Hi, James. Ben, how are you? I'm good. Welcome back to Spotify. Welcome back to Spotify to you, too. I have a sense this might be a podcast about podcasts. Well, we already did a podcast about podcast. We're going to need a new name. But it was funny. I started open my article this week. And I'm like, look, I'm going to be honest, I'm not giving you a fancy introduction.

This is a straight up follow-up article that I feel compelled to write because, one, I wrote about Apple's subscriptions the previous week.

But two, I wrote a big article blasting Spotify a year ago for basically, you know, taking advantage of the open

internet of podcasting and then sort of like shutting down the possibilities of that open internet.

And if they changed course, then I felt like it was, it behooved to me to acknowledge that and

talk about that. So that's what what i did and that's what we're

going to do it sounds like a plan um it's interesting they certainly wouldn't be the first

company to come along and take advantage of the openness of something close it um what's so

interesting is the fact that they've decided to actually tack back towards the open side of things,

and I think it's commendable.

Yeah, so just to back up, and we'll put a link to the episode a year ago where we talked

about this.

But podcasting is, you know, it's an open ecosystem in that anyone can put up a podcast anywhere,

just like anyone can put up a web page.

Same sort of idea.

But the way podcasts work is you don't usually visit a web page and listen to a podcast.

I mean, some people do visit our webpage and listen to the podcast.

But by and large, you use a podcast player.

And the podcast player knows that a new podcast is available because it pulls a special kind of website, a special kind of web address, I should say.

That's called an RSS.

That's called RSS.

Real simple syndication, I think, is what it is.

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