Lucky for us, Patreon FINALLY came to the party and two months ago introduced individual, separate feeds for podcasts hosted on Patreon! YAY! Unfortunately it took a reasonable amount of effort to go back over every episode (several hundred) and update them to associate them with an individual show. Once that effort was completed, we could finally create and synchronise the most relevant ones to Spotify as well!

Unlike previously now there’s a great article on Patreon about how to find the RSS Feed URLs for your show of choice. If it’s been posted as Audio or Video content on Patreon, it now has its own RSS Feed you can access on ANY podcast player. Patreon’s system now includes video, sorta, insofar as it will extract the Audio from the Video and add it to the feed. Hence for Video-first podcasts you can only get the Audio in the RSS Feed via this method. The only other ways to get a Video ahead of public release is to subscribe via YouTube (can’t be integrated with Patreon), or to view the Videos within Patreon’s Website or their app.

We’ve chosen to synchronise actively produced shows with Spotify for those that prefer to subscribe via Spotify. Remembering that this requires you to link your Spotify account to your Patreon account, but once you’ve done this they’ll all play just fine. There is now a separate feed for non-show TEN Bonus material: things like Q&A, Patron updates and so on.

To Summarise what is where:

Note: Pragmatic only exists in Patreon from Episode 80 onward.

The RSS Links are Private RSS Links and should not be shared. I’m told Patreon have an algorithm they use to attempt to detect re-shared links that can lead to your Patreon account being disabled, so please don’t share your Private RSS Audio links publicly.

New Spotify Links for all Patreon-Feed Shows:

• Causality
• Whisky Whiskey
• Pragmatic
• Analytical
• TEN Bonus

For those supporters that are only interested in Pragmatic…you can now just subscribe to the Pragmatic feed without it being clogged up with Analytical, Bonus Materials and so on. If you’re a big Causality fan but don’t care about Whisky, or falling a-Sleep, you can now just subscribe to the Causality feed.

One more detail is that the previous “The Engineered Network Patreon” feed has been updated to include everything that is now flagged as a “Podcast” which now includes Whisky Whiskey and Pragmatic Electric and is a true representation of everything available in one feed.

It’s great that Patreon finally caught up. This has been top of the list from the periodic Patron Creator survey they send around every year or two and I’m pretty confident that some of TEN’s Patrons will be very grateful for it.

As always, thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the improved flexibility in listening to our shows.

Generally though I’ve added the concept for quality of Low, Solid and High for those drams that are on the borderline between. Simply put for each Quality Category, the lower, barely making that Quality level is a “Low,” with anything firmly in the middle of that Quality Category being a “Solid” for that level, such as “a Solid 3” for example, and anything that is almost, but not quite the next highest Quality level is a “High.” I’m denoting these as an “L” for Low and a “H” for High, with Solid not having anything after it. Hence you’ll start to see “2H” for a High 2 for Quality, and “4L” for a Low 4 for Quality and so on.

Updated Cost Table:

Updated Quality Table:

Updated Overall Table:

The updated ranking matrix below:

But in the end it’s still all subjective. Hopefully this scoring system will be a good sanity check for myself in the first instance and for others as well that are following along at home when trying to decide which bottle they should or should NOT buy.

Good luck.

Unless there’s a refocus by the community then this is unlikely to return, or if it does it will be in another form.

Thank you to all of those that supported the shows via this pathway in the past, it was greatly appreciated. Thank you as always, for listening and/or watching.

1. You’re never going to be able to try them all.

Reality check: There are globally over a thousand active distilleries making Whisky of various volumes, all with their own unique mash bills, grains, yeasts, fermentation times, stills, double/triple distillation, barrel woods, barrel ex-contents, maturation durations and final blenders with their own palettes that, whilst it’s not an infinite number of combinations…there are more combinations than I could reasonably try even if I tried one glass of each day between now and the day I die. So…accept you’ll never be able to try them all and focus in on what you like the most, and try to understand why you like that type, style, profile, whatever you want to call it, to better inform future decisions of what you’ll buy and what you won’t.

2. Whisky is to be enjoyed, not collected.

When I was initially trying and buying bottles of the ones I liked and watched the space on the shelf getting lower, I had to pause and ponder. At what point do you limit how many you have? There’s an episode coming up where I’ll delve into safe drinking quantities or at least, health-department guidelines/recommendations but it’s clear that a single drink per day is probably “safe” enough (whatever that means) and for a standard bottle volume that would mean you should get just over 3 weeks from a bottle…call it a month. Therefore what’s the point of having more than about 12 bottles since 12 is an easy number as there’s 12 months in a year?

I’ve found people online with Whisky collections that are in the dozens, hundreds and a few with over a thousand! That’s never going to be me. Where do you store it all? It’s not possible to drink it all without being ill or dying so what’s the point unless you’re truly collecting which means you can’t drink or enjoy it? I’ve decided to enforce a bottle quantity limit for myself with some variety in styles on the shelf. It makes sense to me to have a nice easy-sipping one, perhaps a nice really strong, cask-strength one, perhaps a lightly and heavily peated one and so on, so you could pick based on your mood or meal it’s being paired with.

The problem with rotating through bottles unevenly, is that a half-empty bottle will oxidise and particularly Peated whiskies, if you leave them with large amounts of head-space in the bottle, without a wine-preserver gas or something in them, they will slowly lose their flavour and become flat between the 6-12 month mark. If you choose this approach then be aware of that at least. A few of the Whiskies I have on my shelf have been there for a year and if they’re nicer, rarer, or more expensive, then I can see that becoming multiple years.

3. Whisky should be shared.

One of the challenges I have personally is that no-one in my family, close or extended, likes Whisky. I’ve found that discussing the dram in hand with others that share your interest and passion for Whisky is far, faaar more enjoyable than when you’re on your own…and I don’t mean alone physically, but that too. Enjoying a nice Scotch when surrounded by people all drinking beer or wine takes away some of the enjoyment you’d otherwise get from being surrounded by other Whisky lovers.

4. Pick a day, week or month to voluntarily go dry.

This is the hard truth dot point. The downside of enjoying alcohol, whatever its form, is that can be habit forming. Having several drinks, every single day, can lead to dependence and permanent damage to your body, most notably the liver. This is something many people gloss-over or try not to look at, but it’s the truth. There are also many people in the world that draw the hardest of lines in the sand, saying that even a single drop of alcohol is bad and you should never drink at all. I’ve seen forum posts and Whisky podcasters, Whisky-tubers and the like, be labelled “Alcoholics” and that they “clearly have a problem,” when that’s not generally true.

The litmus test is our ability to choose. Take it from someone that’s had a weight problem in the past, our ability to say “no” to ourselves is the key. I like the idea of “Dry-July” or pick a month that suits, but you can pick a day, a week, a month, or hell even a year if you like…where you have no alcohol. If you can do this, you’re fine. If you can’t do this…you may have a problem.

I’ve started asking people to “…always remember to drink responsibly, in moderation and where and when appropriate…” in every episode as I want to explore and enjoy Whisky, but I don’t want myself or others to forget that without moderation and your ability to choose, it’s a slippery slope that you don’t want to be on.

5. Savour every drop.

I’ve now tasted over 120 Whiskies at the time of writing this and I’ve got a really good idea of what I like and what I don’t like. I’ve therefore made the decision that I will not buy a bottle of anything that I’ve ranked as a Quaity of 1 or a 2 again. I’d prefer to save up for a nicer drink, take my time with it and savour every drop. Nose it. Sip it. Don’t rush it. Enjoy it. Quality NOT quantity is my ultimate goal. If I wanted to get smashed, like I’m in my 20s again, I wouldn’t be sipping nice Whisky. That’s for sure.

Cheers and enjoy 2025.

• Cost: >$1k, I removed “Collect Only” from this line since it’s quite possible I may buy or be gifted a very expensive Whisky at some point and I have no intention of just looking at it, so I wanted to modify the language away from the idea that super-expensive bottles can only be collectors items.
• Quality: 4 & 5, I demoted drinks that make me giggle from 5 down to 4 as a reflection of the fact I noticed my own reactions to tasting exceptional Whiskies and instead added a clarifier that to be a 5 it has to make me melt on the inside. This now better reflects the fact I’ve only ever tried two Whiskies now I would rank a 5. They’re rare and they’re usually expensive for a good reason.
• Overall: Green, I removed the “Should” since you shouldn’t buy alcohol unless you want to. Seemed too strict to me upon reflection.
• Overall: Yellow, I changed out “Special Occasions” for “Something Different” to reflect the fact that there are still affordable Whiskies in the Yellow category and I realised that I’d crossed the cost/quality streams…which was the exact problem I wanted to avoid with my ranking system for Whiskies, that frankly, so many others fall into the trap of doing. Consider it corrected.

Updated Cost Table:

Updated Quality Table:

Updated Overall Table:

As I said previously, it’s still all subjective. Hopefully this tweaked scoring system will better reflect my position on the Whiskies I try and will proceed forward now with minimal further tweaking. I retrospectively looked at the Whiskies I’d ranked and don’t see that this changes any of my prior conclusions or recommendations.

Good luck.

That said, being a fan of (The) Macallan I had hoped that there might be a Whisky tasting for their Quest line-up, however those had effectively ended their rotation last year. They were in fact offering a Colour Collection tasting at a cost of $50 USD on the fourth day of the cruise. However, it was not a complete line up as they only had the 12 year, 15 year and 18 year available. The 21 year and 30 year were not included and the primary intention of the tasting, for all travel exclusives, is to drive sales in the Port Merchants Duty Free Alcohol Store on board.

As with all Macallan colour collection these are not artificially coloured (that’s rather the point of calling them a ‘colour collection’) though they’re all chill-filtered and whilst the 12 year is 40% ABV, the other two are both 43% ABV. When I was told about the tasting, I was at the Vintages Bar at the rear of Deck 5 on the ship (Ovation of the Seas) and noted that it was only on the printed list, and not the Royal Caribbean app. This meant that unless you noticed it when you went to that bar, you would have no idea it was happening.

It turned out in fact that only three people had said they were coming to the tasting, of which I was one of those three. Despite this, the Vintages Bar had been set up for a lot more than that…

As it turned out, 18 minutes after it was due to begin, I was the only person that showed up. I therefore got the entire tasting as a one on one with the bar staff member that was running the tasting. He poured mine and his (half-nips for him…since he was on duty!) and we watched each of the videos for each of them, talking about each in turn. Nosing…palette…finish and impressions. The tasting was supposed to run for only 45 minutes, but we went 15 minutes longer, beyond the 18 minutes late…we were just enjoying talking Macallan too much!

In the end the host gave me a complimentary Macallan Glencairn glass (not part of the tasting fee) as a special thank you. I had taken my own tasting notes afterward and upon wrapping up I went to the Port Traders to confirm what I already knew: they had NO STOCK of ANY Macallan Whisky for sale.

I returned to Vintages late in the cruise and asked if there were any 18 year unopened bottles on the ship they could sell me…and unfortunately the rules forbid them from selling them through the bar. They could sell wine bottles through the bar, but not spirits bottles. Ultimately though by the end of the cruise, the 12 year was completely gone.

The 12 year resembled my 12 year Sherry Oak at home slightly, however with a far less pronounced Sherry influence and perhaps somewhere between the Double-Cask and Sherry Oak 12 year in palette, but I drank a fair bit of this and rated it a 4 out of 5. The 15 year wasn’t as sweet and had more pronounced oak spices that lingered on the finish nicely and I also rated it a 4 out of 5. The really impressive one was the 18 year.

Admittedly I’ve only tasted maybe 75 whiskies or so in my life, however the Macallan 18 year Colour Collection is the first I’ve given 5 out of 5 to. I was quite literally giggling after every single sip. It has a delicious, coating mouthfeel to it, with a buttery, creamy caramel and vanilla taste that lingers for ages with a delightful finish. That said, it cost $46 USD a shot on board and a bottle would set me back $900 AUD for a bottle off-ship…from a dodgy seller since it’s technically a Travel Exclusive.

The reason I was keen to try and nab one on-board was it was selling for $350USD a bottle, Duty Free, on-board but alas they had no stock they were allowed to sell me.

However it ended, it was an interesting experience and I shall remember it every time I use my Macallan Glencairn glass.

In March of 2020 during the start of lockdowns due to COVID19 in Australia, the Sleep podcast was born moreso out of a dare than any actual plan. Having been told “I have a beautiful voice…” and “Listening to your voice makes me relax and helps me get to sleep…” I decided to start recording a show that was just me…talking gently about anything in creative commons.

The show has a significant amount of downloads with the vast majority from talking cylinders where I imagine people just say “play a podcast that helps me sleep” or something similar, and out pops “Sleep”. Irrespective the last time I recorded an episode was September 2022 and I think it’s time to admit the experiment has ended.

Archiving Neutrium

When TEN launched in October 2015, two other Australian Engineers took the plunge with me and launched their own show on the Network called Neutrium. It was a hit almost immediately and was quite popular however both Trevor and Matt were busy engineers and their show, rather like Pragmatic and Causality, took a LOT of their time to produce. Ultimately they decided to refocus and stepped back from podcasting and the show finished with only four episodes.

Even though it’s been 9 years since the last episode, I’ve left it on the homepage as it was quite popular and in keeping with the original intention of the network. Having said that, it’s time to archive Neutrium as well at this point. Both shows have moved to the Archived section of the site and their feed URLs have been updated to reflect this. They will continue to be hosted, just won’t appear on the main landing page of TEN.

Adjusting Focus

With more of an admission of reality than any real change to the shows on TEN, I’ve updated the About Page to better reflect the reality of what TEN has been for the past 7 or 8 years at least: “…a group of shows about my passions in life…”

I will always be an engineer and see the world through that lens but it’s not the only thing that interests me. Many topics I’ve covered on Pragmatic over the past decade are examples including Photography, Renewable Energy, Electric Cars, Whisky amongst other things.

In coming months I’ll be exploring video further and continuing to produce Causality and Whisky Whiskey, with Pragmatic and Analytical as well.

Thanks again so much to everyone for their continued support and thank you as always, for listening and/or watching as well.

I’ve decided to have a crack at my own, because, of course I have…

I propose to rank all of the Whiskies that I try against two Axes: the Columns represent a quantitative measure: the current amount (at time of review) a standard 700mL bottle costs. For bottles that aren’t available in this size (eg. many Australian Whiskies are sold in 500mL bottles) then the costs will be linearly re-scaled. Cost will also exclude sale pricing and will be based on recommended retail and will be in Australian Dollars because…well…I’m Australian. Prices overseas will vary based import duties, local taxes and currency conversion factors so you kilometerage may vary.

I understand that prices will vary over time due to supply and demand, manufacturer economies of scale and desirability in the market. As these things change, so too will their position if/when I revisit a review. Price bracketing was guided by the quantity of bottles available that fell into those pricing categories. To be clear you can get a Single Malt Scotch for under $80 but there aren’t many, and those that are, generally aren’t going to set your world on fire. There are passable Blended Whiskies however that can be great everyday sippers.

The second scale is the inevitable Qualitative scale of Taste (which is subjective) about how much I personally would desire drinking the Whisky at some point again in the future. For this I propose a scale of 1 to 5 which is intentionally not too granular but groups together the most common positions I’ve taken when trying different Whiskies. I also decided it’s important to add a ZERO (0) row since there are ones I’ve tried, that I will simply never drink…again.

This leads to a simple table below:

Finally I’m going to simplify the outcome with a colour recommendation. I’ve coloured each box with a slant against people that have loads of disposable income to buy expensive alcohol. Generally speaking, if it’s more than $300 for a bottle, it needs be a truly impressive drink to consider investing in one. Whereas a lower scored 2, a nice drink for some occasional variety, if it’s less than $80 and you’re into Whisky, then it’s Green: Always keep stock of these on hand. Of course your evaluation of how much you’re willing to spend on a nice Whisky will vary but for me, at least for now, is my guide.

I have intentionally NOT split out Legs, Finish, Palette or Nose on their own scales and I’ve intentionally kept the two axes separate since a great nose but a bad finish could end up with a score that matches a bad nose but a great finish. To me the assessment is overall, which includes all of those factors. Like a good Whisky, the qualitative assessment needs to be balanced.

But in the end it’s still all subjective. Hopefully this scoring system will be a good sanity check for myself in the first instance and for others as well that are following along at home when trying to decide which bottle they should or should NOT buy.

Good luck.

Whilst that may be an option in future I decided to try my hand at an incident in video form, that had no real physical location: CrowdStrike. I’ve tried to leverage more of the possibilities in video production but, and this will come as no surprise to anyone that’s done both audio and video production, video is a LOT more effort.

So for now this is somewhat of an experiment. It will be posted like Pragmatic Electric and Whisky Whiskey, as a 720p version on my own infrastructure and linked with a truly independent RSS feed but it will also be cross-posted to Patreon as an early release for Premium and above supporters and on YouTube early for Members on YouTube, and publicly for those that aren’t.

Unfortunately there is currently no way to upload a video for early access using Apple Podcasts platform and having been highly disappointed with my Spotify experiment a few years ago, I will not be posting it on Spotify. There are just too many silos at this point to feasibly keep in sync and maintain.

Causality Video and Audio are recorded independently, and presented in both forms but the spoken content is the same. Note that this means I record the episode twice to ensure the best possible audio result. I did initially attempt to strip the audio from the video recording and edit it, but I didn’t want to compromise on the quality of audio in the Causality podcast.

Episode numbering of Causality TV will start from episode 1 and will loosely cross-link to it’s matching Causality Audio episode in the show notes only.

I hope you enjoy this new chapter in the evolution of Causality.

Whisky Whiskey is intended to be a mixture of individual Whisky reviews as well as comparatives between different Whiskies that are 10 to 15 minutes long each. Some episodes I’ll cover backgrounds behind terminologies and distilleries and try to come to terms with all the history and complexities of Whisky.

Videos will be listed in a Video-Podcast/RSS Feed like all other material on TEN, however the 4K versions will be available via YouTube and embedded on the website on each episode page as well. Episodes on YouTube will have standard advertising on them per YouTube monetisation, however those from the feed directly will always be ad-free.

If you enjoy the videos and would like to see more of them, remember to support the show via normal channels.

As we don’t sell “Commerce” items through Patreon (we use Spring and Cotton Bureau directly) this had no impact to TEN, however with the impending change over to Apples internal app-subscription method I wanted to quickly state my position and advice for fans of TEN moving forward.

Existing Patrons Have No Impact

These changes ONLY apply to NEW Patrons, and only to those new Patrons that sign up to support WITHIN the Patreon iOS App on an iOS device.

Patreon iOS App Pricing Adjustment

Unlike Apple Podcasts’ when subscribing through Apples own system, there is no mention or call out to say Apple are skimming 30% off the top, nor will there ever be unless there’s government regulation making Apple tell the customer that. Patreon on the other hand are doing this:

Apple Are Just Being Consistent

Whilst many people are upset about this move the truth is that rightly or wrongly, Apple are just being consistent. There are no real positives I’m aware of where the Patreon iOS app is a huge advantage over the website (especially considering the content TEN produces), so I’ll hold on the anti-Apple tirade. Is it merely the nature of this beast.

Avoid Signing Up via the Patreon iOS App if Possible

How this will work following the change (according to a Discord Q&A Patreon have been hosting for the past few days now) is that people that sign up on the Website will still be able to log into the Patreon iOS app if they want to and get access to all of the Patron benefits. It’s worth noting however that the Private RSS Audio Feed URL is still available from the website and the Web-app for Patreon has most of the features of the native app. My advice is to simply avoid the Patreon iOS App unless you have a compelling reason to use it.

Thank you all!

I’m grateful to each and every person that supports TEN, via whatever means suits them the most. Thank you for your ongoing support and as always, thank you for listening.

This feature has been requested by several fans of the network and as such I’ve turned that feature on today. Once logged in to Spotify, navigate to The Engineered Network Patreon and then you will have the option to link to your Patreon account. After this the audio files will play through Spotify. All 168 Patron-only audio files are available in a common feed as per the Patreon Podcast feed.

Previously Causality was also offered on Anchor as “Causality Premium” at a discounted rate for those that only wanted to support Causality. After two years and a few months, only one person chose to support via this pathway and they shifted over to Patreon after a few months anyhow. Therefore as of today I have disabled memberships via the Causality Premium on Spotify feed and will be removing that in coming months permanently.

As always, thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the additional flexibility in supporting and listening to Causality.

It’s been a challenging first half of 2023 for myself personally but despite this, we made it to 50 episodes and Causality continues to grow in popularity slowly but surely, despite the somewhat irregular schedule. Many, many more episodes to come.

A massive thank you to everyone that is already a supporter via Patreon, via Apple Podcasts or via Streaming Sats, for all of your support both for this show and for the other shows on TEN.

Thank you EVERYONE!!

As of April, 2023 Causality episodes in the back-catalogue have been scrubbed of Ads, both on the website and in the episode audio. Whilst I’ve been in there, I’ve tweaked a few things like noise suppression, normalising levels, transitions and of course, adjusted the timestamps for the transcripts (where they existed).

I will not be extending this to other shows at this time though I may reconsider scrubbing back-catalogues some day in the future as a separate exercise.

What it means for Supporters

If there are no ads, then what does a supporter get now? Well for those supporters already at Premium or above, you will still get the higher-quality audio version, posted before the public version is released. Not only that, Premium and above will still get bonus content I don’t publish publicly.

I’m still both shocked and humbled and so very grateful for all of the support via whichever medium you’re comfortable with. It’s been 7 years since TEN launched and back then, I never thought it would be possible to reach this point.

Another massive thank you to everyone that is already a supporter via Patreon, via Apple Podcasts or via Streaming Sats, for all of your support in making this a reality!

Last week Twitter continued on its mission to tighten all methods into and out of its website, taking aim now on the third-party API. My app of choice for many years now Tweetbot had it’s API access cut-off without warning by Twitter, followed by my previous favourite Twitterrific.

Whilst I have posted to the TEN Twitter account directly many times, the vast majority were auto-posts delivered via the Twitter API. Whether or not Twitter continues to cut-off use of its API to then retrospectively include auto-posters I’ve decided it doesn’t matter. I will leave on my my terms, not Twitters.

Therefore as of today, there will be no further posting on the @Engineered_Net Twitter account. If there are still those remaining what wish @-mention that account then I will occasionally check it, however due to message spam from the official Twitter account, I will not have notifications on so I may not respond quickly.

All Twitter clients have been removed from my devices and I will be accessing only via the website interface.

But…it’s not all doom and gloom! Quite the contrary! Last week I set up a new Fediverse account that will take the functional place of @Engineered_Net did on Twitter. You can now follow TEN POSTS ONLY here:

@EngNet@engineered.space

It’s the Twitter account…but on the Fediverse.

It’s a shame that it’s come to this, however as was pointed out in Medieval times and is still true today…all good things must come to an end. Bye Twitter.

We covered a lot of ground as we talked through the next steps of applying PC2.0 ideas to the Music industry, breaking down what value actually is, a potential future newsletter tag, how I integrated Value 4 Value into my shows and a bunch of other things. Adam and Dave learned that I prefer to use a calculator (I’m an Engineer not an Accountant) and that according to Adam I have great pipes. (Awww, thanks Adam)

Thanks again so much to Adam and Dave for having me on the show. I had an amazing time!

With recent changes with Twitter and many fans of the show seeking an alternative home, I’ve decided to open up a new Fediverse server that’s separate to the Engineered Space single-user instance.

Introducing the See You on the Fediverse server.

As Mastodon servers are extremely resource hungry, this new Fediverse server runs Pleroma. The server is currently running on a very low-rent VPS. If it proves popular then it may be migrated to something with more resources.

I’m intending to use this new account for more personal posts with the existing account for more TEN-related posts, gradually over coming weeks. Invitations are open to anyone that’s interested. Visit and select Register to sign up. Once your EMail has been verified and I’ve confirmed you’re real, I’ll approve your account.

If you already have an account on the Fediverse you don’t really need another one but if you’re looking to have a try, then feel free to join!

There’s a link here: Podcasters’ RoundTable Round 162: Podcasters Don’t Care About Live Streaming and also on the As a Guest episode list.

We covered a lot of ground and talked about the following:

• Checking expectations with Guests for time limits when you’re recording
• Whether it’s okay to break an episode into multiple separate episodes (e.g. Pragmatic Tesla Ep 82/83)
• Podcast Apps with the most longevity…and why we think that is
• When making a podcast, should we be anywhere and everywhere?
• Are Twitter spaces really podcasting?
• The “art” of Live broadcasting vs heavily post-produced podcasts
• Our experiences with live streaming: Is your show the right kind of show for live?
• Consolidation of Podcast advertising platforms over the past decade
• Difficulty of building a network with professional engineers
• Sponsorship vs Advertising vs Patronage
• Patreon vs iTunes Subscription experiences
• Spotify acquisition of Findaway Voices (Audiobook production)

Thanks again so much to Ray and Dave for having me on the roundtable. I had a blast!

For many fans of The Engineered Network, support via Patreon, BitCoin/Lightning or Apple isn’t feasible or preferable. Many that already subscribe to Spotify Premium actively avoid Apple Music and Apple Podcasts, and after many months of requests I can now offer a Premium version of TENs most popular show, Causality, as Causality Premium via Spotify. In Spotify, search for “Causality Premium” under Podcasts or use this link.

Only Causality

Unfortunately Spotify’s offering is somewhat simplistic compared to Apple’s. It’s clearly aimed at single-casters, not multi-casters like TEN (i.e. Networks need not apply…yet…) and hence there is no equivalent of a “Network Subscription” or a “Channel Subscription” as you have with Patreon and Apple respectively.

Additionally there is no concept of a merged feed from outside their ecosystem, meaning the existing Spotify Causality feed is a native TEN feed, but it can not support adding exclusive/bonus content from inside Spotify (like Apple can), instead they want people to migrate their RSS feed over to Anchor, then add bonus content to that.

Ahem No thank you.

The only way I was prepared to do this was to keep the two feeds separate. Therefore the existing Causality public feed will remain unchanged, however a new Anchor/Spotify feed has now been created with an introduction/trailer publicly available and all other content available on a subscription.

At time of publishing, there are 44 ad-free, high quality episodes of Causality, plus 6 Causality Explored bonus episodes. In future, early releases (when available) will be released to Spotify Subscribers in step with Patreon Premium and Apple Podcasts subscriber early-releases.

Pricing

As previously mentioned the Spotify offering is quite simplistic and billing is no different. There is no option for annual discounts for subscribers and since it’s not possible to group multiple shows into a single subscription it was necessary to split out Causality in terms of several factors relative to other shows on TEN:

• Complexity, time and effort to produce
• Number of recent historical downloads
• Patron, subscriber, fan feedback on episodes

A final twist is that whilst Apple has set monthly levels for each part of the world, they and Patreon are US-centric with a base-level set in USD, which is why Patreon and Apple Podcasts are set in USD. In Spotify you can only set a subscription level in your local currency. With these details all factored in, Causality Premium on Spotify will launch at $4.99 AUD ($3.49 USD) per Month.

Currently there is no option in Spotify to modify your subscription setting, however it’s extremely likely this will come in time. The problem with AUD vs USD is obviously exchange rate and whilst in February, 2012 the Australia Dollar out-valued the US Dollar, that’s an ever-changing situation. The problem comes more with dramatic shifts in the rate over the long term and the induced discrepancy vs other support pathways. So in summary, there’s a limit to how equivalent Spotify permits this to be and whilst it might be near equivalent today, in the future - who really knows?

Preferences

There are some pros and cons though if you want to support TEN, between Patreon, Spotify, Apple and Lightning:

Patreon Benefits:

• A subscriber can support the entire network
• Multiple support tiers gives you more flexibility (Premium is there if you want it)
• Able to get additional benefits beyond audio (Raw Notes, Named Mentions, Q&A/Interaction)
• Bonus audio (whilst in a common/firehose style feed) can be added to ANY podcast client app for listening
• Bonus Audio files are DRM-free

Apple Benefits:

• A subscriber can support the entire network, but can have a different audio feed for each podcast
• Full integration of the podcast bonus audio is seamless with Apples offerings on all platforms (where they’re available)
• Full anonymity (may be considered a benefit for some supporters with privacy concerns)

Spotify Benefits:

• A fan of only Causality, can support just that specific show rather than the entire network
• Full integration of the podcast bonus audio is seamless with Spotifys offerings on all platforms (where they’re available)

In terms of which method delivers the most end value to TEN (least fees) then it’s:

1. Lightning
2. Spotify (Causality Only)
3. Patreon
4. Apple Podcasts

Either way if you’re an existing Patron, Apple Podcasts or BitCoin/Lightning supporter then there’s no reason to shift to a different platform. Then again, if you’re a big fan of Causality and you’re a long-time Spotify eco-system user and you’ve been on the fence for a while, then perhaps this is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for!

As always, thank you everyone for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the additional flexibility in supporting and listening to Causality.