Spotify and Disney have everything-app dreams
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Welcome to the broadcast, the flag shap podcast of machine learning based recommendation systems. I'm a friend, David pierce and I, on a walk. So i've been trying this thing where instead of sitting in from the screens all day, which I do wait too much of my bad hurts, my eyes heard.

It's just bad times. I tried to get out in the world once a day and just kind of wander around a lot of sort. People say that if you want to think something true or be creative or process something, there's really nothing Better for you than you just go for a walk, leave ve all your technology at home and just walk until you figured that out.

It's a kind of romantic idea. I really love IT. But so far, in my experience, I found that I spend a lot of time, just like walking, singing one twenty one pilots song to myself over and over again.

And then I get home, and I like, did I actually just accomplish anything? I don't know. Maybe like meditation, where you have to do IT a lot, you get Better at IT.

But I feel like when I go on a walk and I I mean to think deep thoughts, not go on super grade so far, but at least the walking is nice and it's definite good to not look at screens for at least a little while every now and then. Anyway, we have an awesome show coming up every day. The first person I going to talk to is ghost of solar strom, who is the co president of spotify.

He also ran product for spotify for a long time, and he is a person I most wanted to talk to about what spotify is trying to be. It's trying to be this incredible AI recommendation system that knows exactly what you want to listen to and exactly what you're doing is exactly the right time. It's also kind of trying to be tiktok, and it's doing audio books and it's doing podcasts.

And i'm trying to figure out how you do all of that all in one place without making a total mess out of spotify. So that is what crustal and I talk about. He's very open and very smart about all of IT.

And IT was a really fun conversation. After that, i'm going to talk to alex crane, who is my favorite person to talk to about all things streaming. We're gona talk about disney and who and what variable on is doing with netflix and max and what's going on with marvel movies and just what to make of all of this upheaval.

We both have strong theories about ads and boundary, and we had a lot of fun taking out. And of course, we're going to get to virtual ast hot line we've really fun with on this week. All that is coming up in just a second. But first, I have like three more blocks on this walk, and i'm going to go trying and think some of thoughts on the way back. This is the verge cast.

See in second.

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Welcome back. So I didn't think any of thoughts, but that one twenty one pilots song is now deeply lodged in my head, probably forever. And also I am called all right, let's get into IT.

I think spotify is one of the most interesting companies and apps on the planet right now. It's a huge winner as a music streaming APP, but IT turns out there's really no money in being a music streaming up. So it's trying to figure out podcasts and audio books and in general being whatever the tiktok for audio is.

That's what CEO Danielle has called IT before and IT sort of makes sense. But then as a user of spotify, mostly I worry that all of that stuff is just gonna a clutter up the APP and confused my playlists and make everything about IT worse. I think a lot that maybe spotify should just be a really good music APP instead of trying to take over the world and share a lot of audio in the one place I don't know gus so strong, spotify co president and chief product officer is the person responsible for making all of this stuff makes sense together.

So I brought him to the show to talk about everything from recommendations to audio books to APP design, to try and figure out what spotify wants to be and whether it's possible to do IT all really well. We started by going back a few months to this spring when spotify announced a more visual, more tiktok style for the APP. Here's gow that spotify stream on event explaining kind of the big idea bind IT.

The spot I we're revealing today is built to feel alive the interfaces dynamic is easier than ever to scroll and swipe and loaded IT with all new ways for listeners to enjoy your work. The reimagine homestead will show Better recommendations from your favorites, the fresh content, Richard animated images and videos I asked you .

stop to digg a little deeper on that and to explain what spotify was trying to do with this redesign, because I think the redesign actually says a lot about what that APP wants to be. So what was spotify trying to do here? Yes.

we got all the way back to to over. Trying to achieve is something like a year ago plus a bit more actually. So we can apply ourselves on being good discovery.

Uh, sometimes we say we think we are the best of discovery if we ask our users, that is a certain type of discovery is of the type of discovery called background discovery. When you are listening to play list, we're very good at finding tracks that fit that play list you would like. So for we want to have a lot of specific players for discovery.

You discover weekly and daily makes us so forth. But there is a different type of discovery, which we so called foreground discovery. When you're finding, for example, a new acts and a stronger that you didn't even know you would like, it's not actually similar to anything you're listening to right now.

And the truth is that most of that type of discovery doesn't happen. But if I were really good at inserting more of what really listening to know, if you're into certain on a really good at finding other things, that isn't that journey that we think you like. But if you want to explore a completely new shower, those things actually often happen off platform.

They happen on youtube, they happen on tiktok, to happen other places. And and two things are important there. When you are evaluating a lot of a sort of new music that you don't even know if you like, you usually don't listen to the full song's and you sense ban hours, you're kind of evaluating much more quickly.

And secondly, you're also quite interesting when you discover ban in in sort of seeing what they look like and so forth, right? And and that's most of the first time we've been in syriac with these other services where you know a lot of foreground discovery that happens all over the place. But then he usually say that try to spotify and that we spend most of the consumption, and that's fine by us.

It's worked for us really well and means that we could focus on investment on the sort of background movement, background discovered being a really good background. So we decided about a year plus ago that we want to become a really good place for when you want to export something completely, when you want to break out of yours. That's the feedback out that we got like sort of is really good for you already like, but it's not that is to break out of your sort of taste butter.

And this is brought brought about the whole redesign. I know I was across music, but also across podcast and now recently across audio books as well. How to evaluate a lot of items in more of a gtd, get things done way where the hitter show maybe low, maybe it's one great candidate in ten.

Well, then you Better to be able to quick to get through those ten roses in the background if we had a one in ten history. So you would hate spotify. IT has to be like nine and ten, right? So I had to be much more careful. And so far, so we thought that, that was imposed, like why we did IT, because we also wanted to in addition to staying very good at background discovery, we wanted to bring fog and discovery or or being up, giving you tools to quickly break out your taste possible and find something completely .

new was really interesting about that. That that strategy makes absolute perfect sense, I think, especially the idea of trying to make IT easier for people to find stuff they don't like, which sounds weird, like the sort of lowering the penalty of guessing wrong exactly, makes total sense meate.

Yeah, what is soften called like fault tolerant and like product product speak.

And I think like if tiktok did one incredible thing for the world IT, was that like IT, IT is the most fault tolerant p that has ever existed. Exactly what I think is really interesting. And and the way you describe that makes me think that if if I had always done that kind of thing, that would make perfect sense to everybody.

But there's something about coming back around to the foreground piece where it's like we want you to be in more in the APP, going to make the APP more enticing and more inviting. We want you to scroll more. We want you to do more stuff.

And i'm just like thinking about all of the like mad people on redit when the redesign arted coming out and that sort of instinctive reactions, some people had to seeing the way the new APP looked. And even as what you described is very much sort of the other side of the point of the thing that already exists, it's just so different. Did you expect the kind of visceral reaction of lake? We're doing a very different thing even in service of the same activity.

So let's dig in to IT because he was a commoner. A few things I sort of did expected any like I resigned like the entire thing a few times my career. And people always upset is sure.

The problem with that is that they can be upset, but it's right. They just don't understand IT yet. You know the Steve jobs for you, sure. Or they can be upset because actually and room and the questions how to tell us to a part. And so IT was a little bit of both in this case.

So this was impedes IT was to give users tools for much Better fok and discovery and be able to effectively try a complete new showers is over. Now what happen when we launched this even before people got to try IT? To your point, like even when we showed IT, I think that big chAllenge is that we were trying to do something very different with these needs.

We were trying to get you to go through as much music as possible in order to find stuff, to save to your library, to listen to later. So is actually discovery, but not consumption. Our point was to get you through this thing as as as possible.

And the thing we measure is sort of saves per minute, whether if you look at tiktok or or youtube shorts or real. The feed is the consumption and is not discovery. And the feed is consumption.

And the point is to keep there as long as possible. So I think what happen when people saw this there? Like, oh my god, I don't want to know tiktok feet. Like, I have three now, you know, have shorts and reals, not tiktok. Like lion.

They stick into the music thing that like them for why they want to become tiktok, because that's honestly what IT looks like when you see a feed of moving images as so that was that like visual reaction to IT, which is just like a problem of communication and the ideas what when you started using IT, you'll understand that's more actually trying to get to alter the feed as as much as possible and get to to save as much and actually listen IT later because that's when, I mean, we don't gain anything unless you listen to IT later. This is a tool for for creating more sessions down the line. But then we also made a few mistakes in the first iteration, ation of IT, which was that we were so keen on adding foreground discovery that when we resign the experience, we change the baLance of what the homepage specifically did quite drastically.

If you think about IT from like the product teams point of view, you look around and you see like there is a youtube, there is kind of similar long form experience music, it's just it's just a feed, you know everything is just a feed as as the starting ge. So you could step that's what users want. They want to feed as a garbage.

And so I think we've got a little bit too jealous of the competition. And so now we have these shortcuts on top of our home. But then pretty quickly, we went into like full screen cards because that's kind of what word looks like and people are quite upset.

And so we looked at this and we realized that to our benefit, we were doing something quite well that we didn't understand, that we broke. So our home page was quite different from from these competitors, which was just like full card fees. We have this shortcuts and then we had this shelves.

And what they did, which I think we saw much Better than competition, is said they manage to keep you in a lot of sessions at the same time, you might be in middle of two podcast now, one audio book and a players, and you might be into set a player st. Right now. And our home page managed to sow, we call, recall really well and made IT really easy without having to go into your library and search to get back to those sessions to want the story really relevant to you.

We had this baLance between recall and discovery. When we look at the metrics, you know how much of the consumption from the home page is. So a recall, you go back into sessions.

That you have previously visited or run the medal. This is how much you two list to you. IT was always like ninety percent recalled and ten percent discovery.

And when we flit IT around, we sort of turned IT into ten percent recall, like the top shortcuts and ninety percent discovery. And you could see this in the metric. And on twitter. So on twitter, if you squinted draw us swearing and cursing, and this guy should get fired.

And I was being to put in lying kids and all these things, you can see the actual fee back being like, where are the hello, my playlist on my podcast, right? And then you look at the consumption data and you see the same thing. You see traffic into search and to library people who are trying to find their playlist.

So we realize the error to be a flip racial too much into almost like forced discovery. And then we we said, okay, let's look at this and let's embrace what people loved if we were really good to recall. Instead of even just going back, let's make sure that the redesign we delivers that and we become even Better.

Recall the weird thing for us and was we looked to competition and like that, actually not doing this at all. And people don't seem to complain and be angry like what's the problem. And we realize that we probably very good at recall keeping in many sessions at the same time.

And our competitions probably not. But the the thing as they were never if you're only ever had like a single feed, you think about something like a youtube or something is very hard to actually get back into the session and you have to click at the button ride and go back in history. So maybe it's just a case that they don't complain because I was never good there as we tried IT, then reverse and leaning to let's be a really good at recall.

We actually made IT even Better, and we got to recall metrics measured us, like how many people find, uh, a relevant session on home without having to go to search al library even Better. And we wanted to achieve forgn discovery. So how do we solve this? And we switched our tacti C2Being vol untary ent ry poi nts int o, instead of these cards that auto play a very high up.

We have two mechanisms now. One is we have this all we call a watch feeds or discovery fees, which are these small cards that you can click, and then you go into feed, only optimize for this. But it's it's volunteer like you click like, hey, we found a bunch of new songs for you.

We have a bunch of podcast for you. The idea now is as soon as you feel little bored and trapped in a tax bubble, which should be one click away to just get into very effective discovery. And then when you scaled down the home page, you actually get to these cards and think of that is like, if you keep scoring well, then you probably didn't find anything.

So now you are interested in discovery and cut a long story, slightly shorter where we are now. Finally is now the new home pages is out to a hundred percent of existing users over. We're back to like one home page with not being on two stacks.

Very, very expensive and very frustrating. And we see what we want to see. So in this watch these for example, we actually see fifty times the saves per minute to versus any other session versus like discover we clear or something not they're not saying fifty tracks per minute, but fifty times more saves per minute. So we're seeing what we want to see finally and and users now seem happen. So that's a long version of what actually happens.

No, it's super interesting. And you actually brought up of the like two central questions of what spotify is that have always fascinated me. I think part of the reason people flipped out of having all of this discovery added was that spotify, the APP that you use all the time but hardly ever touch yeah right.

That's a really value thing and it's it's a thing that I know spotify and the passes been very proud of, right? You can use spotify for hours and hours and hours without ever looking at IT. And in the time when every APP is demanding my full face attention at all times, that's a good thing.

very. But then how to marry that with this idea of obviously know we we want to build a video as business and we also want to in in general, this foreground discovery. And like I can see why there are lots of perfectly valid polls back into the APP, but IT just breaks that sort of core behavior that is so good about spotify.

Like I don't go to tiktok to listen to songs because it's a pain. They asked to find sounds on tiktok, right? I go to spotify because and that's like the purpose that is served.

And if like trying to pull that thing back into IT, even if it's the right call, is just a chAllenge to do, right? But then the lip side of that is and this is I feel like that the sort of great product journey of spotify is how to do a lot of things in one APP in a way that makes sense, right? And and this is like this goes back to the question uni, talk about about like how do you do podcasts and audio books and music in a single interface in a way that makes sense.

And i'm still not convinced you all the way there. I'd be curious here how you think you're doing. I got chafed to three of an audio book in my release rate or which like you just cannot convince me as a good user experience.

But a that's a great chapter promise.

I'm sure IT was. But I think that question continues to be kind of the big one, right? Like if you want to be the tiktok for audio that Daniel has talked about in the past, like you have to figure out how to put all these things in one place, but doing in a way that feels like IT doesn't compromise you to one of them along the way, just get harder every new thing you add.

Yeah so you you're completely right that there are two dimensions here. One is the we have to go forgan versus background. So we're still a vast majority background service seeing what percent of the time is the phone in your pocket.

Most of the services, to your point, at like nine percent in the foreground, and we're sort of the opposite. So that's one I mentioned, and that's what we try to find this. So one of that phone is in the foreground and your board, that's when we have to have these tools for you to find a lot of music for that sort of eighty ninety percent background listening.

And that's that's a tRicky baLance. And we we rebaLanced the home page to reflect too much of the the time that you're in the foreground, which is the minority. And sort of focusing on is still is being safe, simple to get to your favorite sessions.

But think and by the way, that user flow you've lands on in which you say basically like i'm in discovery mode, you just like bang, bang, bang through a bunch of stuff, pick a bunch stuff you want to listen to, click play and put your phone away, like that's a very spotify version of the thing you described, right? Like that's much closer to the way that the APP is always been.

Exactly, that's that's a plan and that's a few would land now, but there was a bit wilderness wondering to get there.

There always this yeah.

And then the other thing you mentioned is what A A cross content right now, the certainly should be uh, audio books, chapters and your daily mix or something that's just a bug, uh, that we need to fix. But there is that question of how is there is that the best product experience? How much is that a strategy that we need to adopt because it's a distribution tried to reverse support best for the for the consumer.

I choose to see IT as a very interesting chAllenge, and IT puts a lot of requirements on our experience team, right? Because the chAllenges in order to keep sort of the complexity as we call IT internally, to keep entry pid down, you need to make things look as similar as possible so that IT doesn't get very confusing, right? And and the notion is that will save audio, right? Music is audio, podcast audio, audio book is audio.

But there is also very different. Music is like three minutes audio. Books may be a pog may an hour, audio books twenty hours something right? Ah so it's also very different so that the real big chAllenge that we just have chosen to accept, given our strategy is to make IT sort of to consciously missure einstein as similar as possible but not more similar than possible, right? okay.

And so what what is an example of that? You know you can say that it's all cards like that. There's a track card and there's a play this card and there's a an episode card and audibly card, which is kinda ue.

But on the other hand, we also have to realize where they're different. So so for example, one thing that were working with right now is the feedback to the algorithm. We actually we've been playing around with giving people tools to feedback on the algorithm and IT turns out people love that even when we had like on the three dots, a hidden option has a nice that.

How many people found that and said, like, I didn't want this recommendations, want that this. So we're making that easier, but you run into these problems where where is different. So for example, we're experimenting with these things.

You can say like this is a bad recommendation or more like I don't want this recommendation know, which gives the user way to like the faul tolerant to solve when we were wrong quickly. But I also gives us a lot of super valuable signal to improve for the user. But then for podcast episodes, put take forward, you just say like this was bad recommendation, don't show IT again and we can interpret like bad recommendation for a playlist.

It's tRicky because if you say that maybe he was that you didn't like the song, but did you not really like the play this? Should we actually show the play this again, but not what the same songs? And then for any book have a different problem, which we realized, which is when you say like sort of comes down, that could be because you hated this recommendation or could be because you would love this recommendation or listen to the book, read book years ago.

And so we are trying to find the exact baLance. We will have different controls on s in on tracks, but we also need to still make the system similar enough that IT makes sense as as one up. So this is what we're putting most of our effort and and we think we're we think we're doing a good job if you just look at the metrics and and user engagement.

But IT is kind of the strategy and path we have now. I always told the team that the chAllenge is like how to choose between these things. You know, so we show a podcast or an audio of music.

I choose to say that we're just being more honest with ourselves. Then all the companies. Do you think about something like apple seven music p podcast, seven books? IT is the same user in front of the iphone.

The three teams treated as different users, right? And they all tried to compete for the user. But IT is the same user, the same twenty four hours. There are just, uh, fooling themselves. There are three different user.

Where is just being honest yourselves? No, it's the same user says it's it's in a way a hard to chAllenge, but it's in a way true for everyone is just one user. And where is how to be more explicit about how we solve that problem, but the user can listen all three at the same time.

And and and I think when people say, like we just had three apps, you don't have to worry about IT. I'd say like now it's the same. David is still gonna to choose betwen the three apps. So why not solve IT in one APP if we can? It's just less clicks.

That's kind of how you think about IT. I agree. I think this is become a controversial stand over time. But I actually think doing all of these things in one APP is the right path. I think sort of wilderness stuff for spotify, so to speak, would be the thing where it's like, okay, what what we actually need. And I think people accuse spotify of this more than at least i've actually seen IT in well.

But IT does seem like one possible end point of this is like, how do we mix your favorite songs with a bunch of podcast you might want to listen to and then will throw an audio book and and to me, that's just not even remotely what I want. Like sometimes I want to list new book and sometimes I want to list new podcast, and sometimes I want to list new music. I always know which one I want. And for spotify to guess or try to inter mingle them all, that strikes me as like borderline impossible to do well.

So when you do that on if we have three different apps, you would just go into three different apps, right? Exactly, because you would know, right? So the way we solved that is we land on the home page.

Well, we have a pretty good guess trying to we have these shortcuts, but you are in multiple sessions at the same time so you can actually continue in the play and continue that audio book. And there is like any of that episode, two episodes. And so hopefully it's like supersize to solve IT, but then back to fault total and us.

This is also why you see these tabs where you can say like you click the music tab total and then is music on the other podcasts or the older books tab. So which which is almost the same as opening the separate APP. So this is I were trying to solve IT with trying to program for you and then have a full tolerant solution if we're wrong or if you're intent will super high.

But we do statistically see that IT works, that we actually managed to get people to listen to podcasts who didn't and and hopefully the same for all the books. So so IT seems to work, but I think I think is a statistic question. I think you you're right, but my home is is like eighty percent of the time on ninety people know what they want, but the other the other ten percent of the time incredibly valuable because that's when you find this new podcast or book is back to is like why we need to be ninety percent when you call in ten percent discovery and we went wrong with nine percent.

The upside of doing all those things together is you you can do a sort of one, and one makes three thing where it's like the podcast I listen to probably do inform the kinds of box I might like and the kinds of music that I listen to probably informs the kind of park gas I like. So you can actually having all of those things together in one place lets you do stuff. But that stuff is not just stuff in front of me that I don't want to listen to, I think. But I think you you're increasingly getting away from that.

I think is good. I'm glad to hear what's time.

but that also brings me the AI, which I think you're using kind of in both directions of that, right? Like IT seems like the A I stuff i'm seeing floating around both have been released in what rain and people are finding in code on. Is that both you want to use A I to be smarter and more proactive about what people might want.

Like the dayless thing I think is really fascinating, and the names are all deeply weird, put in really interesting west. And then on the other side, there's this idea, like, what if you could just make a player with a prompt, but if you could just sort of declare to spotify what you want to listen to and IT can do that. And that's the kind of thing that, as much as I can tell, these largest language models are relatively capable of. That's data that you have like that becomes a whole new sort of tool for finding stuff to listen to again, if if your ideas like get back into the pocket as quickly as you can. That's a pretty powerful one.

Yeah, for sure. I think you're completely right. I am very fascine about both of those directions.

So so one way to sort of retail, what you said is you could think one way everyone tries to reduce friction and get even Better at predicting what you wanted to do. And and certainly, these elements help with that in many ways. Uh, you get larger and bedders that makes the content understanding Better.

So just the recommendations of songs get Better in podcast. You're obviously have the whole safety thing. You can now have machines free, listen to the podcast, make sure that we can do safe fixed ball exploit, which can service as podcast to you, that we couldn't them before because we didn't feel literally safe expLoring content that we didn't understand ourselves.

Uh, so so there is this that making the recommendations Better and hopefully even Better. This home page predicting the right thing, the thing that you had in your head. So we reduce friction. Are we doing that and we seeing the benefits of that? But your point, I think the other direction is really interesting as well.

Sometimes you want more control like you don't want to be served everything as so can we build even more powerful tools for you where you can have a lot of fun with a podcast catalog, the music catalog that is something i'm very fascinated about. Can't comment too much about things aren't live, but you're certainly right. That's an area that is super interesting and haven't having a conversation around music with an entity that is very knowledgeable about the global music culture. Everything has been written, wikipedia, I be concert ever happen. But that also super knowledgeable about you because as your music taste, I think can be a really cool expense that is cool.

And how has that changed the way that you think about the kind of human machine interaction that you've always talk to? That a spotify, right? I think like the sort of human created playlists with machine help, like a core tenant of a spotify has always been. But if I headed into this place of sort of mass personalization, both that you're bringing to me and that I can ask for myself, does that change that dynamic?

I think over time, I probably will. If you think that the systems are getting more and more intelligent, they can do more and more of that. But what we are right now, I think it's still the same world world.

You you look at twitter, you see this one hundred percent automatic. Things are very cool demos. You don't see a lot of applications of them.

And then when you do some when you apply something, it's actually almost always including humans in the loop is just that they are to get much more leverage. That's yeah. so. So for example, if we look at something we did a recently with the dubbing, for example, it's quite straight, straight, but it's getting quite easy to to use the service, get like A A pretty good translation and generation of a voice in another language.

But if you put that to n need to speaker for that language, they're gonna drop off because the translation is not gonna ound like a podcasts, is gonna like correct grammatically, but very formal. The interactions are off. And so what we find is that you need to use these technologies in the amazing, but you still need people in the loop to make IT truly great.

So we keep applying that recipe and we think of IT more as um getting more and more leverage of those people on those people rather than replacing more and more of those people, if that makes sense. How the same amount of people that we can do more, more and more. If you think about Steve jobs sold notion of computers, a bicycle for the mine, I think the alarm is like it's not a motorcycle for the mine.

Milton biker or something is just that on. That's how I tend to think about like that for any type of creation. If you're an artist, if you know, I think that big benefit of this will be is an incredibly powerful bicycle for the mind.

And and sure, you can automate something, you can do elevator music and so forth. That's not the interesting part. I think the interesting part is as augmentation to people.

No, I think that's right. And actually the unglazed rought the dubbing because that and kind of on the flip side, the automated transport ript stuff, I think is really interesting because like you said, IT IT opens up sort of new both for people to reach people and for like new ways of consuming this kind of stuff. To me, like automated transcription in making podcasts search is like incredible yeah.

And we're finally getting to the point where the airlines are good enough at speech to text. That is actually pretty positive, which I think is very exciting. But I M curious from a from a creator.

Same point like I make a podcast and i've been trying to figure out how I feel. I just like a very personal level about the idea of my voice being translated into tones of different languages all over the world. And most of me thinks it's very cool.

Part of me is sort of horrified by IT. In a way I can't even totally describe IT just feels. Oh, it's like it's me, but it's not me in some way that I can totally wrap matter around and he feels like in so many ways of the AI were headed IT down that road of of feelings in a lot of ways. But what are you hearing from creators and people who are are using this tech already? Like what do they make of all this new leverage or giving .

them yeah so as you say, our focuses really on on helping creators, giving them tools, try them, trying to replace them, how the people may have that as our tool is really try and power craters give them more, more tools and and dubbing is one of those. And we're working on other tools as well that we think are very interesting for craters.

But if if you look at dubbing, your notion like it's weird in a way, there's a lot of these things I think we're going to get into that feels of weird the next two years. But from another point of view, if you look at known pod casters, you know uh book authors and T V movies, you've been doubled for tens of years, that's sure, and would complete different voices. And sometimes, you know in certain markets, what just ducking the original audio is I can really crap innocence.

So on that point of me, this is just the same. But much more of that take is really you instead of someone else trying to pretend to be you. So I I my houses pod casters are gonna are gonna get over that uh, feeling certainly will be hurt from the podcasts we work with is the the fear was the opposite that when we contacted them, they're like, I don't think it's gonna sound like me.

Well, I have like a an accent where I sound like a instead of a good span speakers. I sound like a slow american, but have the american action. I just dumb somehow they really very predictable ly very concerned about what they appear like in that language.

So that's what we put a tone of effort on details like, is the translation not? Is cremated ally correct? But is this what a this person would sound like? What is this a relax podcast conversation or a form a lecture in that other language? Does you know lex freeze man or Steve bara? Do they sound like they should probably sound in spanish, or do they sound like someone who does not speak spanish, but if it's too spanish doesn't not like them anymore?

That's the baLance we spent all a time on. And I think we found a good baLance. At least they are very happy.

And maybe even more importantly, when you look at the twitter feed, what I take a lot of joy from us almost without a fault. The feedback are like omitted speaker. And this is amazing, which you don't see that much.

I see people saying this is amaze. And then you seen that to speak of saying, actually not that as a natives speaker, because it's wrong, that and we really try to put effort. And I was like, sort of this quality production.

And so I look a lot at it's a greater happy, do they feel like what they should sound like? But then also look at the feedback from the native speakers. And then obviously, I look at the episode.

And when the people drop off, if it's not good enough, if it's cool but not interesting, people can drop off to five minutes. So that's kind of how we value equality. And so far were very encouraged by overseeing yeah what are you telling .

the creators who are trying to figure out how to navigate this stuff? I mean, I just think about we've talked to time about like the rider strike on the hollywood side. And one of things they're worried about is like if you're an actor, they can just take your voice and never need you anymore.

And then I I listen to like I was just going to build simple and he's like, oh, great. My voice can read our ads and I don't never have to and so like, well, there is the two sides of the coin right there. What are you telling folks who are are trying to figure out how to navigate that? Like what what does that mean that my voice is now part of kind of an AI machine?

Yeah, I think is very much about creator control. I think why you hear the Simons say that is because he feels like his in control. sure.

That obviously, when we do these dubbing things, we get no rights to that creators voice for any other purpose, right? It's only for that purpose, exactly for that translation. So it's their voice.

I think that's the key. I think people be there would be very uncomfortable about getting away the rights to their lightness. Ss, for like unknown purposes.

So for for us back to like you, we try to structured as narrow, less possible around like your voice for exactly this purpose. And and you know it's your episode. So that's how we've solved IT.

And I think that's the that's the feel that crates, I would feel equally concerned if someone had the rights to say whatever they wanted. My voice, sure. And that's also why we've been quite careful.

I think that's why open eye we have work, but that's been quite careful because there is that potential produce. I think that's why this was a good use case to start with. What is very clear that this is something those want as voluntary.

And it's it's I think ambiguously good. yeah. No, I think that's that's fair.

And I think I I definitely ree that the right way to think about IT is like these. These are tools you can give people to use, not sort of things. Are sting on top of what they're already doing? I think that that feels straight to me. yeah. So come back to the A I playlist thing for the second because i've been thinking a lot about D J, and i've been thinking a lot about day lists recently.

And I think DJ, which is the year to really well, everybody I talk to about DJ thinks it's the coolest thing ever, but it's this very human thing, right? Like it's an A I generated thing that is still meant to be sort of a character in my life. But then on the flip side, daily is just like a super created list of tongues, right? There are two sort of very different ways of thinking about IT should both be in there, do a thesis about wonder the other that we land on over time?

What do you think it's a great question. And the two we don't know yet. Which going to be the future play mode. And I think people have different listening ing modes.

I still think there's always going to be a mode where you want to exactly your play, this, your your curated, you know, without our recommendations in IT to anyone commenting anything like that. And then I think you gonna these music sessions sort of like a daily mix for something where you're asking for, like a specific shower. You can know exactly what you're gonna get on the Shawn run style, but not exactly which track, but you don't want anyone talking in between the songs.

The whole thing. It's like a lean back session words, what we call IT like mine bussy if s is mine free, I like. And you know, when the mind is busy, music fits mind busy because you can think about something else.

But that when someone starts talking, you have to stop talking about someone else and pay attention to pay attention again. And and this was one of the tRicky things with the DJ. We look on some mother experiments, uh, where we've had like these sessions.

We can talk for a while and then play some music. Any dairy people love IT. In practice, the problem is like it's partially a podcast and you have to pay attention and the music comes in you so not to think about something else.

And then I hold back now have to pay attention again. You're switching between like mind free and mind busy. And so we saw in the data was people gonna chose either they listen to the podcast, skipped past the music.

I kind of did the opposite. So I definitely think we're going to have these music only sessions. And the notion for the D.

J was actually taken that learning and saying like that, this is a new session. First and foremost, the D. J needs to be quick grief, I, and get out of the way. So is not a podcast about music. It's a play list with some introduction to IT with me at point to the opposite and have a generated podcast about a track or six ninety percent talk and ten percent music, but then is a different, I hope this is right. But this is the the D J.

What's the point of this? D J, like why does he even need to to talk? what? What we found was that even for the exact same playlist, if you say, like, hey there, here's a player, these five tracks are going to come up. And and when you look at that play, this is seeing they're thinking like, maybe I do, maybe I don't like that, maybe it's going to feel like this and so forth.

And there was a lot of like choice paralus is and that the kind of weird thing is when when we had the DJ say like they have, i'm going take you back to when you are like teenager, i'm going to play this track. And it's the exact same track that you would have seen in the playlist. You stick k around and listen.

So there is something about there's something about removing choice and paralysis saying like, okay, just take me somewhere where you seem to get inspired and enjoy IT sort of the exact same tracks you might have skipped if we showed your list. What's going to happen in the future? I was still not exactly sure what that is, but is very clear this happening.

So I think of this now as we have lots of choices. If you know what you want or you sort of knowing you want, we have some as and hundreds of players for every type of one and you have your own players. We didn't have a good solution for like I spotify, I am no idea.

So this is a solution for like I know there is, but I want music and then this is this is a really good tool and so I don't think it's onna switch to hundred percent. I am no idea. I think you're going to a have different .

moments yeah you know that makes them and that actually brings me to i'm not just i'm going to throw acute and I want to do to agree or disagree and tell me why I am right. A wrong go for IT seems to me that we've gone through this phase in this space where there were a lot of bets and a lot of different direction tions. right?

Everybody, everybody went towards trying to figure out how to do exclusive content in really cool ways. Everybody try to build radically different kinds of listening experiences. People try to do live audio. And IT seems like we're coming back to the idea that actually there is this incredibly cool, interesting library of content out there.

And the job of an apple ke, spotify or any of your competitors is to find ways for me to find that content and that content to find me just sort of watching spotify over the last, I know, twenty four months, IT feels like to something that you've kind of wound all the way back to, like the core competency, which is like we're very good at telling you what to listen to. And IT just feels like you pushed back into that in new ways over the last year or so. Is that fair? And I totally wrong. What do you think? I think this is fair.

I would say that we try to get more distinct t about separating the modes. So the DJ is still in this classroom, like it's mostly going to play things that we are quite certain that you like back to, like it's probably gonna right now out of ten things. And then we need a different solution for when you want to be exploratory, when we are only right one out of ten instead of nine out of ten, which is the feeds, right? So we got a separator two instead of having a bad average of both live to DJ was right one out of ten you would turn out right?

Or if they are both five at a time.

i'm going na turn out exactly that's a Better point. If both five or ten both are bad, right? So that is true. I think we ve got more confident like let's build this product for this product and other product for that other purpose.

I do think that back to your questions on A I and general today, A I, I have this obsession with as artificial intelligence or machine intelligence or whatever you call this, is getting more and more capable. I've always had this subsection sion about everyone should be able to really have A D J. That sounds very natural, but that gets more and more intelligent time.

So IT understands. So the d to we have now IT understands quite a lot about your music taste. But with a lancy, we'll also sort understand a lot about music culture in the world and what happens. I can get more skill that things like mix saying and like I I really, anna, build this perfect session where you feel like a larger percentage of the time, you feel like spotify is almost like A A friend, a person, a DJ, i'm just gona trust them.

Then maybe instead of eighty percent of the time you go to choose to your play, let mean we get down to like twenty twenty percent of the time you're going to have you to play this because this is party or something. But most of the time you're going to say like is codify my friend, just play something and I i'll feedback. I think that is entirely possible given the insane development of intelligence.

So that's what something i'm very passion about. So I think we keep investing in that. So in that sense, I think this is is right. We're getting more confident in the ability to recommend and try a program to you, but we still need to find this baLance of being fall tolerant and give you super the ways to like, say, now you're wrong, give me control back yeah.

that's that's totally fair. What players do you listen to most?

I should listen to IT with you. Statistically, it's it's the D. J. By far that I listen to the most. And then I have a set of my my own actuated hole is and all this like IT.

uh, I really appreciate you. And this is really fun to do this. I glad we got to make that happen, though we could do in person likewise.

Always fun, happy to do again, right?

We got to take a break. And then we're going to talk about streaming because there is always something happening and streaming we'll bring back.

Support for the show comes from clavo you're building a business clavo helps you grow IT cvo S A I powered marketing platform puts all your customer data plus email, email and analytics in one place with cabo tend fish finon fishwife delivers real time personalized experience says that keeps their customers hocked. They've grown seventy times revenue in just four years with clivia. Now that's scale. Visit K L A B I Y O dot com to learn how brands like fish wife build smarter digital relationships with clavo.

Hey, it's lee from decoder with the detail. We spent a lot of time talking about some of the most important people in taking business about what they're putting resources to and why do they think it's so critical for the future. That's why we're doing this special series diving, some of the most unique ways companies are spending money today.

For instance, what does that mean to start buying and using A I at work? How much is that costing companies? What products are they buy? And most importantly, what are they doing with IT and of course, podcasts? Yes, the thing you listening to right now, well, it's increasingly being produced directly by companies like venture capital firms, stand funds and a new crop of creators who one day want to be investors themselves.

And what is actually going on with these acquisitions this year, especially in the A I space, why are so many big players in tech deciding not to acquire and instead license tech can hire away cofounded ers? The answer, IT turns out, is a lot more complicated than that seems you'll hear all that and more this month. I'm decoder with the life of presented by strike. You can listen to decoder whatever you get your podcast.

Or I were back. We have kind of a grab bag of streaming news this week from disney to verizon, max to marvel to netflix. It's a lot.

And IT feels like there's a bigger stories tying all of IT together or maybe a couple of them. So I grab ed alex grants to talk IT through, hi alex, hello. Uh, whenever we have streaming things to all about IT feels important that you and I do IT on the verge cast together.

So i'm very happy to the first thing we need to do is we need to we need to explain the truth to some people about what is going on with disney. The shortest bit of the history that I need to give in order to get in into this is what a week ago now, two weeks ago now, disney and comcast enacted their agreement for disney to buy the rest of whole from conchas, which we've kind of always knows going to. That's the history. Explain to me these weird things that have been happening around to the disney internet in the last few days.

So disney was doing its earnings call the other day, and bob igor said that they're going to experiment with a beta in december combining the content of hou in disney plus and that I think something we've talked about on the verge cast was probably going to be the outcome of all of this. So that was not a surprise to us.

A DIY has not hit that fact that ultimately, what I was going to do was probably combine the mall into one streaming service.

He's been talking about this, I think since may very openly that, that was his plan. But a lot of outlets, a lot of people have gotten confused by that and assume that one or both of those streaming services to go away, and I think like a name is probably gonna go away. I think who lured disney plus is probably going to get retired, but all the content is still gonna.

There is just going to be one APP, which in the the united states is kind of tRicky because the disney plus APP in the united states is for babies and the whole W. A. Is for adults. I say that subscribing to both I am baby here. But now that one is very much for kids, your kids are less likely to go find two people, go and add on just .

d plus who the one for sex? Yeah.

i've been honestly, in the united states, that's the big different nations 是 one is boned down the other population none。 One of the things that bob iger said was he was like we're going to wait and take a bit because people are going to need to like prepare and think about child protection and stuff to their kids. Don't go to board town. He didn't say bone town.

but what that means?

Yeah yeah and I think they're got people kind of scared thinking that disney plus going away and is like IT is going to be there so much yeah, you've just going have to think a little harder about the accounts you set up and make sure that one of them, if you don't let your kids seeing the handbook tail that you block.

that everything you just said is true and correct expect except one thing. Okay, there is no question about which brand is going to go away. It's going to be hello, like I don't know how to be clear about this.

Like disney plus is going to be the name of the service who who is going to be a section of the service that has some of that more adult stuff, maybe able to be everything on hulu. Maybe it'll just be that more or like adult subset of IT right now. Others like effects on hou, which is like, yeah, kind of the way that that works. This is going to be effects on who leu on disney plus, like it's going to be, but that's what it's gonna like. Let's not pretend that there is a possibility that who lew is like the main disney brand forever.

That's ridiculous.

I ve got to clink to IT. Not only is this just like an objectively moral truth of the universe, I just want to read you the thing that bob yi gar said, okay. From the earnings call, we expect that who luu on disney plus will result in increased engagement, greater advertising opportunities, lower return and reduce customer acquisition costs, thereby increasing our overall margins.

The beginning of that sentence is we expect that who love on disney plus, I don't know how to be clearly, he said. It's right there, alex. It's right inner. I'm so tired of all of these people being like, what if the disney plus brand dies? It's not gonna die.

It's not gonna die. It's fun to think IT will the way .

I see IT and I I went I went up reading and listening to this entire earnings call, which I like super don't recommend as a life style choice to do that.

folks.

But what super interesting to me is Bobby gar at least feels very strongly that disney has two really good brands. And it's disney and its E, S P. N. Those are the flag ships, those are the monoliths, are like the things he believes in as brands. Everything else is like subservient to those two things. And an interesting way, he even kind of intimated that E S P N might roll in the disney plus, like disc plus is the thing is just is good idea about idea.

IT is the answer, which is a Better name, disney plus or max for your giant, your giant.

Everything up, you know, sucks as i've been .

who who is a Better name there we got seeing who who have more captures the what the hell of oh at all and like, I think that's one of the things that a little questioning myself as disney plus has a very firm brand in the united states of population, zero for bones town and and that's not the case in the rest of the world, but IT is very much the case in the united states.

And I think like that's gonna a real chAllenge for them branding wise, but they probably will call IT all distal plus. And Blake, now you can get E, S, P, N, and who do there. And then in a year everybody can be .

like why who yeah who luu for me has like google energy and that it's like not a word, but it's kind of a word and it's like fun to say and it's a very good brand. I've always just really liked IT as as a word like even not known what that means. It's just a good word.

It's a good word like hulla hooking a hula what you just level. But you know that's where you could get your TV legally for a long time.

I've come to think this strategy sort of makes sense for disney because like even if what you're talking about like who u equals bone town, right, it's gonna be like a checkbox in the disney APP that is like when you set them up for your family, you're like, my APP has bone town, the kids zaps no bone town and it's gonna a pretty easy tagle. Like I think where content goes over time is going na be kind of trick.

And we've already seen some kind of bleeding between the two over time, right? We're like some things are on both services. Sometimes they move between like it's already kind of complicated.

right? There's like a whole bunch of fox films that really shouldn't be on disney plus. We think of IT today that are currently on disney plus, really.

No, no. Like kids, are you going to see something they might see like the top of a bob, and like this travesty, travesty for the children. So yeah, yeah, we've already been dealing with this problem.

And that was why he wanted to burge the two, right, like he doesn't want have to think about that. And I suspect it's going to be less bone town versus no bone town and more. Do you want your company able to watch mature rating stuff? And do you want you can able to watch like TV fourteen.

And so I think you're going to really clink to those T V ratings that theyve kind of informally adopted that they don't actually have to have at this point. Like nobody y's telling them they aren't broadcast on television. They can do whatever ratings they want and they're still out there being like we thought of a good rating for this one at disney, which is the sterile.

But I do think like even in that is having who who is the kind of short hand for like here's all of our sort of adult originals is probably pretty useful. It's like I know what disney gets to me and I know what you luo gets me. And even though they're in the same map being able to kind of split them as I want to make some sense.

I think what we're really onna start seeing as we get these more super apps right, which is disney plus, whatever paramount and peacock end up joining ticket make in order to compete as as we started to get these super apps. I think we're going to start seeing kind of the replica of TV that we had before. We're like you, you had your different channels and stuff that something exams talked about, that something that like I R kind of hand. I think the idea that concept of channels is going to come ring back and some brand exact somewhere are going to be working their butts coming up on hole. Like to do channels are trying to direct old ones.

Oh, that's interesting. So in the like disney cable bundle universe, hulu becomes like the H B O, right? Prestige adult television channel.

You ve got fx over, still hanging out over there or whatever. And then like disney X, T for the kids think that's what I was for that interesting. I'm an old so I think it's disney X, T.

And and so I think we're going to see that sort of thing. We know free form. Well, reforms, toast. Reform is not going to a survive the next couple of years create. They might still keep that for like that why audience keep that Young adult audience there with three forms.

You're making me realized now that if you if you take what disney is already planning on doing, like the way you describe, and then you add E P S on demand stuff and even the linear channel, which didn't y has talked about adding to streaming. And then you do the same with A B C news. You've just basically recreated sixty percent of the cable under, like your one N B C, N C B S broadcast channel away from just .

the full cable, which really.

really compelling who you has you with live T, V. back. This is just i'm just paying disney from my cable.

But no, now instead of comcast, oh, I guess this is where we should disclose. Comcast is an investor in vox media through its syria. Nbc universal realized, not here. So why I don't have to tell you about the netflix show that he humble baggs about all the time. Alex has pyramid plus, I don't know like this is we have a bunch of complicated disclosures to do here, but that's that about cover.

We've all spend a lot of money on streaming, all right? We do we watch a lot of streaming.

yeah, which actually is a good same way to the next thing, which is the other thing that bob bigger talked about in the earnings all bunch that also there was some variation, netflix max news on this is that the advertising tear of streaming continues to boom. Yes, in a way that like kind of surprises me. Like I think bob gar said, over half of new disney plus subscribers in this last quarter were had supported, which is huge.

I don't think that's like that's not surprising to to me at all. People want things and they want things cheap. And tiktok, youtube and everything else has totally prepared people to be able to sit through IT in red cast.

T, V has prepared people to sit through IT ad in order to get the content they want. So that's not surprising to me. And I think the most surprising part of IT is that advertisers are so eager for IT when they do have the ability of micro o target on platforms like to talk and stuff.

So that's the part that's surprising. But I guess it's easy. You've got good partners with disney. You know there's going to brand safety. You're not going to have to worry about some .

weird thing unlike tiktok and some of the other platforms .

are talking about, yeah, you have a lot more safety on something like this new netflix or max then then you do on social media platform. So I get IT big sense.

Yeah it's also very funny. Like part of me wonder if part of the appeal of that is just all of these ad agencies have been making one specific kind of add to go next to one specific kind of thing for decades and for a long time I was like, well, where do we put that thing now ah and now never fix is just like, well, instead of putting IT next to I I don't know, like chicago fire on television put in next to chicago fire on streaming and the add agencies are like, oh, I know how to do that. That works for me.

I think that's a big part of that. I think it's just like this is a thing. They are all the other terms already know how to do.

They know how to sell IT, disney. All of these companies know how to how to buy this stuff and how to sell IT. So everybody is like, okay, we figured that out.

And now also, instead of broadcast in in cable and dealing with that, we can have IT all internal. We can control everything, and that makes everything a lot easier. And keeper, but also now disney is gonna own all the entertainment you wanna watch.

A like going a really real way like bob.

igor is going to be deciding what script to TV you watch. And that's a little that has me a little concern. I'm not crazy about one company having that much power over what I watched. But yeah, I do like how convenient yeah.

But one of the things I was reading was basically theorize, zing, that disney is going to win because IT did all of its acquisitions before IT became hard to do acquisitions, both, I guess, for like interest rate reasons, just the way the economy is gone and also like there is more scrutiny, these mergers and acquisitions than they used to be.

If you think about IT, the fact that they were able to acquire marvel, they were able to acquire E, S, P. These been end to the acquisition of marvel.

right? yeah. And then look as film and pixar, like the list is crazy.

It's insane. And I really shouldn't have happened. But IT was also IT is bob iker legacy? IT was the thing he did really, really well. He's very proud of.

I think every when he was retired for that year and a half or whatever, he spent all of his time going around being like, I didn't this. I built this this whole of of assets for us, and now we can just go mint money. And disney has IT worked out .

super well for a minute.

He saw the writing on the volume is really, really smart about IT, whether or not he should be able to do that. The whole copyright situation, the fact that he's gonna own all of these copyrights and in aggressively goes in has laws to stop this stuff from like entering the public domain. That's less cool.

But but the thing about that, that's weird then, is the flip side of that is like disney has lost just an essentially infinite amount of money on streaming. Now it's betting on this future of like all of this is onna come together. And like I think with the flue thing, I see IT more than ever like the bundle, the way you describe that as like all that, that might work and IT might make an awful lot of money pretty quickly.

But also IT makes me wonder, can anyone come after disney? Like put one of the things in the news this week was that verizon gna start selling a combination of netflix and nx, both ads supported for ten dollars, instead of, I think, what would be seventeen dollars. And one of the the theory I saw about that is basically like ordinary.

What would happen is these two companies would merge, or two companies like them would merge, or theyd find some way to kind of be one and compete in a real way head on, but they can't because, you know, just as broadly, the world is what IT is. And so they're having to find all these ways to kind of put their pieces together in order to be harder to turn away from. Do you buy that logic? Like is everybody else going to sort of sneaky bundle because they can't .

do what disney is doing? Yeah, I think they have to, right? Peo can paramo have to bundle or they're gonna toast because you've got to three or four big players. There's disney plus with now hundred and sixty two hundred and million subscribers at this point, just astronomer amazon with a similarly astronomical number. But that was going to be really curious because how much that is just people who bought amazon prime and how much is actually users.

which amazon has never really talked about.

we've never disclosed. So there's always like a little asta ics when you see them at the top, the list and you've got max and then you've got netflix. So there's also the big four.

Those are effectively your A B C, C B S, N B C and fox of twenty twenty three. And I think everybody's na probably need to subscribe to most of those if they want to be able to have like intelligent conversations with their friends about cultural moments. Yeah even that is everybody else para mountain in p cock and in all these other ones are all sitting at the bottom underneath them there.

The W B, in the U. P of the sonos gy. I mean.

not not wrong, but brutal.

What to move for these guys. And I think the only way they're going to be able to compete is, is to start bundle ling and start offering that right now, they are they're really hedging their beats on being like Better at programing. And to their credit, they are much Better at programing than netflix, much, much Better at IT. But I don't think just being really talented at one thing is going to pull there, but some of the fire yeah.

And also the thing we seem to have learned over the last year so is that netflix can just spend its way out of any problem that IT has. IT just has so much more money that it's like, oh, we can make a good original will go get suits and make IT a jan ticket like IT just works.

P cox out there, furious. I think pick was the owner of that. Well, that's the other thing we're seeing is we're seeing a lot of these companies, love said this last year, he said we're open for business.

We're going to starts selling a lot of our properties. Yeah, we don't want to hold everything. It's not just for us like disney is very much in the business of is our IP. This is our brand and you come to us for this I P, in this brand, max, and in p cock and paramount, not netflix, but max and p OK. And are mart. Those kind of competitors are like, no, we want our brand to go everywhere in the hopes that eventually you say I like this brand enough, i'm gna come back and pay you and we'll see how that works.

I don't know if it's gonna, but IT definitely means there's more stuff being purchased and moved around, which is really, really which is actually crucial to like a good interesting set, the slate of content coming out because if all the content is being made by four companies who run by four White guys who all have very similar taste and stuff, you're not going to a lot of diversity of content. You're not going to get a lot of different fun, exciting things happening. And so needing to sell to the smaller runs need to keep the rest of that industry moving is going to be important for that diversity because otherwise it's just going to be suits. Grace anatomy river deal, I don't know what are the like the .

most board like socking dramatic weight people all this .

moments in there just a few huh moments yes.

swelling violins at the end of ever episode the that's how you know or .

chasing cars that's actually A A good day.

Way to the last we should talk about, which is two things happens sort of cy multi eusden. One was Bobby gar also set on the synetic earnings call that one of his big focuses is to go back to the film studio. Like the core disney thing has always been.

They develop, like you are saying, characters and movies the people love, right? That feeds movies, that feeds the theme parks, IT feeds the merchandizing. If they do, that feeds everything.

And that in recent years, especially with pixar and especially with marvel, has started to win. And so what he said is i'm going to go back and really dig into that space. And on the one hand, it's like, okay, you're like an old rich White guy like we kind of know how that was. But on the other hand, the marvels opened this past weekend, horribly opening to the lowest in marvel history, right? That was the worst performing box office for a marvel movie ever.

Ton of atrix next to IT, by the way. Yes.

i'd good list them for me. Tell me the atrix.

There was the sag strike so they couldn't, 对， didn't have Oscar waiting break larson out there having fun with Samuel Jackson, getting you excited for IT, which they totally we're going to do. And so you have a sag strike of a large group of people in the that our friends see you that are very upset with the direction of like the more diverse direction the frenches has taken over the last few years.

And so they're all upset that this is staring ladies and dudes. Um there are some dudes in IT the great. And then you have you have the real chAllenge of just marvel fatigue.

E there are so many marvel movies that came out before and and, and quanta ia is another one that got short thrifty, because IT came out for they had four months to like finish, a whole bunch of effects that they were supose like a year to finish. So they had to like rush their finish. And that's why IT looks like hot garbage.

And you're like this is an ugly movie because nobody has spent the time, so have poison their brand, which is a shame because I think everybody who's going to see IT really likes IT. I wouldn't be surprised if the scores coming out of the film are pretty high for IT, like not astronomically high. But disney historically has been really good at making a movie that even if critics don't like IT audiences really like IT in the last few, they really didn't have that success, particularly with ant man and top of strange, they really, really struggled with the cinema cores. And so I think marvels probably got much Better cinema scores. But it's gotta Carry so much water that I think it's it's gonna have that horrible abstract s next to IT forever.

Do you think IT has a chance? Like is the deals increasingly with every one of these, like the marvel fatigue is just irreversible. Even the stuff of people mostly seem to degree as good like locally season two people seem to mostly like doesn't have that like cultural force that he wants to do. You think we're just done with that phase and it's time to figure what's next for disney and everybody?

I don't think so because I think what people need to remember is that the original and see you, with the exception of maybe the first im movie was just as calculated, was just as well planned out. Like the reason captain marvel as a character exists today was because they rewrote her in back, and like two thousand and eleven, to make her a Better character, to spit, make IT producing movies, miss marvel herself.

But that was one of the reasons ms. Marvel that character was created was for the same reason, like these characters would have always been manufacturer to sell tickets. Guardians of the galaxy was their big, was that first big surprise where they made that film. And IT did really, really well in their like, oh, IT, we could make people care about a sentient reckon we can do anything. And that's still true.

But but if you don't have the marketing behind IT and if you're not making films that are entertaining because there was a lot of strugling like early on, marvel struggle with the incredible hold and the first storm movie did not have the strongest cinema scores and even at the time is like, oh, we're going to get IT and then like they've knocked out of the park with the avengers and everybody is like, okay, never mind. And so they were able to kind of whether those bad times before, but they've just had a string of horrible films that nobody cares about. And they're so focused on that cross ver concept in that who are you you going to see next that it's it's just exhAusting when it's like just do what you did at the beginning, tell really good stories and then to have similar Jackson show up in the last five minutes to be like also this up next week.

Well, that's one of the that's one of the things that I I haven't seen the marvel yet. Bio accounted did very well is like it's just a good movie but also if you're a super fan who has seen everything, IT has extra of rewards for you. And that was the thing for me that like the original movies did so well was like I i've probably seen sixty percent of the modern movies.

And I thought, like, the longer I went, the more I was being analyzed for not having seen them, whether at the beginning I was like, if I had seen them, I got ten more references that I didn't get before. But IT wasn't a huge problem that I missed a bunch of them. Now it's like if I start watching one of these movies and I haven't seen sixty five other things, none of IT is going to make any sense to me. And that is that too much. We're like we've lost the plot when we ve gotten there.

like literally lost the plot. I think man in the walls in into quantum ia, whatever the hell it's called, probably like that. The turning point, because the original at me and franchise exim lifed this Better than anything. I was just like, hey, look, we're doing a really cool thing and also like .

it's paul red he's so small .

yeah it's it's loosely attached to this larger franchise but you didn't have to care about IT and in this third one, they were like, you must care about this entire franchise and also this little man named king in what I know why stop IT. What IT looks like a shit. So but you think we're forever .

like one or two good marvel movies from IT being back on top of the world.

I think so disy is very good at making hits. Disney is Better than just not anybody on the planet at making you care about something and selling IT. So as long as marvel invested, they're they're going to do well.

I think what's gonna curious to see is what lessons they take from their recent failures. It's it's not lame that the last two, like the two biggest recent failures, were also LED by women. That big primary part of the cast.

And I I live in constant terror that they are going to do what they were always doing. And like the two thousands of being like, uh, the women LED show bombs, so we ve got to kill all things where women lead that kind of group think is really popular hollywood. And i'm terrified of that happening again. But disney knows how to make kids. Marvel is not going away until bob egger, who or whoever decides IT needs to.

Fair enough. Thank you. right? We got ta take a break.

Go see the marvel apparent. It's great. Charles really like that.

Everybody who sees this seems really like IT. We can take a break. Will can you come back to the hot line?

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Right, welcome back. Let's get to the verge. Cast hot line.

We take questions every week, and we try to answer them as sometimes helpfully as we can this week. Chris logic here to help me. Hyrst.

hi, good to be back.

We got a question about something that I honestly thought we would never ever in our lives get a question about again on the verge of hot line, which is M P three players. But first let me just play the question IT comes from Patrick .

diverge team. This is Patrick from on arizona. I'm trying to reduce my reliance on my phone so that when I go to replace that, I can get a dumb phone and replace all of its functions with standalone dumb or simi smart product.

The one feature that giving me the most difficulty replacing is the ability to listen to my music from spotify, my podcast and my audio books in my car in an easy and automatically updating fashion. IT seems that all of the M P. Three players that remain on the market are either over six hundred dollars, at least like the Sunny walkmen, or under one hundred dollars and limited to playing manually populated offline files.

Is IT true that there is just no more mid market for M. P. Three players. thanks. I afford to your insight, as always.

Okay, I have like an immediate visual reaction of this question, but i'm curious what your instant thoughts are.

I think the main hang up and problem chAllenge here is that podcasts part like funning, an empirical player that like automatically update podcasts is not really what the ones that are out there are these days or four. I like you mentioned, you can buy like a SONY walkmen for three hundreds, four regnat dollars, but that's like all high fire listening gear, does not really intended for a casual podcast listening. I don't know what you your vibes on the question, what do you your .

feels I kind of have come to the point where I think the only reason to buy a dedicated M P three player is if you really care about high five lossless, and I think that's a perfectly valid thing and reason to buy an M P three player if you're worrying about spotify and podcasts, that is not you. And so I kind of think the market for those people, for an M P three player is dead to me.

The answer here is by a cheap second phone, only download two apps that you need like, I don't know, have somebody changes google play passwords so you can do anything else or whatever, and then just treat that like your device. Basically try to like ipod touch fy a phone that you have. That's the only answer I can think of. That makes sense to me.

So you still came back like a used ipad touch that's an option. But it's stuck on IOS fifteen, I think. So they will come a day where like spotify no longer supports IOS fifteen and like same for apple music, which is very strange.

Think about so at some point the ipod touch will be left behind. I ve got one to feel so small these days that like no longer feels like the phone. I know it's really true.

It's like so tiny. So you know I got some charm um but at software days are probably numbered. There's also I don't even remember the mighty player is like that ipod shuttle device that can sink, that can sing spotify and like try some podcast.

So and but you would need a smart phone to sink IT to. So if you want a done phone there and less the problem. But that's a lot of I think they cost a hundred and thirty bucks, so no where near the cost of like a SONY walkman, which again a silan for nurses like me who like have like lossless libraries of fully illegal and downloaded music .

question about.

But yeah, for this question I would either like persue an old ipod touch for a few years related, should be good for one, two, three more years, or like he said, buy a secondary phone that's know.

does the job the only other thing I could think of, and I did some research on this, like I kind of wish we lived in the world where spotify, like car thing, had been super successful. And I went down this road of building sort of nickey music gadgets because I agree, we should have more music gadgets. Like, I think the idea that my phone is my source of music make some sense because it's the advice I have with me, whatever.

But I can wish there were more. And the thing I wish most of all is that some kind of wearable was the answer. And there's little bits of stuff fitbit makes them, stuff that has some pretty good integrations with spotify and dial in some of these things.

A lot obviously depends on which japs you use. Like if if you use apple podcasts, all of this is mood by an ipad touch. But for some of these things, they are like bits and pieces of you can get. But like you said, all of these are just phone accessory. They require so much else to do on your smart phone before you can get IT on to your actual dedicated .

device like the of the single and mac at this point time and know about us, it's a almost twenty twenty four, but he still need an iphone there. So that would solve the problem immediately like an a watch to talk to a market, be algate that is not access. But I would look at the mighty, honestly, you know, that looks like going to have push shufflin scout and charm.

You can wear IT if you want to dump one kind of fits that that vide. But I can to figure out like what device will think with. And I think i'm sure he's got some kind of phone line around that can till run spotify.

yeah. The good news is I think on the phone front, if all you really want is like spotify and pocket casts or whatever all put pocket casts, my favorite has that you don't need much phone to do that, right? You can buy a pretty small, pretty low and pretty low powered phone, I would say, as long as it's relatively modern in its software capability.

So it'll last a long time. Yes, like tube, almost no one what I recommend most of the like one to two hundred dollars smart phones out there. But in that range you can get something that's gonna ve you perfectly fine for these particular cases if all you want is like a thing to like have runs into to listen to music, right?

Yeah that like check out like a pixel 7a during the holiday cells and see if .

you get a google。 Things things you can probably any other other any other interesting music gadgets out there in the world right now. I feel like there's like is neil Young still .

doing the the ponder what a time that was to be? That's not around anywhere. I mean, sure some of the readers are going to have some very super niche solutions that are out there, but have the top of my head, I think, like make cheap quins that aren't that Price, see.

But those are the manual, a loading on music and stuff. And so those don't not android IT all and so that would not be a good solution. But yeah, I would buy an old ipod touch secondary phone, check out the mighty for hundred and thirty ty box and see if that all solve your dilema. But that's a that's a big chAllenge to find a device that can sync your podcasts with a dumb phone.

It's a strange one. And I really I do support the overall theory of trying to take all the things that your phone doesn't so absolute them out so that it's like instead of having everything with me all at once in this one device, I can just have the tools that I need to, not really the rest.

like single purpose devices.

the I D. I honestly, I wish the answer was the new ipod classic, like integrates with apple music and apple pod guests. And you can just live your life. And that.

like this is now you get to work with what we got.

I hope that helps. Chris. Absolutely .

pressure.

All right. That's IT for the verge cast today. Thanks to everyone on the show, and thank you for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about from our spotify coverage to all the stuff going on in streaming at the first 点。

Com will put some things in the show notes, but also know read the website as always, if you have thoughts, feelings, questions, weird spotify players, do you want to tell me about? You can always email us at verge cast at the verge 点 com， keep calling the hot line eight, six, six bird, one one we love hearing from you. So my everything to do on this show this show is produced by andrei o and the m James the verge cast is a verge production in part of the vox media podcast network. Nei alex now will be back on friday to talk about the playstation portal more from epic v google and all the other news of the week. See them rock.

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