Join Dmitri and Tristra as they explore what’s happening right now in the wide world of music and tech. Using Rock Paper Scissors’ weekly newsletter, Rock Paper Scanner, as a jumping off point, Dmitri and Tristra discuss the TikTok/Universal game of chicken, Spotify’s payouts to the indies, and the current state of live music according to Live Nations earnings call. It’s a lot.
Show Notes From the Episode:
Links to articles discussed
The TikTok Showdown (for now)
Spotify
Indie Payouts
Live Nation
Vision Pro is not Google Glass (?) and some Roblox news
Listen wherever you pod your casts:
Episode Transcript
Machine transcribed
0:00:10 - Dmitri
It's the Rock Paper Scanner. Pew, Pew, Pew, Pew Be sure to come back. Welcome back to Music Tech Tonics, where we go beneath the surface of music tech. I'm your host, Dimitri Vietze. I'm also the founder and CEO of Rock Paper Scissors, the PR firm that specializes in music tech, music innovation and also some marketing stuff too. And I've got our other host with us it's Tristra.
0:00:34 - Tristra
Yay, hi Dmitri, how are you doing?
0:00:37 - Dmitri
Tristra, Newyear. Yeager, the chief strategy officer at Rock Paper Scissors.
0:00:40 - Tristra
You were trying to get me to introduce myself. I don't know.
0:00:43 - Dmitri
I refused.
It's always trouble when you get Tristra and Dmitri crazy pants on the same podcast, but sometimes we just got to do it and we are both kind of fanatics about just seeing what's going on in the music industry in music tech, but also the wider industry, the recording industry, the musical instrument and production side of things and all the parallel universes. And we've launched a Rock Paper Scanner newsletter. It's a newsletter where you can see the 20 to 30 to 40 articles that we're coming across and helping you kind of see what's happening right now in the industry and what's coming in the future. And so this Rock Paper Scanner edition I mean this Rock Paper Scanner edition Shinchin, shinchin, shinchin Of Music Tech Tonics it's an opportunity for us to go through some of the stuff we've been scanning in last week's newsletter and you can sign up for it.
Just check out the podcast notes. If you go to musictechtonics.com you can sign up. It's the first link you'll see in the notes and you can sign up and every week have the same information that we're looking at. So we thought we'd go through I don't know 3, 4, 5 of the big topics that are hitting right now and of course we're recording this A little bit earlier than you're going to hear it, so who knows, everything could change by the time we say it, but hopefully there's still some relevance here.
Tristra, the thing that keeps popping up in the scanner every week for a while now is universal music and TikTok playing a game of chicken. Yes, and there's, I think this week we've had I think we usually don't try to have too many of the same topic, but there's little nuances in each of the articles that we found this week. One of them is specifically about the UMPG, the publishing side starting to get removed, because originally it was the record label side. But what's interesting about the publishing side is that it's impacting more than just universal music label artists as well.
0:02:44 - Tristra
Yeah, and I've seen some interesting figures. The more conservative estimate was something like 50% of the tracks on TikTok to as high as 80%. I'm not exactly sure how these calculations are being made, but I think Tim Ingham in music business worldwide had a rundown of exactly how big the scope of UMPG was and it was pretty astonishing, even if it's on the low end.
0:03:12 - Dmitri
I mean, that's the article that I pulled for this week is actually a music ally article, stuart Dredge. Tiktok is removing tracks using UMPG controlled compositions as the title, but he actually sites that Tim Ingham thing and then it's basically a battle between well, how much impact is this having, stu says? An MBW report earlier this month suggested that it could be as much as 80% of quote. Relevant repertoire, end quote on TikTok. However, the company is now pushing back on that stat. According to TikTok, umg and UPMG's catalogs combined represent between 20% and 30% of quote popular songs, depending on territory. And he says the phrases relevant repertoire and popular songs are doing a lot of the work there, which is very Stuart Dredge in my opinion, Got a love Stu.
But yeah. So it's interesting Both you're seeing this game of chicken widen out to these publishing composition component of the TikTok catalog and then the and. So then there's this continued battle, basically about who needs who more. Does UMG need TikTok more, does TikTok need UMG more? And then we pulled a couple of articles that are both talking about the power of TikTok or the opposite of that, or the waning power of TikTok, and then also about what the impact is beyond the industry. So Billboard did an article about Beyonce's TikTok takeover, proving the platform power persists.
0:04:38 - Tristra
Lots of a lot of alliteration there. Billboard that was. That's excellent. I love it.
0:04:42 - Dmitri
That wasn't their title. Yeah, it was.
0:04:44 - Tristra
Persistent platform power.
0:04:47 - Dmitri
Yeah, persists, proven, like Beyonce. And then you pointed out there's also this Pew research study. That kind of is saying a slightly different narrative. What was that one saying?
0:04:58 - Tristra
Yeah, I thought that was really interesting. I wasn't talked about a ton in the music industry, but a lot of the sort of internet culture commentary at was diving into it and noticing that TikTok is not. Tiktok does not equal Gen Z, the way a lot of advertisers and other folks assume, and that in fact, TikTok is mostly millennials right now. And another really interesting thing and this isn't completely relevant to the conversation, but most people who have a TikTok account don't actually ever post anything. They just look at stuff, and that's really really interesting too. So there's some questions right now in the internet, sort of I don't know, it used to be called criminology, right Like sort of trying to guess what's going on behind the curtain. But I think a lot of people are very curious about what is TikTok maturing? Is it going to become less of a hot commodity? Is it going to become less useful for people and therefore less attractive? Or are there certain niches that are going to be really, really important, but that in general it's not going to be this sort of be all and end all that a lot of people have assumed. You know.
I think it's a really interesting moment for TikTok too.
They're rolling out things like a lot of social commerce, live streaming, commerce, all of these things that have been really effective in China, for example, where there's like a whole, you know, whole talent agency constellation of like 25,000 agencies that run live streamers and do online commerce in this really specific way, and I don't, you know, and that hasn't quite caught on here yet, and it seems like TikTok's really trying to figure out how to crack the US market, in particular, when it comes to social commerce. So it's a really, really interesting time for TikTok and the fact that there's this dispute around music and music rights is also really interesting. Like, will you know, will this fight with UMG, you know, have TikTok pivot to something that's much more like a Duoyin kind of app, or will it just completely go back to being music-based and everything will get resolved and the music industry will be even more in love with TikTok, more excited about this? I don't know, it's like a really interesting question and maybe by the time this podcast comes out, it'll all be it'll.
0:07:15 - Dmitri
It could be resolved, but I think it's a longer term question. Yeah, I mean, the longer term question is really about the value of music and the way that technology and social platforms use music. People want to engage in music in this very interactive way where it's part of this. You know this digital community interaction, you know this, this building. You know building memes and videos and trends and things where music's a critical part of it.
And you know there's these other pressures, like you know, ai and and will there, will there be a different type of rights holder as a result, or no rights holders as a result of the flooding of additional types of music and so forth. But it's really, you know this isn't the first time that a large tech and social platform has had to kind of go head to head with a label or labels and music rights holders. I mean, it took a while for, I think, the labels to get I don't know if comfortable is the right word, but to accept what's going on on Facebook and Instagram and YouTube and and and Twitter and well, twitter, I'm still not sure that anyone's happy, but no one knows what's going on there.
Right, but but you know it's it's. This continued, like you know, free market tension, slash conversation, slash negotiation. That happens and it'll be interesting. I think what's interesting to me about the UMG TikTok one is this is the first time we have, you know, a Chinese company that's negotiating with the major labels, and there may be some cultural differences in terms of the interpretation of how business negotiations happen that make this a longer tie, basically like a standstill of this. It might take longer as a result. I mean a couple of the articles we pulled that are relevant.
Here was another music ally piece Kim Petrus defends UMG over TikTok. The intentions are noble and that's I think that's interesting to. There's.
There's a lot of artists who are unhappy that their, their release plans and their promotion plans and their community building and their own influence has been put on hold because of weaker links to universal.
You know, they might not be a universal music group label artists but they might be distributed by a company or they might have now a co-writer who's a UMPG or something like that, but you and yet you also have artists who who are saying, well, I know, actually I do kind of want somebody. You know, I want somebody with some strength in the market, kind of protecting the idea that music needs to be paid for when it gets used. And then you have this billboard piece that Elias Light wrote universal music isn't on TikTok, but artists keep using it anyway. So on the one hand, you have some artists who are like, oh, thank goodness, somebody's fighting for us. And then you have others artists, some of whom are universal artists, who who are working around the the, the kind of the standstill here, doing things like releasing things on TikTok before the actual releases out to build up audience and interest even before.
0:10:13 - Tristra
But there was some great phone calls after that one.
0:10:18 - Dmitri
Or releasing acoustic versions or sped up versions, which you know those things are trendy to do anyway. That's that's. That's been kind of a growth area anyway, but it's super interesting to see that that's a workaround for the impasse between UMG and TikTok as well.
0:10:34 - Tristra
Well, it's also speaking both of those examples you just gave of Kim Petrus and these and often much more emerging or newer artists using TikTok, regardless of what the label says, like both of those sort of speak to the artist label relationship shifts that we're seeing right.
So everyone's asking, like, what is the label going to do for me? And the label says I'm going to go to bat and, you know, negotiate on your behalf with a big old other corporation, which is, you know, exciting, because as a single artist you really can't get TikTok to do anything. But so it's almost like, you know, you've got an industry group that's representing your business. And then there's these other artists who are like, I have to steer my own ship, I have to keep my own audience, I have to take responsibility for my career, no matter what my label does. So I'm going to go a little bit rogue here on, or I'm going to, you know, toe the line and get right up to the edge of what's acceptable and just keep engaging my audience because, you know, ultimately that is all I got. It kind of points out the lines that delineate the artist label relationship and how they're getting gray and a little confusing.
0:11:43 - Dmitri
Well, but even some of the label artists are also still doing this stuff as well which is yeah interesting.
But it's that tension of sort of like who's adding more value? The label and the artist or the streaming? You know, the video streaming service, you know, and there's just this back and forth. That's super. I don't know, maybe it's inside baseball for anyone who's not in the music industry, but it's super interesting to see it play out. We've seen it play out and have different results.
But, you know, youtube created their content ID system under a similar kind of circumstance, which was saying, oh well, we're going to open up enough of a door that you can generate revenue from your music being used on user generated videos and not as much as on audio streaming services not getting paid as much. But then there's that kind of promotion aspect and that viral aspect that can take place on on YouTube. So but, but I have a bunch of tick tocks gonna end differently and I'm not sure what it is, but I just feel like it feels a little. It feels a little different because there's already enough other Instagram reels and YouTube's out there that Universal can say well, you know what, if you don't want to use our content, there's some other places for us to go. And with the conversation about, is tech talk strength waning a little bit and YouTube and Instagram has some maturity that maybe their audiences are going to stick around already for a bit.
0:13:03 - Tristra
Yeah, instagram, too, has been really pushing music inclusion on reels. So they're like don't you want to add music? You really do want to add music, don't you? Come on, give us some music, maybe some music here? At least, that's how it feels for me personally as a user. I don't know what everyone else has felt, but it seems like they're really, really wanting you to add music, which is kind of interesting, instead of using the original sound.
0:13:24 - Dmitri
Let's take a quick break and when we come back, let's talk about this news that Spotify has generated a lot more money for independent music artists. We'll be right back.
0:13:35 - Shayli
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0:14:16 - Dmitri
Okay, we are back and this is a blast. We were talking all through the UMG TikTok tensions and that conversation how that's unfolding. Another interesting thing came out this week, tristor, that I'd love to get your take on. A Music Allies article was Spotify says independent music generated half of its 2023 payouts. And then, specifically, the Billboard piece headline was Spotify paid out a record $4.5 billion to independent labels and publishers in 2023. And there's this ongoing conversation about the power of the independence and also the growth of the market share. And the flip side is people saying, oh, the market share of the majors is going down over time and so forth. But what was your takeaway on the news about the independent strength in the 2023 numbers?
0:15:06 - Tristra
I mean this fits in with the trends that people like Mark Mulligan have been pointing to for five years, ten years, a gazillion years. So it's interesting that we're at this moment where it's like 50-50, and where will it go from here? The other thing, though, that I've seen is that, while this looks really impressive, it's like oh wow, half the music is going to Indie artists and publishers. The overall consensus that I've seen from Indie publishers and labels is that the average per stream rate has gone down slightly, so it's like 8% less. It's not a huge dip, but it still kind of signals that maybe this isn't completely as rosy a picture as people want to paint.
The other thing that's interesting is I've seen some calculations that re so it's $9 billion total, the idea that majors got half and the Indie sector got half. But what about the fraud sector? And that's been a big topic of conversation lately and that if that's 10% as beat-dap estimates, we got to take out a whole big chunk there of $900 million, and so it's actually $4.05 or whatever $1 billion that went to Indies. So whenever these figures come out again, a lot of interesting conversations spring up from people who are stakeholders or have a different perspective on all of this. But in general, because there are more and more artists out there who are independent, the overall slice of the pie is getting more and more slender.
But I also saw some really enthusiastic reactions from some larger label, either label groups or independent labels that were really psyched about this and really felt like really validated by these numbers that their mission of kind of pursuing this independent vision of supporting artists who have either really specific kind of creative output or that fall outside of what the majors are interested in this is really. They feel really justified in their position and I think that's cool too. It's great to hear somebody enthusiastic about the state of music and hopeful for the future that they'll be able to put some good stuff out there. So yeah, it's an interesting. Those statistics always bring out a whole chorus of voices and it's always very interesting to listen into the different sides.
0:17:36 - Dmitri
I'm interested in.
Also, it feels like there's more of a diversification of genre.
That's happening overall and that this I would assume that having more diverse players in terms of record labels and all the teams around artists would lead to the opportunity for different niches, different genres, to kind of rise in terms of their following and as well as their payouts and so forth.
So I think I'm assuming this is a sign that a growth in the independent sector is also meaning that there's less of a top-down approach to what kind of music people are hearing. If you think about the traditional model of commercial radio for a long time was what broke music, and then MTV for a while and then all these other things. But even with what we were talking about, with TikTok and Instagram and YouTube, you have a more diverse set of creators and producers who are bringing music to light, to audiences, and so I don't know, I don't have the science to back that, but I would assume that, as we see a growth in the independent sector by using data, using the numbers of payouts and streams and so forth, that that's a sign that there's more diverse types of music getting listened to and getting out there as well.
0:18:48 - Tristra
Yeah, it is hopeful. It's hopeful for all my poo-pooing about where's the fraud and where's the calculation, and the per stream rate is going down. There's still a lot of really exciting stuff happening.
0:19:03 - Dmitri
I wondered if the 8% decrease in payout was that across the independent sector. That was like per stream, because it was across the independent sector. It makes me wonder about whether Spotify's news at the end of the year, in November where they were, I don't know when this kicked in when they were saying they're not going to pay for any streams, any royalties for songs that stream under a thousand streams per year, or something like that.
0:19:27 - Tristra
Yeah, I don't know if that's a really great question and I don't know if that 8% decrease. I think it was an average per stream rate because the per stream rate is never the same. The per stream rate is calculated in a variety of different ways, based on the user and the market and all sorts of other things, so it's difficult to say there is no one per stream rate, but there tends to be a little tick downwards is what some creators have noticed.
0:19:56 - Dmitri
Kind of a related story, since we're talking about the payouts. Chris Egerton at Billboard broke the story that songwriters and publishers are due nearly $400 million after final streaming royalty rate determination. It just goes into a little bit more detail about that, but it's interesting to see that more revenue is getting unlocked through this process, partially through just the establishment of the mechanical licensing collective, but also the switch of the Fono 3 blanket license period of 21 to 22 finally getting released of what those are going to be saying. The MLC reports that digital service providers like Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube and Pandora underpaid rights holders by $419.2 million $281 million for mechanical royalties and $137.8 million from performance royalties. Those underpayments were due to the fact that final rates were higher than the interim rates during the more than four year royalty dispute between publishers and streamers. So it's not like they were wrong to not pay it, but it does mean it's a bit of a windfall now that the payment rates have been settled for a previous period.
0:21:04 - Tristra
Yeah, and it's also really amazing how we're finally. I think in some ways there was all the stuff put into place by the MMA and we're finally getting to a point where we're starting to reap the benefits of it, where there's a structure in place that's pretty transparent, where payouts are flowing because rates have been determined and there's been so many little pauses and holdups and wait a second here and now, at last, things are kind of moving along. So we'll see in a year or two how people are feeling and thinking about this system, but it seems like the problem of digital mechanicals is getting to be less of a problem, which is good.
0:21:47 - Dmitri
And a lot of the problem is really that people are releasing stuff before they know what the splits are and who owns what, and that just makes it really. It made it really hard for the streaming services to figure out who to pay and when and as ownership changes and all that kind of stuff as well. And that's the big knot that the MLC is trying to constantly untangle to match the rights so that the right people are getting paid or so that we even know who's supposed to get paid, because if you haven't registered your works, there's probably money sitting there waiting for you. It's the same thing on the sound exchange side of the business, where people had to make no-transcript. Sound exchange knew who they were and what their songs were so they could get paid.
And now that's happening on the mechanical side too. So if anyone's involved with artists out there songwriters particularly, or publishers or publishing admin and you haven't registered for the mechanical licensing collective, the one thing you can battle, due to battle the black box, is to make sure you register and make sure it's clear what the splits are and who owns the rights to the songs. So go and do that too. All right, another quick break. We have one more announcement and let's talk about the live side of the business. There's some interesting news there. We'll be right back.
0:22:58 - Tristra
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0:23:37 - Dmitri
Okay, we're back Tristra. I know we've been kind of jumping a lot between Billboard and Music Business Worldwide and Music, ally, music, ally.
0:23:45 - Tristra
You just love them so much.
0:23:47 - Dmitri
We do love them, a lot of them. I mean we have some left of field stuff we publish as well in the scanner, the rock paper scanner but they're definitely regulars. Live Nation reveals 20% growth for concert attendance in 2023. That's from again Stuart Dredge at Music Ally. Its concert attendance was up 20% year on year, as more than 145 million fans attended over 50,000 events. That pushed the company's annual revenues up 36% to $22.7 billion and an operating profit of $1.07 billion. Whether you're a fan of Live Nation or not, it's a great sign to see live music is still very strong.
0:24:25 - Tristra
Yeah, it was. 2023 was a boom year. I mean, the folks we talked to in on sort of in the back end of live events, the folks who listened to the tour managers and the bus rental companies, et cetera. You know, already back in 2022, we're just we're predicting an avalanche of a year, and it looks like, according to Live Nation's earnings, we've seen it.
We're in a really interesting moment, though, where you know, a lot of the smaller venues independent venues, smaller theaters are still struggling post pandemic.
You know, in some countries there's been more support than others.
I mean, the US is a kind of a mixed bag, and I think Niva has still got a lot of work that they want to accomplish and in order to support this sort of very beginning, which is often the starting block for a lot of artists and or what's often a cornerstone of a scene, or the musical identity or cultural identity of a community, and a lot of these places, at least in the UK and the US, are still facing pretty strong headwinds, and so we're seeing a lot of festival cancellations, of independent festivals, a lot of venues really struggling or going under, and I think that should be of concern to everyone in the music business, because that is where artists, who's even artists who are, you know, deeply electronic, have to forge their, their artistry.
You know you can't really get great feedback from the internet. Consistently Performing Live is probably one of the best ways to hone your craft and to find your artistic vision. So I really hope we can maybe, as an industry, come together and figure out how to how to support these places that are so essential for folks who are developing, just starting out and trying to find their way as creatives.
0:26:13 - Dmitri
So I don't know if it's. I don't know if it points to the same you know this, the same market you're talking about, but in in music business, worldwide's coverage of the latest earnings call from Live Nation and not not to focus too much there, but it is kind of an indication of, since it's such a large entity in the live side. It is an indication of sort of trends and how things are going in live. But but Daniel Tenser at MBW said Live Nation is surprised and thrilled. It's all in. Ticket pricing is a success. And three other things we learned on the call and those other things that they learned. One of them was about dynamic pricing that they really see a lot of growth opportunity internationally as as they they play with dynamic pricing, which I don't know what to think of as a as a concert goer.
0:26:59 - Speaker 1
So you know, it feels like.
0:27:00 - Dmitri
Uber, uber surge pricing or something like that. But but it could, you know it could reduce the amount of second secondary market prices as well. But the second one, live Nation, sees demand shifting from stadiums to amphitheaters this year, so that's kind of interesting. You know, amphitheaters are still not small independent venues typically but but it's still interesting to see that there's kind of an interest in people getting a slightly more intimate.
Stadiums are just so hard to even see what you're seeing see what you're hearing, I guess, and they are also talking about spending another $300 million on new venues and renovations this year too. So, clearly, investing more in where live music's going and you know, I don't know, I expect is, I think people want experiences, right.
They want to. That's the, that's kind of the human reaction to this sort of scrim that now exists in the digital experience of music between listeners and artists. And even if you're in a large venue, you're having experience, that I mean you're connecting with the people around you, you know, getting a sense of sort of what the energy is of your fandom and that sort of thing. I personally like to go to very small venues and feel like I can see, really see the sweat beating on an artist's forehead or hear them whispering, you know, or see the interactions of the band members and things like that. But but I don't know, just interesting stuff, that just that there's some vibrancy in the live side. But, as you said, whether that's spread evenly across, that's another story.
0:28:32 - Tristra
Yeah, and I think it doesn't necessarily have to be you know an either, or I mean it's some. In some regards, yeah, it is a zero-sum game, but I think, if I think, there's got to be a way to support these initiatives to you know, or these, these, these storied venues that have that have been like the linchpin of Musical creativity in there, in their town or in their city. So, yeah, looking forward, looking forward to some more more creative thinking in that area in a year to come.
0:29:02 - Dmitri
All right, I've got a couple more articles we pulled from Rock Paper Scanner this week that are totally different. We kind of went very traditional with that for several things.
0:29:10 - Tristra
Yeah, exactly, we're keeping bread and just a nice little meat and potatoes, you know, or tofu and potatoes bring in a little further.
0:29:18 - Dmitri
The music ally reported. The latest Roblox music experience comes from audio firm JBL, so super interesting to see music creation opportunities within Roblox.
0:29:30 - Tristra
Yeah, and I don't know if you saw that they have a little demo video. It's very fun to once you get to the, you know the rest of it's just like oh, it's a Roblox thing, whatever. Like weird little games and we both, we both wobbles, kind of blop it around and then you see these like but then when you get To the top art it's really cool because it has these kind of like little blocks that folks can move around.
They collect this, these sound blocks and then they can do really neat stuff with it and that, to me, was super exciting and Was probably the most compelling part of that. Just from you know someone who's observed people playing Roblox more than I should ever have, but it is. It is Really neat to see that kind of and it just seems like those little they were seeing, these little bits and pieces that are gonna come together to To really encourage people to make music themselves even if it's assembling it more. Collage, like from other parts.
0:30:23 - Dmitri
Starting at a young age. I mean, you know, you know, you know at age eight or ten you might not get your Parents to buy you a teenage engineering synth or a drum machine or anything like that, but you're just wandering around Roblox picking up these little audio snippets and mixing them with other people in these in-world jukeboxes. And of course it's great for JBL, because then you can buy some JBL headphones and portable speakers as virtual items, according to Music Ally. So it's kind of fun for them to Be able to mark that while they encouraging that kind of musical creativity that you know nobody had to give these kids lessons to start dabbling with sound and playing with. That's pretty cool.
The other one, this is this is not like groundbreaking information, but we pulled a business insider article. There was a vision pro party in San Francisco, complete with people dancing and pinching in the air, and it's interesting to me to see as the Apple vision pro has been released, you start to see people Reporting on people kind of out and about wearing them and in the warnings of no, don't wear them out and about your don't wear them in your Tesla like.
0:31:27 - Tristra
I think that was a big story right after Elise. So some Tesla dude was driving around with a vision pro strapped to his face.
0:31:33 - Dmitri
Yeah, don't wear them crossing the street, etc. But I'm trying to see like, is this gonna be a Google Glass moment? It? It seems like it's got a tiny bit of that flavor like your Tesla story, but but it seems like people are. I think Google Glass broke the ice on People kind of wearing something out in public. This one is way more Visible than Google Glass in terms of what it looks like on your face. You look like a little Android. I'm wearing.
0:32:03 - Tristra
Wearing them with electro eyes.
0:32:06 - Dmitri
But I do. I do still believe the vision pro is an early you know, it's a very early stage. They were not. Apple was not expecting this to be like a mass consumer hit where they're gonna overtake Oculus on day one and then overtake iPhones on, you know, day 100. But I do think that's the direction they're heading is to try, you know, to have a whole new device that has a whole new set of interactions and experiences and once again, use a very high-end Hardware play to create a whole new market.
0:32:36 - Tristra
And it's and it's happening at the same time as meta just put out some of these the, a new version of I think they've messed around with Ray Bands before, that's like nothing new. But the this new version, has a bunch of multimodal AI in it so it can theoretically identify your dog, though it make it confused with, like a blueberry muffin or something like that. Um, but and there's been some like mixed, mixed reviews about how it, how it's um, it's more you know multimodal capabilities actually work in real life. But I think that's another really interesting interesting thing is Not this you know, I think VR tended to think very immersively, and what Apple is suggesting with its spatial computing, this kind of like pass-through Approach, and what some of these glasses suggest are that will have layers that are not.
You know, we're not completely shutting ours or maybe we'll have like a variety of different you know contacts, like we shut ourselves down for some and we just go completely immersive. And then there's Other times, when we walk around with the you know glasses on our face that tell us things like that's a dog or you know. You know that, look, it's third street. Yeah, like thanks, you know, I didn't need to know that, but then, and then you'll have like something where you know you have a phone or a device that has other, like extra compute or does other other stuff. So In some ways I'm not seeing, you know, everyone talks about replacement and I think it might just be proliferation, like we're going to start seeing, you know, this explosion of different device formats for very different purposes and People expecting different things out of them.
0:34:10 - Dmitri
You yeah, totally so. Those are some of the articles in this week's Rock Paper Scanner. Find the link in our show notes so that you can get the latest one. You would have also heard about a DAW that's in Apple Vision Pro. That was also in the scanner. You would have heard about not only we have an article about cassettes making a comeback specifically in Japan and elsewhere, but also floppy disks. There's a floppy disk music scene. Did you know there's still a floppy disk music scene?
0:34:39 - Tristra
I'm not surprised. I know people make cool stuff with Amiga still. So, come on, there's got to be the floppy disks.
0:34:45 - Dmitri
And lots of other articles, including we talk a lot about different industry revenue streams. Ascap reported out on paying out a record amount, hybe also had great numbers this year and several other places too. So check out Rock Paper Scanner newsletter Tristro. This is fun. I don't know if we should do it every quarter or so.
0:35:04 - Tristra
I'm not sure, yeah, why not? Why not? I'll pick one, if only if I can pick my favorite totally weird story, like the failed Willy Wonka AI exhibit in Scotland.
0:35:16 - Dmitri
Absolutely.
0:35:18 - Tristra
There, you go.
0:35:19 - Dmitri
I got a plane to Scotland right now. Awesome. Thanks so much, Tristro. It's a blast talking to you.
0:35:25 - Tristra
All right, bye.
0:35:26 - Dmitri
Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to Music Tech Tonics. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on your favorite podcast app. We have new episodes for you every week. Did you know? We do free monthly online events that you, our lovely podcast listeners, can join? Find out more at MusicTechTonics.com and, while you're there, look for the latest about our annual conference and sign up for our newsletter to get updates. Everything we do explores the seismic shifts that shake up music and technology, the way the Earth's tectonic plates cause quakes and make mountains. Connect with Music Tech Tonics on Twitter, instagram and LinkedIn. That's my favorite platform. Connect with me. Dmitri Vietze, if you can spell it, we'll be back again next week, if not sooner.
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The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Weekly episodes include interviews with music tech movers & shakers, deep dives into seismic shifts, and more.