 It's the Metwork. This is a point made by Mark Mulligan. He made the point about the tech major becoming powerhouses. He also mentions that about we're currently experiencing a discovery crisis in that we're listening to way more music now but at the same time we're not really discovering as much, we're not really developing meaningful relationships with artists. We're sort of just streaming as a commodity just for a certain purpose rather than actually discovering new artists to love and it could become a growing problem as the streaming culture increases. Now what do you think? Do you think that's more of a feeling? You know how just generally generously some things change and they're not used to it and say oh this isn't what it used to be or do you think there's some accuracy to that? I think from you know if you look at it on the face of it there's definitely you know there are stats support this but at the same time I think we're shifting more towards the dark social now which we'll talk about you know earning your own earning your own fans and that therefore I feel like people will switch away from this and become a more community focused and I still I love like the Discover Weekly and Release Radar on Spotify but at the same time I'm not just I'm not just in there just to save certain songs and also then deep diving into the artist catalog as well but a lot of people aren't doing that. I feel like we're going to lean more, we're going to go more towards like back to our discovery rather than just listening to music just yeah. So let's walk through this so essentially they're kind of blaming playlisting culture yeah right yeah and playlisting culture and radio culture. Which starts with the iPod basically goes way back to the iPod I'd argue. Yeah yeah so if I'm saying and because I'm listening to so much music through playlist because I just want to I go to a mood or something similar to this artist and I'm not just listening to this artist at this time and this artist at this time I'm I'm now hearing all these songs and I get to know them maybe from frequency I never might even know the artist that's actually singing this song. In some way though I said all right that's how it was with radio. I guess the biggest difference is the fact that at some point people were being upsold to choosing an artist right which record do you want to go here on demand. Yes you can do that now even easier less of a bird barrier to entry because there's no no CDs that you have to go by you can just actually go to that artist but I guess maybe it's almost so accessible that people don't use it now. I you know like maybe the incentive isn't there. Is that what's driving it? Is that what he's saying? I don't understand. I think at this point that on that side you know we have got all these playlists and it is very easy to listen to music and listen to artists and not really think about them or you know just listen to whatever comes on but at the same time because of social media and things like band camp you know you can be a lot closer to actually not helping you before therefore in that way you are really building meaningful relationships with artists. Well I guess where I lean to is the idea that it's probably some sense of an exaggeration just because the landscape has changed and what I mean by that is you can really look at the whole concept of an along tell right. At one point attention was concentrated on a small segment of the market because attention couldn't even be accessed for a lot of the niches out there or niches however you say that word right like that just wasn't possible. Internet happens bam eventually people can now consume a lot of these smaller communities and types of music genres and all that stuff more people can access them and those genres can access more people so what happens is that attention that was monopolized in on the short side of the long tail all of a sudden has to be shared and when that happens especially when you include social media it's not that there are no closer relationships I feel like I feel like they're just less stars on steroids where we have these people that were up here and now it's increased a middle class it used to be a huge attention gap right the inequality attention gap now that gap is shrunk right you have more people from the bottom that is have risen to the middle but you have some of those people who are at the bottom of the top that have have came down a little bit you have the super superstars that are still there but now there's a lot of people that I believe in the 90s the 80s right that were looked at on a certain level that would not have been perceived on that level right today because not because of a talent I'm not even just saying that because a lot of times people think that oh there's less talent no there's no way there's less talent it's more competition now right it's more competition and we have more access to bad talent there's less curation right so I think some of that has to do with the fan relationship as well it's like yes we do have our deep connection still with certain people but then there's also more bad quality connections yeah there'll always be super fans but there'll just be a more concentrated amount for different artists where I was like yeah exactly that's where I see it going I don't think it is necessarily a crisis I think it's just it is now part of the culture but there'll still always be you know a place for the you know the the tight-knit community to build relationships with artists because it's a crisis for those who are invested in the old model but philosophically you can argue like you can argue for the new way right if you want to think of a more let's say socialism or just what do you call it merit of of talent that like that type of philosophy about the people and the people being in control that's more today if you're thinking about capitalism right and control then and your specific purist critique of what quality is then that might lend towards the old model and that brings us on to another point about fandom becoming the new currency and this is now this is the new the power of technology now that we have got to this point where you can directly reach out and support your artists see if I like this particular artist you know not only can't not only just go to their google by their merch I can now at least in eastern culture and eastern music I can actually you know tip artists play out a certain track or just you know just support them just not you know give them a bit of money they want to directly and this is what he now believes we're now steering to this in the west over the course of the next decade and we're starting to see that being implemented with platforms like loom we mentioned last time they've launched a new virtual currency called notes where you can directly tip artists that you like on the platform and we are seeing twitter and now starting to experiment with it as well they might be implementing into the platform this year which is you know the biggest change that's happened to twitter in a long time really and youtube has already did that as well yeah yeah twitch has been doing that for a long time I think man that's just a matter of time it's inevitable I never really understood why they hadn't done that before because it seems just and you know from my perspective it's a great ability to access another form of profit for a company because so many times are for our technology platforms those look at social media because this is where a large part of it comes from right social media will you know it grew expanded and then so many of these platforms look to hit a certain threshold of having market share and now we're going to monetize through advertising and then in a lot of ways for some people a lot of people that ruins the user experience blah blah blah blah at least that's what they say the other model and a lot of these companies by the way still are not profitable although you have this advertising and you're making hundreds of millions but at the same time you're still not profitable due to all expenses and the other model is like yo we're just starting out and we have this ingrained way of making money that the the community actually likes because we're taking a share of the tipping Spotify not Spotify TikTok I believe they take 50% I'm not aware how much yeah I'm not aware how much everybody takes but that's profit as opposed to having to wait the fact that you have revenue that's already starting before you even think about advertisers and obviously TikTok is very smart and how they're integrating advertisers but even getting into traditional programmatic advertising and things like that just the ability to have your own revenue stream it only makes sense that without having to wait for those other things and and even the stickers right they've been doing that and like you said eastern culture for so long even I remember when I first realized that because I could even when Facebook tried that years ago because then that's probably part of it they haven't trained people in America at least their behavior to do stuff like that because to me I'm like why do somebody buy a sticker like what do they get from the sticker I still don't understand that completely more than I used to but when it first started that's probably had to be like I feel like I might have been in high school maybe in college but I just remember that feature and I didn't understand what was the point even when it's free like I didn't I don't understand poke I never understood like why why don't I want to poke somebody I don't I don't understand that stuff but there's a culture that does those things fanatically and then the and then the fact that there's money behind it is it just seems like it's the only way to go if not only for the fact that platforms like TikTok are coming over and these other platforms which help train us users to do so but if you don't they're the competitive advantage of that act act of additional stream of income alone becomes a threat to your company being able to to even you know withstand these other companies it's the network