I release electronic music as Ambriel, so the question of how listeners support artists is personal. I want people to find the music, spend time with it, and have a straightforward way to give something back. That relationship matters to me more than another dashboard of plays.
Wavlake and Fountain caught my attention because they make payment part of listening. They also led me to a wider question: what else exists for music and podcasts, and where does Monero fit if someone wants to support a creator privately?
Here is what I found in the platforms’ published documentation as of September 2026.
Let the listener choose the value
The idea behind value for value is simple: someone makes something available, and the audience chooses what to give back. In Bitcoin-enabled audio apps, that can mean a one-time payment or small payments sent while listening. These use Lightning, and the amounts are usually expressed in sats, the small units of bitcoin. Fountain’s value-for-value explanation is a useful introduction.
What interests me is the room this leaves for a small audience. Someone can care deeply about a track without needing a million other people to validate it first. Voluntary support gives that listener a way to act on the feeling. It does not guarantee an income, but it makes the exchange more deliberate.
Wavlake: start with the music
You can find my Ambriel music on Wavlake.
Wavlake connects music publishing with Bitcoin payments. Its Open Music explanation describes how other applications can present its catalog and let listeners send Lightning payments to artists. It also describes payments following a song when a compatible music podcast features it.
That last part is especially interesting to me. A DJ or podcaster can introduce someone to a track, and the payment system can recognize the musician being played. Discovery and support can happen in the same moment.
This is not hypothetical for me. Fifteen episodes across four shows have played Ambriel tracks, and I found almost all of them by reading the shows' own feeds rather than by being told.
Radio Stereon, an all-music V4V show, accounts for seven: "Acid Angels" on Ep 15, "Passage" on Ep 26, "Pump it Up (100k Remix)" on Ep 31 and Ep 37, "SaturnMoon" on Ep 39, "Heaven Pool" on Ep 42, and "The Heart Dies A Slow Death" on Ep 44. Mutton, Mead & Music has played five: "Thrones" on its 12th Edition, "Dawn" on the 19th, "Midnight" on the 45th, "Pump it Up (100k Remix)" on the 68th, and "Crime Scene Cleaner" on the 154th. Phantom Power Music Hour has played two more — "Pressure" on its NYE Techno Party and "Midnight" on its EDM v2.0 show. And This Week in Bitcoin 105 closed out with "Heaven Pool".
That is the part worth dwelling on. Every one of those plays is chaptered to a Wavlake album, which means the payment splits and the listener's "who is this?" both resolve to the same place without anyone filing a report. I keep the running list on my own site.
For an artist, Wavlake is a music-focused place to investigate first. The appeal is being able to put a release into a listening environment where supporting its creator is already part of the culture.
Fountain: podcasts and music together
Fountain brings music and podcasts into the same listening app. Its support guide describes streaming payments and one-time payments with messages. At the time of writing, that guide lists a 4% fee on streams and zaps, reduced to 1% for Premium subscribers. Direct support still has service costs.
Fountain also offers publishing tools. Its Fountain for Artists announcement describes music distribution using RSS, payments from listeners, and automatic revenue splits for collaborators. That makes it relevant on both sides: listening to other people’s work and publishing your own.
I like the possibility of an audience moving between a conversation, a music show, and an artist’s releases without treating each as an entirely separate world.
Other ways to listen and send Bitcoin
There are more choices than those two services. Some are listening apps rather than places to upload an album.
Podverse is a free and open-source podcast manager available across mobile and web. It lists both boostagrams—payments with messages—and streaming value-for-value support. Its feature comparison marks streaming payments as a mobile-app feature, so the web and mobile experiences should not be assumed identical. It is worth a look if you want an open-source podcast player that includes ways to support participating shows.
Castamatic is another option for Apple listeners. It supports Lightning payments to podcasters while listening and lists connections through Nostr Wallet Connect or a Lightning address. This is a podcast player with payment features, rather than an artist publishing service.
The distinction helps when choosing: an artist needs somewhere to publish, while a listener needs an app that understands the feed and its payment information. Those can be different services. Having more than one player is part of the appeal of an open audio ecosystem.
Where Monero fits
I also want a way for someone to support creative work without making their payment history public. For this search, the clearest Monero options were donation and payment tools. I did not verify a Monero-native equivalent of Wavlake or Fountain with integrated payments that follow playback.
Kuno is the closest fit for a creator who wants a ready-made page. It is a Monero fundraising platform, and its own examples include a band accepting donations from listeners. Kuno describes itself as non-custodial: it provides the campaign page while donations go to the recipient’s wallet.
For a musician or podcaster, I can imagine using that to fund a release, a run of episodes, or recording costs. The audio would still live elsewhere. A Kuno link could sit beside it, giving listeners a separate way to contribute with XMR.
A personal site can take an even simpler approach: publish a Monero receiving address and QR code alongside the work. The Monero project’s guide to accepting payments explains receiving funds and organizing accounts and subaddresses. That supports a direct wallet-to-wallet contribution without needing a music platform to add Monero first.
For a more customized setup, MoneroPay provides a backend for receiving payments and tracking their status. A creator could build an XMR checkout or donation flow around it, but it requires development and hosting. It does not provide an audience, audio hosting, or a finished music storefront.
Monero protects transaction details by default, but that does not make a public comment or an email address private. The surrounding donation page still matters. I would want the support experience to ask for as little information as possible.
Keep a home for the work
For Ambriel, I want these services to be ways people can reach the music while my own site remains its home. Wavlake and Fountain offer places to explore Bitcoin-enabled listening. Podverse and Castamatic give podcast listeners more choices. Monero adds a separate possibility: a direct contribution or a fundraiser beside the work.
This connects with why I wanted an independent website in the first place. I want to keep making things, sharing them, and building relationships that can survive a change of platform. A listener choosing to send something back is a small, concrete part of that.