What was your biggest takeaway from the summit?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to pick one, but something that really stuck out to me personally, and I was just writing about this, is just how much this idea of the convergence of different industries and different types of media is not just an emerging trend anymore.

It really is just the way things are now.

More often than not, an artist also is involved in other ventures whether it's they also have a merch brand that's really a fashion brand or they have uh they're they're starring in a movie or playing a role in a movie or you know having a podcast or having sort of different elements to their business and it was interesting to me that um I didn't think twice about Kev on stage, the comedian, being a speaker at a music conference because it made sense that we're all sort of in this umbrella of the entertainment industry learning about strategies that transcend mediums.

And Kevin is a comedian, but that same story is sort of told across media.

his live tour, his podcast, his YouTube channel, all these different sort of formats.

And so I've written about this too before, but I feel like there's this decoupling of story from format where it used to be a TV show was a TV show, and that was both a format and a type of story.

I'm curious, going back to the other question, were there any discussions that were happening in the room that weren't conversations that were reflected on stage? Maybe they complimented or maybe they were just a little bit different from what we had heard on stage.

And Granted, that is considerable growth, but I do think for them to be able to achieve that, it needs to expand beyond professional musicians that are using the product and expand to be more of a true consumer product.

Totally.

When it comes to the total addressable market and also who are the active users, which is another really key question with all of this, is how many are coming back on a monthly or weekly basis? I mean, we've been surveying in our global consumer surveys quarterly about whether people use generative AI music platforms monthly.

And the percentage has hovered somewhere between like four and six percent for the past three or so years.

It hasn't changed that much.

It's still very much a niche in terms of when we categorize consumer products.

When we survey music creators, and we survey thousands of them per year, most say when they use AI in their music, it is... by far assistive AI tools that they're using.

Do you look differently at some of the other platforms out there like Eleven Labs or Unio? Obviously they're both different in a lot of ways, but do you have any more unique specific takes on them and what their role is.

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One thing that we talked about last time in terms of actual events that I feel like is still a good fit is esports, also because it's something that people are sort of... already used to watching sort of virtually and in like virtual environments.

Um, but something else I wanted to bring up this time, and I don't know, this isn't really, this isn't really an event.

It's more of something I think they could do, um, for like the immersive film side of thing is I feel like there's, there's an, there's like a, a Netflix partnership and a stranger things experience here.

This is a, this is, this is my pitch.

I think that, um, sphere could do with a longer term partnership with netflix in that way netflix which has already run ads on the exosphere is already exploring things like experiences and retail and has a lot of ip that is built around sort of like fantastical environments lots of lore sort of cult fan bases, and I feel like Sphere could be a place where Netflix or other companies like it could sort of give franchises their afterlife, and it could become sort of fandom events, FanFest, different conferences that revolve around fandom.

I know we talked a bit about risks, opportunities, but are there any others that you see, either in terms of things that you see as caution flags for them or things that you think they could consider?

I think there's two.

What was your take?

Yeah, it's funny.

We're going to get into this with how when you're in attendance at the Grammys, you weirdly miss so much of the actual show.

So I had to today go back and watch some of the performances that I feel like I missed and watch some of the big moments that I couldn't hear very well.

I guess the sentiment that I have is that the bar keeps rising and we keep hitting these new benchmarks that seem, how are we even going to go beyond this? And then we keep going.

Bad Bunny winning album of the year the week before performing the Super Bowl halftime show.

Within that, Notching multiple historic record-breaking moments, the first Spanish-language album to win that award, being the first solo Latino artist to headline the Super Bowl halftime show.

But I think

What do you think?

Yeah, at least in the big four, a lot of it sort of made sense and was what I expected.

The main outlier that was Leon Thomas with Album of the Year.

Made me want to listen more to that album, actually, because I know him, like most people, probably mainly from the hit song Mutt.

Otherwise, it was a lot of what I expected.

I think that what came to mind, though, immediately for me was...

Just comparing to last year's, because I don't know how you felt, Dan.

But Tati, before we let you go, any other final thoughts on this year's Grammys?

People had sent in some bold predictions that they had via surveys, and we picked some of the top ones to talk about.

I loved that session.

It was fun.

I think that the submissions that came in and the ones we talked about on stage, even the ones that we didn't get to, spoke to things that are on my mind a lot lately as well.

Someone had sent one in about, will we see mass culture come back after this period of hyperfragmentation? And that's something that's been on my mind.

The convergence of formats is We talked about someone's prediction that Netflix and Spotify would merge, which neither of us agreed with.

But it was interesting to discuss what would that look like and why don't we see it happening in a world where so many formats are converging? So I loved that session.

Were there any other segments that you had any takeaways or insights? I know you said you were taking notes yourself.

He later became the owner of the msg group and by extension owned the new york nicks and the new york rangers he hasn't necessarily been seen as a successful owner in that perspective just weird controversies that have happened with legends in madison square garden like charles oakley or patrick ewing or spike lee that make people question and plenty of pushes for people to be like hey sell the team and the new york rangers while they've been competitive haven't won a stanley cup in over 30 years either so there's been some questions there and then even weirder stuff like the whiz electronic store that he had acquired but it was a weird time to acquire an electronic store that didn't work out dolan was definitely someone that had some passion for music himself he was a musician he still continues to play in his band every once in a while so the interest was there but this was still a pretty big gamble people had questionable thoughts about whether or not he was able to do this and would he be able to still be in the position that he was as an entrepreneur if it wasn't for the success of his father.

And you missed one in the controversies.

What about the facial recognition business? Oh, yeah.

Yeah, I was reading about how he's used facial recognition technology to not allow in lawyers who have worked on cases that were ultimately against Madison Square Garden in some respect and all these things where they show up with their kid to go to a Knicks game and they're not allowed in.

Yeah.

These sorts of things.

And I feel like the music business is not without its characters.

I didn't.

But it felt like there was this confluence of things that did lean in her favor, but also led to fans spending a lot more money than they may have otherwise on Taylor Swift.

Totally.

Yeah.

And I think there are like, if you go into kind of like the Reddit threads of it all, or the X threads of it all, there's definitely disgruntled fans.

People jokingly call her capitalist queen now.

I think there are people who are spelt like, maybe taken advantage of.

I think that those who were fans of Taylor and felt even more connected to her through almost being part of this mission and this journey outnumber those who feel disgruntled by it.

Yeah, you got to tip your hat to it.

Let's get back to the episode.

The very nature of what you're doing on the app makes it really hard to insert advertising and not piss people off or just make the experience that much worse.

But I also think even if we were to say, OK, WhatsApp will never have ads, I still think end-to-end encryption causes meta trouble because getting businesses even to use, especially in the U.S., to use the app for chat and things like that, They also don't get to know anything about their customers.

So, of course, their ideal thing would be to know about their customers, target those customers with ads.

But even if there weren't any ads, they still don't even at this point get to know about their customers.

I know we want to talk a bit about music artists and just to bring a little bit about it in here.

I think maybe part of the reason that it hasn't taken off for artists to use things like channels is because They don't get to learn anything about the people that are liking the posts in their channel.

The long-term roadmap and strategy be trying to find ways to monetize this product further beyond just the B2B aspects and making it essentially free for everyone else and keeping it as something that keeps the user sticky or will they feel more pressure to try to monetize it even more?

But if you look at the numbers sour had 300 million streams in its first week versus guts at 199 so almost a 50 difference there when we're talking about it and i think that as popular as the song vampire was and as popular and as well as this album has done i just don't think there's a hit that's quite as big as that like driver's license song on this and i think sometimes you do need that type of hit to be able to have things carried through

I will say she does, just based on like interviews and things, she does seem to be very intentional about wanting to take her career step by step and not just going for every opportunity out the gate.

Like not wanting to go straight to arenas, wanting to start her first tour smaller, things like that.

I was looking at some of the numbers.

At Midia, we actually every so often do these brand trackers in our consumer surveys that we ask about a bunch of artists.

We also do this for games and video and all these other things.

And we just see how aware consumers are of them.

And those fans do get upset even when she says critical things about them and they've stuck with her despite numerous controversial incidents that she's had over the years

But I think the reason why it makes sense for Meta to still try it because they... generates so much money it's a company that has been profitable for quite some time when you have that much money you can operate a bit like an internal vc fund where you have your own base to be like hey even if 90 of this stuff doesn't work out we want to be able to do it because the 10 or even the one percent that does could take off because we have more users than anyone

Totally.

I don't necessarily fault them for trying all these things.

And if entertainment is the biggest competitor for these platforms, if the Netflix's of the world are the biggest competitors, why would you not just try to bring those things onto your platform? It's just another example of how you can't really change consumer behavior or try too hard to go against the grain of it.

And that was another thing that I wanted to bring up.

I had sent you this newsletter from Garbage Day.

It was about how tech companies used to succeed by inventing tools to basically enhance the things that consumers were already doing.

It just reaches less people.

I don't think her career could have gone any better the past five years.

Yeah.

And Disney does have brands that I feel like you could as an artist stay in that label and not be part of Disney so heavily.

Hollywood Records is super associated with Disney, but the average consumer doesn't necessarily know that this artist is signed there or whatever.

One thing that I didn't realize is plain white tees were signed to Hollywood Records, Breaking Benjamin, a couple of other artists that I just wouldn't have associated.

But anyway, I say all this because I guess the question is whether these artists can feel that they can grow while still being attached to these Disney companies Or if the mere being under that umbrella interferes either because the artist feels that way or because there's actually pressures being put on them by the executives of the company.

I know they also own S-Curve now.

It's safe to question and wonder, can anything come in the future that can have this same type of pull or influence, especially with regards to music or the development of music talent in this way that Disney really is an incubator for that? Do you think we could see something else at that level? I'm skeptical, but I do have some nuanced thoughts on it.

But do we think a year from now, looking back at things, that YouTube will surpass Spotify as the number one contributor for revenue in the industry?

Juicy.

I love it.

It's really hard, as you mentioned, to predict and to compare because we haven't gotten a number from YouTube in a couple of years now.

But I do feel like it's inevitable for YouTube to surpass Spotify.

It's not just how much they... are paying to the music industry now, but how much room there is to grow, I think that YouTube is in a really good position.

I feel like it sometimes is lost or just forgotten how massive YouTube is as a form of music consumption, because based on our consumer surveys, watching music videos through YouTube is the number one most popular way to consume music globally, like full stop.

content even that is probably a tough benchmark to use if you're really trying to split up who would be subscribed to one of these service than the others but that 25 number is the one that i've always kept in mind when i think about content length and also how much people are watching music versus non-music on youtube