Independent podcasting has a structural problem. Most networks are built for shows that are already big. The creators who need the most support, the mid-tier independent producers without major backing, are left to compete on their own for advertising revenue, distribution, and discovery. Liam Heffernan thinks that gap is a business.

Liam, an award-winning audio producer, launched Mercury Podcast Network in February 2025 with a specific thesis: that the podcasting industry had developed strong infrastructure at the top and left almost everyone else behind. One year in, the UK-based network is marking its anniversary with two new initiatives, the Orbit subscription service and the “Heroes of Indie Podcasting” recognition program, that push its original mission further than a traditional network model would allow.

“We launched Mercury as a network, but the vision was always bigger than that,” Liam says. “There was a huge gap to properly represent and support independent podcasters.”

Mercury currently represents a curated roster of shows, including the newly signed “The Players Keep,” a British D&D troupe-turned-podcast, and “Lexx Education,” a comedy podcast by comedian Laura Lexx. The network targets independent creators globally who lack the representation, distribution muscle, and brand relationships that major podcast networks routinely provide to their top-tier shows.

Podcasting’s Middle Class Has No Network

The podcast industry has matured quickly. Wondery, Goalhanger, and Spotify’s owned-and-operated shows dominate advertising relationships, leaving a wide swath of independent creators without institutional standing. According to Liam, they produce quality content, but lack the credibility to break through the gatekeepers that determine which shows get featured, funded, and heard.

“Podcasting is a hell of a lot more mature than perhaps any of us give it credit for,” he says. “The established networks and the established brands have those relationships already.”

In Mercury’s first year, Liam found that assembling inventory without pre-existing brand relationships meant competing on trust the network hadn’t yet earned. He describes it as a “build it, and they’ll come” assumption that the market quickly corrected. “I thought, ‘Let’s pull the inventory together and then the advertisers will be there,’” he says. “It’s a lot more relationship-driven than that.”

The shift came roughly halfway through the year. Early on, Mercury was approaching podcasters. Then the dynamic reversed. “More people were coming to us than we were going to them,” Liam says. “That was a real moment of validation.”

Orbit Opens the Infrastructure

Mercury’s network model requires curated shows that can receive individual attention. Orbit, the subscription service launched on Mercury’s first birthday, is designed for everyone else.

“We know we can’t represent everyone at Mercury,” Liam says. “What we can do is release our platform and some of our tools and resources to the independent podcasting world and say, here you go, use it.”

Orbit gives independent podcasters access to enterprise-level hosting, programmatic advertising activation, and a members-only community forum. The economics follow a shared infrastructure logic: Mercury pays fixed costs for its hosting platform regardless of how many shows it carries, and Orbit extends those tools to creators at a price below what most individual hosting platforms charge.

The community layer is deliberate. “It’s really easy when you have a network of sorts for podcasters to just still be in silos,” Liam notes. “When you connect all of those shows, you find collaboration opportunities that you wouldn’t have thought of before.”

Orbit also functions as a talent pipeline. Mercury can observe which shows demonstrate growth, audience engagement, and commercial potential before extending full network representation. “Orbit is designed to be a gateway,” Liam says. It is how Mercury plans to scale its discovery process without diluting the attention it gives to shows on its core roster.

A Hall of Fame Built for the People Behind the Shows

The second major announcement is the “Heroes of Indie Podcasting,” an annual recognition program for individuals who have made a material difference to independent creators, specifically, not the broader podcasting industry at large.

The inaugural class includes Arielle Nissenblatt, founder of the EarBuds Podcast Collective, and Emma Turner, co-founder of the Independent Podcast Awards. A third inductee will be announced at a forthcoming event. Nissenblatt was also recently inducted into the Podcast Hall of Fame. Liam was deliberate about the distinction between the two programs.

“There’s always going to be some overlap in the people we recognize and the people the Podcast Hall of Fame recognizes,” he says. “But it’s operating at a much higher level. What’s really important for us is to shine a light on the people having a direct and significant impact on the independent creators we’re representing.”

Turner is a particular example of the initiative’s intent. As the engine behind what Mercury calls the world’s largest independent podcast awards, she has elevated many indie creators, but her industry profile remains low relative to what she has built. “She makes it look effortless,” Liam says. “I think that makes it so easy to undervalue.”

Video Is Pressure, Not a Pivot

Podcasting’s relationship with video has become an industry-wide debate, with Spotify and YouTube pushing creators toward visual formats. Liam does not dispute that video matters. He disputes the conclusion that audio-first podcasting is being replaced.

“If we stop doing or focusing on audio-only content, we stop being podcasts,” he says. “We start just being YouTube creators.”

Liam stresses that the pressure falls hardest on independent producers, who are already time-limited and resource-constrained. Adding a production-quality video layer to a one- or two-person show is not a budget-neutral decision. “When there’s an expectation from an audience to have a video element, that creates an additional burden on creators, especially indies,” he notes.

His argument is not that video should be resisted, but that the podcasting industry needs to integrate it without treating it as an existential reorientation. Audio-only retains real power, and decisions about how to use video should be driven by what serves each show’s audience, not by platform trends alone.

Downloads Are the Wrong Number

One of Liam’s clearest positions is that the podcasting industry has been measuring success incorrectly for years.

“Downloads are not a marker of success in podcasting,” he says. “I think we can’t shout that loud enough.”

The reasoning is practical. Liam explains that a show with a concentrated, highly specific audience can be more commercially valuable to a particular brand than a show with a broader but shallower reach. Crowdfunding, direct listener support, and live events are all viable revenue paths that have nothing to do with total download volume. Independent podcasters who give up early because their numbers aren’t spectacular are, in his view, chasing the wrong signal entirely.

Mercury signed “The Players Keep” partly on this logic. The D&D show’s download numbers are not platform-defining, but the group recently sold out a live event that drew attendees from New Zealand. “The power of building a really engaged audience around your content,” Liam says. “That’s something more tangible than a download.”

He points to Goalhanger, which achieves millions of downloads per month, as evidence that scale follows community, not the other way around. “The numbers are not the goal,” he says. “Your goal is to build an audience. The numbers will follow. If you define your success by the number of downloads you have, you’re going to miss the whole bit in the middle, which is building a community and finding your audience.”

Year Two: Grow What’s There

Mercury enters its second year with a new commercial hire to lead revenue, two new shows, a production partnership with Amplifi Collective that creates paid work for independent podcast freelancers, and two platform-level products in Orbit and the “Heroes” initiative.

Liam is direct about where he wants Mercury in five years. “I like to tell people we’ll be the biggest independent podcast network in the world,” he says. “I believe that.”

The more immediate goal is narrower. Networks, he argues, get trapped by constantly adding new shows to inflate numbers, which eventually outpace their ability to support the shows they were built to serve. 

Mercury is designed to resist that trap. “Year one was about building the roster,” Liam says. “Year two is about growing it.”