‘Callous and punitive’: Rosie Waterland launches own podcast network after battle with SCA
Award-winning podcaster Rosie Waterland has launched her own podcast network and will re-record old episodes after an ongoing dispute with SCA’s Listnr was finally resolved.
In various statements, Waterland has labelled the actions of Listnr “pointlessly callous and punitive”, and called on her listeners to use her network’s launch as an opportunity to “prove to the men in suits who co-opt the work of artists and creators that we can be bigger, and better, without them”.
Waterland had two podcasts with Listnr, Just The Gist and Mum Says My Memoir Is A Lie. When the deal with Listnr was dissolved, Waterland was unaware that she didn’t own the master recordings, or that she’d be unable to use the successful podcasts’ feeds.
The original branding for Just The Gist when it was a Listnr podcast
“I had no idea I didn’t fully own my own creative work to begin with, and it’s been a two-year process trying to get Just The Gist back up and running, because I would only do it in a way I considered fair,” Waterland said in a social media statement this week. “That meant eventually having to walk away from the old JTG feed and content, and completely start again from scratch.”
In a separate statement on social media earlier this month, she said: “The corporate side of art is weird. You would think if you create a thing, you own that thing. Believe me – if it was that simple, JTG would never have stopped two years ago. I have spent the last two years desperately trying to bring JTG back. And the gist is, it’s been a long and frustrating process.”
An SCA spokesperson had a different version of events and told Mumbrella: “We respect the work that Rosie created while with Listnr and wish her every success with her new venture. Any suggestion that episodes have been deleted is incorrect, as is any suggestion that Rosie does not have a copy of the content created during her time with us. All episodes of Mum Says My Memoir Is A Lie remain unpublished in accordance with the mutual agreement between Rosie and Listnr. We remain committed to operating within this agreement.”
Waterland has compared her move to make new recordings of Just The Gist to the famous actions of Taylor Swift. The pop star re-recorded her back catalogue of albums after the master recordings were sold off. Swift’s newer versions of her old albums became known as ‘Taylor’s Version’.
“Get ready for an all-new Just The Gist podcast, with brand new episodes and re-recordings of every single deleted episode. Yep – we are bringing you the entire JTG back catalogue (Rosie’s Version),” Waterland said.
Waterland’s version of Just The Gist will be recorded, produced and owned by her own network, Just The Network, and hosted and monetised by Acast.
Re-recording her other podcast, Mum Says My Memoir Is A Lie, is not an option, as her co-host and mother, Lisa Stevens, has since died.
In December, Waterland revealed that when her mum died, it became important to her that she had full ownership of their joint podcast.
“I fully owned the IP but not the master recordings. I wanted to own the master recordings. I wanted it to stay up as a Listnr podcast though, and was more than happy for them to continue monetising it if they wanted to. I just wanted to make sure I fully owned the IP and the masters, so that I could be sure only my sisters and I had final say over any possible use of her voice. But Listnr would only agree to let me own the masters on the condition they delete the original Mum Says podcast feed.
“Basically, if they don’t have any ownership of the masters, they don’t want anyone else to benefit from them – even me. And even if they are still benefiting from it by monetising it. If I wanted to fully own the original version of Mum Says, they decided nobody could have it. It just seems so pointlessly callous and punitive,” she said at the time.
Just The Gist (Rosie’s Version)
SCA has since given Waterland the raw and final published files of her recordings with her mother.
“I couldn’t afford to buy the masters outright, so I had to agree to their terms. After I did, they sent me the raw audio files, so I can republish it, and I will when I can. It took a few weeks for Mum Says to start… disappearing from podcast platforms though, so I really thought they might have changed their minds about deleting it. Like maybe someone in the Listnr offices was like, ‘Wow yeah there doesn’t really seem like there’s any point in deleting this, this woman literally died this year and this podcast is an important record of her life and an important body [of] audio work that has affected millions of people and we should be proud that we played a part in producing it so let’s not be dicks and just keep it up’. Ha. Hahahahaha. That did not happen,” Waterland explained.
“So now the audio files are just sitting on my laptop. It will take a lot of work and editing to remove all the ‘Listnr’ branded stuff from each episode that I’ve been ordered to remove before I republish anywhere (the artwork/music etc). But that’s not really the point – re-editing everything is annoying, but not the main issue.”
She added: “I can republish a new version of the audio, but the original version – the version that my mum heard – will not be available to the public ever again. When I realised it had been taken down [in December] I burst into tears. I’m actually surprised at the level of grief this has all stirred up for me.”
Waterland also issued advice to other content creators.
Waterland with her former SCA producer Lindsey Green and former co-host Jacob Stanley
“I’m very good at making podcasts. I have two national awards and millions of downloads to prove it. But the corporate world of podcasting can be a really awful business. Please listen to me when I tell you: never sign a podcast contract with any of the major players unless it stipulates that you 100% own all your master recordings and your IP,” she said.
Waterland was approached for additional comment via Acast.
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