The Joe Rogan Experiment
Two weeks ago, Spotify re-signed podcaster Joe Rogan to a new $250 million multiyear deal. Compared to the hoopla that surrounded the company’s initial deal with Rogan, the renewal seemed to fly under the radar of some. The new deal is a significantly different one from the first. Instead of an exclusivity arrangement in which Joe Rogan’s podcast, “The Joe Rogan Experience,” would only be available on Spotify, the new deal will result in the podcast returning to other platforms but this time with an accompanying ad revenue share arrangement between Spotify and Rogan. The change in deals offers insights into how the Joe Rogan experiment didn’t turn out as Spotify hoped and reflects where the podcasting industry is today.
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Disney’s Problem
These past two weeks have been a whirlwind for Disney. Last week’s Apple Vision Pro launch saw Disney as one of the largest third-party video streamers to embrace Apple’s new computing platform. On Tuesday, news broke of Disney forming a surprising partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery and FOX for an all-new sports app. On Wednesday, Disney announced it would buy a stake in Epic Games as part of a larger agreement that will see the gaming company leverage Disney IP into a new Fortnite-like Disney universe. Despite these moves, some of which are likely being done to quiet down activist shareholders, it’s hard to shake the feeling that Disney’s actual problem is being minimized, or worse, ignored, by management.
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Meta’s VR Predicament
With Apple Vision Pro now officially on sale, Meta finds itself in quite the predicament. After initially pooh-poohing Apple’s headset, there are signs of Mark Zuckerberg and company already pivoting to reinvigorate their own headset strategy. Such a change in mindset suggests Meta will be a different kind of competitor than Apple has seen in the past, and yet I don’t have confidence that Meta can compete against what Apple is selling.
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Why the Media Is in So Much Trouble
Earlier this week, the LA Times announced plans to cut 20% of staff. The cuts go deep with the DC bureau being hit hard along with sports and the video division. Simply put, the news has led to yet another round of journalist freak-out. Mass layoffs are only part of the problem for the sixth-largest paper in the U.S. in term of circulation (fifth when counting subscribers). The LA Times’ executive editor left a few weeks ago, and two of the four people tapped to replace him just quit. It’s tempting to call the LA Times implosion a canary in the coalmine for the broader media space. However, that wouldn’t be true. The LA Times is just the latest development in what has been a decades-long trend that the media still does not want to admit is occurring.
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It’s Time for Google to Make the Hardware Call
Last week, news broke that Google was reorganizing its devices division. Along with laying off hundreds of employees, Google appears to have admitted defeat with Fitbit as its co-founders are leaving the company after three years. The remaining team is being combined with other HW assets. While the preceding items may surprise some, they all are predictable. In late 2022, we talked about how Google’s HW bet was struggling. We are now at the point when Google should make the call and end its hardware involvement.
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The Rabbit r1 Unveiling
Rabbit has the appearance of being the hardware startup that AI-centric folks have been waiting for. Unlike Humane’s $200 million multi-year tease that culminated in one of the oddest consumer gadget unveilings in recent memory for its Ai Pin, Rabbit unveiled its $199 r1 to little fanfare with a taped keynote posted to X. With its $30 million of funding, Rabbit won’t be able to escape the same fundamental AI hardware issues facing Humane in its attempt to get around Big Tech.
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Tech Questions for 2024
Predictions don’t excite me. They are often lackluster attempts at providing answers to the unknown. To then get the timing behind such predictions correct makes the whole thing a charade with little to no added value. Instead, for the first Inside Orchard essay of 2024, we will embrace the unknown and look at tech questions that are on my mind for 2024.
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2023 Was a Year of Characters
As we wrap up another year, we look back at what comes across as an eventful 2023. Macro issues and lingering COVID talk led to a shaky start. We then saw a fair share of winners (“Barbie” / NVIDIA / OpenAI) and losers (Disney / consumer gadget sales / EVs). While most people would position “AI” as the tech story of the year, there’s something about that decision that doesn’t sit right with me. While AI buzz was certainly alive and well, the actual impact on consumers was less clear. Instead, 2023 came across as the year headlined by characters – Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bob Iger, Jensen Huang, Satya Nadella, and Sam Altman. With each, a narrative took hold that came together to give the year a fast-paced news flow.
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The Good and Bad of X
More than a year into Elon Musk’s Twitter ownership, it’s safe to say it’s been an eventful journey. Last month, Musk generated another wave of controversy at an NYT conference by publicly going after former Twitter / X advertisers for pulling away from the platform. The saga brought a renewed look at what X is becoming. Enough time has passed with Musk at the helm that we are able to point out genuine improvements and problems found with X.
We will begin with the genuinely positive developments. We will then follow that with the bad and the mixed bag.
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Spotify’s Ongoing Search for Profitability
Every few months, Spotify seems to go through a PR fiasco that leads to people saying the company has a toxic culture. The Joe Rogan saga created a wave of pushback that Spotify was incorrectly putting its thumb on the moderation scale. Due to periodic battles over payments to artists, Spotify has a reputation of being hostile to artists. Earlier this week, Spotify took on heat for announcing a substantial round of layoffs right before the holidays. These developments share something in common – each is rooted in Spotify’s desperate search for profit.
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Sam Altman Mania
Earlier this month, the tech news cycle was overtaken by the attempted board coup at OpenAI. The drama played out on X seemingly minute by minute. After a few days, it became clear the board’s effort ultimately would fall short. At a certain level, many people loved the twists and turns, as if we have been starved of such drama in tech. I guess the Elon Musk drama became a bit tired. Other people thought the OpenAI saga was a riveting inflection point in the AI movement. The company must have achieved such a breakthrough that members of the board were downright frightened by the ramifications. I think all of that will end up being wrong. Instead, we were witness to the Sam Altman show – days of unnecessary drama ultimately initiated by Altman’s behavior and amplified by his masterful command over the startup tech press.
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The Next TikTokification Phase Is Here
One of the defining post-pandemic shifts in tech has been unfolding in the social media space. Seemingly overnight, tech giants including Meta and Google found themselves on the ropes, fighting a new kind of competitor: TikTok and algorithm-fueled video timelines. From my vantage point of analyzing quarterly earnings, we are already seeing the next phase of TikTok’s influence seeping through the industry, and the observations make me increasingly worried about where things are headed.
Beginning in late 2021 and coming to a head in early 2022, Big Tech’s layoffs caught many people off guard. Various theories were floating around as to what was going on. Some of the theories came across as being a bit out there – such as Apple ATT being blamed for single-handily bringing down the entire advertising complex and all of the businesses that depend on it to drive revenue. The subsequent rebound (and we are talking in some cases strong rebound) in the advertising giants’ performance puts a fork in that questionable theory.
Instead, macro unknowns and TikTok hit Big Tech’s digital advertising revenue so quickly that management teams had no choice but to cut payroll ASAP.
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Humane’s Unimaginative Pin
After what seemed like a never-ending stream of teases and leaks, Humane finally revealed its hyped product: Ai Pin. It’s a wearable camera worn on clothing that is meant to move people beyond smartphones. While the company has received some accolades for simply getting to the point of announcing a new product – something that strikes me as being an awfully low bar to get over – there has been no shortage of skepticism and doubt. The actual 10-minute reveal video was one of the worst I’ve seen in consumer tech. I can only imagine the video and delivery, which is completely void of excitement or joy, is exactly what Humane’s co-founders envisioned. Dissenting opinions, if there were even any, must have been shunned. For me, the bigger issue at play with Humane is the company’s overall lack of imagination.
Humane was able to do something that up to now seemed very difficult: make the iPhone unveiling in 2007 look like something from the future.
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Airbnb’s Promise
Airbnb started out as a relatively simple premise: make some extra money by offering travelers a bed, a place to work, and breakfast. Instead of going through the complicated process of opening and running an actual bed and breakfast, a homeowner could “share” their space with others. Jump ahead 15 years and Airbnb is a platform with more than $60 billion of booking volume per year.
The idea behind Airbnb isn’t revolutionary or even new for that matter. Instead, the timing has worked to the company’s advantage. Similar “sharing” concepts like Uber have helped to lower the mental and comfort barriers found with leveraging an asset (car / home) to generate additional revenue.
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Autonomy Is the Missing EV Piece
News of GM dialing back its EV sales targets wasn’t met with much surprise. Elon Musk’s downbeat Tesla earnings call a week prior had already lowered EV demand expectations. However, the question remains: Is EV demand declining simply because of higher interest rates resulting in higher financing costs? It’s prudent not to box ourselves into such a narrow explanation. Instead, there is a bigger problem at play. EVs are waiting for, and needing, autonomy, but the technology has proven far more difficult to achieve than consensus thought.
With EVs in mind, the role that would be given to autonomy is straightforward.
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Why Tech Feels Tired
We still have two months to go in 2023. A lot can and will likely happen. However, we are already able to point to a few broad tech themes that have come to define the year.
Imagination has escaped the paid video space as companies shift their efforts to improve user monetization. Password sharing crackdowns, ad tiers, and price increases have been leading the industry’s new cycle. Consumers have become somewhat downbeat of what seems like retrogression to traditional cable bundle dynamics on a few fronts in paid streaming.
Generative AI certainly captured this year’s tech hype cycle but most of the consumer-oriented early examples involving the technology fall short on the excitement and intrigue fronts.
EVs remain a very complicated industry with plenty of questions regarding just how much progress is being made.
The consumer gadget recession rages on and has contributed to a wave of HW executive turnover and changing hardware strategies.
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Big Tech’s Hardware Paralysis
It’s been a very busy two months for consumer gadget enthusiasts. With Samsung kicking off the fall product cycle earlier than usual in July to Google’s product event in NYC last week, we now have a good view of how tech companies are positioned heading into the holiday season. As the gadget recession rages on while AI mania remains palpable, the way companies are thinking about hardware is splintering, leading to more questions and unknown.
In terms of the underlying themes found with product events (six to be exact – Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Samsung, Apple, and Meta), there is a growing recognition / acceptance that ecosystems will dictate long-term success. Wearables are finally getting the attention they deserve. At the same time, years of Apple ecosystem momentum is front-and-center with most companies. There is no more denying that Apple’s billion-user installed base is a force to be reckoned with. Thoughts of competing with Apple on price are firmly in the rear-view mirror.
Here were more granular takeaways from this year’s fall product event cycle:
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Google Pixel’s Photo Editing Features Point to a Scary Future
Earlier this week, Google held its annual fall event for new products. Along with new hardware, Google unveiled various AI-powered editing features for photos taken on Pixel 8 smartphones. The features make me nervous about where we are headed from the perspective of AI.
Among the announcements, the following three new features stood out to me:
Best Take relies on “an on-device algorithm [that] creates a blended image from a series of photos to get everyone’s best look.” This is another way of saying a fake scene is created by swapping out one’s facial expression for a different (fake) one.
Magic Editor relies on “generative AI to help you bring your photos in line with the essence of the moment you were trying to capture.” This is another way of saying that a new scene is created by moving the subjects around.
Audio Magic Eraser “lets you easily reduce distracting sounds in your video, like howling winds or noisy crowds…[by using] advanced machine learning models to sort sounds into distinct layers so you can control their levels.”
The stated mission behind these features is a big one – redefining memories using generative AI in photography.
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The FTC’s Uphill Battle Against Amazon
For the better part of the past decade, there has been talk of the U.S. government coming down hard on Big Tech. Upset and frightened by how a handful of companies have grabbed so much power, lawmakers and regulators have tried to sound tough about doing the hard work to protect the public. At least based on the early battles to date, the bark has been worse than the bite. Earlier this week, the FTC announced its long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. The online retailer is said to be a monopoly via its digital storefront and seller marketplace. The FTC is going to need as much luck as possible to win this one.
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Detroit’s Conundrum
Last week, we looked at how U.S. states proposing bans on gas-powered cars is not a development that EV proponents should be applauding or supporting. Instead, EVs need to stand on their own in terms of appealing to consumers and winning over switchers (from gas). Staying in the auto space for one more week, we turn to the developing UAW (United Auto Workers) strike. The UAW is a union covering 400,000 workers from a variety of companies and entities. If gas-powered car bans didn’t represent a headache for Detroit, an embodied UAW operating by a different playbook will do the trick. Detroit finds itself in quite the conundrum.
On one hand, Detroit, which I use to describe U.S. legacy auto, has reason to be optimistic about going up against Silicon Valley.
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