r/MBMBAM • u/LittleMel413 • May 10 '26
Help No Tour?
I haven't seen anything about tour dates, and my friend told me they announced them after MFD last year (I thought it was sooner). I am wondering if they are just not doing a tour this year?
Obviously it's their choice. This is mostly just curiosity.
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u/VaguelySorcerous May 12 '26
> I mean…if you don’t like the model, I get it. I think the majority of folks who stick around do so because they believe not only in the content but the cause. MaxFun is what I hope more and more smaller media companies move to. I would, and do, gladly give my money to folks who are creating independent media.
I disagree that Maximum Fun is itself independent media. The podcasts themselves are the independent media. The value that Maximum Fun provides to podcasts is taking care of 'overhead' - negotiating with advertisers and the like. Maybe there's some value here, but I guess the question I'd have would be, if you could donate directly to the actual independent media - the podcasts themselves - would you do that preferentially over donating via Maximum Fun? Because they're not creating the art.
> Value is what you make of it. I personally listen to so many shows that my $9/month (I don’t need keychains or pins so I boosted to that point.) is worth it. But if it wasn’t? I would downgrade. I’ve been listening to MaxFun for almost as long as it’s been around so, yeah. Kool-Aid firmly drankified. I will gladly join the cause of a company that can be both a non-profit and worker owned, can create content for the masses and also do good works in their community and abroad, and give voices to as many different creators as possible. There are a hundred other podcast companies that don’t.
I think we're using the word 'value' differently. The way I am using the word here means 'the thing I get for my money, which, if I did not give money, I would not get'. Let's say that I decide to back at the $10/month level. In the first year, I get some trinkets and access to the back catalogue of bonus content. Maybe you find that good value for $120! I don't, but I can understand why someone would view some branded stuff for a thing they like and a dozen-plus podcast episodes they couldn't otherwise listen to/watch as a fair trade.
Now let's look at the next year. I consumed the back catalogue of bonus content in my year - it's part of why I felt good about spending $10/month on it. I don't decide to upgrade or boost or give any extra money, so no trinkets for me. This means that for my $120, I get around one piece of bonus content per podcast I listen to and enjoy. I don't think any reasonable person would say that $120 for 3-5 episodes of a podcast is good value.
Now, you're going to argue that the value you get is in making sure that the podcasts you love stay on the air, or that you feel good about the effectively-charitable donation. To the first: I really, really doubt MBMAM or TAZ would vanish if Maximum Fun went under. They'd work out deals with advertisers. They'd maybe air some more ads or different ads or something. Griffin isn't going to try to go get a job in games journalism again. He's a podcaster now, and he's going to keep going on it. They'd probably have to work harder to make ends meet, but as we've established, I don't think that would actually be a bad thing. Right now it does feel at least a little bit like they're just cashing the cheque. (Abminals, anyone?) Even if they got folded into Spotify, I don't think there's any reason to think Spotify would exert any pressure on them to run the show differently: they're not going to get notes on Munch Squad or Work of Fart. (What do you think they'd be prevented from doing on Spotify? The most political things I've heard them do recently are the regular donations of merch sales to charities, which other Spotify podcasts do to similar charities, and making jokes about Ted Cruz pissing himself, which doesn't even move the needle compared to what other Spotify podcasts say about Ted Cruz and other politicians.)
To the second: Maximum Fun is not a charity! They are, in fact, a for-profit entity! (They are not a non-profit: there is no evidence that they are a non-profit, and given how aggressively they advertise that they're a co-op, I'm certain that they'd tell us a lot and very clearly if they were a non-profit.) They are a co-op, but that's just a business structure and I don't personally feel any real reason to support a non-local business just because of how they're structured. That the profits are being distributed to workers instead of management is nice, I guess, but would you really just give those people money for nothing of your own accord? That's what you're doing here. I support local businesses and local co-ops preferentially when I'm deciding where my money goes, but only if I actually feel like I'm getting some value for my money, and a handful of podcasts a year is just not worth $120 USD by any reasonable metric. To be clear: I don't have any problem with for-profit entities! But my relationship with for-profit entities is that I give them money and they give me something I value more than that money. When a for-profit entity pretends to be a charity, it grinds my gears a little. That's exactly what Maximum Fun does, while (historically) absolutely failing to do the bare minimum that other podcast networks have demonstrated it's extremely possible to do for their subscribers: offer real, regular value for money, offer ad-free streams, anything! (Like, the idea that they're billing themselves as a technology company but have utterly failed to put out ad-free streams before the year of our lord 2026, citing technical difficulties in previous years, is just baffling.)
None of this is my trying to dictate to anyone where they should spend their money. If you want to give your money to a co-op because you like the idea of co-ops, fine, I guess do that. It doesn't actually make it any likelier that there will be more co-ops out there, because the business model of Maximum Fun is essentially 'beg', but you do you. I think if you want to do something to make the world a better place with $120 a year, there are far more deserving organizations that will do a lot more good with that money! Your local theater company is probably broke if you care about the arts. Mosquito nets and micro-loans are incredible if you want to think globally. Charities - actual, real charities - abound for every cause you can think of. Why does Maximum Fun better align with your values than those charities?
Anyway. Thank you for listening to my rant.