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-valueStart podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.comSend James & Sam a messageSupport the showConnect With Us: Email: weekly@podnews.net Fediverse: @james@bne.social and @samsethi@podcastindex.social Support us: www.buzzsprout.com/1538779/support Get Podnews: podnews.net