Michael and Johnny continue to look at Spotify, its controversies with artists, its impact on the music industry, its future in podcasting, and deliver their final verdict on whether it is Rich Tech or Poor Tech.
In the News of the Week, we discuss Alexis Ohanian, the Reddit Cofounder’s recent move to step down from the board asking for his replacement to be a black person, and Trudeau’s prolonged moment of awkward silence.
Recorded Date: Sunday, June 7, 2020
Ideas of the Week:
- Accessory embedded cameras that allow one-button streaming
- Get into the clothing industry to allow people one-button streaming of those precious moments + use their algorithms to come up with the perfect background music to the recorded event
Time Stamps
- @00:02:22: Reddit Co-founder Steps Down from Board
- @00:15:12: Trudeau’s Comments on US Protests
- @00:20:35: Taylor Swift vs Spotify
- @00:28:13: Jay-Z vs Spotify
- @00:33:20: Spotify vs everyone
- @00:35:43: The Future of Spotify
- @00:43:55: Spotify Rich Tech or Poor Tech
- @00:54:15: Ideas of the week
Highlights
- Will Alexis’s move lead others to seek out under-represented and capable people?
- Artists are paid $0.0006/individual stream on Spotify’s basic tier and $0.008/individual stream on Spotify’s premium tier
- Taylor Swift’s ‘Fearless’ tour brought $75 M
- 2018, Taylor Swift’s ‘Reputation’ tour broke records bringing in $345 M from just 38 shows - $9 M per show average
- You can’t make 10% of that from streaming
- Are we moving to a world where the more we use something, the more people will be paid for it? With CD’s and tapes, you bought it once and could replay it as long as the CD/tape was not damaged. With streaming, artists are paid by how much each of their products is consumed
- Could Tidal have had a bigger impact if it catered to highlighting up and coming artists?
- Are we moving to a world where we no longer own our media? We stream and rent it? It is available today and gone tomorrow to potentially come back someday in the future?
- What does the future of podcasts look like with Spotify muscling its way in and making podcasts exclusive to it?
- Are people loyal enough to podcasts that they will switch to using Spotify?
- Spotify better improve their podcast description previews
- Will Spotify become the gateway to podcasts in the future?
- New month, new rich tech poor tech definition :)
- Shareholders: Spotify is another distribution arm to the music industry -> Obscenely Rich Tech
- Employees: Spotify only employees are mostly white-collar; any employee can become CEO -> Rich Tech
- Customers: Enriches our lives in many ways, monetary wealth is not one of them -> Poor Tech
- Contribution to Society: Not spotlighting new acts, artists still need record labels; made it very convenient for customers to consume music legally but that hasn’t translated to more artist wealth -> Poor Tech
- Verdict: Spotify is a Poor Tech company!
- They have a great engineering culture & being very data-driven, Johnny would gladly work for Spotify
