As summer comes to an end and our listeners have provided their feedback on our podcast, in our most recent annual listener survey, we will be making some changes to our podcast, starting in September 2019.
- Special episodes will be discontinued on a regular routine basis. Special episodes will continue to be produced, but will depend on the occasion.
- Cultures episodes will now replace the special episodes; they will appear on a regular routine basis, released once a month. However, if we do a special or top 20 (see point 4) episode within that month, there won’t be a cultures episode created.
If you are a regular listener (not a Patreon donor), you will now get the approximately the first 15 mins of a Cultures episode (depending on the music/talk, we won’t cut off the episode in a middle of a song or discussion). If you are a Patreon donor, there won’t be any changes in how you enjoy these episodes (regardless of your donation level). - Top 10’s will now be released on a monthly basis, hosted by Kirby! The wording of “early/mid/late” will replaced by just the month and year of the top 10 (ie, Japan Top 10 September 2019 Countdown). No further changes with the actual top 10 episode format.
- Our bi-annual top 50’s will be reduced to a top 20 countdown. Basically, we told you guys that we placed too much effort on a huge episode that only our Patreon donors could really enjoy. Free listeners will continue to enjoy the first 10 songs of these episodes, while our Patreon donors will get double the amount of songs (the top 20).
- Song reviews will temporary be put on hold due to logistics. When they are resumed, we will let everyone know.
- Ethel & Andy will partner together for their Cultures episodes and Erin & Eric will partner together for theirs.
- Ethel will continue to remain focused on AToM’s, except for some of our staff’s focused episodes or if she’s hosting a Cultures episode with Andy, then you may see another host take over that month’s AToM episode.