Hello, James and Sam and PodNews listeners. We are just massive fans of PodNews here at Buzzsprout, so it really is an honor to contribute to this look back and look ahead. I'm Cameron Maul. I manage design for Buzzsprout, so the UI for the tools that our podcasters have come to love, anything brand related, this all falls under my purview as head of design. 2024, well, this was a banner year for Buzzsprout, how it presents itself to the world and how we empower podcasters to present themselves to the world as well. And probably the most visible change of all that was this complete brand refresh for Buzzsprout. A new logo, new colors, new artwork, a new UI. I was fortunate to lead these efforts with some outstanding people, both internal and external to Buzzsprout. You know, we also launched our iOS and Android apps this year. Huge effort by the team. Both apps have been received really well by podcasters. I've done this a few times in my career, this idea of like standing up apps, a zero to one effort, as we say sometimes. And it's no small task. So a ton of great work by the team. There was other great stuff as well throughout the year. Loads of updates, you know, like new podcast website themes, refreshing our embedded player, manual insertion points for mid-rolls, and a bunch of other great things. Now, looking ahead to 2025, I've done these end-of-year predictions. And I've been building for the web about two and a half decades, so I've done a lot of these. And most of them are related to design. And I've learned that I have no better than a 50% success rate, or in some cases, far worse than that, in getting these right. And I think that's the case for all of us. But they're a fun endeavor nonetheless. So here we go. Number one, AI will again be one of the the years. But what I think we're going to see this year, or I guess in 2025 will be the tools that we use as podcasters. They'll be improving in such a way that AI will be so embedded in the products that we use that it will start to transition to a role behind the scenes, as it should. This year, you know, a lot of companies, Buzzsprout included, were eager to promote their AI features with like sparkles and AI labels and that sort of thing. And we're not going to see this go away next year. And in fact, we'll probably still see it rise for a bit. But as AI is more naturally integrated into these workflows, it's not going to be necessary to remind people that they're using automated intelligence. So I think we'll hit peak AI by the end of next year. But until then, we can probably expect to have AI continue to dominate news headlines. And one of the areas in particular that I'll be keeping a close eye on next year is watching AI potentially go from the role of collaborator to potentially becoming like the talent behind the mic. And we've already seen some very fascinating, but also very concerning advancements with Google Notebook LM and other tools like it. And things like Spotify Wrapped, which gave users this AI podcast of their Wrapped stats, which was powered by Notebook LM, by the way. And the voices, the voices for these tools, their intonations are just remarkably realistic. Not like the six-fingered, you know, hands we saw with early AI image generation. They're just stunning. And so we can probably expect that those voices will become only more indistinguishable from human voices over time as the tools improve. But I'm not holding my breath to see if our bot overlords are going to dismantle the podcast industry as we know it. I've, again, I've been building for the web a long time and I've seen countless threats of technology replacing humans that have come and gone. So I'm not going to lose sleep over this. I don't think people should, but I'll be keeping a close eye on this or maybe a close ear in 2025. Number two, I think we need to be honest here and recognize that most podcasters want as many ears as possible, rightly so, listening to the content that they've worked so hard to create. And you can't argue with the gravitational pull of the big players in the industry like Spotify, Apple, and YouTube because of their ability to draw in millions and millions of listeners. But the problem, and this can be a huge problem for the long-term health of the podcasting industry, if not held in check, is that often these big players and others have shown reluctance to support or protect or maybe embrace the open nature of podcasting. And part of that lies in the fact that their profit models are not necessarily built on helping you get your episodes in as many places as possible. They're built on proprietary closed wall platforms that, you know, tend to maximize ad revenue. So I think this is something that we need to hold in check and keep in check as an industry, as a, you know, a group of practitioners working to further the goals and aims of, of this beautiful, remarkable vehicle that allows people to have a voice and to have that voice be as, as present as possible in as many places as, as possible. So I'm really excited to see what next year holds for the podcasting industry. I expect nothing less than our best year ever. So on behalf of the Buzzsprout team, thanks for having me pitch in happy 2025 and keep podcasting.