This is an automatically-generated transcript of the PodPod episode ‘Decode: Why silence isn’t the enemy for podcasters’. We apologise for any errors in spelling and grammar.
Rhianna
Hello and welcome to PodPod. I'm Rhianna Dhillon. And I'm joined this week by contributors Adam Shepherd, editor of PodPod. And Matt Hill who runs the production company Rethink Audio, and is the co founder of the British Podcast Awards. Hello to you both. Thank you so much for coming on again.
Adam Shepherd
Hello hello.
Matt Hill
Good morning. Or afternoon. Depends when you listen.
Rhianna
Daytime, nighttime.
Matt
Good daytime to you.
Rhianna
We've got a really exciting interview today. I loved doing this. So it's our first live podcast, kind of, because we recorded this from Podcast Day 24, a podcasting conference, and we spoke to the team behind Decode, Spotify's podcast, which delves into albums, so every episode, they talk about a new track and they go through it pretty much line by line, analysing, explaining, decoding. So I spoke to Kayo Chingonyi, composer Axel Kacoutié and managing director at Reduced Listening Joby Waldman. But first of all, I kind of wanted to reflect for a minute because Podcast Day 24 was a huge, huge deal. I was there all day, I was sort of compering, Matt, you were also doing...
Matt
Also there.
Rhianna
Also there, you were co-compering, is that a thing?
Matt
Co hosting? I'd say co hosting?
Rhianna
I guess so, yeah.
Matt
Not doing as well as you, but...
Rhianna
It's so interesting to think about when I first started out in podcasting, so many years ago now with you, Matt, because we did the BAFTA Guru podcast together at a time when we we still had to explain to people what podcasts were. Kind of going around, convincing people to be on our podcast, we had two mics between us. It was always portable. And it was so funny kind of being up on stage at Podcast Day 24. And looking at an audience knowing that people were watching around the world to find out the latest news about podcasting. But can you tell us a little bit about what Podcast Day 24, is why you've been involved in this and kind of what's been happening in those 10 years since we did a BAFTA Guru podcast. You've got 30 seconds, go.
Matt
Wow. Okay.
Rhianna
No, I'm joking.
Matt
So Podcast Day 24 is a collaboration between the British Podcast Awards, which I've run the Australian Podcast Awards, which I also run, not just me there as a team, but I co founded the British ones. And we took over the Australian ones a while ago, and also Radio Days Europe, which is a leading publicly funded organisation for basically doing events around radio and audio in Europe. And so what that means is that Podcast Day 24, which kind of had an outlet in Australia, and we've done events in North America as well. And also in London. What I think was interesting about it was it has, the London event has a very European feel. So we're very much looking east towards what's going on in France and Germany, as well as showcasing the best of what Britain has to offer, as well as some amazing talks from Norway with NRK, which is really reputable broadcaster that a lot of documentarians absolutely love, as well as Sweden and Poland and lots of places, which was really, really fascinating to hear stories on. One of the ones which I really loved was a session that was hosted by Deutsche Welle, the German broadcaster, which had sort of collaborated with a company to create this pack of cards called a 'method kit'. And these cards were basically a little primer for how to create a podcast. And I've just found that absolutely fascinating. Because as someone who spends a lot of time talking to different clients with my day job at Rethink Audio, we will speak to a lot of clients who don't know what a podcast is. And this pack of cards is really your kind of like face to face talking point, okay, these are the things you need in a podcast: a host, you might have some format points, you know, jingles and duration, and whatever, you know, those little talking points to work out what your format is, let's go through those and work out what is, from this pack of 50 cards, the show, and all the elements of it. And it just gives you something visual to work with, which I just found absolutely fascinating, because we we've all I think we all have this way of talking about what a podcast is to people who don't know.
Rhianna
Do people still not know what a podcast is?
Matt
Well, often they don't know how their brand translates into a podcast. I mean, case in point we launched last week, a podcast with River Island, which is now freely available, called Notes From The Island. And we've been working for the last nine months really with the brand to work out what that show is and how it will sound to fit the brand which is you know, I mean, obviously they're really big on Instagram and Tik Tok, and it's all fashionable models and stuff. And we've got none of that to play with because it's just people's voices. Yeah. So we have to think about how that will sound, how do we translate that brand into sound?
Adam
I think one of the really interesting shifts for me, is because it's not any more explaining what podcasts are. It's now explaining how podcasts work and the practical benefits that they can offer. So I was at the Campaign MediaWeek Awards a few weeks ago. And a lot of people were coming up to me and saying, Look, we, you know, we're marketers, we really want to launch a podcast, a branded podcast, for our brand. You know, we're really interested in exploring that as a channel. We don't know how to go about doing that. We don't know what metrics we need to be looking at. We don't know how to quantify and kind of sell the benefits to higher ups within the organisation. What are some of the things that we should be looking at from a kind of practical standpoint? So it's less about selling the idea of podcasting now, it's much more about, okay, how do we put that into practice in a sustainable and actually viable way?
Rhianna
So what does that mean sort of financially then? We're talking about Decode, which is a Spotify original podcast, that is a podcast it that needs so much money behind it, because of the research, the sound design, you have an incredible host, who has to do a lot of work on this, they have a very big team. So where is that money coming in? Are they actually properly investing in podcasts like never before?
Adam
Spotify is one of the companies that is investing the most heavily in the podcast space. I mean, we can see that from the battery of acquisitions that they've made over the last year in that space, they picked up podInsights, they picked up Chartable, they picked up Whooskha. And those acquisitions, big money, have led to a pretty significant operating loss of €228 million for the Q3 results, which is expected to reach €300 million in Q4. But podcasting has been a substantial part of the 19% year on year increase in advertising revenue that Spotify has seen. So they're investing heavily in podcasting on a kind of platform and kind of corporate level, because they are clearly expecting that almost 20% advertising growth to continue, fueled by podcasts.
Matt
And to a certain extent, you have these big showcase original projects, which are really to bring people who are used to an open podcast ecosystem, whether you're getting your things through Podbean, or whether you're getting through the Apple Podcast app, they're trying to lure people over to Spotify. But obviously, most of the podcasts on Spotify are freely available in the open market. So they're just trying to give you a reason to bring all of your podcasting over to Spotify, and then find all the music and everything else in there as well.
Adam
Yeah, absolutely.
Rhianna
Do you think that's going to be successful? Do you think that is the way that it's going to work from the way that you know that people consume podcasts and music, which is quite different.
Matt
It's sustainable in the sense that they don't have to do all these big showcase shows forever. And once people are on the app, and they find it a nice place to be, and they are using it for all their audio needs, then it would be harder for them to leave. I think it's more a question of like how many series of all of these shows they do before they cut back a little bit on what they do? It's a slightly different business model to Audible where they need to continually create new grandstand content that persuades more people to go behind the paywall. I think with Spotify, you've got the added advantage of that huge podcast listening catalogue that's there, regardless of whether you're paying for it or not.
Adam
Yeah, and I think Spotify is actually doing a lot to convert people who are maybe new to the world of podcast consumption into listeners. I mean, if you're on Spotify already, for your music listening, if a really interesting podcast pops up on your homescreen or in your recommendations, you're much more likely to check it out and find yourself getting drawn into the wider kind of podcasting world. I'm sure we've all had this. You have your kind of gateway drug of podcasts, whatever that is, you start listening to one maybe two shows and before you know it, you've got 14 hours worth of of audio content in your kind of queue. And it all goes to hell in a handbasket. I mean, fundamentally, I think Spotify is going to find itself in a very strong position in regards to do podcasts if it keeps funding and producing really exceptional shows like the subject of today's episode. Decode is a fabulous podcast and it's one that has slid firmly into my favourites.
Rhianna
It is a really beautiful podcast actually and I do love that it breaks down the albums line by line. It's incredibly satisfying. So let's hear from the team behind Decode, then. Here I am, onstage with poet and presenter Kayo Chingonyi, composer Axel Kacoutié and Managing Director of Reduced Listening Joby Waldman. So welcome. Thank you so much for being here today. So the sound design of Decode is lovely. It is so evocative and emotional, and can tell that Kayo also is a poet. This is more of an artistic experience than a fan podcast and it is just so beautifully well written, researched, presented, produced. Let's hear a clip. Before we go any further. Can you introduce it?
Joby Waldman
We're going to hear the opening of episode one season one, which focuses on Dave's Psychodrama.
Kayo Chingonyi
Tuesday 23rd of January 2018. A young man rises from bed late. He's on his way to a recording studio in southwest London. Head buzzing with ideas, Notes app and his phone full of lyrics. He's an emcee, producer, grade seven pianist. Today he starts work on his first album, a long player designed to take us deep into his mind. The songs he'll make will tell of a young man, one who's careful, reckless, arrogant, extravagant. If we listen in will hear him navigating his past, taking us into his therapy sessions, leading us on a journey via buses and trains confronting some of the lowest lows, deprivation, violence, and the highest high; fame. Money. He's a man on the cusp of greatness in a world where racism is ever present. And it's not always clear who's on his side, in a capital city where wealth and poverty brush past each other on a daily basis. If we take our time and take in the whole album, paying close attention, we may find out about our collective psyche. The society that informed it. Where we the listeners fit in to the world of this young man. Which begs the question: Who is he?
Rhianna
Wow, what a way of pulling you in, what an intro. So we'll go more into that clip in a minute. But first of all, Joby, perhaps you can tell us how the podcast came about.
Joby
It was inspired by the US podcast Dissect, which goes into great depth one track at a time about great hip hop albums from the States. So they've covered The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, Kendrick Lamar's Damn. And Spotify UK came to us and several production companies and asked us what it would sound like if we evolved that format. But for a UK audience and with UK rap in mind, they knew right from the beginning that they wanted to do Dave's Psychodrama, because there's so much within the album in terms of musical ideas, as well as lyrical ideas, and social history. So we started thinking about what we would do how we would make a British version of it. Dissect is fairly sort of simple format, which is like speech and clips of the music. We thought, well, what if we could bring some rich sound design to the project? And how could we use field recordings or reuse voiceover actors, and also other bits of music and archive and commission original music. So brought in Axel, who really sort of created the sound world of Decode. And the other thing that we thought we could bring was around the host. So Cole Cuchna who invented dissect is very well informed and has a huge knowledge and passion for hip hop, but brings quite a sort of an academic approach. And we thought that it would bring a lot to the podcast, to have a host who, who has a kind of more personal engagement with the music. And so we're really really fortunate to find Kayo, who as well as being a massive Hip Hop nerd and an academic is also a published poet and an MC.
Rhianna
Kayo. There is something about the rhythm of the way that you break down these albums that makes a listener, actively listen, you can't put this on passively in the background, you know, it demands that you pay attention. What could podcasters learn about delivery and tone from poets?
Kayo
That's not to say poets have it perfectly. But I feel like there's a pacing thing about space and silence. Like in radio, in audio production, silence is almost like the enemy. If there's like dead air, it's a problem. I feel like we do, in a combination between myself, Axel and Rapsz Katai who made the original music is that we use those spaces like Rapsz Katai's my cousin, he knows my voice really well, Axel I've worked with before, he knows my voice really well. So they know where those spaces, those silences are. And I feel like when designing your sound world, thinking about silence as a unit of sonic currency, as opposed to the enemy is a really powerful thing in terms of delivery, I think.
Rhianna
That's so interesting. And I love how much I learned about Britain, just from listening to the podcast, as much as I learned about the musicians and the music, though the political context of the songs that you analyse comes up a lot. How do you balance talking about the political and social context? And then dissecting the music?
Kayo
I feel like it's a it's a ongoing mutating experiment. And I feel like the best experiments are a kind of hybrid between different things. So yeah, it feels like sometimes it's skewed towards one direction, and then it skews another. And I like that movement between thinking about the context that made the album and then thinking about musicologically, what made the album and the the compound of those two poles is like really fruitful, I think, like we spend ages in the research process, just talking about context, even before we talk about notes of music, like, the social context of an album is really important to what you get from it. When you listen.
Rhianna
You heard there, how much love goes into the production, the soundscapes are so sensitive in places and the audio clips are incredibly well researched, sourcing specific audio clips of actual events, so Axel, tell us about your how your work at The Guardian has helped you here. If it has.
Axel Kacoutié
Yeah, I don't think um, if it wasn't for working at The Guardian, working on daily podcasts every single day, developing my intuition, my instincts and just given the space to essentially be like, Okay, this is more of a psychological foray into joy or depression. And what does that sound like? What are the sonic textures around that? Of course, daily news has its own field. But what's really exciting with Decode specifically, and with the music that is essentially having its rightful space in whether it's in academia, or whether it's art, or whether it's just a pure love for the genre, something that used to be for me quite a secret thing, because now I'm able to celebrate it and Psychodrama I also grew up in Streatham as well, I, I love concept albums, too. And this is same approach to podcasting as a whole that I sound design in the same way that I would. Yeah, my, the way I sound design is essentially like a concept album. So that's what I brought to working at The Guardian. And this is just a very natural fit to then bring it here essentially,
Rhianna
How much do you actually get to go out and gather sound effects with your microphone?
Axel
The producers are my minions. Sadly, I don't have I didn't have at the time the capacity to do it myself. But in episode three of season one with Streatham, I think it's it's episode three, oops, asking Jack Howson to go and sit on a bus and record his trip up and down, specifically up and down. It can't just be one way because I need both announcements. And you know, it's quite fun to be able to do that. But hopefully, maybe in the next season, it'll be me with my own gear, bringing things to life that way. So yeah.
Rhianna
Interesting. Joby, working with a global company kind of just seems like the dream in terms of podcasting that's often cited as a goal. So what was it actually like working with Spotify?
Joby
It was great. Wonderful. But we had a really passionate commissioning exec Rob Fitzpatrick, who has deep love for Dissect and really wanted to get this right and Spotify are well resourced and so they were able to resource the project properly. And it meant that we were able, you know, this idea of like, how how might you invent this? It was meaningful. Like, it was like, Okay, you can really like dream a bit and then, you know, bring those ideas and make them happen. So we were able to bring in a really substantial team. Behind the script, there's a really important collaboration between experts from different fields. So for each album, we invite four researchers, we have a grime journalist Joseph Patterson, a musicologist Shara Rambarran, a cultural historian James McNally and archive researcher Raymond Tannor. And they each go into their seam and dig and come back with their take on the album, create a dossier. So then these dossiers come in to the producers, and to Kayo and Axel. And on Season One, we had two producers Jack Howson and Amy Bennett. And we all get together and like, talk through the themes and, and then there's like multiple iterations of the script, there's like probably about four iterations of the script, after which point, the script goes back to the researchers and they review it. So it's grounded in sort of expertise, and we're able to, you know, really, it doesn't necessarily take a huge amount of their time. But it just means that what goes in there, you know, there's some nuanced readings of like, you know, music and gets very detailed, and we need to make sure that it's right, so we're able to do that. And that's because, you know, Spotify have got that sort of attention to detail and ability to fund it.
Rhianna
I'm sure anyone who works in the industry must listen to this podcast and think, Yeah, but what about the fair usage? Like that is a that must come up so much using commercial music in podcasts is notoriously complicated, because of rights issues and clearances. So how did you navigate that?
Joby
Right. Yes, so using music in podcasts, sometimes the received wisdom is that you cannot use commercial music at all. And so we did use the principle of Fair Dealing in its truest sense, in that if you're critiquing a piece of music, then it's fair to play a bit of it, how you do that, there are certain principles that you've got to fulfil around crediting songwriters and producers, and also exactly how much you can use of it. The 30 second rule isn't a rule. Don't know where it came from. But there are other principles like you just have to use just enough, which is fair, it all comes to the sort of concept of fairness. And also, you can't use more than half of a clip of a piece of music. So all of this kind of creates editorial challenges. So we have to get really familiar with Fair Dealing law. And then yeah, the other thing you can do is you can use new commercial music to illustrate a social or political point. So just basically every use of music we interrogated and using that along with original music, we're able to do it like that. I think I'm going to play a little clip. This is from season two, which has a bigger production team, expanded with more producers. And this is from episode eight, Man and the album is Skepta's Konnichiwa
[Clip: Skepta, ‘Man’]
Man get money with the gang, Man get girls with the gang, Man eat food with the gang,
Man talk slang to the feds, Can't work out what I just said to a man,
Told me you was a big fan but the first thing you said when you saw me is "Can I get a pic for the gram?" I was like "Nah, sorry man", I only socialize with the crew and the gang.
Kayo
Three little letters, a whole lot of meaning. Man might just be the most malleable word in multicultural London English. In this section of the song man is used in three distinct ways. As a stand in for I; man eat food with the gang, man talk slang to the feds. I eat food. I talk slang. When the same word is used to mean something else entirely. Can't work out what I just said to a man. This time man refers to someone else, a general other person. The police, Feds, can't work out what I just said to a man, to this guy, to my friend. And finally, I was like, Nah, sorry, man. Here man stands in for the specific pronoun. You. Sorry mate. Man can be whatever you need it to be. You ain't even got to be a man or be speaking to a man to use it. Nah, sorry man, doesn't necessarily mean Sorry, male person. But make no mistake. Grime as sceptre describes it is an unashamedly masculine space. The clues in the title man.
[Clip: Skepta, ‘Man’]
Man get money with the gang, Man get girls with the gang, Man eat food with the gang,
Man talk slang to the feds, Can't work out what I just said to a man,
Told me you was a big fan but the first thing you said when you saw me is "Can I get a pic for the gram?"
Rhianna
One of the things that I love the most listening to the podcast is that your kind of love of homophones, Kayo, I think you really, really do take pleasure in that and I love hearing all of these different words that have so many multiple meanings that I would never have got to myself, What is your kind of favourite part of kind of drilling down into the detail of these albums, which is the bit that you get really excited talking to an audience about?
Kayo
I feel like writing poetry sometimes is obscured from I guess the the poetic tradition of rap in the popular imagination. So like, just connecting different people who are similarly interested in words like from from like people who do like word based like puzzles to like, rappers, MCs, writers, all of these people have that same playful, like celebration of language. So I guess it's just that being lost in that. And yeah, getting swept up in it myself is really like fun, like, probably in recording, like listening back to the clip. And just remembering what somebody did in that moment. And trying not to let that come across in my voice too much that it's like that we have to retake it. That kind of moment is really good. It's really like infectious and I'm connected to the music again, when we're thinking about those kinds of nuggets, those moments of play, basically, it's play.
Rhianna
Axel, regarding the sound we've kind of talked so much about collaboration, how does that work with the sound, you know, like, for example, like the piece that we played at the top, presumably, you're not just handed a finished narration track and just told to soundtrack it.
Axel
On a good day, sometimes it is the case. That is that that is the thing. Um, I also work with a lot of prompts with other producers with leaving the script for me to interpret. I've been very lucky that a sound entering a portal works in the way that you know, there's like a very Doctor Strange type of Portal or very, I don't know, another kind of game Portal sound that I would then. I don't know, I feel like basically what I'm trying to say is that it's, um, there have been very few occasions where that collaboration has been like the awkward, like, what did you do here? Could you not? And can we try this? And, yeah, we're not gonna stuff like that. So it's, it's, there's a very intuitive understanding, shall we say, of what I can do and bring to life. And I think also as well, because Kayo's words are so evocative in the way that I think it just harmonises with my own sensibilities of how I see the world or like to move in the world that it just, there's a lot that is left unsaid, and just you just leave with a feeling which sometimes can be quite risky, but I think we've got a lucky makeup with the team that it just flows in a way that, yeah, there hasn't there hasn't been those kinds of I was gonna say difficult conversations. But there's part of those conversations where it may potentially depending on the different type of team, that could be a bit awkward or ego gets in the way. It's just like Joby told me to get rid of the sound. And I don't know, but that's never happened. It's all good. I feel really lucky about that.
Rhianna
I could honestly talk so much more. I'm so excited for season three. But that's all we've got time for. Please give it up for the wonderful Decode panel. Thank you so much, Joby, Kayo, and Axel. And we didn't. And we didn't just let the decoy team rest after their chat with me on stage, we caught on the scenes to find out some of their best pieces of advice when it comes to podcast,
Kayo
I think you need to define success for yourself. Does that mean more people listening to it? Does it mean the people who listened to it engage in a particular way? How do you drive that engagement? Does it mean like a certain kind of artistic standard or quality that you're trying to do? Does it mean covering certain subjects? So I guess Yeah, defining success is the main thing. Because there are as many podcasts formats and types as there are like types of listener. And you could spend a long time trying to make your podcast something that it isn't. But if you lean into what it is, then that's when somebody who's looking for that, will find it.
Joby
Take a deep breath and a long view. Creating a podcast is a long journey. It's a long road, it's like publishing a zine or creating a publication like a you know, a newspaper or something in the sense that they run on and on. And it's great for it to evolve within that. But I think sometimes we think of podcasts as a bit like a sort of a radio programme, which is like a short series of where you can go in depth about something and is really important that that form exists but in the podcast space, they grow over years and so you're probably looking at building up a catalogue.
Axel
To add to that, I guess those are very two good points. I guess Just kind of bringing it to the reason why you wanted to make a podcast in the first place. And making sure you align to that as much as possible. So as is the balance between committing to that original vision, as well as making space and flexibility and malleability of the life that it will then have of its own, essentially, and you know, it's a balance between what you want to do slash how the people are engaging with it. And essentially, having the courage to commit to whatever decision it is, and being okay to go back and change something, if it makes sense to, you know, so so it's a real heart centred thing as well, that at the core of the business of what you're trying to make, and exist in this world.
Rhianna
And we asked them for the one thing that they wish they'd known before they started podcasting.
Axel
I don't know, I mean, for instance like, it's not that deep. I mean, like, it's, that's that's literally the first thing that came to mind as in like, it's not that deep in the sense of just yeah, there's, there's the numbers, yes, there's the engagement, yes, there's this amazing thing. But just like with everything, to be honest, make space to not be the thing that you are making as well, and know that you can pick it up again tomorrow.
Kayo
I guess the thing to reflect on for me coming from a background of performing published work and being a writer and existing in that space of writing, is that this kind of writing is different. So a lot more space in it. Yeah, I guess it's important to learn, if it's a scripted podcast, it's important to learn what kind of form you want to use. Because that makes, that makes the development of the podcast artistically creatively even more rich, if you have that kind of basis in form.
Joby
So think about sound and play with sound, like it's an audio medium. And quite often, people may be tempted to get caught up in the words and the facts and, you know, getting across the information, which is important. But whether it's the music, or little bits of sound design, or going out and recording some sound in the street, like, it just makes the whole experience richer. And so if you can find a way to use sound to tell stories, the listener will thank you.
Rhianna
I absolutely loved that; I loved talking to decode and like you said at the top, Adam, it is become very quickly one of my new favourite podcasts and actually hearing kind of the insights that they brought to it, the research that's needed, the way that Axel Kacoutié goes about the sound design, all of that I just thought was fascinating. Matt, you were actually there in the room when it was happening. What did you think?
Matt
Yeah, I mean, it's fascinating to see the way in which Reduced Listening have worked with Spotify on the show, you know, taking something which was an American format, and making it their own. And interesting to note that they are doing the same thing with Pod Save America, because they're the production company behind Pod Save The UK.
Rhianna
Which we talked about last week.
Matt
Exactly. So just being able to translate those American hits into British ones is clearly something they do really well. And also to a really high standard with a big team of people behind it, you know, not all production companies are set up like that. And I think they do it really well. And with real high quality results.
Adam
One of the things that really stood out for me about that session, is when they were talking about the amount of researchers they have, they've got four different researchers focusing on four separate kind of distinct areas. And it really gives the podcast an amazing depth in terms of the content and the context that they bring to it. And that's something that I think really powerfully illustrates the importance of good research and good planning. When you're making a podcast, there really is no substitute for just doing the legwork.
Rhianna
Yes, absolutely. And I think that's what I mean by satisfying it's sort of like every line that comes out, you not only get a breakdown of the line from the album, you get an analysis from, as you say, multiple people's perspectives as well. You know, I don't think we can necessarily ascribe all of the things that Kayo is saying to the artists all the time in the same way that with any piece of art as soon as you have a bit of hindsight, you find more in there that perhaps was meant. And that's such a great pleasure to do. I've never really done that with music before. So yeah, a really special one this week.
Adam
So as a giant UK and grime Hip Hop nerd. I'm gonna throw a question out to you guys. Is there an album that you would love to see Decode cover for season three? Because I've definitely got one.
Rhianna
Oh, what's yours?
Adam
I would love to see Decode cover Kano's Made In The Manor, which came out in 2016 and it's a fantastic album. It has such standout tracks as New Banger and it's just dripping with really rich kind of lyrical and musical imagery that I would love to see the Decode team really dig into.
Rhianna
I mean, it's got to be Stormzy, hasn't it? Heavy is the head? I mean....
Adam
Oh, excellent shout.
Rhianna
Just, oh, it's just that's kind of crying out to be. But I also think Stormzy would do such a good job of doing that himself. So I don't know.
Adam
Yeah. Is there a point where they start getting guests on to discuss the the album at the end of the season? Do you think maybe it's like a bonus episode?
Rhianna
I would always listen to that. Matt, what do you think?
Matt
I mean, I think I just need to nod sagely at both of your excellent recommendations and keep my own 90s indie preferences to myself.
Rhianna
Don't get me wrong. I'm also an indie kid.
Matt
If the team want to take a kind of like step by step through the Divine Comedy's Promenade from 1994 I'm all for it.
Adam
To be fair, I would also absolutely listen to that.
Rhianna
It's just such a brilliant kind of endless format, this, so any album, I think is fair game. Thank you so much to Matt Hill and Adam Shepherd for chatting all about Decode this week. And for the Spotify stats are all really really interesting and necessary for us in the world of podcasting to know about. Thank you for listening. You can find out more on podpod.com, our brand new website, please do head there. There's loads of extra content and sign up to our daily email bulletins as well. Follow us on social at podpodofficial, rate and subscribe if you would like to, tell us how amazing we are. We all love to hear it. The podcast is produced by Emma Corsham for Haymarket Business Media, and I'm your host Rhianna Dhillon.
