Friday Nov.29, 2019

Live from Spotify — the future of podcasting

_This is Nick, this is Jack, and we're your newsletter writers (and pod co-hosts)_
_This is Nick, this is Jack, and we're your newsletter writers (and pod co-hosts)_

Hey Snackers,

We made this one extra digestible while you juice cleanse out all that tryptophan. Markets hit record highs before closing for Thanksgiving — now everyone's watching for Black Friday sales numbers to roll in.

Today's newsletter is about podcasts. We build our 15-minute Snacks Daily podcast every day, and we put the whole behind-the-scenes process up on YouTube for you to check out. And for insights about the future of the freakily hot podding industry, we just interviewed an entrepreneur who sold his podcast startup to Spotify. Takeaways below, or watch it here.

Volume

Spotify is on a talent binge for exclusive podcasts — so it can defeat Apple

Subscribe to everything... That's the decision that music-focused Spotify made back in February when CEO Daniel Ek said he wanted 20% of Spotify listening to be non-music. When you're not Lizzo-ing or mid-binge on Talking Heads, Spotify wants you podding. So the streaming pioneer came up with a 2-part plan:

  1. Blitz acquisitions: Spotify is spending $500M on podcast acquisitions, starting with Gimlet (a production company for podcasts like "Homecoming"), Anchor (a tech platform for creating pods), and Parcast (more pods like "Horoscope Today").
  2. Sign celebs: Spotify just revealed to Hollywood Reporter that it's signed podcast deals with Mark Wahlberg, Jordan Peele, and... the Obamas.

These podcasts aren't for the public good... they're for podcast profits. One lovely thing about podcasts is that Spotify gets the content for free.

  • Music: When your Spotify playlist streams Love on Top, Spotify pays Beyonce for that. The talent gets the royalties.
  • Podcasts: Max Cutler, Founder & MD of Parcast Studios at Spotify told us in our live pod interview that podcasts generate revenue through their ads, not by taking their part of Spotify's revenues like 'Yonce does.
  • The result: A podcast listen is more profitable for Spotify than a music stream.

A new streaming war is coming... You can only watch The Crown on Netflix, The Lion King on Disney+, and Hulu ads on Hulu (please kill those ads, Hulu). We asked Max if podcasts would go the same way. The answer is... sort of. Exclusive podcasts are central to Spotify's plan — the Obama pod will probably only exist on Spotify, even if other Spotify pods are still available on Apple (for now). Audio streaming is tempted by the video streaming playbook.

What else we’re Snackin’

  • Resurrected: Toys 'R' Us teamed up with a software retailer and just reopened its 1st store with sensors that track how you're shopping (side note: we're kinda into their Nerf shop concept)
  • @blank: Twitter notified 6-month inactive accounts that if they don't sign in by December 11th, then their usernames will become available for someone else to snag
  • Poked: Facebook acquires a VR gaming company based in Prague with 1 hit game (Beat Saber) that’s sold 1M units
  • Tariff'd: Dollar Tree falls another 2% on word Chinese tariffs will add $19M to the cost of the discount chain's products next quarter

Friday

  • Big retail opens their doors for Black Friday, with the sales bonanza stretching through to Cyber Monday.

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Latest Stories

Business

The FTC vs. Big Handbag

The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block big tech, big grocery, big vacuum, and now, big… “affordable luxury handbag.”

Yesterday, the FTC sued to block Tapestry Inc’s $8.5B acquisition of Capri holdings. The agency is worried that a merger between Tapestry, which owns the Coach and Kate Spade brands, and Capri, which owns Michael Kors, would eliminate competition in the market.

The crux of the FTC's argument lies in the scope of the "accessible luxury" handbag market, where Tapestry competes with Michael Kors, with the FTC saying the following:

Where Tapestry and Capri most vigorously compete against one another – mainly between Tapestry’s Coach and Kate Spade brands against Capri’s Michael Kors brand – is in the “accessible luxury” handbag market. Today, Coach, Kate Spade and Michael Kors continuously monitor each other’s handbag brands to determine pricing and performance, and they each use that information to make strategic decisions, including whether to raise or lower handbag prices.

The deal would eliminate fierce head-to-head competition on many important attributes including on price, discounting, and design. Tens of millions of Americans that purchase Coach, Kade Spade, and Michael Kors products could face higher prices

While Capri and Tapestry are two of the largest players in this market, winning an antitrust case won't be so straightforward, as consumers have other options at similar price points, including Marc Jacobs (owned by competitor LVMH), Tory Burch, Cuyana, and Mansur.

The crux of the FTC's argument lies in the scope of the "accessible luxury" handbag market, where Tapestry competes with Michael Kors, with the FTC saying the following:

Where Tapestry and Capri most vigorously compete against one another – mainly between Tapestry’s Coach and Kate Spade brands against Capri’s Michael Kors brand – is in the “accessible luxury” handbag market. Today, Coach, Kate Spade and Michael Kors continuously monitor each other’s handbag brands to determine pricing and performance, and they each use that information to make strategic decisions, including whether to raise or lower handbag prices.

The deal would eliminate fierce head-to-head competition on many important attributes including on price, discounting, and design. Tens of millions of Americans that purchase Coach, Kade Spade, and Michael Kors products could face higher prices

While Capri and Tapestry are two of the largest players in this market, winning an antitrust case won't be so straightforward, as consumers have other options at similar price points, including Marc Jacobs (owned by competitor LVMH), Tory Burch, Cuyana, and Mansur.

Tesla had a good ride, but the stock’s price destruction is historic

Few people have created as much value as Elon Musk. The iconoclastic entrepreneur took Tesla from a market capitalization of roughly $2 billion at the time of its IPO in 2010 to $1.2 trillion in early 2023. That’s a return of about 55,000%. Musk made a lot of people a lot of money.

On the other hand, Tesla shares are down nearly 60% since their all-time peak. The company has ceded ground in EVs, prompting a series of profit crushing price cuts to preserve market share. The cumulative loss in market value over that period is pushing $800 billion. Few corporate executives have presided over such a degree of value destruction.

And it could get worse, as people are bracing for an ugly update when Tesla reports after the close Tuesday.

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Tech

Smaller AI models are in

Tech companies that have long touted the enormity of their AI models are now saying size doesn’t always matter.

Microsoft is the latest tech company to introduce smaller AI models, as part of its Phi-3 tech family. Last week Meta released two smaller models of its AI Llama 3 and earlier this year Alphabet did the same. All are open sourcing these models to encourage wider adoption.

Microsoft says its smallest model, which can fit on a smartphone and wouldn’t need to be connected to the internet to work, is nearly as good as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5. A Microsoft exec suggested this less expensive model could be a good fit for online advertisers, if not doctors.

Microsoft says its smallest model, which can fit on a smartphone and wouldn’t need to be connected to the internet to work, is nearly as good as OpenAI’s GPT-3.5. A Microsoft exec suggested this less expensive model could be a good fit for online advertisers, if not doctors.

$127

The average bitcoin-transaction fee hit an all-time high of $127 on Friday.

The temporary spike came as the halving cut miner rewards and traders forked over huge sums of BTC (skewing the average) to be included in the first post-halving block.

Adding fuel to the fee fire was the launch of Runes, a new protocol that lets developers create memecoins on top of the bitcoin blockchain. The debut was so popular that fees popped as traders fought for limited block space.

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2024-04-22-1-america-importing-less-from-china

The US now buys more goods from Mexico than from China

Chinese imports are down as companies begin to "nearshore" in Mexico

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Multiple bidders want to buy Paramount Global’s sprawling media assets

Junk

How much of the world’s plastic is recycled? Only a fraction

Landfills still account for the majority of plastic disposal

Markets

Stock market gains for 2024 cut by more than half

All of the sudden, the stock market seems to be running out of steam.

There’s no big mystery here. War in the Mideast has pushed up oil prices, which will help keep inflation elevated. And annoyingly high price increases in March have already pushed the June Fed rate cuts the market was banking on farther into the uncertain future.

All that’s added up to higher interest rates and lower stock prices.

Tech
Rani Molla
4/22/24

AI needs so much electricity that tech companies are getting into the energy business

To accommodate tech companies’ pivots to artificial intelligence, tech companies are increasingly investing in ways to power AI’s immense electricity needs.

Most recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman invested in Exowatt, a company using solar power to feed data centers, according to the Wall Street Journal.

That’s on the heals of OpenAI partner, Microsoft, working on getting approval for nuclear energy to help power its AI operations. Last year Amazon, which is a major investor in AI company Anthropic, said it invested in more than 100 renewable energy projects, making it the “world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row.”

This can all feel like a bit of spin, as these tech companies move the narrative toward their use of green energy rather than questioning whether they truly need to be consuming so much energy in the first place.

That’s on the heals of OpenAI partner, Microsoft, working on getting approval for nuclear energy to help power its AI operations. Last year Amazon, which is a major investor in AI company Anthropic, said it invested in more than 100 renewable energy projects, making it the “world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy for the fourth year in a row.”

This can all feel like a bit of spin, as these tech companies move the narrative toward their use of green energy rather than questioning whether they truly need to be consuming so much energy in the first place.

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Private equity firms may soon own your favorite football franchise.

Business

What’s on your mind?

Meta is rolling out a new chatbot, Meta AI, to its 3 largest social media properties: Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

On Facebook the usual search bar for some users has been replaced with “Ask Meta AI anything” — a prompt that could give millions of people their first ever interaction with an AI chatbot.

Meta has been increasingly focused on AI ever since ChatGPT exploded into the mainstream in late 2022. In earnings calls, the focus has never been clearer: Facebook execs made ~10x more references to artificial intelligence than the Metaverse, the company’s previous primary focus which prompted its rebrand in October 2021.

Metaverse mentions

Meta has been increasingly focused on AI ever since ChatGPT exploded into the mainstream in late 2022. In earnings calls, the focus has never been clearer: Facebook execs made ~10x more references to artificial intelligence than the Metaverse, the company’s previous primary focus which prompted its rebrand in October 2021.

Metaverse mentions