support more commercialized schemes: Using the funding tag is a vote for podcasters to say, “You can support the show by clicking the support button.”

A link that appears in their listener’s favorite podcast app. It takes them to a place to swipe a credit card, shoot over a Venmo, buy them a coffee, or become a patron. Establishing the highways that enable more podcaster support is not difficult. It’s a choice that podcast hosting companies and app developers will make.

In an open ecosystem, users can vote with their dollars and attention by using the companies that support the features they want.

Here’s a list of podcast hosting companies that support the Funding tag:

Here’s a list of podcast listening apps that support the Funding tag:

iOS

Android

Web or PWA

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