[Feature] No Energy for Move-to-Earn? Listen-to-Earn Has Got Your Back!

Who does not know Move-to-Earn (M2E) or Play-to-Earn (P2E) games? The former exercises the body while the latter challenges the mind, but we all need a break once in a while ─ a time to relax, kickback and maybe even do nothing while earning concurrently. There is much chatter about M2E or P2E but Listen-to-Earn (L2E) always seem to take a back seat.

L2E platforms reward users with crypto when they listen to music or write reviews. Platforms based on crypto are more complex and vast in function compared to the traditional L2E platforms i.e. websites. It may not be purely listening to a recorded track; it can be the social media or streaming aspect of L2E, and so on. Gone are the days where you have to pay an exorbitant sum to listen to your favourite tunes; like Spotify. With L2E, you get paid to listen instead.

Recently, I took the liberty to check out one of the L2E platforms, ‘Current Rewards: Offline Music’ which is available on the App Store for Apple users while on Google Play, it is known as Mode Mobile/Mode Earn. It starts off relatively simple as with most platforms that require you to sign up with your email address or via your social media account (Facebook in this case although there was some error with this option). After you confirm your email address, you can select the style of music you want featured.

For every track I finished listening to, I earned some points which can be eventually redeemed for PayPal gift cards, air pods and the likes. Other “missions” you can easily complete are like filling in your profile with your birthday and such. This L2E app does not have a subscription fee and you get to play unlimited music via 100,000 stations from around the world. You can even record your favourite mixes to listen offline.

Plus side is that I no longer have to spend on a subscription and no longer need to endure advertisements in the midst of grooving to the music. According to millenialmoney.com, it “lets you earn up to $600 in cash or gift cards just for listening to music. You’ll listen to the curated radio stations of your choice… and earn points along the way.” This music app certainly is a great way to earn passive income but what about earning crypto?

Here is another L2E music app I chanced upon recently, ‘Fountain’, a podcast-streaming app where users can earn Bitcoin (BTC) while listening to their favourite content. Users can be compensated for listening to advertisements and sharing audio clips.

‘Fountain’ launched its L2E programme or podcasting revenue model last June which lets listeners and podcasters be rewarded for the value they provide ─ users will earn money for their first hour of daily podcast listening. What do they earn actually? Users earn small amounts of BTC or satoshis (sats). The earning rate changes daily and is entirely random. On top of earning sats while you listen to podcasts, you can earn by creating clips too ─ find clips and share it with others so when they like your clips, you get paid. Their website details how you actually earn.

I gave it a shot since you can do something whilst listening to the podcast ─ nearly 22 minutes in and I have earned 16 sats so far (as seen at the top of the screenshot).

After a couple of podcasts, I had 60 sats (I was not able to earn more even if I continued on), and at the time of writing, it was 0.0000006 BTC or USD0.014. How do I “cash out” in a sense?

Before we dive into that, earning sats on ‘Fountain’ is fairly new ─ launched in October 2019, mobile payment firm ZEBEDEE, a BTC-centric gaming firm that releases games through its mobile app, announced on Tuesday its partnership with ‘Fountain’, which allows its listeners and podcasters the ability to earn BTC using the app.

ZEBEDEE’s chief strategy officer Ben Cousens said in a statement, “With this partnership, we’re supporting a new type of business model and economic activity, not just for the payments space, but in general… When money moves as seamlessly as information, or in this case, audio, it just opens up a world of possibilities, and we’re happy to be pioneering what that means in the podcasting space alongside Fountain.”

So when you are ready to cash out, simply connect to the ZEBEDEE app. Fountain’s founder and CEO Oscar Merry expressed in a press release that “a few years from now, we’ll look back at when we paid subscriptions for content platform that aren’t related to how much we actually use those platforms and laugh at how basic and inefficient it was.”

He is probably right in a sense. There are also other platforms using the L2E model, like BitRadio, Renaissance, Audius, etc. The earning flow may be slow but you can be doing a myriad of other things whilst listening to music or a podcast; you do not need to focus exclusively on it if you do not have the time.