Hello and welcome back to Pod News Weekly Review.
I'm joined by a friend of the show. His name
is Liam Hefner. He is the CEO and founder of
the Mercury Network. Now, the Mercury Network
is one years old. Congratulations. Liam, hello.
How are you? Hello, Sam. Good to be back. Yeah,
I'm good. Busy, tired. How are you? Busy, tired.
Good. Yes. Welcome to the world of entrepreneurship.
With your one -year anniversary announcement,
you've also made a couple of other announcements.
But before we get into those announcements, for
those who don't know, just take me back a step.
Who or what is the Mercury Network? Well, we
launched Mercury in February last year. We launched,
I guess, as a typical network, but our plan was
always to... do a bit more than that, be more
than that and be more of an advocate for the
whole indie podcasting space, which is hopefully
what we're going to talk a bit more about. But
in the last year, we started with a couple of
really great indie shows. We've now got a roster
of about 20 and we're kind of going onwards and
upwards. I think we're one of the fastest growing
independent podcast networks in the world. And
last year has just been an absolute blur. It's
been a lot of sleepless nights growing a network,
but we're doing some great things. So yeah, next
steps. Give me some examples from some of those
network podcasts you've got. I'll give you a
couple of examples. The first is our first original
that we launched last year, which was Spooky
Storytime, so a weekly horror anthology. It's
one that we worked very closely on to bring to
life, and we completely own that. That's gone
from strength to strength. We've started growing
a nice little audience there, and we really wanted
to sort of tap into a sort of female -hosted,
female -targeted horror podcast, which... we
noticed didn't really exist and we thought let's
do it. I think one of the things that Mercury
can do really well is it can give a bit more
creative autonomy to independent creators in
ways that bigger networks maybe can't because
they have certain commercial pressures to deliver
straight away. We can create shows that have
a slightly slower burn to them and that's what
we're seeing with Spooky Storytime and because
of that we've been able to deliver something
that fits in a real niche and a gap in that space.
And we're starting to see the results from that.
Another example of a show that we've worked with
is Passmaster. They're a phenomenal show with
a couple of really, really talented guys, Ryan
and Tan, who put a lot of blood, sweat and tears
into their show. And they just need that help
with the growth, with the brand building and
some of those elements that they just don't have
the capacity for. And, you know, again, it's
one of those that just requires a hell of a lot
of just... banging on doors and sending emails
and it's in theory easy enough but it comes down
to time it comes down to money it comes down
to resource and all of these things are just
stuff that independent creators don't have and
that's where we're stepping in to help now let's
start to talk about a couple of things you're
announcing one is the hall of fame now why do
we need another hall of fame well yeah you're
right i mean there's a lot of hall of fames out
there but One of the real things that we wanted
to do at Mercury was not just to represent and
support podcasters, but to celebrate those who
have already contributed enormous value to the
independent space specifically. So rather than
being just a generic hall of fame that tries
to make some nice kind of high profile friends
across the industry, we are very targeted hall
of fame. We call it a hall of heroes that celebrate
those who have really championed independent
podcasts. We think that by doing that, what we're
able to do is really bring together that community
of people who have changed the game in the independent
world and shine a spotlight on them, really.
Emma Turner, one of our first inductees this
year, she's frustratingly modest considering
everything that she does for our industry. So
being able to actually hold her up and say, look,
she's awesome and this is what she's doing for
you, it's great to be able to do that. And have
you added any others into the Hall of Heroes?
Yes. So Arionis and Blatt is our other inductee.
And we do have a third this year to round off
our 2026 cohort. It is currently under wraps.
It's a surprise. They don't know yet. Very few
people know who this person is, but we're working
out a way to surprise them at some point in the
future. Oh, you're so kind. Just bring it around
anytime you like. Anytime you like. Cool. Now,
one of the other things you've done is created
a product called Orbit. Tell me more. Yes. So
I always find it hard to actually tell people
what Orbit is because it's actually a very simple
concept. It's taking the infrastructure that
we've now built at Mercury and it's offering
that to all podcasters. Now, the challenge with
that as a typical network is that you can't just
invite. everyone and anyone onto the network
because you have to be able to deliver a certain
amount of support with that. What we can do is
say, look, we have this network. We have free
hosting to offer you. We have the ad marketplace
to plug you into. And we have, by building up
that community, we have a lot of cross promotional
power with that. We can also, you know, use some
of our own sort of promotional expertise and
network level resources. And for a small monthly
fee, less than you're going to be paying currently
for any hosting plan, you get to use that. So
what we're doing is giving all podcasters this
immediate day one cost saving with the potential
to then also earn money from advertising in ways
they just can't do on their own. And this is
all part of what we wanted to do at Mercury,
which was to find ways to actually empower all
independent podcasters with the same resources
and tools that currently and up to now have been.
hidden behind a paywall first of all congratulations
it'll be interesting to see the adoption will
you cherry pick some of those from orbit and
bring them onto the mercury network well there's
definitely a long -term plan there our part i
think at the moment doing that scouting and going
out there trying to find shows that are really
good fits for mercury is a heavy lift on on my
part but there's also an awful lot of discretion
and sort of qualitative judgment there there
has to be always and that will never change but
the more that we build orbit up and the more
people we have there the more just insights we
have we can see that data we can see what shows
are doing well what shows aren't doing well we
get that first hand data set that we can use
to do the sort of trend analysis and really understand
what is happening in our industry, the shows
that are showing the most potential and where
we can step in and offer the support. So, you
know, it's going to make our decision -making
a lot smarter so that we know that the shows
that we then promote up to Mercury are shows
that we genuinely know we can help to succeed.
Right. And if I wanted to sign up to Orbit, where
would I go today? You can go to mercurypodcast
.com forward slash Orbit. And all the information
is there. I will caveat that I built this website
without any knowledge of actually how to build
a website or something like this. So I'm open
to feedback. Please be as harsh as you need to
be. No, no, no. Be gentle. He's working hard.
He's working hard. Liam Hefnan, thank you so
much. It's always good to see you. Will we see
you at the London Podcast show this year? Of
course you will. Yeah, I'll be around. So if
anyone else is there listening to this, do drop
me a message and let's catch up. lovely then
take care mate see you soon yes sir