Mercury Podcast Network: plus, too many ads, and what YouTube is doing about AI slop

Sam and James talk with Liam Heffernan of Mercury; and cover all the latest news of the week.

• Sony’s AI character podcasts and voice licensing risks
• Video discovery leading to audio loyalty and why it matters
• IAB’s AI scraping proposal and good bot vs bad bot
• Apple’s downloads for transcripts and chapters and host costs
• Voice Regen vs Auphonic and Buzzsprout Magic Mastering
• YouTube’s AI slop problem and weak enforcement
• Apple buying QAI and the future of audio understanding
• Livewire stats filtered for AI and broken trendlines
• Spotify “down,” browser “up” and bots skewing analytics
• OP3, unified dashboards, and realistic measurement
• 34% ad loads training skip behavior and pricing for fewer ads
• Subscriptions, ad-free tiers, and where to build fandom
• Japan’s giant festival, Radio France’s indie curation, Disney and Hulu podcasts
• Boost Box, LN address, and Runway for value-for-value

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