 It's the mat work. Hey everybody, it's Sean and welcome to Music News that matters. We're on the first of every month, we help you sift through the noise to bring you the most important industry news. Hey guys, it's Josh here. We know there's so much information out there, but we're gonna try our best to bring you all the topics that matter. Today we're discussing Trends to Watch in 2020, a podcast threatening the growth of the music industry and always the weird and wonderful world of TikTok. And before we get started, since these videos are only once a month, make sure you sign up to our newsletter in the description below to get notified of the latest news and why it matters to you between episodes and also make sure you hit that notification bell so you can get notified when we upload videos of information like this for you. And for the first time, this will be available on all audio streaming platforms. We know you guys have been commenting saying, can this be on Spotify or Apple Music? And it will be from now on. This episode and all future episodes will be available everywhere. Awesome. I love it. I love it, man. It's been a long time coming. It's about time. Yeah. It is about time. We're here. We hear you guys. We hear your feedback and we have a lot of awesome topics. So Josh, let's get into it, man. Yeah. So first of all, we've got an article from Sync Tank. And it's a, some music industry analysts have done a predictions for Trends to Watch in 2020 in the music industry. We'll put a link in the description for that. So a few of them have had their say and we've picked out some of those interesting points from it to debate. And I think we'll start with the idea that the major tech platforms are gonna become powerhouses. So the idea is that music is gonna become more of a, not a separate subscription, but part of a larger sort of like package as it were. So we've seen before, like foreign companies might offer Apple, for example, have Apple TV, offer Apple Music, News Plus, throw me a bundle together. And that's quite, it's not really a good thing because that means the revenue per user for the music stream platforms is gonna go down, which means artists will probably get paid less royalties as well. Yeah, man, with it, to me what this is ringing as is the commoditization of content because there's so much of it. People are really going to get tired. They're not gonna wanna pay 50 different subscriptions to be segmented to 50 different niche, you know, subscribers, I mean providers. So how can I access my content? In the same way tech companies, well, no, not even tech companies. Let's look at networks, right? I mean, when I say networks, I'm actually talking about phone networks. If you look at a company like AT&T, right? And those companies start bundling, right? Phone and internet, then they wanna integrate cable into those things. All these things, the bundling of those types of service and content and communication has always happened in some form of fashion as it started to grow. And it really just comes back to competition, right? How can we have as much market share of this stuff as possible? Because, okay, I have a cell phone and cell phones are awesome. But then if I realized that a lot of the infrastructure, right, that I built because of my cell phone infrastructure and some of the things that get provided also lend towards this internet thing, right? And then some of these other things like, well, yeah, because internet, once we create smart phone and you can access the internet through the phone, it was like, now all of a sudden these things has come together, right? So how can I control both of these things as opposed to leaving them separate and allowing somebody else to come in, take that market share? It's this never ending idea of how can I gobble up communication and content? That's when it comes down to me. How do you see it? Well, admittedly, I'm one of those people that Spotify comes with my phone contract so I don't pay for it directly. I didn't know people were doing that, that's crazy. Yeah, yeah, that's quite a common thing here. Because obviously I think, well, the way I see it is that if I'm paying this X amount a month for this phone contract, I'd actually be paying an extra 10 pounds if it wasn't for Spotify. So actually I'm getting 10 pounds off. My phone per month is how I see it. Yeah. But that's what they get you really, isn't it? Well, I may as well get it, I'm gonna pay anyway, so. Yeah, see, that's exactly where they get you because it comes down to leverage. Those bigger companies, they can take whatever those short-term losses are to create those bundles, to make people see those benefits, like you said, gain market share from it and it goes back to the fact that attention is the game. Attention and data. If we had your attention and data, it doesn't matter if we're losing something, at least the competition doesn't have you and we can figure out how to monetize you after that fact. This brings us also bringing back to the tech majors, like Amazon have had a massive increase in their subscribers to Amazon Prime Music. Now it's come from like 18 million to 55 million in the past year. And that's primarily because a lot of people own Amazon Alexa's and Smart Speakers in their homes and they're offering like a, there's a free Amazon Music Plan that comes with them. So a lot more people are using the music services and then they pay for Prime, then they get music for free as well. They get some music for free. So she's adding on layer upon layer, lots of subscription models. That's where they are now. That was funny because that was the first thing I heard when I heard that Amazon had 50 million users to their Amazon music. It's like, okay, they don't focus on pushing heavily like marketing themselves and becoming this branded music platform like Spotify were the ones they were first and in terms of how they really pushed and leveraged it and then Apple comes in and they kind of have sexy brands that they push separately. Amazon doesn't seem to invest heavily in that. They recognize that music, listening to music is almost a utility at this point, right? Like it's just a thing, it doesn't have to be sexy. So if we provide you this and we understand where customer behavior already is, you're already on the Alexa, right? You're already in these places. You don't necessarily want the whole, you don't want to have to go over the behavioral change and the behavioral barriers of going through these other apps, right? Like what's gonna be most integrated? What's gonna be most convenient? What's gonna work faster? And that goes back to, like I said, AT&T and all these other, or Comcast and all the other companies that'll bundle and take these other subsidiaries, so they can now infiltrate that business. Amazon is a platform that has the leverage to do just that, right? Like you said, Prime, all the way down to like the grocery store delivery service. There's so many- We all use it, don't we, for something? Right, there's so many different integrations and aspects they're in. It's the ultimate lifestyle brand and they don't market themselves as it. That's what I love about it, right? You can think about, Hip Hop was one of the huge innovators when it came to lifestyle brands, but it was also very much aspirational and we brand this world to you. And Amazon's world that they brand is a lot more about convenience and easy to access and then they just make it happen for you. So next thing you know, you're doing it because it's easy, not, ooh, it's so cool. And there's so much power in that, which also brings inevitability to it in terms of the level of presence that they'll have in that market that you can't necessarily escape. So after seeing the amount of energy they've put into this, because, oh, Prime, like you said, all these things become free. Their content, like the more Netflix competition style of content that they have, the music platform, which I've never even tried Amazon music, but I don't have an Olexia yet. Right? It's been a very quiet rise for them and kind of getting out of business. All those things, they can happen quietly though when you have control of the hardware and the platforms that people are already leveraging. And you might not even know that you're using that because you're just saying, let me hear some music. Right? Yeah. They've also been very clever in their position, like separating themselves from other streaming platforms. So for example, they've now got the high definition like streaming option, the really high-end one of like, it was like Dolby Atmos and stuff and you can pay extra fee to get the HD streaming if you want to, a spot I don't offer that. I know it's hard or used to, maybe they still do. So what's the difference when you say like the high definition? Like does it like really just sound way better? Is that the only benefit or is there something else to it? It's made just sounds a lot better in it. And you can also, they've also done a partnership with Dolby for certain smart speakers. So that it sounds even crisper like. But so obviously Spotify still only offer 320 kilobytes per second as their high quality and inverted commas. But I think the HD is more like wave CD quality. Got you. Yes. That's an additional add-on. I don't know how many consumers will truly care to the extent that they can't. But it's there for the audio files. You see it's there, but it's got the extra layer that some haven't got. Therefore it gives them a slight edge in that small market. That's what it's all about though. Cause they're also similar now. You've got to find that niche. That was what I was going to say though. Those music heads, those people who actually do care and can tell that's always a market. So why not gobble up an additional marketing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So they're set to overtake Apple Music this year on their own track to do that in terms of subscribers. How many is Apple Music at? I think it was. That's a good question. Not for the latest figures out. It's definitely, I think it's like 70 million or something. So not too far away. Yeah. So if they overcome Apple Music, when you think about the... So 60 million, it surpassed last year. So in Amazon, like 55 million. The rate of growth holds the Amazons a lot bigger curve than Apple. Yeah. So I was thinking seriously, we don't really talk about it a lot, but maybe it's going to become more of a main player this decade. It comes down to search, man. That's what it comes down to. And that's where some of these platforms lose benefit. Where you have a platform like Amazon, right? We have all these items. I was just looking at like camera bags and things like that before we hopped on this call. And when I wanted to find something, like now I go to Amazon just to search something in the same way I might Google it. It's weird. It's almost like, it's not weird. It's what Google already knows. These separate sites in their own way, they take away from search, right? They're not direct search engines. That's not how they begin marketing themselves. Like Yahoo start, you know, with search engine being search engine forgot the one before Google Netscape, I guess I think, but Facebook is a search engine now. It started off in social media, but it's now a search engine. Amazon is a search engine for items, right? Like things that people shop for, but in that it started to create this same ability when it comes from music. And then when you start to move towards the voice market of Alexa and was it Google Home? Is that what they call the Google one? No, that's the whole suite. Yeah, it's Google Home, I think it is. Okay, yeah, like all. Just to put it in perspective, that a quarter of the US population owns a smart speaker right now. What? Oh man. Yeah, and majority of those are Amazon products, like over 60% of those Amazon products. So you think of the amount of people who are streaming, you are now, you know. Yep, so they're gonna have access to at least the free tier of Prime Music. There it is, right? So you make this stuff free, easily available, you know? And now all of a sudden when I'm in the voice search space it's wherever I am. What platform am I using already? I'm using Alexa, so essentially I'm on Amazon and I'm searching for everything through Amazon. Yeah, and if you say play this song, it's gonna play it from Prime Music unless you say play it from Spotify. So therefore, it's always got you, like it's got, yeah, it's got you right where you want it. That's it, so who's controlling the platforms? So that's, I'm really interested to see where Apple navigates in that particular side of things. So yeah, definitely. And also like that links quite nicely to the idea of, 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 relationship 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, 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 to 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 fans and that. Therefore, I feel like people will switch away from this and becoming more community focused. And I still, I love like we 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 dive into the artist's catalog as well. 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? Playlisting culture and radio culture. Which that's the iPod. Basically goes way back to the iPod, aren't you? 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 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, right? In some way though, 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 barrier to entry because there's 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. Maybe the Cinevis in 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, 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 just listen to whatever comes on. But at the same time, because of social media and things like band camp, you can be a lot closer to actually than they helped you before. Therefore, in that way, you are really building a meaningful relationship to 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 till, 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 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. There used to be a huge attention gap, right? The inequality attention gap. Now that gap has shrunk, right? You have more people from the bottom that have risen to the middle but you have some of those people who are at the bottom of the top that 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 today. There'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. So 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 a place for the the tight-knit community to build relationships with the artists. 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 wanna think of a more, let's say, socialism or just, what do you call it? Merit of talent, that type of philosophy and about the people and the people being in control that's more today. If you're thinking about capitalism and control then in 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 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 I not only just go to their gig or buy their merch, I can now at least in Eastern culture and Eastern music, I can actually tip artists, play out a certain track or just, you know, just support them, you know, give them a bit of money if I 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, for our technology platforms, those are like a social media because this is where a large part of it comes from. Social media will, you know, it grew and expanded. And then so many of these platforms looked 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, at least that's what they say. The other model, and in 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 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 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 even the stickers, right? They've been doing that in, 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, wow, 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've 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 at all? 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 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 of additional stream of income alone becomes a threat to your company, being able to even withstand these other companies. Yeah, I think the reason why companies in other parts maybe push back and didn't implement it is because they are the gatekeepers. And I think they might have seen a sense of potentially losing a bit of control if you start giving the user too much power to influence the way the platforms run. And I think that's what it many came down to. I think there's a lot of fear factor in giving too much too early. It's so funny you said that. Because that's weird to me when it's like, are these US platforms are based off of a democratic philosophy, right? And TikTok is very much so, not that as far as how they really push it. It's central control and they're not really shy about it. But at the same time, when you think about the power of the user and the community itself, it actually is kind of what you said. It's like, okay, this is supposed to be the democratic way of thinking. However, we're doing things like that that might limit the empowerment of individual users while TikTok or these Eastern platforms, as you alluded to, they do a lot of things that really do empower the users and the individuals who are on that platform to thrive off of income. And I know that can go to a far deeper argument, but it's just funny, a lot of the nuances back and forth that you can spot and the contradictions on both ends that come from it. Because of anything, maybe they feared that if they gave me these features, they'd then get enough money and would then move away from the platform and launch their own network or company. Whereas in fact, that would actually keep them on the platform, they didn't realize it at the time. Maybe they would just, yeah. That's one way of looking at it, potentially. True, true, yeah. Because I actually always have wondered why somebody, right, didn't create their own app. Like why didn't Kanye, I remember thinking this when Kanye was asking for money so much, like why doesn't Kanye at least have some standalone app, even if it doesn't make all the money he wants, right? Or needs with whatever he was trying to raise it. Why doesn't he have his own standalone app that you can subscribe to and get whatever, right? Or a stream him individually and where he'd get a lot of his side material. Him, okay, artist, perfectionist. So it might be hard for him to have a certain prevalence of content and product. But still the theory and the concepts still lies, like why aren't there more stars that do that on a higher level? There have been some. Yeah, did you read Capital's article on Jay-Z, for example, you know, all his projects and all his partnerships, like launching an album exclusively on like a particular, was it a particular, like Nokia phone? Like in just three or four or like. I remember he did the Samsung one. I didn't know he did some. Yeah, it might have been Nokia, it might have been Sony Eriksson or something, but he did launch it. I thought an actual special edition phone came out with it as well. It's like a Jay-Z like phone. See, no, and that's, see that's a whole conversation about Jay-Z. Because I'm thinking about somebody having their own isolated thing that they're completely in control of all the data and everything. But when it comes to Jay-Z. That's what he's done now, isn't he? He has taken, you know, he's bought his own company. He has learned from this experience. He's now owning his own brand. Yeah. Title was that. Title was that. They had to go through that process of, you know, selling the brand the way to others to then realize that the power is in his own hands. And that's what Jay-Z does though. I don't think it's just about realizing the power. I think he's always had a sense of power being in his own hands. Yeah. But Jay-Z has used partnership to learn, right? Which lowers the risk of starting anew every single time when you tap into all these different industries. So instead of building my own platform from scratch, let me leverage, go to a platform, oftentimes the person who's not perceived as the leading in the market. So then they even could use, you know, my brand even more, there's more meaning to my brand and impact for their individual brand in between it. And I learned from that relationship. And then I decide, do I want to move on? And you know what? I don't like this business, you know, but I learned and I got a lot from it. I'm like, I don't want to be in it, at least not right now. Maybe I'll double back in years, but I minimize right my risk, bam, I get out. Or do I say, I really like this shit. And then I just buy out the rest of the company, right? There's, he's definitely leverage partnership extremely smartly. And I think a lot of people can learn from that, especially from somebody who, you know, he didn't go to college. So I think a lot of his approach is, hey, and that's super irrelevant at this point anyway. When you think about go to college, but he still has that mentality of, I need to learn from somebody and I can learn from somebody in situations. He puts himself in situations where he can get around people who are sharp at what they do, learn and decide if he continues in that business by what not, which is super smart. Absolutely, yeah. I'll make sure to link Dan's article in the description because it's quite a good breakdown timeline of sort of like his projects. Definitely, definitely. I'm interviewing Dan in a couple of hours, by the way. How sweet, great. Yeah, well, check out Trappiter, honestly. There's so many, many, many great articles on there. 100%. And that moves us. I just want to come back to the tipping about Twitter. Like, do you think this could, you know, revive it somewhat for, you know, independent artists, musicians? Like, has it got some more life in it yet for them to utilize from marketing perspective now? I don't see it. I just... Too late. Yes, Twitter has its place, right? And I think they have a stronghold on their place, in the marketplace, but tipping in itself, especially because like all these other platforms are starting to do it, it's just going to be a standard. So if everybody is doing it, it's not like it's going to say, hey, Twitter all of a sudden is allowing artists to do this, let's go there. I mean, even Spotify is considering something like that, right? So, you know, that won't be the thing. I suppose Twitter has its virality still, though, doesn't it? Does it can, you know, things can shoot off very quickly on Twitter like tons of going viral, which could lead to more tipping than other platforms would? I think there's a lot of benefit from tipping, but I just don't think that will be the value at. And I'm more about the Amazon way of doing things when we're talking about, especially businesses needing to reinvent themselves or find their way back. Right, you can't leverage cool features, things that sound great and expect behavior to change. You have to do things that are in line with behavior like Amazon saying, hey, we have the hardware, we create this thing where you all go to, it's almost, it's an indirect move, but now because of this, we're bringing you to our other place. All right, they might never have the brand value in terms of being a music streaming platform. They might not ever have that, but they can still have the sheer numbers where it doesn't matter where they're profiting and they're in that business just as much as anybody, but they just don't have the, oh yeah, Spotify is the number one. And, you know, they might not have that or the wards and like, cause that's not their core business necessarily. So you don't need that to be playing in the game. You don't have to have the sexy business model to even make, be the most profitable. Yeah, so maybe Twitter is not still not the one like it's, you know, it's trying different things, but it's only playing catch up and doing not really, yeah, as you say, not really inventing anything new and exciting. What can Twitter do? I wonder because Well, they can listen to the community first of all and have an edit button. That might be a start. Is that an edit button? Yeah, cause obviously that's the most like community feature ever. And they never listen to them like, you know, trying to, you know, trying to appease your consumers. It's not a really good way to go about it. Cause I think the CEO announced this week when he talks about the new features that that's never in their plans, it's not going to happen. It's not in there. I wonder what that is about. I guess there is, I don't know. Is there like a stance on seeing themselves as news? Cause that's what I feel like they pushed themselves as news. So you have to adapt it. I guess there is a danger if something does go viral and then someone can completely change the content of that tweet to something a lot more like malicious or potentially dangerous. Then there is, there is that aspect of it. You could say the same of all the platforms though. Cause obviously you can edit on all of the platforms. So the same thing could happen. I don't know if that's just been, I don't know whether that's a thinking or not. I'm not sure. I mean, screenshots allow things. Yeah, yeah. I wonder what the look more into that. Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, that is something different, but I don't think I admire it. I think it's for the wrong reasons. It's just them being stubborn, isn't it really? Yeah, I mean, yeah. I would really love to see what they could get themselves into because they would definitely have to be more of a indirect thing. And Twitter is just a light. It's, it's, it's a lot part of life. It's not going to be that thing, right? But they could create something else that's that thing and Twitter get reintroduced through that thing and then things, you know, flourish in that way. I think that's what they should be more focused on. But that's just, you know, hot. That's a very macro perspective of it, that whatever the micro things that they're working on day to day and innovations, I haven't really checked up on Twitter in a long time. Another interesting article that we've read recently is about the headline is our podcast, Threatening the Growth of the Music Industry. This is a Rolling Stone article. And obviously it's a very strong opinionative statement. It certainly caught my attention because I wasn't, it's not something I've ever really thought about because I feel like it's a complete different area. Even though we're talking about audio, I know Spotify is very heavily invested. But also the headline is a bit misleading because the market shares only were only flipped by like 5% since 2014. So it's gone from, gone down from 20% before. And now music share, music shares gone down to 76%. So that's a 5% decrease for music in favor and a 20% gain for podcasts. So 5% decrease in music and 20% gain for podcasts in terms of market share. Yeah, that's not too much. I don't think it's just too much. It's not really too much to shout about, I don't think. Like obviously podcasts have been getting increasingly popular in the last five years. Yeah. I mean, you see that in stats all the time. Something could be the fastest growing but it's still a very low percent. But just the perception of that general statement can make it seem larger than it is. But I think there's a lot of merit to that statement. If not for now, but what could possibly be looked at in the future? Only because if you look at some of the information, I think they might have actually quoted Daniel Eck, but if they didn't quote him, the founder, it was somebody who said it within the company just citing the fact that podcasts were a fixed cost. And we know the issues that it comes with dealing with record labels, right? Yes, there's more music and yes to the entertainment value and just the looping and the debt form of entertainment, it brings a larger market in its own way for sure. But at the same time, having to do with variable cost, especially for a company that is always searching for profitability and wasn't profitable for years, technically, are they even profitable now? I can't remember. Just about. Yeah. Just about, yeah. Yeah, like so, like when you're talking about as a business and then you look at the fact that there actually are new competition that actually are formidable finally when we look at somebody like TikTok, like the things that TikTok is doing is a legitimate threat right now. I'm saying that they're gonna take over tomorrow, but they are a very legitimate threat and just innovation-wise because of the lack of politics and the things, and the way they came into the game, they were able to innovate way far past what Spotify has done for a good period because Spotify has had so much market share. So to hedge some of that bet and say, hey, yeah, we're number one in music right now, specifically when we think about streaming only platforms, which now at one point that won't really matter, streaming only platform? No, because we're looking at bundles and everything being bundled together. So that's less relevant at some point. You have to think about the fact that if we can improve our profitability by focusing on podcasts, and we know that TikTok doesn't wanna look at podcast, right, that's too far outside of the circle of competence and the way their focus is. So it allows us to hedge our bet in that way. So I think there's a lot of credence to why we would look at podcasts from a Spotify standpoint. Again, one, just summarizing as fixed costs and the profitability that could come from that and two, just fighting off the posing threats. They're also reporting the trend that's happening across all ages for podcasts, especially like in 13 to 34 year olds, they said that it was in 2012, it was 88% music consumption, 12% listened to podcasts, but now it's shifted to 81% and 19%. So there's been 7% shift, which I guess is when you factor into hours and minutes, that's quite a significant jump. Yeah. About seven years. That is, yeah, you're right. Because kind of like you said, I mean, podcasts are longer, generally speaking, all right? And then two, so that's more time that the time might be a lot closer. Time listening music versus time on a podcast. Yeah, this would be interesting to see, wouldn't it? Right, so then we even think about that from the fixed costs of podcasts, maybe getting even deeper and saying, hey, we not only have this fixed cost, but then you get into the fact that time is spent, more time or maybe an equal amount of time. Running ads as well. Running ads, right? So the amount of attention is still equal. It looks different on the surface. Oh, I'm losing here. But at the end of the day, we're talking about economics, not the optics, right? So now we all get into the threat. We are. Yeah, I think that could be something. Of course, we have to spend more time looking at that. And I would love to keep talking about this and step the dates to this one specifically. But yeah, podcasts are definitely going to continue growing in my mind just because that radio thing is not, is not something that people don't desire. It's just the, what's the word I'm looking for? The format that is dwindled down, right? It doesn't mean that people don't like listening to talk shows or conversations. People love conversations. The most profitable parts of radio are typically those morning shows. And it's usually where they put the bigger personalities, right? And those bigger personalities matter because of the conversations they bring, the interest they bring. It's almost, it's built off stars in their own right, right? That's the most profitable part of radio. The rest of it is just, I don't even want to say just the most profitable part. Cause yeah, I'm not super in deep with, you know, radio balance sheets. But that's definitely one of the most adored and the highest paid people, the highest paid host are the most people in those, right? For sure. So, and which indicates profitability though, it usually alludes towards. So my thing is that means if I'm listening to this morning show, more for the morning show, the people, then the music in the first place, the next generation comes, they're not going to not want to listen to people they like talking and conversations that they like. They're going to still desire that it's just this medium. This medium doesn't make sense to me. I don't like having to sit through commercials. I don't like not being able to listen on demand when I want to. Consumer behavior has changed, but the desire for the product definitely hasn't. So I could see podcasts, you know, growing. Yeah, and bring it to a more micro level for you guys if you're considering like launching your own podcast, then I definitely think it would be worthwhile to just be good to focus on something outside of your music. Saying, you know, that's more of a niche and more about you, more of your personality. Perfect time to remember that music news that matters is streaming on all platforms. 100%. Yeah, we're finally doing it. Yeah, so we're doing it. There's no reason why you guys can't as well, but it's just funny saying to talk about that you're passionate about, not necessarily like tuss into the music that can come later. It's just about, you know, just showing who you are, essentially. True. Maybe we don't talk about it enough for you. We talk about, you know, advice, you know, what you can do to promote human music and what you can do on social media, but maybe podcasts should have more of like a light shine to it as it were. You think so? I think so. I think it's good. If we're talking about, you know, building up your personality on social media, this is another great way to do it. And you can talk about saying perhaps you wouldn't necessarily talk about on social media. Like if you're a singer, songwriter, but you're really into like mythical creatures or something, then you can start a podcast on that. You know, and it's gonna be an audience for it. And then they buy into you as a person, then they might go and check out the rest of it. And this is how it leads to super fans. And then this is how it leads back to tipping and stickers and all that. I think that's a great point, man. Because if we wanna get any indication of super fans, a large, a good indicator probably is time spent. And if you have 50 people listening to your podcast religiously, that's probably a lot better than maybe even a thousand, just listeners. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. They're the ones that are gonna sustain you and support your new careers to super fans, not the general listeners. Yeah, like listeners to your music. So yeah, podcasts probably are far stronger indications of that. So that could be a good way to start sifting through and seeing who that is. And that's my issue with the month listeners start on Spotify. I don't think it's a very good aggregator and get indicated for an artist's performance. Tell me about it. Yeah. And also, I've always wondered as well, not sure why a lot of artists have quite low follow accounts on Spotify. I don't know why people don't follow artists on Spotify. They would on social media because I like to follow them so I get notified when they've got a new song out if I like them. But even big artists don't have a lot of followers. I've always wondered why people don't follow artists on Spotify. The platform doesn't lean towards it, man. It's right there. It's right there on the artist's page that she followed. It's just at the top. But there are always these innate behaviors that come from each platform. That's why you will say something like a million followers on YouTube is way more powerful than a million followers on Instagram. And shoot a million followers on SoundCloud or Spotify is more powerful than a million followers on YouTube because it's like who has a million followers on Spotify? You know what I mean? So because the platforms and the way typical user behaviors are. And I think when it comes to Spotify, the user behavior that gets encouraged is a lot more of that play listing. That behavior, playlists have bigger followings than a lot of artists. It's more about that culture that gets established there then building up individual stars of, yeah, individual stars, individual artists, just like when you think about TikTok. Following on a page is different. And when you hear music and you see a TikTok, most people's behavior right now is to hear the music and then go find the music. It's not, hey, this is the song on the platform. Let me go find whether your original sound is or let me go see if that artist's page is on TikTok and follow them on TikTok. It's like, no, let me go off the platform and go listen to the song. You know, you've been, so you can have a million streams on, I mean, a million views on a TikTok video when your sound is just popping, but your profile still has a thousand followers. All right, it's an interesting aspect, but yeah, each platform has their own innate behavior and then my question for you would be... Well, what's going to counter that as well? Because I think with Spotify, you're saying that it's not in the culture to follow artists per se. It's not. But by following an artist, you do get notified when their new songs come out. Okay. And then when we have Spotify now implementing pop-up alerts to when artists have got new songs coming out, that seems to be exactly the same model. It's the same, what's the same model? It's literally, you know, that pop-up alert, it notifies you when one of your artists you like has got a new song out. And by following them, it does exactly the same function. So they clearly find some value in that and they're going to sell that to the labels to, you know, buy out of that. So maybe they are bringing that into their culture. Well, or maybe, because that was going to be my question to you. Is there still value to it? Yes, you basically just answered that then, but then from a company standpoint, is there more value in us encouraging that behavior? So it happens without us or us being in control of that happening, right? You could have encouraged people to follow and now these people just naturally follow and get notifications or I can just sell it as a revenue stream. Yeah, yeah. So maybe it's against the company's incentive, right? There, you know, that was, I wonder why, well, no, I haven't wonder why that specifically happens with Spotify, but I think that's a really interesting take because I haven't noticed that before. Yeah, it's kind of really interesting from a consumer standpoint, like I follow an artist because I want to keep track of when they release new songs and that's the best way for me to do that. I don't follow anybody. I never follow anybody. It's interesting to different, completely different interaction with the platform, isn't it? Yeah. But in that, I'm the common man. You're something special when it comes to that though. I don't know though, because there's quite a lot, there's still a lot of followers for a lot of artists, I'm not sure. I have a debate in the comments section about this. There are. And there might be, there's probably some artists that have more, far more followers than others and not because they're these larger artists, but maybe they have a different relationship with their fan base, maybe they encourage it. And that's why I think these stats are more important than the monthly listeners. That was what goes back to my original point, but yeah, yeah. Yes. So I wonder like what that is and I would question what, when I see something like that, where you say this is valuable, but it's not prevalent on the platform as it is. And especially when you're saying this is valuable to the core consumer of the platform, yet they're not doing it, then I would question one, the company's business model and two, the quality of the product based on, and maybe that's just a different indicator of what success looks like on the product it is. But I would, I wonder, I would love to know what anybody who's listening thinks about followers on Spotify and are there any artists out there who have heavily encouraged followers and seen a game from it? Maybe we can interview artists at some point who has a hell of a lot of followers and see what that culture looks like, what they do around it. Yes, please debate and discuss. I think that's a great place to end it there really, I think, Sean. I agree. Yeah. Well, thanks for tuning in guys as always and make sure you check it out on all the audio streaming platforms now. We're finally on podcast format. Yes, yes. Once again. And don't forget to hit that notification bell. Have a great one everybody. Peace. Mike. It's the matte work.