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Bad Spotify Moment
You may have seen some people share this around — The Pudding created a tool to judge, How Bad Is Your Spotify? The AI looks at your listening history and creates a very shareable description of your listening habits. It’s pretty fun…if you don’t mind being ridiculed by a computer.
This is a project put together by The Pudding, they create visual essays covering a wide variety of topics. A few of my favorites: The Office’ Dialogue in Five Charts, Finding the Worst, Highest-Paid NBA Player, Ever, The Historical Cost of Light, Identifying the Generational Gaps in Music, and many more.
Instagram Moment
There were a few interesting write ups this week about the influence of Instagram to create trends in the things we purchase.
Colorful cookware
Vox documents the meteoric rise of colorful cookware in 2020. The author attributes the trend to (1) the pandemic-fueled increase in eating-at-home and (2) marketing the aesthetics of cookware on Instagram. The author mentions of the power of Instagram on shopping and marketing cookware 20 times in this piece!
It’s impossible to talk about the proliferation of new cookware brands without talking about how many of them look like they belong on Instagram. They offer their products in a range of bright colors and pastel shades previously never seen in the cookware category, and as a result, they have become ubiquitous on the platform. They are not just functional — they also look beautiful on the stove or the dinner table.
Design-focused banks
Neobanks are a type of direct bank that operate exclusively online without traditional physical branch networks (think Square, SoFi, Chime, etc). Julian Lehr had an interesting piece, Banking on Status, on the signaling value of the “premium” cards offered by Neobanks.
The premium subscriptions neobanks offer usually don’t win on features but solely on nicer looking cards. The N26 or Revolut Metal plans, for example, don’t offer any additional features that really justify the ~€15 / month price tag. They do include a nice looking metal card though – that’s what people pay for.
You may have noticed that the credit card number has moved from the front to the back of the card. This makes it easier for users to share photos of their cards on social media as an additional signaling distribution channel.
Extra Credit: The Empty Ethics of “Shop Small” (h/t Lorem Ipsum)
Uber Moment
Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped is a fascinating look into the the rise of Uber and the misconduct that led to its CEO, Travis Kalanick, being forced to leave the company in 2017.
On occasion, when a sexual assault victim decided not to pursue litigation or if the evidence in a police report was not conclusive enough to prosecute, a round of cheers would ring out across the fifth floor of Uber HQ.
This book delivers the details on Uber’s long list of malfeasance: spying on drivers, ignoring and / or covering up sexual assault, overlooking harassment in the workplace, corporate espionage, and the list goes on.
It was a recurring theme at Uber: something went wrong, the boss wanted it taken care of, and he didn’t much care how you got it done. Just get it done.
This book is cut from the same cloth as Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup and Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Fall of WeWork. The “Charming Tech CEO Flames Out After Causing a Shit Ton of Damage” book category is getting a bit crowded these days.
Extra Credit: How Venture Capitalists Are Deforming Capitalism
* The links above are Amazon Affiliates. If you intend to purchase the books above and would prefer to support a local book store please click here.
Music Business Moment
You may have read in The New York Times about the consolidation of song publishing rights by companies like Hipgnosis. These organizations have have been throwing around a LOT of money to acquire the publishing catalogs of many of music’s biggest names. The founder of Hipgnosis, Merck Mercuriadis, claims that their aggressive tactics are not just a wise business opportunity, but a chance to put the songwriter and the producer in the spotlight. Only time will tell how this all plays out.
In just two and a half years, Hipgnosis has spent about $1.7 billion scooping up the rights to more than 57,000 songs from an enviable list of writers. Hipgnosis owns, in full or in part, 188 songs by Jack Antonoff, a collaborator of Taylor Swift; 197 by Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie; 814 by RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan; 315 by Mark Ronson; 1,068 by Dave Stewart of Eurythmics; and production royalties for 108 tracks by the hip-hop producer Timbaland.
Speaking of Taylor Swift. Her fans are likely aware of the challenges that face artists who lose control of their rights.
Still, many artists complain that they have no choice but to consider selling their most prized asset because of the loss of touring income during the pandemic and anemic royalty rates from streaming services.
It will be interesting to watch if artists end up regretting these large, lump sum transactions in a few years. I will not be surprised if this trend is accelerated in 2021, as we roll into a second year devoid of high-grossing music tours.
(h/t Music REDEF)
Music Moment
Tom Freeman’s solo, indie-rock project Covey dropped a new single this week. Covey has been #1 in my rotation in the past month.
Bonus content: Five song playlist of my favorites from Covey. If you enjoy Rainbow Kitten Surprise, Lumineers, Hozier, or any generic indie rock I think you will find something in here to enjoy!
Which Moment did you most enjoy?
🎧 Bad Spotify
📷 Instagram
🚕 Uber
📊 Music Business
🎵 Music
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Next Distribution 01/02/2021