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The Fireside audio app, funded and co-founded by Mark Cuban, has yet to launch publicly, but it is already asking for money from the limited creators of its platform. In an email sent to users late last night and viewed by The edge, co-founder and CEO Falon Fatemi says she and the team are accepting investments until August from anyone interested.
“If you believe in our vision, this is your chance to be a part of it,” she wrote. “Put your money where your mouth is 🙂 (We did it.)”
The email says more details are to come and does not disclose the terms of the deal, how the investments work, the app valuation, or how much the team hopes to raise. But the email also makes a few other announcements about the future of the app and its vision.
Next week at the Podcast Movement conference, Fatemi said she and Cuba will take the stage to announce a partnership with podcast hosting service Libsyn. Like The edge reported in March, Fireside hosts live audio chats in the same way as Clubhouse and allows users to record those conversations. The team had told the creators that they planned to allow them to distribute their files as RSS-based podcasts, and the Libsyn partnership appears to be the solution to achieving that goal. Fatemi says users will eventually be able to distribute their shows as a podcast with “one tap.”
Additionally, she says the team has struck a deal with audio hardware company Rode to offer users discounts on various equipment. Again, no details were provided.
A spokesperson for Fireside declined to comment. We have also contacted Libsyn and Rode and will update if we have a response.
Meanwhile, the Fireside app launched on iOS last week in a closed beta. Users who download the app can sign up with their phone number and email to try to get off the waitlist. Fatemi writes in her email that the app doesn’t look like Clubhouse, Facebook Live Audio Rooms, or Twitter Spaces at all.
“As many of you know, early media speculation wrongly categorized us as social audio – as many of you have said, we are creating a whole new category,” she writes. What exactly is this new category, I don’t know. You can see a trailer for the app below, which focuses on digital creators who own their work.
Yet despite Fireside’s ownership goals, the podcasting newsletter Podnews reported last week that some of the terms in the app stood out as not friendly to creators. In particular, Fireside and related parties may use the “recordings, including your name and image, for commercial and non-commercial purposes (including the creation of NFT), including to use, reproduce, distribute and license to third parties in accordance with the Terms of Service, in any medium, current or future, without further compensation or authorization.
The terms also appear to give Fireside ultimate ownership of the recordings that occur in the app, and an arbitration clause is included as well. Some of these details may be standard, but again they stand out due to Fatemi’s stated interest in freeing the creators from binding property agreements.
It’s unclear when Fireside will launch publicly, probably the detail everyone wants to hear.
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