 Today we had to talk about these Spotify features. We can go a super deep dive, a full episode one day just talk about these Spotify features. So, but we want to talk about some key features that got everybody talking. Because the platform is changing. And if we want to get straight to the point, we can just start with Jacory saying I told you. So you want to go there? I love a good I told you. Sorry, let's get ready to live for a good I told you. So one of the biggest, I won't say the biggest, but one of the more prolific feature updates is the announcement of Spotify's clip feature. That is what they're calling it, right? So, essentially what they're going to allow artists to do is to upload short form videos, 30 second videos to their profile, to like add more context to a song or an album or, you know, just to kind of show your personality a little bit. Now, you might be thinking, oh, that's cool. But whereas I told you so come in, you know, and we've been telling you guys for months that short form content is the new language. And, you know, like most good languages it starts to spread and you realize you travel to places and you still got to speak the same language. You know what I'm saying? Once you hit these foreign soil, you know what I'm saying? And so now Spotify has adopted the language of short form content, which to me says that more likely at some point the others are going to do it too. You know, maybe their own version, but the very least, one of the biggest ones is doing it, which is enough, you know what I'm saying? So now your short form content skills doesn't just apply to TikTok. It doesn't just apply to YouTube. Doesn't just apply to social media, whereas ours like, I'm not a social media guy. Well, I got to do these social media things. So what now you see why? Because the streaming platforms are adopting social media platform methods and it's probably gonna work the same way, you know? Preach path. Preach. So yeah, we told y'all, man, you know? So what you're saying is TikTok is great Britain. Okay. And there's some a period list. Okay. It was just invaded the rest of the world. And now everybody's speaking English. Yeah. That's what it is. We all eating beans and toast. Yeah. The drinking great tea, bro, like, you know? I only want to go too far in that direction, but everybody is speaking TikTok now. Everybody's speaking TikTok. They've invaded, they've imperialized if that's a word, it is a word, because I said it. You know, I got to think about like, what's a word and what's not a word? It's like, hey, bro, you tell my mom that this Shakespeare guy can create words that we now talk about. How come I can't create a word? Well, she just throw some shit out there. Yeah, man. But I don't believe, you know? Hey, well, Webster was basically like a content creator. You know what I'm saying? He just, oh, let me organize these thoughts and give you the thoughts. So you got to kind of give Webster some credit. But with that feature, like I think people are, artists are underestimating why it's gonna be so valuable. But also I think people are either estimating how this is gonna affect TikTok in the long, no, Spotify in the long term. Yeah, yeah. So number one, the value is, okay, I'm showing my personality on the platform where the music is. We think, oh, the friction is low to go over from TikTok to Spotify in comparison to what we've seen before. Well, you're already on Spotify now. All right, so the same way you can be popping on TikTok and then your sound will get traction. Well, your song will get traction on Spotify at some point. So you have that. Two, with that being said, I don't wanna say that. I'm gonna say that one third. Two, now it's gonna be up to you to be able to be creative to still have high quality content, right? That doesn't feel like it's messing up Spotify's platform. Spotify is a little different. I don't think they're going to be as tolerant about the experimentation that took place on TikTok to start to allow things to bubble to the top of what's good and what's not. That's gonna be interesting. So you're probably gonna have to make sure that your content is on a certain quality without the leeway that you had on TikTok. Because that otherwise will just take over and make it way too social, right? But third, I think at some point, if this is successful, we might find Spotify ads become a real thing again. Like the regular audio ads? Not the audio ads. It's gonna be a new type of ad. The same way that we can advertise in the Instagram feed, the TikTok feed, the stories, that's going to become a thing on Spotify. Oh yeah, 100%. Because this is set in the stage. If this is successful, that will allow them to actually compete with ads in a way they haven't been able to compete. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Let me take a quick second to say, if you're an artist trying to blow your music up, or if you're a manager, a music professional in general, trying to help an artist blow their music up, I have something that's a game changer for you and it's completely free. As you may know, we've helped multiple artists go from zero to hundreds of thousands of streams. We've helped multiple artists go from hundreds of thousands of millions of streams, chart on Billboard, GoViral, all of that stuff. And we've now made the way we've branded multiple artists and helped them go viral completely free, step-by-step in Brandman Network. All you have to do is check out brandmannetwork.com. You apply, it's completely free. But the thing is, we're not gonna let everybody in forever. So the faster you apply, the better your chance of getting accepted. Brandmannetwork.com, check it out, back to the video. The thing about it that was the most, or what I like the most about it is that this is the first time that Spotify has given artists a feature that allows them to communicate with their audience on Spotify. Yep. Right, and so that's been a huge factor for a lot of people which is not fucking with Spotify. I was like, man, I got a million monthly listeners. I can't say nothing to none of them. I don't have the data to retarget. But now you can, I guess just like you said, I almost use Spotify as like any other platform. Hey, let me use Spotify to push my million monthly listeners over to Instagram, TikTok, whatever. Or just to say, hey, in platform and let them know I'm kinda here. Cause I'm curious to see, to your point about the quality control, what the parameter's gonna look like. Cause I remember when they did the Spotify rap, right, and they let artists upload the 30 second video to go into that route, which was them testing it out. I remember they had like certain things you couldn't talk about or say and so like you couldn't be trying to push people off platform. You couldn't put like logos and links, you know what I'm saying? Like icon of your video. So it had to be like very like clean. I'm gonna say, hey man, like, you know, this is the box of what you can talk about in this video. Right, so I'm assuming they're gonna implement like those same types of guidelines on here, at least for this early stage, right? Cause like I don't think they wanted to be as like loose of a cannon as TikTok is. I don't think Spotify was ready for that, you know what I'm saying? Yep. And then most artists wouldn't even put the output out to do it, right? So it would get dominated very quickly by the artists that are like that. You know, like the, the Nick D's and the Isle Kenny's of the world. You know what I'm saying? With more and really quickly and to take this shit over. So yeah, cause in the labels is our good planning cause their artists aren't doing it too big. Yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, so, so I think they're gonna, my guess is they're gonna work to find that balance. But I mean, I personally like it, man. Like I said, bro, artists you can finally talk to your audience. You can show your personality on it. I was reading on the features early and just seeing some of the plans that have for it in terms of like, you know, popping up at the top of people's like search bars and being fed into the algorithm like the music is. So it's gonna, you know, be a, I'm assuming like a good discovery tool. Probably secondary and then be a good like fan engagement tool at primary. You know what I'm saying? Like here's a way for you to just kind of like talk to people. It's like the more advanced version of that note that you can put on your song for all the Spotify. You know what I'm talking about? Oh yeah. To me, it's like a more advanced version of that. You know what I'm saying? Cause I don't know, I don't know. I would love to know if those notes actually work. I feel like I haven't seen artists using them in a while. You know what I'm saying? To me, it's just a better version of that. Well, I think this will actually help things like that become more impactful. Yeah. Because the thing is, you had this note which by itself, it seems cool because like even the artist pick, it seems cool. But if my fan experience on this platform is truly never to receive any communication from the artist, I don't ever register. Yeah, you're invincible. Yeah, I'm not thinking about it. I'm just not looking for it cause I don't expect to hear from them. So I'm not even looking. Even if it says artist pick, I'm not even thinking truly if they pick that. Oh, this person really liked this song, right? Versus if you posted that and said, this is my song for you on Instagram or TikTok. Then I would feel like, oh, this artist really believes that this is a song that I should be listening to, right? Or they want me to. So creating other forms of engagement where on the platform, people feel like the artist is communicating this to me is going to help them pay more attention to other features that probably didn't really make the impact that she would have thought. Yeah, that's true. Cause like now you could build like a true funnel around it. Like you could have a little text pushing people to the artist pick, pushing them to a playlist to that has your clip in it. Like you could build a real like, you're like Fanny has been funneling it. And now, you know, it was a no, you know, not to get ahead, but like there was one of the new updates that kind of emphasized like Spotify had like the whole like merch thing on in there, right? Like I've been seeing like merch become a lot more like prominent artist profiles over the last like couple of months. So I mean, now that they announced it, I get why, but I see that they're making the steps to make Spotify more of a fan engagement platform, which is like I said, being one of the biggest complaints of it for as long as it's been around. You know what's crazy? People, I've seen all of these apps. People reach out to me for my paying to build or or wanting me to be like a marketer for these apps where they have a platform and people can stream your music on the platform. People can buy your merch on the platform. They have a fee where people can comment on a platform. People have been pushing these ideas for years now. And it's the easiest for Spotify to just become this platform. Like Spotify could and should be everything that an artist needs. You have everybody here. All right, if you made it easier and better for merch to be purchased and tickets to be purchased where it was a true viable option and people could truly like communicate with their fans do that and process. Like you might be taking control of the process and whatever in some form of fashion. Like that's great for you revenue-wise. You literally can become my house, right? Where everything lives out of they're in the best position to do that. Now there might be implications for other sides of the business why they don't wanna do that or I don't know, maybe the labels have been pushing them away from it, but they have been best positioned to be the place where people go and have a 360, you know, hey, no pun intended with artists and be a part of every part of this in no way. Yeah, and that's what I like about this feature rollout is that it feels like Spotify is finally embracing its position as a marketing tool, you know what I'm saying? Hopefully. Because I mean, we talked about it a lot, right? Where artists have their complaints, you know? What about it about the platform in terms of like payoffs and things like that? I've always kind of just looked at Spotify as just another marketing tool, right? If we can use this to build an audience up in the hardest part, like I was saying, it was always like figuring out a way to push them off-spot about other stuff because we couldn't, you can't talk to them directly. So then they fix a lot of that, right? They only have things like the clips, they even have another feature. It's called something called like fan first and they try to identify like your biggest fans and then make sure they get like email updates and things around you pretty consistently, right? And I've been seeing it a little bit with some artists like I follow. Yeah, so it's like they're finally embracing it as like a full marketing site. Hey, we have Organic for you, which is the algorithmic playlist. We have Pay for you, which is marquee and Discovery Ass. We have, I guess Organic too could be like content and we have something for you to farm that too because you can sell tickets and merch on your platform. Yeah, it's gonna take time for all that to develop in a way that is really significant, but them not having these things pretty much continues to clarify that they have never been in a business selling to artists, all right? If anything, they've been selling fans and consumers because they were looking at themselves more as a radio, all right, and the radio value, it comes from the people who are listening to it, the amount of people who are listening to it and then it becomes a kind of way for other people to market themselves on, which it makes sense to start out that way. I can't even fault them on that, but now to me in terms of revenue and possibilities, they have the position to be a platform for artists. Your added threshold where everybody goes to, y'all are already number one, so if you can be a place where I ain't, and rightfully so, then it cuts other parts of the business because you're allowing me to sell more merch directly just to better understand where my fans are coming from and somehow optimize which of those fans see tickets for these shows and things like that, then why would I go to another platform? It's hard for anybody to even build anything comparable to that because it's really difficult to get to that point. Yeah. So hopefully this is another step in the right direction, but switching to another feature is the DJ AI, all right? So how would you explain the DJ AI in short? To me it sounds like AI shuffle, you know what I'm saying? Like I still don't completely understand it yet because my Spotify hasn't updated to what I have it. My hasn't either. But so EJ, shout out to EJ, the editor, we all want to know who kills y'all with the headline. Yeah, that's headline shawty out there, the headline goat. But personalization at the heart of what we do as Spotify. This is their quote on the new AI DJ. Just think of fan favorite playlist like Discover Weekly or our annual rap campaign. The beauty of these experiences is our ability to deliver the right piece of music for the exact moment in time and maybe even connect you with your next favorite artist in the process. We're building on that innovation by harnessing the power of AI in an entirely new way. And today we're excited to share that we're taking our personalization to a whole new level with DJ. So what's this all saying? All right, to me it's a glorified radio station. I mentioned EJ because he says his girlfriend uses it a lot. So I think it's to me that's a proven case, a real world case where we might often say, all right, that sounds cool, but are people gonna really use it? Well, there's already some people who are using it seriously and allowing it to select the music and control their discovery process. Right? Yeah. So, and I think Gary V alluded to this years ago when he was like, he was a little bullish on voice. It really hasn't taken over to the extent he thought yet. But he was saying, when people are no longer searching the search engine and I'm going to Google to search it and I see like 10 options on the page, you think that's a little bit. Well, what do you think is gonna happen where people just say, hey Siri, do X, Y, and Z or hey Alexa, do X, Y, and Z. And then they just give him an option. All right? It's like, oh, when we're in that other office the other week and I was like, hey Alexa, play some little baby. I didn't control whether it went to Amazon or Spotify. All right? It could have just played enough. I forgot when I said the other week, I think I said play like jazz or something. And it didn't tell, I didn't decide which jazz artist it played, right? So it's like, how do you create visibility in a world where you're not even competing with eyeballs anymore? You just, I don't know, we just say you're competing with ears but like people can't see you unless they happen to hear you because the platform is choosing for you. So I think that's something that sounds cool for consumers. I don't quite see, it seems like it's a little troubling for artists, like it makes things even more competitive to be at the top. Yeah, I mean, I think if it works the way they're marketing it, cause they're a big thing for like this is almost like discover weekly but a little bit more personalized to them based on your old music taste. Which now that, as I said out loud, it's like, but isn't that the appeal of discover weekly is that we're learning your music taste and recommending you new things, right? So my only thinking behind this is pretty much what you said, man. I think Spotify is saying that users don't want to have as much control over their discovery processes that they did on Spotify. Cause that was Spotify's big thing in the beginning, right? Like you have complete control of your discovery process, you know. And they failed at it. They did, terrible. They weren't great discovery engine. Better play listers like TikTok killed the discovery game. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will give a spy finder there. They're better than the other DSPs at discovery. Like Apple's discovery engine is basic. Move titles. I only, Pandora might be the closest. Pandora's vibe was the best to me to be honest. Where Pandora's the best at like staying in one vibe. And SoundCloud, SoundCloud's probably the best. SoundCloud, I guess they didn't consider that a DSP. That discovery, they probably at their height did discovery better. Yeah. Right. So it was just more of a cultural thing. I don't even think it was all technological. It was just a setup of it. But, I don't even look at Pandora as a DSP to be honest. I think of it just differently as like radio and they do it at the best. So in, and obviously in a DSP game, I just don't think Amazon and Apple count in all both ways. They don't care to count. Right. They don't care to count. Now, it's not that they aren't viable sources to get like plenty of strings audience. Of course, all that, but yeah. The discovery. Yeah. Like they're not in that same game that Spotify has done. So that's what I say. All right, TikTok killed them in that. They're trying to get back to it. And I think what they realized also is the listenership is such a passive experience with the app. All right, you go in, you play your music. You're not, you can be using Spotify for three hours and never look at the shit. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Whereas, and that's tough for advertising, which probably is part of another reason that they would like to have more advertising dollars. Let's get people looking at the app. Let's do these clips so people can actually look at the app. Cause they nobody really looking at Spotify like that. You know what I mean? So when you can capture more eyeballs in that way, I think it's probably gonna be a benefit to them as a company, but then it'll be a benefit to the artists in this own way that figure it out because now I can engage with you in more ways and consume you as a visual and audio experience. But still the DJ aspect of it, again, I just don't think, I don't trust them to be great at it. From an artist's music and give that kid his standpoint, when I trust them to be great at it for a happy consumer standpoint, right? But like for me to be a new artist and trying to get myself seen, outside of using this other feature, which we'll get to. There's only a limited amount of shell space. I know, although we, and that's the weird thing about this. So we acknowledge the advent of the internet created this unlimited shell space, right? Before you go to the store and it's only enough space, like a certain amount of space that you can put your CDs on. There's only enough space for, if you could put your Coca-Cola and Pepsi and it's hard to bring a new product in there because literally physically, there's only another certain amount of space. I get that the internet makes things better and Spotify to that credit has more space for more artists. But then realistically, shell space is limited by time and people's attention in a given amount of time, right? So, yes, I can have unlimited amount of artists on this platform, but can I truly equally distribute this music through this AI DJ in a way that's even? What's even a setup to be even and fair to quote, quote, quote, quote, fair to everybody. You know, this doesn't even make sense, right? So you're still gonna have some level of prioritization towards people that it makes the most sense, you know what I mean? You know, those are the labels and distributors and the indies, but not so indies that you get down to the pure indies. So that's one, like, I don't really trust it to be a huge benefit for artists unless they happen to get in. Then the other side, maybe one incentive would be this feature, the Spotify Discovery feature. Well, even just really quick on the DJ thing, I just kind of thought about it. I think that DJ features may be meant to control the vibe around the discovery. Because like I said, what I was thinking was like, okay, it doesn't make sense if they feel like they would need the DJ tools to introduce artists to people because they have Discover Weekly, right? Discover Weekly is essentially the output. It's like an optimized way of doing it. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Cause yeah, exactly, like Discover Weekly is kind of like, hey, we're looking at like your broader music taste, I guess, in recommending you. So versus the DJ feature sounds like, hey, we're recommending you songs based on like the mood you're seeing being right now. You know what I'm saying? So like, we can't versus like Discover Weekly doesn't necessarily have like, there's not like a theme like vibe to your discovery. It's like a bunch of new music that you like versus like this is gonna be like, hey, you are listening to, you know, Lil Baby and Lil Dirk right now clearly you in the mood for some lit music. So I'm gonna start recommending you other artists that make this type of music, right? So it's a little bit more, I guess, cohesive in your musical mood for the moment. That's, I just thought about that. Like that's the only thing I could think of like why or how that could maybe be beneficial to artists. Like it's gonna make the experience in which they get discovered in a little bit more positive, you know, but then. That, yeah, less random. Yeah, but it's like, I don't know how impactful that's gonna be. Maybe. It might take away some of those skips. Yeah. It's like, when you finish your playlist and go to some other random thing and you skip it because like it's not your vibe. Even though you would have liked it a better experience. Yeah, exactly. To that I say, well, this is some Apple shit. You know, when they release a feature like five years later, it's an Android, Ben had that shit. Like this is, well, Pandora's been doing radio the right way. It's not that much to this. But again, you equate that and relate that to the discovery engine. What is it? Discovery mode. Yeah, discovery mode, that's what I meant to say. That's the real kicker. That's the real kicker. So breaking down the discovery mode, what's the percentage again? Think it's 30%? They take 20 or 30, they take 20 or 30. 30% cut from your track and then you get incentivized placement on the platform. Through the algorithm. Through the algorithm. How powerful would that have been without having this radio? This DJ AI, I think that's part of why they're being launched at the same time. Oh, because they can disguise it through that shit. I didn't think about it, that's a good point. Yeah, I think about it. So, and that's the better way to probably even introduce it, otherwise would you just hop on some playlist? Yeah, that basically just keep throwing me like this cover in the regular radio. So yeah, I wonder if the DJ thing is going to replace the regular radio, then we'd have to use the radio as I like to repeat its tracks. Well, it has to be a better way of doing it. Like they themselves, they call it a combination of discovered weekly and wrapped. That's the rest. I just don't quite get the wrapped analogy personally yet. I guess it's maybe the personalized aspect of it, but that's how Spotify describes it.