Artisanal Hipster Vinyls

This week's show involves a lot of policy: policy on the internet, policy in music, policy concerning not being stabbed when retrieving your stolen iPhone. And then there was something involving Taylor Swift and Scooby Doo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:06Nilay Patel?

  No. Come on.

• 0:10Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 0:13Nilay Patel?

  That's not how this should start. I mean, we're not even good at starting it.

• 0:16Speaker 01

  You were so ready to-

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  And that was a low point.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  I gave you, I gave you like a heads up this time. I was like, you're gonna do a great job.

• 0:23Nilay Patel?

  I thought it would. And now it's, it's playing somewhere?

• 0:30Nilay Patel?

  Everything about starting this show is really bad. I had a whole bit. I had a gambit.

• 0:35Speaker 01

  And welcome to the Vergecast.

• 0:38Nilay Patel?

  The gambit was to let Dieter do it.

• 0:42Nilay Patel?

  Alright, this is the Vergecast. That usurper that you heard was Dieter Bone. To my left is Chris Plant, so hello.

• 0:51Speaker 02

  Oh, hello.

• 0:52Nilay Patel?

  And over in the swag box, Sam Shepard himself.

• 0:57Speaker 03

  That's a new one. Hi.

• 0:58Nilay Patel?

  Hi. Sam, we, we brought Hype Check himself back to the show after last week. We're gonna try to structure Hype Check a little bit more, but I just enjoy having Sam like run in a corner.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Right in your field of view at all times. You look up, I'm here.

• 1:16Nilay Patel?

  It just, it keeps us, it keeps us true. So let me start by reading a tweet. Let's start the show. Right in here, this is the Vergecast. It's a show about a lot of stuff, but today it's gonna be a show about this tweet from Mark Cuban.

• 1:29Speaker 01

  Oh god.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  "In my adult life," says Mark Cuban, "I have never seen a situation that paralleled what I read in Ayn Rand books until now with net neutrality."

• 1:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43Nilay Patel?

  It, we have, we have reached what I would call a completely crazy level of stupidity with net neutrality.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  So wait a minute. What's, I don't, I don't know.

• 1:54Nilay Patel?

  "The people want more government to protect them," says Mark Cuban.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  "So they can't be stopped from getting movies, TV shows, over the top." That is straight out of Ayn Rand. That makes no sense.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  We're takers.

• 2:08Nilay Patel?

  We're takers?

• 2:08Speaker 01

  We are just takers who want the government to give us things and it's going to turn us into lazy slobs.

• 2:14Nilay Patel?

  "If Ayn Rand was an up and coming author today," says Mark Cuban, "she wouldn't write about steel or railroads." It would be net neutrality.

• 2:22Speaker 02

  She also wouldn't be read because she's an utter hack who couldn't write. Like, it was a good fortune of events that led to her being famous. Congratulations.

• 2:31Nilay Patel?

  And the fifth tweet of this amazing tweet storm. Mark Cuban. Who is John Galt?

• 2:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:37Speaker 02

  No.

• 2:38Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm just glad that some people don't have to get past high school English and then can just coast on it the rest of their life.

• 2:45Speaker 01

  Take the internet.

• 2:46Nilay Patel?

  And they should take their go homes.

• 2:48Speaker 01

  An enclave in the middle of the mountains in Colorado.

• 2:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:51Speaker 01

  And the rest of us can, and they can just have their own special private internet there. The rest of us can deal with their other internet.

• 2:56Nilay Patel?

  Before we do that, let me just say, that was gonna be my gambit. That was gonna be the opening gambit where I just read the tweets in a crazy voice. But then I blew it. Just to be clear, I blew it.

• 3:06Speaker 01

  What does a Mark Cuban voice sound like?

• 3:09Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'd like to hear your Mark Cuban.

• 3:11Nilay Patel?

  No, I can't, I can't. I was all hyped up.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15Nilay Patel?

  It was gonna be like a...

• 3:16Speaker 02

  You know why you can't hear your Mark Cuban voice?

• 3:17Nilay Patel?

  It was gonna be like a bellowing...

• 3:19Speaker 02

  It takes 25 minutes to cook. That's a Cuban sandwich joke for everyone in the audience.

• 3:23Nilay Patel?

  All right, Chris, you're fired. By the way, the only person in the audience is saying...

• 3:28Speaker 03

  I didn't laugh at that joke.

• 3:29Nilay Patel?

  Yo, hype check on the Cuban sandwich joke.

• 3:31Speaker 03

  It was bad.

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Not even bust.

• 3:34Nilay Patel?

  Not even bust. Just a head shake. All right, so let's talk about this news.

• 3:39Speaker 01

  Is it warmer in the swag corner than it is over here?

• 3:42Nilay Patel?

  It's quite warm over here, I think.

• 3:43Speaker 03

  Sweaty.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  The corner's pretty warm. Must be 90 degrees over there.

• 3:48Nilay Patel?

  All right, let's talk about the news of the week. There's a lot of it, but I would say the biggest news this week, the way the week opened, was I actually received like a panicked text from someone that said, this is true, a source texted me and said, "The president is finally about to do something about net neutrality." And I like got on Slack and like alerted the team and then within seconds, the president released a statement saying, "I support full net neutrality using the strictest possible rules." And then the world has gone crazy ever since.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:19Nilay Patel?

  And so the backstory there, which we have dug up, is that... A great many companies, like basically what we're seeing right now is the tech industry, particularly startup-ish tech companies and people who like things like free speech. And every, like, you know, we are a startup, like Fox Media's a startup, The Verge is a startup. Most digital media companies that are in startup phase are all aligned in favor of strong rules to protect net neutrality. And then AT&T and Comcast and Verizon and, you know, big, big access companies.

• 4:54Speaker 01

  T-Mobile.

• 4:54Nilay Patel?

  T-Mobile. Powerful T-Mobile are all aligned against it. They don't want new rules. And there's, and that has turned into...

• 5:03Speaker 01

  But they align against it. All those big telecom companies align against net neutrality by saying...

• 5:12Nilay Patel?

  They support it.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  "We're for net neutrality and an open internet. Just do it this way."

• 5:17Nilay Patel?

  No, they didn't say do it. It's basically, "We promise." But so what happened was that cabal of like, and I say cabal in the loosest possible term, but that group of like startup tech companies, powerful tech companies, finally pushed Obama after disastrous midterm losses to the Republicans to finally take a stand, take the high ground. It's basically like what I perceive as like a YOLO Obama moment. Right? He's a lame duck. He doesn't have, he doesn't have the rest of the government on his side.

• 5:46Speaker 02

  But like, you guys can answer this for me because you're gonna know way better. But to me, it feels like I've already done everything I could against this, so now I can say, "I support it and everything's already in place to make sure it doesn't happen." Like this, I wrote it, I'm sorry. I said, "He hired the guy who worked for Comcast," which isn't a company. Comcast. But he, yeah, it's like, it feels like the people who are in place, you, tell me, tell me about this because I don't understand.

• 6:17Nilay Patel?

  Here's the long history of this, this nonsense.

• 6:21Nilay Patel?

  Obama's first guy Julius Shenkaski proposed the exact plan Obama endorsed in 2010 and he got crushed.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Got run out of town.

• 6:29Nilay Patel?

  Like literally, basically run out of town. Like he got crushed for saying a very obvious thing, which is internet service is a utility akin to phone service. And we should use the same rules that allow us to regulate the phone system so that you can call anybody you want. Uh, and anybody who wants can call you.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  And you're allowed to put whatever phone you want on the network.

• 6:47Nilay Patel?

  Right. No, like.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  Makes sense.

• 6:49Nilay Patel?

  There's fun, there's fun.

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Rules and rules, yeah.

• 6:51Nilay Patel?

  There's rules about the internet has to be free and open and accessible to devices and services and people. And those rules are obviously substantially similar to the rules that govern how we use the phone network because it's a network.

• 7:02Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 7:02Nilay Patel?

  Right? Um, so he said, we'll just use these existing rules that are strong rules. We'll classify the internet under Title II. That's the legal. Uh, that's the section of the telecommunications act. Uh, and well, you know, there's a bunch of shitty rules that apply to telephone networks. And we have the powers, the FCC to say, we're not going to enforce them. It's called forbearance. So we'll use the rules we need. We'll write other rules under Title II that we do need and we'll, you know, just ignore the ones that say like, we're going to limit. We're going to set rates for long distance telephones.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Sounds great.

• 7:32Nilay Patel?

  That doesn't make any sense. Um, got run out of town. Said literally Comcast and Verizon and quite frankly, people are going to be mad about this. Uh, the right wing media machine seized a chance to attack Obama for regulating the internet. It makes no sense. Um, and it doesn't. It that, that is not the thing that Title II is, right?

• 7:53Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 7:54Nilay Patel?

  It's not regulating the internet.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  It's regulation. It's just not regulation in the sense of what people are thinking when they hear regulation.

• 8:00Speaker 01

  It's regulation.

• 8:01Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not what people are thinking when they think of the internet.

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's the thing. It's regulating a piece of the internet.

• 8:08Nilay Patel?

  No, it's regulating Comcast, right?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  And Comcast is in the internet. But Comcast, this is the move that they make. They, they, they make the same move. I support, I support an open internet. And they also say, don't regulate the internet. And the, the problem is that part of the internet is Comcast. Like, grant that, right?

• 8:27Nilay Patel?

  I won't. I think, no, because that definitionally that'll, that's the thing. That lets them lie.

• 8:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:33Nilay Patel?

  The internet is not.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  The internet is, we are the internet, right? Was that what you want to say?

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm saying Comcast could fade away and not exist.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  And then it would be fine.

• 8:40Nilay Patel?

  And the internet would be, it would be different, but it would be fine.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would still exist.

• 8:45Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, like, that's the problem here, right?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  No, but the move that they're making is.

• 8:51Nilay Patel?

  Takes credit for, like, every, like, they take credit for, I don't know, Airbnb and Etsy.

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:58Nilay Patel?

  Right? And they take credit for the success of the things that people love on the internet by saying, if you regulate us, you'll regulate Airbnb. And like, that's not true.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:06Nilay Patel?

  Right? And so this is the move. So that, so Wheeler got killed against regulating the internet. And because Obama was like, still in the, in the first blush of being the president, basically, he's like, we will find compromise. And then Republicans were obstinate. And so, whatever. So they, the FCC tried another way to do it, which was always called a house of cards. This way failed. This is the lawsuit that got thrown out.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is section 706 or whatever.

• 9:32Nilay Patel?

  It's like, very wonky, but they basically said, there's, 706 says, the FCC should be responsible for good broadband in America. That's all, that's basically all it says. And the FCC is like, that's, that's good enough. And for good broadband, we need all these strict rules against Comcast. And Verizon was like, no, that, no, you don't, that doesn't give you the power. They won in court. The judge in that case said, the FCC is correct, that broadband providers are a threat to internet openness, because they have so much power. They should be regulated, but you can't do it this way. And then Wheeler has basically been like, twiddling his thumbs. Wheeler, Tom Wheeler replaced Julius Nikowski, former cable industry lawyer.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Wheeler is the one I know.

• 10:11Nilay Patel?

  Wheeler is a bastard. It's just a fact. It's just a fact.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  His parents weren't married. I mean, that's all, that's all he's saying. He's just saying that.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Welcome to the show.

• 10:22Nilay Patel?

  Dude, hype check, Tom Wheeler.

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Bastard.

• 10:28Nilay Patel?

  Got it. See? Like that. From the hype seat.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Fresh.

• 10:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh my gosh. Right. So Wheeler took over for Janikowski. He has insisted over and over again that he can craft a hybrid proposal.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  He can figure out a way.

• 10:44Nilay Patel?

  That there are some fast lanes that are acceptable that

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 10:48Nilay Patel?

  That maybe what we need to do is regulate like the interconnection layer, which is where like Netflix has its arguments versus the consumer layer. He is trying everything he can to not, to pass rules that will somehow not piss off Verizon, like in Comcast. The reality is that Comcast and Verizon are so against any rule change for a variety of reasons, some of which are legitimate. Like we've built our business and sold money and sold pieces of it to investors based on the regulations staying the same. Like that will be weird for us. Like, but whatever. They're so against it that no matter what you do, you will end up in court. So you might as well make your strongest move, which is what Obama is saying. And Wheeler is like, but what if, what if I do whatever I want? And actually, what he said in a meeting that was

• 11:31Nilay Patel?

  reported in the Washington Post was, "I am an independent agency," which is just an amazing quote for any bureaucrat in the government. Like he like buttoned up his gray suit. He'd like gotten a sensible car.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Wheeler was visibly frustrated during the meeting, telling attendees, "What you want is what everyone wants, an open internet that doesn't affect your business." Wheeler, a Democrat, said he had to work out how to quote, "split the baby" to keep both sides happy.

• 11:57Nilay Patel?

  But you can't. That's the thing. And this is what I will just tell you. If you're in a situation where everyone's going to get pissed off at you, do the thing that gives you the most power. Right? Straight up. If everyone's going to be mad at you, right? Or some powerful interest is necessarily going to be pissed at you.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  It seems like that's like Wheeler doesn't want that power.

• 12:15Nilay Patel?

  Cause he's a lobbyist.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  But well, also, and well, and that's the other thing is what's your definition of power? Because when you, when you talk about it, that's what people do. They do go for power. And what that power is

• 12:23Speaker 01

  His power is getting his old job back when he retires.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Exactly. I can retire and get that money.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  It's, uh, well, that's fun.

• 12:30Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. So that's been our week.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  But like Obama, thank you for endorsing this at this time late, this late in the game when you have no leverage at all.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  So now the story is, can the people that are against proper, you know, powers of the FCC to regulate, not regulate the internet, but to regulate these companies that provide internet to us, is that better?

• 12:57Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  That is a better way of framing it, because when you say regularly and open, it sounds weird.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Can, like, if you walk up to any American human and like, lay out the case for, should you be able to, you know, not have discrimination in the way you could, like, lay out the basics of net neutrality, the basics of the argument, I'm sure that everybody, whatever their politics, the vast majority of people will be like, yeah, that's cool, I'm for that. But the question is, by using the regulate the internet language, by using, I don't know, by using the language that they use, are they going to get a large portion of people to go against their own self-interest and undo a bunch of the work that had been done to get people to pressure the FCC?

• 13:46Speaker 02

  I think I've solved it.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Okay, here's what you do, here's how you pitch it, this is your, like, commercial.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  It doesn't matter how you pitch it, because like, you're actively being worked against, that's what I'm saying.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Sure, sure, sure, but there's like, something very simple, that if you could even just get people to listen to this once, they'll be on board. You say, hey, you know those people who manage your bills for your cellphone, which never works, and your cable, which never works? What if they had more power over the internet, the one thing that sometimes works?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  Right, no, and that's the thing, no, but if you look at what the FCC is doing and how they think, and, like, why they're moving, why Obama moved, it wasn't because of, you know, companies like Netflix, it wasn't because of companies like Tumblr that are like, really, like, they're really pushing, right? And Tumblr's part of Yahoo, and Tumblr's like, kind of doing it on its own, from what I can tell.

• 14:37Nilay Patel?

  It's because of the four million comments that crashed the FCC server. Part of which happened like after we did the internet is fucked like eight months ago or nine months ago. They crashed it super hard after John Oliver did his segment like it went down. We actually ran. We FOIA requested the emails that they sent each other after John Oliver. They're hilarious. They know.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  We need to do a dramatic reading of these.

• 15:00Nilay Patel?

  I mean, there's no way you can take the citizens of the United States and say, do you want Comcast to have more authority over your life? Because they won't say yes, right? They hate Comcast. We ran it. We ran a story called the most hated company in America. About Comcast's terrible customer support and all of the reasons.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Do we?

• 15:17Nilay Patel?

  And this is like, you know, Adrian's like last huge feature series at The Verge. And basically what she discovered is because Comcast has so little competition. They have no incentive to improve this bullshit, but they do have incentives to sell you more crap. Right? And to put in the end of lump customer support into like retention sales or customer support into up charges.

• 15:39Speaker 02

  And it's amazing what happens when even like an ounce of competition shows up anymore because it so rarely does. Like in New York, there is no cable competition. You get Time Warner, but then with internet, you have like pretend competition. They finally, finally installed FiOS in one building on my street. And they said they're not going to install it anywhere else. And everyone kept calling FiOS and calling Time Warner and just saying that we're going to leave. And then Time Warner did this thing in New York where they're like, you all have high speed internet now. We, we switch, we plug the switch. Yesterday I had 30 and now I have 300. And, and, and it's like they sent me a new modem, but in plugging into the same shit. So it's like, so what? And then they have the different speed rates and it's like, it's just a tube.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  So why, why do I have to pay you this much more money for 30? And then the next day, suddenly I'm 300 and it's the same rate. But if I want 400, I have to pay more. The whole pricing thing of it is so absolutely insanely absurd and frustrating. And they, they never would have even had to have done that if there wasn't that much competition.

• 16:46Nilay Patel?

  And if you think about, if you look at a market like Kansas City where

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  Uh, Google Fiber showed up, uh, and just like a test market, like AT&T Fiber is like everywhere now.

• 16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:55Nilay Patel?

  Like they're, they're moving hard against it.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  And they fight against you. I mean, that's where I'm from and my family, they, they don't stick with anything for more than a year at this point because they have AT&T and now everyone's trying to get you in two-year plans, but it's like, we're gonna come, we're gonna install, every, everyone your TV is gonna be interconnected and we're gonna give you this internet and then Google's like, oh, well, we're in your neighborhood now, we wanna do this. And they're constantly getting pulled back and forth.

• 17:16Nilay Patel?

  And if you can do that, and that's fine. And like the, this is, this, this is the choice you have to make for access, right? You can look at, in that we ran this picture with the internet as fucked. It was the iPhone or cell phones in 2004 and cell phones in 2014. And like, you can just see what competition did, right? A Trio is, was, is dra- like a drastically different product than the iPhone.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  You could say it sucked. It's okay. To the editor of TrioCentral.com.

• 17:45Nilay Patel?

  Just, just go ahead. I like, I literally looked at Dieter with like a sad look in my eyes.

• 17:52Nilay Patel?

  But a cable, like the Comcast cable box, the default Motorola piece of junk is the same a decade later. Cause there's no product in the market that competes with it. So there's no incentive to improve it to make more money.

• 18:02Speaker 02

  Mine died actually two days ago.

• 18:04Nilay Patel?

  And they, and what they're gonna, like

• 18:06Speaker 02

  It's gonna take two for the next one.

• 18:07Nilay Patel?

  And I, and I say this, and I will disclose to the, the world that Comcast Ventures is an investor and Vox Media, our parent company, but that means nothing.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  I was ready to have this conversation.

• 18:17Nilay Patel?

  It's like, whatever, like the, you know, we, it's, there's your ethics in games journalism, everybody. But whatever. Hype check Gamergate.

• 18:26Speaker 03

  Don't even get me started.

• 18:30Nilay Patel?

  No, but here, here's the truth about Comcast. So if you've been in an airport recently, you've probably seen their ads. They believe that their iPad app is an operating system. It's a picture of an iPad running the Comcast app and they're like, the X1 operating system. And it's like, you don't know what an operating system is. Like you don't, you just don't know what it is. I don't want you near this part of my life. Like, please. Hire all of the best network engineers in the world with your billions and billions of dollars in profits and make them make a better network. But don't hire the designers and the app engineers who weren't good enough to get a job at Apple or Facebook and Google and be like, yo, make us an operating system. Because it's crap.

• 19:15Nilay Patel?

  And like, they just don't see it. They are taking credit for the good work that other people do on top of their network. And they're insisting that their free email services and weird apps and like, bad ideas about content are enough to make them not just dumb pipes. That they should not be regulated like the dumb pipes that pretty much everybody I know wants them to be. And the idea that we're imposing more government regulation on these companies that will somehow just regulate themselves because there's a free market is insanity. It is insanity because there is no competition for access. Even if, even in wireless, like, switching from AT&T to Verizon is impossible.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  So, this story hasn't changed. Like, the story that you're telling is the same problem that we've had for, since at least a Verizon case, if not slightly, you know, before.

• 20:03Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 20:04Speaker 01

  But, the question I have is, what is changing now is, they are getting more aggressive, I feel like, in talking to the wider internet, the wider humans out there, rather than just attacking the FCC. And, the question, I'm going back to the thing I said before, is, will regular humans be convinced to advocate against their own self-interest?

• 20:24Nilay Patel?

  So, here's the thing, like Ted Cruz, the day Obama released his statement, was like, net neutrality is Obamacare for the internet.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 20:30Nilay Patel?

  And what's dangerous about this, and I get tons of emails now that are like, "Stop putting politics on the verge." And it's like, well, A-

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Everything's politicized.

• 20:38Nilay Patel?

  Everything is politicized. Gamergate was politicized. Like, it's the same spectrum of things, right? It's like, change versus not change. But, literally, the-

• 20:50Nilay Patel?

  The idea that like wanting the internet to exist and not be fucked with is not a political issue. Like Scalia and his dissent in the Verizon case, the old one that threw out the bad rules that didn't work, was like, you should just do it the right way. Like, you want these rules, that's fine. It's in your power FCC. Just do it the right way. And like, doing it the right way isn't going to change. It is literally just, at this point, let me put it this way. If you're Comcast and AT&T and Verizon, whoever, you have pretty much maximized your like profit-seeking from the existing network model, right? We know how the internet works in America. We know what people are going to buy. We know how much they're going to spend. What you want them to do is use more data and meter their

• 21:35Nilay Patel?

  data. So you put a data cap on it and hope they hit it. That's like AT&T's, that's the wireless carrier move. Everybody understands it. And what you want people to do is use data that you can then charge against in some other way, right? So if you're the wireless carriers, it's easier to just meter the whole thing and give you a pretty low cap. So you'll go over it as that becomes your primary internet access. If you're Comcast and you've got a 300 gig cap, a lot of people aren't going to hit it. Some people are. And you're like, crap, how do I make more money out of this already existing customer relationship? And what you say is, well, I can't charge the customer anymore, but I'll go to Apple and charge them. I'll go to Google and charge them. I'll go to YouTube and charge them. And those companies will pay. But the companies that can't afford to pay will like wither

• 22:16Nilay Patel?

  and die on the vine because they won't have as good access to the consumer. And in a world where we know that Google has done extensive testing on like their homepage, and they know that milliseconds of responsiveness add up to user, like real concrete user behavior, that little difference is a significant thumb on the scale. And so the cable companies are out of ways to charge you. We know that they are excellent at ways, at finding ways to charge other people. And they're just going to go and do it because that's their next revenue stream.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And even then, most people would be like, whatever. Big companies charging other big companies, some little companies getting screwed over. But they're not out of ways to charge us.

• 22:54Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  The next way is to like, you know, start charging for fast lanes and slow lanes and bundling stuff and... Oh yeah, if you get our service, you'll get this data speed and oh, we'll toss in free Netflix and it'll go really fast.

• 23:08Speaker 02

  Imagine everything you hate about cable applied to the internet.

• 23:11Nilay Patel?

  Right, yeah. And it's just, what they're saying now is Comcast will say, well, we believe in everything Obama says, we just don't need these cumbersome laws.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  And

• 23:20Speaker 01

  And the way they're saying that is because they've

• 23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:22Nilay Patel?

  Applied it. Like when they bought NBC Universal, they promised to abide by these principles because the FCC is like, the only way we're letting you buy a content company is if you can't favor their fucking content.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:33Nilay Patel?

  And they're like, oh, that makes sense. Yeah, we'll sign that document. But that expires in 2018. Like, that's actually not so far away. Like, you get past these laws and there would be a court case that might not be done until 2018. So like, you're screwed anyway. So everyone's lying. The end.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Jeez.

• 23:48Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that was my net neutrality rant for the day. All right.

• 23:51Speaker 01

  Do we want to do some, uh, do, uh, nevermind. We should do a dramatic reading of this, uh, this email from inside the FCC. Come on, was on a comic show. Last week tonight, HBO. No, dude, you gotta, you gotta beat Poet Riot. You gotta, we need bongos.

• 24:05Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't.

• 24:06Speaker 01

  Camo was on a comic show.

• 24:09Speaker 01

  Last week tonight.

• 24:09Nilay Patel?

  I think we should workshop this before we just do it.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  HBO.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Workshop this? We're gonna go up.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  George Foot?

• 24:16Speaker 02

  We were in the Catskills for two weeks, workshopping on a new routine.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  He should watch it.

• 24:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I think like, that would be good. Like, here's what I want you to do. I want you to get in a car, I want you to drive the mountains and read this stuff to each other.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:28Nilay Patel?

  Until you realize what a bad idea it is. And then you can come back. Uh, I have next on my list.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:34Nilay Patel?

  Uh, that Chris Plant explains Dragon Age to Dieter.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, not true, not true.

• 24:39Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Chris Plant explains Dragon Age lore to Dieter. Very different. I want to play Dragon Age Inquisition. I've never played Dragon Age. Tell me what I need to know so that I can play this game.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  My note was, oh, bro, I don't know Dragon Age at all. I've been playing this game so much and there's a great piece I'm gonna throw you to the Gawker network, but Kirk Hamilton on Kotaku wrote like the hey, you didn't play 80 hours of Dragon Age 1 and 2, understandably, especially for Dragon Age 2 apparently, here is everything. So, people should definitely read that thing. But what I will say is, I went to Dragon Age Inquisition blind. I don't play like RPGs.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  I haven't played RPGs in super long.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  This one's 80 hours long.

• 25:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:24Speaker 02

  So just recognize that.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  But when you say this one's 80 hours long, are you exaggerating?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  No, it's 80, 80 hours is like, that's how long the reviewers who are in a hurry hit it at 80 hours.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Wow. So can I, can I pick up this game and play it for like a half hour at a time?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Here's what's crazy about it and why I think I'm actually gonna play it probably over like the next year. But so, one, you get the sense that they get storytelling really, really well. Like the game opens, there's on the very, just the credit scene, right? Like, start, options, all that bullshit. And there's like two lines of people and it's like mages and like soldiers who I guess are Templars. And they're walking towards this big like citadel or something. And then you press start and the whole thing blows up.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  Squatters?

• 26:09Speaker 02

  What? And then that like, it's a great thing that you keep being reminded of because so much of the game is about this. Something really, really bad has happened.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 26:17Speaker 02

  Bad things are coming into the world.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  There are two sides and if they work together, you could probably fix this really quickly. But they have mad beef. And then on top of that, each group, there are groups within both of those who also have mad beef with each other. And there are people who are just trying to take advantage of the situation and become higher ranking political people. So, it's this thing where it's like-

• 26:39Speaker 01

  So it's like real life?

• 26:40Speaker 02

  It's real life. Like, it is like, the whole time you're just like, ah, it would be so easy to fix this if you would just stop being an asshole. But I totally know why-

• 26:50Nilay Patel?

  That's, that's, that Dragon Age is really just, that's telecon lobbying.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, but on top of that, the characters are so well-written. I'm gonna talk about this Freddie Prince Jr. Man.

• 27:00Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Really?

• 27:01Speaker 02

  Freddie Prince Jr., the role of a lifetime, a giant demon bullhorn monster, who's a mercenary with a kind of a heart of gold. And he is so good. And I didn't even realize it was him. I'm like, who is this guy? This guy is on it. Like, this guy is, this guy needs to be getting some real roles. Looked him up. He had some real roles.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:23Speaker 02

  He was on Scooby Doo, the movie.

• 27:25Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait.

• 27:26Speaker 01

  You didn't know this?

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, Scooby Doo one and two.

• 27:28Nilay Patel?

  I'm just saying, no, I'm, I'm actually backing all the way up to you. You went back to research Freddie Prince Jr.?

• 27:34Speaker 02

  No, no, I looked up the character from Dragon's Age.

• 27:36Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Discovered it was Freddie Prince Jr.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Discovered it was, you know.

• 27:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I got it.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  FPJ.

• 27:40Nilay Patel?

  I got it, I got it. Okay.

• 27:41Speaker 02

  He's gonna be a president one day.

• 27:42Nilay Patel?

  I thought you were just like, man, I love this character. I wonder what other roles this guy's put. Scooby Doo!

• 27:46Speaker 02

  Scooby Doo?

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  Another one of my favorite things. Hype check Scooby Doo.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  Ew.

• 27:51Speaker 02

  What?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Dude!

• 27:53Speaker 03

  The movies, no, the original cartoon, the Hanna-Barber cartoons from like the 60s? Yeah, good. Two thumbs up. Those are great.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  60s?

• 27:59Speaker 03

  70s?

• 28:01Speaker 02

  I love how far we've gotten away from Beep and Buzz now. It's just like, yeah, two thumbs up. I'm just gonna start stealing from other shows. It's not my problem. Copyright my ass.

• 28:11Nilay Patel?

  That's fine. Two beefs up.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's so, it's so good. It's so good.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Okay, so I'm buying that. What else, what else am I buying for holiday?

• 28:20Speaker 02

  Um, you're buying Call of Duty Advanced Warfare.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  No one, uh, yes.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  Because.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  I'm really bad at, is it good, does it have a good campaign?

• 28:27Speaker 02

  The campaign is the first good, like, really good one.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Cause I hate multiplayer. Can't do it. I suck so hard that I can't do it.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  You could try multiplayer.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  I don't wanna try it.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  But even if you don't like that.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Only if it's worth the, the campaign.

• 28:37Speaker 02

  The campaign, I, I would say.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  It seems like I have to buy Master Chief, cause it's four Halos for 50 bucks. How can I turn that down?

• 28:43Speaker 03

  And then you get the five beta also.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  You're just buying it to keep it in your house.

• 28:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Like, be honest with yourself.

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I don't have a 360 anymore.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  Especially if you don't like, if you don't like the multiplayer, there's no sense to have that.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  Wait until it's like cheaper.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'll wait till it's cheaper.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  If you're, if you're playing it for multiplayer, whatever, sure. Um, I can tell you that the word on the street is that Assassin's Creed is.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Hile.

• 29:04Speaker 02

  Pile.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:06Nilay Patel?

  I actually had a, like, a really sad conversation with Addie. We were like working on a story earlier and, like, all of a sudden she's like. Assassin's Creed sucks. And she was just like really sad. I think people like really liked that game.

• 29:18Speaker 01

  I would, I love that game.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  I didn't play, what's the last one, the Pirates Black Flag?

• 29:21Speaker 02

  No, we lost because that one's the best.

• 29:24Nilay Patel?

  Oh, it is?

• 29:24Speaker 01

  I have it. I don't know if I'd say it's the best.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  It's gradually over time.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  It is, it is on its own merit. It is on its own merit. It's the best video game of that series, but it is not the best Assassin's Creed of that series.

• 29:36Speaker 02

  Which is?

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  Wait.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Brotherhood.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  I think it's Brotherhood. Brotherhood is like crazy polished, but it didn't add bombs yet.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:45Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I clearly haven't played like the last Assassin's Creed. I like to play video games like two to three years after they come out.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Oh, sure. That's what I do with Rockstar games usually, except for when I have to review them.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, so you want those.

• 29:56Nilay Patel?

  Tell me, let me ask you a question, a really stupid, basic question. When you review, review a video game, you just play it as fast as you can, what happens there?

• 30:04Speaker 02

  Sorry, before we go any further.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  How many times have you had to answer this question? That's what I want to know.

• 30:08Speaker 02

  I just want to pull, I want to pull up to that, you know, God's point of view right here. Before this, I was like talking to you guys in this position about something that really mattered about the world. And I'm like, yeah, tell me more. And now you're like, video game. No, Assassin's Creed. And I'm like, well, you see Ubisoft has been making games for years. In the, in the case of Ubisoft versus Assassin's Creed, ECO two.

• 30:35Nilay Patel?

  ECO two?

• 30:36Speaker 02

  Don't worry about it.

• 30:38Nilay Patel?

  ECO, deuce, deuce.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  I can tell you all about the juicy drama behind the scenes.

• 30:42Nilay Patel?

  Hype check Assassin's Creed.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  Beef.

• 30:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, there we go. That's fine.

• 30:46Nilay Patel?

  Good stuff.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Here's what I'm going to say about Assassin's Creed.

• 30:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 02

  If you want a great Assassin's Creed game, and I'm not the first person to say this, one came out this year. It's called Lord of the Rings, Shadow of the Moon.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:56Speaker 02

  And it's like, if somebody said.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  I've finished the game. I'm collecting all the stupid bullshit trinkets right now because I love it so much. I'm like afraid to stop playing.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  It's where Assassin's Creed was going after too. It's like lots of great locomotion. There's all these crazy moves you can do. It feels like it's much more about stealth. It stayed on track while Assassin's Creed went and did all this crazy shit where it's like bombs and boats and.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  I mean, to me Assassin's Creed on a very basic level is about stabbing.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. You want to play, you want to play Shadow of the Moon then?

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Okay. Yeah.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  It's very much about stabbing.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  I can't comment on stabbing on the air.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  It's about, it's about literally exploding heads with your bare hands.

• 31:45Speaker 02

  After they're your slaves, which is even more.

• 31:47Nilay Patel?

  So actually, speaking of stabbing, I wanna, I wanna get, I wanna get into something with Sam real quick before we move on to the next.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 31:55Nilay Patel?

  Sam, you almost got stabbed over the weekend and you wrote about it and it was very popular on the internet.

• 32:01Speaker 03

  It was.

• 32:01Nilay Patel?

  Why did you, so Sam got his phone, his gigantic phone stolen in his back pocket.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  I did.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Cause he keeps it in his back pocket.

• 32:08Speaker 03

  I was experimenting with it stu-, very stupidly and I, it is just a bad idea to keep the phone in your back pocket, but it's still really.

• 32:14Nilay Patel?

  When you say experimenting.

• 32:16Speaker 03

  Like.

• 32:17Nilay Patel?

  Did you have a hypothesis? Were there test results?

• 32:21Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  Phone not stolen.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Hypothesis, well, keeping my phone in my back pocket be beef.

• 32:29Nilay Patel?

  Oh. Do you have like a little scientific journal?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  I had a journal and every time I entered it into my pocket, I gave it a rating and I put it in my front pocket, it got another rating. No, so, uh, you want me to tell the story?

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:42Speaker 03

  Okay, so I'll make it really quick. I was at a bar.

• 32:44Nilay Patel?

  Yep.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  Uh, in my neighborhood of the East Village, New York. I will not tell you what bar it is, cause that's not right. Uh, and I was there at the bar.

• 32:51Nilay Patel?

  The bar would probably love it if you would tell people what the bar is.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  What's wrong with saying what the bar is?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  What bar is it?

• 32:56Speaker 03

  The 13th step in the East Village.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Oh, gross.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  If you go to the 13th step, your phone will be stolen.

• 33:00Speaker 03

  I live really close to there. It was, it was convenient.

• 33:04Nilay Patel?

  That wasn't right.

• 33:05Speaker 03

  Whatever.

• 33:06Nilay Patel?

  Bust.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  Bust.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  This is not really quick also.

• 33:09Speaker 03

  So I'm there at the bar, phone's in my back pocket and, uh, I just went to go reach for my phone and I was wearing a jacket and I was keeping it either in my jacket or back pocket or front pocket and I was just like, where the hell is my phone? I have my keys and my wallet, phone, no phone.

• 33:24Nilay Patel?

  Can I hit the password button? So Sam leaves the bar and like sees the guy and he like pushes the button and he hears it coming out of the dude's pocket.

• 33:32Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 33:32Nilay Patel?

  And like, and they went up to the guy.

• 33:35Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, wait. And then, and then what do you do when you confront the guy?

• 33:37Speaker 03

  It was me and my brother and I will replay my emotions and reaction.

• 33:41Nilay Patel?

  You can't, you're.

• 33:43Speaker 03

  I can.

• 33:43Speaker 02

  You have to speak them.

• 33:45Speaker 03

  So I. My brother, Deron, gave me confirmation that this was the guy. That's him. And that's him in Hebrew, Zehu. And so him and I went up to, went up to the guy.

• 33:56Nilay Patel?

  Wait, wait, wait. Were you on a mission speaking in like Hebrew as code?

• 33:58Speaker 03

  Yes, we were speaking in Hebrew as code, so he wouldn't, yeah.

• 34:01Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Speaker 03

  So he, so me and Deron were like trailing behind him and he sort of like stops in like, in like a, you know, a doorway kind of thing.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you're holding down the right trigger so that you were in stealth mode.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  I'm just, I'm just pressing the button over and over and I go up to him and there's this like one or two seconds of like, he's like, oh shit. And I'm like, then I just put on this thing, I'm like, oh my God, dude, you have it. You have my iPhone. I hear it, it's ringing in your jacket, dude. You found my iPhone, dude, you have it. And then he just has no choice, pulls it out of his pocket and I just see my iPhone in his hands and I just take the iPhone, and I just take the iPhone from his hands.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  And then you noted it down.

• 34:40Speaker 03

  And then, and then I immediately, I immediately screenshotted the message because like the

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  So what I'd like to point out to, you could have been stabbed.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 34:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:51Nilay Patel?

  Right? This was a dumb thing to do.

• 34:53Speaker 03

  It was dangerous and very stupid.

• 34:55Nilay Patel?

  But it was, it was three in the morning.

• 34:57Speaker 03

  And it was also a $900 iPhone and my iPhone 5S got stolen on my birthday of this year, which was six months ago. And I was just like, there's no way in hell I'm getting two phones stolen from me in six months. That's not happening.

• 35:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, you're gonna get him.

• 35:07Speaker 03

  And I got him and you know, you just, here's the thing, if I would have approached him and been like, yo dude, you stole my phone, give it back, that would have been very stupid and foolish. But I approached him in the sense that he was sort of like the good guy in the situation. And you pull it like a little bit of a

• 35:24Nilay Patel?

  You socially engineered your iPhone.

• 35:25Speaker 03

  Yes, I know, I did, I totally did, yeah.

• 35:26Nilay Patel?

  Was that, was that, you were doing it consciously or you instinctively knew to do

• 35:30Speaker 03

  Instinctively, instinctively, yeah.

• 35:31Nilay Patel?

  You instinctively hacked his brain.

• 35:33Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  And, and while, but while in that hour or so that he had your phone, he bent it.

• 35:38Speaker 03

  I don't know if that's true. I dropped it yesterday. I dropped it yesterday.

• 35:43Nilay Patel?

  That was our brief for saying I'm almost getting stabbed. We should have a story of like Sam's nightlife adventures.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  God, no, you don't want to know.

• 35:52Nilay Patel?

  The more, the more shepher segs we have. Chef segs.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Chefs.

• 35:56Speaker 03

  Are we writing segways?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  Just awful.

• 35:58Nilay Patel?

  The worst name.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  Chef segs.

• 36:00Nilay Patel?

  Hi, chef segs.

• 36:01Speaker 03

  I don't even know what that means. Sounds like a stew or something.

• 36:06Nilay Patel?

  Hard transition. Yeah. Let's talk about YouTube music for a second. So, and then we should talk about Taylor Swift.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Teens will buy YouTube music.

• 36:11Nilay Patel?

  By the way, every time Chris is on the show, we talk about Taylor Swift. I think that's true.

• 36:15Speaker 01

  Oh, you know what I learned today?

• 36:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Some people get to call her T. Swift.

• 36:19Speaker 03

  You do, Dieter. You could call her T. Swift.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  I am too old to call her T. Swift.

• 36:24Nilay Patel?

  All right. So YouTube music. So this is, I think this is actually fascinating. So you can, I watch a lot of music on YouTube. Like the way I prefer to share music is YouTube, right? You just send links to videos. That's great. So YouTube is now doing a thing where you can pay them, what's it, seven bucks a month? Eight bucks a month?

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I saved the wrong link, so I gotta go find it again. But it's also, if you pay the 10 bucks a month for Google Play, it's like,

• 36:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  Like two things are like kind of included, sort of.

• 36:50Nilay Patel?

  Right. So you can pay, you don't get ads on music, which is cool. And I'm, I sign up for everything, so I'm signing up for it.

• 36:58Nilay Patel?

  Why not?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  Dude, I have an audio Spotify, Google Play, and now YouTube music subscription.

• 37:04Nilay Patel?

  What do you use, Chris?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  I use Spotify.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Oh, and iTunes, whatchamacallit. iTunes, what's it called?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  You pay for all these things?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Unlimited.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  iTunes Ping?

• 37:13Speaker 02

  No.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  I forgot to unsubscribe.

• 37:14Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 37:15Nilay Patel?

  iTunes Mash is garbage.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the worst.

• 37:18Nilay Patel?

  It has just nothing, nothing going on. What is the number here? Ad free, 7.99 a month.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Right, for ad free video and then.

• 37:25Nilay Patel?

  And then you get Google Play.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Play.

• 37:27Nilay Patel?

  Which they've renamed.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  You just be.

• 37:28Speaker 02

  Wait, it's ad free video across the board?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I would've been all over that.

• 37:34Speaker 03

  Can I hype check this real quick?

• 37:36Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:37Nilay Patel?

  I mean.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  YouTube, this YouTube thing with the subscribing music is going to be huge because there are a lot of people out there that listen to music on YouTube. And when I went to Israel, I was staying in a friend's house in Tel Aviv and he's like 24. And he would just, or maybe even older, they would just go on YouTube, like hook up their laptop to the TV and speakers. And just hit play on a playlist and just cycle through music videos like on YouTube. And he was like, this is a very popular thing that people do.

• 38:06Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so the stats are like most teens get their music on YouTube.

• 38:11Speaker 01

  So are teens gonna be able to pay this eight bucks a month?

• 38:13Speaker 03

  They'll they'll say to their parents, I want this for Christmas. It's cheap.

• 38:16Nilay Patel?

  It'll be it'll be like the gift card.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, or Dwayne Reid.

• 38:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 38:21Speaker 01

  Right. You can't pay with Apple Pay.

• 38:25Nilay Patel?

  Why would you want to do that?

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Oh, you can at Dwayne Reid. You can at TDS. Right.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  Thank goodness. I wasn't gonna buy it.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, when this got announced and when I knew it was coming, I was all angry. They're like, why are there so many different kinds of music? Music subscriptions at Google? This doesn't make any sense. But like, it's just. If you like music videos a lot, or if that's how you listen to music, then just get this. It's kind of neat. I like not. I think it's a good idea. I'm not I'm not like, I don't care. It's good.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  It's not for me, but I admire anything where a company is at least aware that it's having success somewhere. And they're like, hey, we can make that easier for people. Like, hey, a lot of people use this.

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Right.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  Pay for it and we'll take away your ads.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Will artists be able to opt out of this? Do you think? I know that there was there was some drama before.

• 39:08Nilay Patel?

  Okay, so here's how you take go from YouTube to Taylor Swift.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:12Nilay Patel?

  So Taylor Swift is like on a warpath of deception. That's what.

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Well, it's not her directly, right? It's like her.

• 39:19Nilay Patel?

  It's her. No, she was in Time Magazine. She gave this gave this long interview about how she's against Spotify. No one should be surprised.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, Taylor Swift is out of Spotify if you have been under a.

• 39:28Nilay Patel?

  Everything about Taylor Swift is artifice, right? Like that's like the baseline.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  That's mean.

• 39:32Nilay Patel?

  No, it's true. Like she she plays this role.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Why do you mean?

• 39:36Nilay Patel?

  I'm not mean. I'm just.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  She's like the Lady Gaga machine.

• 39:39Nilay Patel?

  I mean, no, like, everything about Taylor Swift is her saying that she was embattled in some way and that her success is because of like. Success, right? Like, she's she's a sore winner.

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 39:50Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, so she's like, I won and no one thought I could win. And everyone's like, everyone knew you were gonna win.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  Oh, my gold medal's only 18 carats, not 24?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 39:58Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 39:59Speaker 01

  No.

• 39:59Nilay Patel?

  That's.

• 40:00Speaker 01

  I checked that thing you just said.

• 40:01Speaker 03

  I did. I never did that.

• 40:02Nilay Patel?

  So.

• 40:04Nilay Patel?

  Um, no. Out of the hype check box. Stay, stay in your hype check box. I'm contained. I'm contained. The Sam Shepard story. No, so everything about Taylor, particularly this version of Taylor Swift is like artifice, right? It's, she's just the girl next door, she's moving to New York, she doesn't understand what a bodega is, she, no one thought that she should name the art, the thing 1989, they thought her move to pop, like, literally this Time Magazine interview is about how everyone was against her and she succeeded because she believed in her art, which is great.

• 40:36Speaker 02

  The best thing that ever happened was the Kanye moment because it set in motion a style to. No, she had that style before. Each one, but it, it solidified.

• 40:45Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, but so what's happening now is she's saying, I need to stand up for my art, and she's connecting that Taylor Swift thing to the economics of the music industry. I should have really written this today. And what's happening is she is, in her label and all of her people are telling this like very pernicious lie about the economics of streaming versus the economics of album sales. And they're not paying any attention to how people are actually consuming the stuff and not paying any attention to, um, like, it, reality.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:17Nilay Patel?

  Right? So they're like, we only made, in the first, we sold 1.7 million copies of 1989, and we believe when Spotify came to the United States, it killed album sales, but because we kept our album off of Spotify, we did so well with it, which is all bullshit, just all complete bullshit. It's, yes, if you put it on Spotify, maybe fewer people would have bought it, that's true, because they would have a different access to it, but album sales died in 2002 when Apple launched the iTunes Store.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 41:43Nilay Patel?

  And that chart is clear, like, we, I've published it 50 times in my career already of just like, when you unbundled the album and let people buy singles for 99 cents, they didn't buy the fucking filler, they bought the singles they wanted for 99 cents, and album sales fell off a cliff and they will never, ever, ever come back. 1.7 million albums in like, that opening weekend, no album has done that well since 2002, the year after the iTunes Store came out, and it's never coming back. And for them to say, streaming isn't paying us as much as our first week album sales, well, of course not, right? You're not, you're forcing people to buy the three singles they want on a $15 album full of filler, which by the way, is pretty boring, I don't know if you've listened to 1989, fairly boring. It just is, it's like boring.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  I don't want to be in that Slack room.

• 42:26Speaker 03

  Hype check 1989.

• 42:28Nilay Patel?

  Hype check 1989.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  No, I haven't listened to it. I'm asking you to hype check it.

• 42:30Nilay Patel?

  It's boring. How have you not listened to it? You're hashtag teens, man.

• 42:34Speaker 03

  It's not on Spotify.

• 42:35Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:36Speaker 02

  Fair answer.

• 42:36Speaker 03

  No, here's the thing. Here's the thing.

• 42:39Speaker 01

  Is it on Google Play Music All Access?

• 42:41Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 42:41Speaker 03

  People like Plantinide.

• 42:43Nilay Patel?

  It's only on the services where you can pay for premium tier and they'll window things in the premium tiers. So what they're doing with 1989 is they're windowing it against demand, right?

• 42:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 42:51Nilay Patel?

  They're doing the same thing that Hollywood does with movies on the Apple TV or with rental services or Showtime and Cinemax in theaters, right? They're saying, you really want to see Interstellar? The only way you can see it right now is if you go and pay $50 at the 70-millimeter IMAX. Next week, all the people who didn't have the demand that high will sell it to you for $20 in the regular theaters. The week after that, we'll move it to VOD rentals for a lower price. And then a year later, we'll give it to HBO for nothing. And the people who just were like waiting for that, their demand will be satisfied on HBO. That's like ruthless Hollywood windowing, which most consumers like understand, dislike, and fall for anyway.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 43:30Nilay Patel?

  Right? If I could just get the movie at home right away, I would just do it all the time. But because there are some movies I want to see really badly, I pay the extra to go to the theater. That's all Taylor Swift did with IT. It wasn't some like brilliant move. There's pent up crazy demand for this album, so they forced people to go where they had to pay the most for it.

• 43:46Speaker 02

  There's.

• 43:46Nilay Patel?

  Brilliant business move.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  One other thing you're ignoring that's a huge part of both of these things, though, and it's the marketing. And that's what I find infuriating about this. No, no, no. Well, let me explain, is that she is, if she really cared about everyone else who's on Spotify, what you do is you fight for the average rate of streaming to go up across the board. You don't leave because you're, because when you leave and you're making all this money, I'm just gonna, I'll finish it up. If you, if you leave and you can make all the money, because you have a marketing machine, and that's why she made all this money, and that's how windowing works anyway. They build up the marketing and then you're like, I'll just wait till it's time to be on demand. Oh, my gosh, I am going to miss out on culture as I know it if I don't see Interstellar on Thursday when it comes out. It's the marketing. That's what, that's what makes windowing as a process.

• 44:31Nilay Patel?

  Well, but marketing is like, sure, but like, marketing is required, right?

• 44:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, but all these other things can't afford it.

• 44:37Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, you should advertise.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  Sure, but.

• 44:40Nilay Patel?

  You should create demand. All of that is brilliant.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 44:43Nilay Patel?

  There's, there's nothing about that that isn't genius.

• 44:45Speaker 02

  By saying all these. Basically, everyone under Taylor Swift doesn't get that.

• 44:49Nilay Patel?

  So Taylor Swift.

• 44:50Speaker 02

  It's, it's, she's not in reality.

• 44:52Nilay Patel?

  No, but I'm saying, like, I'm not worried about Taylor Swift acting ruthlessly, ruthlessly in her own self-interest. Like, she should, but this lie about, like, how the economics of this business work and, like, what should come back is insanity. Because what's really happening is that in 2002, music was unbundled from albums. Just like on the internet, stories have become unbundled from newspapers and magazines. Those bundled products have, like, suffered. The people that can live in a world of unbundled content have succeeded. Right? So like, that's why there are so many singles artists and, like, exclusive music video releases. And like, that world of pop is, like, partially exploded because you can make great singles now.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:34Nilay Patel?

  It is.

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Sell them in a box of Honey Nut Cheerios.

• 45:36Nilay Patel?

  Um, it is, there's no question that it's harmed, like, the overall quality of music in a way. Like, I've heard Jimmy Iovine say that out loud, right? You got artists who are on the road because they make more money at their concerts, recording singles really quickly in their music, in their hotel rooms. Because singles are what get people to go to the shows and make money on shows and merchandise.

• 45:54Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:55Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, we should talk about, as a society, let's talk about that. Um, that's why there's so much more licensing in music. Like, you don't hear about people selling out because everybody needs to deal with Honey Nut Cheerios.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 46:05Nilay Patel?

  Right? Every, like, Chris Brown needs to do the Doublemint theme song that he did, right? But this is just how the world.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  How did I miss this?

• 46:12Nilay Patel?

  This is like old, it's like 2007.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  Okay, oh, okay.

• 46:16Nilay Patel?

  It's like old. Um, now you guys are like a whole little train of ranting.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  Um, here's the thing, Taylor took her music off Spotify and now Plan and I can't listen.

• 46:25Nilay Patel?

  But like, that's fine, that's, like, that happens, right?

• 46:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can, you can go buy it.

• 46:29Nilay Patel?

  No, but look.

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Just go buy it.

• 46:30Nilay Patel?

  You're out of the window, like, that's fine, right? You don't.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  Or listen to it on YouTube.

• 46:33Nilay Patel?

  You don't have the demand, like, you don't have the desire enough to pay the price that she set. Like, that's normal, that's capitalism, right? And then she'll move it to the next window, and if you have that desire, then you'll pay that price, and it'll come all the way down, and so whatever. Fine. Um, but what's happening now with streaming is it's the next unbundling. Right? It's the next piece where you don't pay 99 cents for the track. You pay Spotify, or Spotify pays Taylor Swift 0.06 cents for a listen. And that is a whole different ballgame than. Like buying a song.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:05Nilay Patel?

  It's you're paying for a listen. And that, that's it. That's the whole argument that you're making here. Right? Do you believe that you should get paid $20 million upfront? As a bet against the fact that your album might not be good, but your people have demand for it right in this first window? Or is your work so good that people will listen to it forever? And you'll collect that 0.06 cents every time they listen to it forever.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  So wait, wait.

• 47:26Nilay Patel?

  Right? And that is like a crazy like.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  What are you arguing for here? I'm really not.

• 47:31Nilay Patel?

  I'm like, I'm saying like this moment in this, the media industry is all like, it is defined by unbundling.

• 47:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 47:37Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like that's fundamentally, people can get whatever they want.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  And, and, and massive supply.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:42Nilay Patel?

  Because they're.

• 47:43Speaker 01

  Man, we're in this world where like, I forget that like, things that are really obvious to you may need to be explained.

• 47:47Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:49Speaker 01

  Because I'm like, yeah, well, okay, I get that. Everybody knows that. Then what?

• 47:52Nilay Patel?

  No, so you know, it's actually really funny. The last time I wrote about Taylor Swift, I was working at Vox.com. I was managing editor over there. And I just wrote what I thought was a very basic thing that like Verge readers know.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:03Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like Taylor, the headline was Taylor Swift doesn't understand supply and demand. It was basically all about how like iTunes killed the music industry. That's a fact. There is a fact, right? And people get their music online and like, you can't force them and album sales have plummeted and you can't force them to buy whole albums anymore. Unless you are Taylor Swift.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:21Nilay Patel?

  Because your supply of Taylor Swift is scarce, but the supply of music in the world is high.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 48:26Nilay Patel?

  Right? So in infinite, actually now on the internet. So I wrote this and I didn't realize that I wasn't writing for like the Verge audience. I was writing for this much more mass Vox.com audience and it, people freaked out. Like just freaked out. They're like, what is this? And it's, it's like, I always say the Verge audience like lives in the future, but I think when it comes to, or two years in the future, because of our phones. Because everyone else gets the free phone two years later.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  That's pretty good.

• 48:51Nilay Patel?

  But what's true.

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Makes sense.

• 48:54Nilay Patel?

  Type check, Verge mission statement.

• 48:55Speaker 01

  That's great.

• 48:57Nilay Patel?

  But what's actually true about our media consumption patterns for people who read The Verge and Watcher stuff is that we're like a decade ahead of everybody else. And so Taylor Swift is having her business model argument a decade after the industry left her behind. The economics of this industry have moved so far away from anything bundled that you are crazy.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  But, but, but, but, but, but, no, no, but, no, for Taylor Swift, she's doing exactly the right thing.

• 49:24Nilay Patel?

  No, I agree.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 49:25Nilay Patel?

  But she's lying and saying it's the right thing for everyone else.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  And that's what I do when I go, when we go back and I say why I would rather her support the increasing value of streaming music.

• 49:35Nilay Patel?

  But why would you do that?

• 49:36Speaker 02

  I'm not, I'm not saying I get on a purely capitalist.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  Right. You want her to help her, her less famous peers.

• 49:43Speaker 02

  It, it's like, well, not only not, she's not only not helping her peers, she's misguiding them.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  She's telling them, don't trust these guys, go back to the way it used to be, follow me. And it's.

• 49:54Speaker 01

  But I mean, we also like.

• 49:55Speaker 02

  She has her like golden like helicopter that just flies away and everybody's like, here we go. And then there's no helicopter and they just slide on the ground.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  But these artists are making less money off of Spotify than they did off of albums? That's the question, right? And they're like, that's the, that's the moral force of the argument that they're making is that the vast majority of artists are making less money on Spotify than they made off album sales.

• 50:16Nilay Patel?

  No, but.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  But, but can you say that that's wrong?

• 50:19Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 50:20Speaker 01

  You think that, you think they're making more money on Spotify than they were off album sales?

• 50:24Nilay Patel?

  The only question, the only thing.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  I would, I would argue that they probably aren't. And who cares?

• 50:29Nilay Patel?

  No, it's not who cares.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  But like, it's, the music industry is going to change and sorry.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  I think that.

• 50:34Nilay Patel?

  Wait, can I answer your question?

• 50:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:36Nilay Patel?

  So there's no way to answer that question, right? Because it's, if you time back, if you like time bound the, the graph of revenue.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:46Nilay Patel?

  Right? And you say, okay, from now until the end of next month, how much money you will make from album sales versus how much will you make from Spotify? Right? The album sales will be here and Spotify will be here. But the problem is that the slope of the Spotify curve will remain constant or go up over time because people will just keep listening to your music and you'll get paid every day that people listen to your music forever. The slope of the the album sales curve will just hit zero.

• 51:11Speaker 03

  Because who the hell is buying CDs?

• 51:13Nilay Patel?

  No, it's whatever, a digital iTunes album, whatever. Because the people who want, who want, unless you made Dark Side of the Moon, which is consistently the best selling album in every format ever.

• 51:22Speaker 03

  I didn't know that.

• 51:23Nilay Patel?

  It's true. But unless you made that, what is going to happen is your album sales will hit zero. People will stop buying your album. So you can have all the money upfront in your, in the box of time in which you'll sell albums, or you can have some money forever.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  I get, I get, I get, that's, that's the promise of streaming. What I'm saying is, like, as a practical matter, we can grant that we don't know for sure that that promise is true yet. And as a practical matter, right now, most people are, most artists at above a certain level are probably making less money on streaming than they would have if none of these artists existed.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  No, you could also say that they weren't going to make much money either way, and touring was the only thing that was going to make them money.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  Right, and so what I'm saying is like, this whole, this whole economic argument is a little bit of a canard, because if it wasn't Spotify, it would have been, you know, the collapse of the, the American system of something, something, and like, the revenue model for music isn't a sacrosanct thing that we have to protect.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  And that the music now might be the promotion for the product, and the product is the schwag and the tours.

• 52:23Nilay Patel?

  The product is Taylor Swift. No, I mean, like, to be, to be really blunt, the product is just Taylor Swift, right? And the things, like, she has a line of, like, bed linens. She has.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Already?

• 52:34Nilay Patel?

  Right, she has Diet Coke ads, like, no, I went through, when I wrote that Vox article, I went through and, and, and looked at all the things that Taylor Smart, Taylor Smart, Taylor Swift has a trademark for, Taylor Mark.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  That's the footnote we should put on this whole thing, too. We keep saying Taylor Swift and she, but really, when we were talking about Taylor Swift, there's Taylor Swift, the person who's singing, and the thing, the thing that we're talking about when we say Taylor Swift is.

• 52:57Nilay Patel?

  No, I called the guy, it's funny how much I know.

• 52:59Speaker 02

  It's hundreds of people.

• 53:00Nilay Patel?

  No, it's funny how much I know, it's ridiculous. Like, I called the guy at Forbes who put her on, like, the most wealthy artist list, and I don't forget what the exact number is and what her number is.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  My God, you can buy Taylor Swift bedding at Walgreens?

• 53:11Nilay Patel?

  You can.

• 53:15Nilay Patel?

  Hype check Apple Pay.

• 53:16Speaker 03

  I've used it. It's awesome. It's quick.

• 53:18Nilay Patel?

  I've used it. Review. Uh, no, but here's the thing. Um, I called, so I called the guy at Forbes, like does this list? And I was like, tell me where her money comes from. And he's, you know, he's like this proprietarian, it's her Forbes thing, but I quoted him. It's safe to say that the vast majority of Taylor Swift's money comes from licensing and endorsements and not music. And so what we're really arguing about right now is not whether Taylor Swift, like can support her lifestyle in the back of 1989. It's whether she can get richer, right? Like, should, like, is this work that, is it? Are we saying that like music has so much more intrinsic value than Taylor? Like, that's the argument we're having. Like, what is the value of this thing?

• 54:00Nilay Patel?

  But for Taylor Swift, it's why am I not maximizing what I think should be more value, right? Why is this music worth less to the world than like my bed sheet line? And that's a fair question for it to ask. And ultimately, I think from the consumer perspective, the answer is simple. The answer is like, I just want to use one app to listen to my music.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  Agreed.

• 54:18Nilay Patel?

  And Spotify should just sell me Taylor Swift's album. If that's how she wants to.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 54:23Nilay Patel?

  If she wants to do it that way, Spotify should just give up on this idealism against her business model.

• 54:28Speaker 02

  Do you, well, do you think it's also a, an idea of brand value too, right? Where it's like, again, if, if this is promotion for all of her other things out in the world and you look at, and Taylor Swift, it's weird because it, there's a team that is around Taylor Swift.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yo, you can get so much cool Taylor Swift shit.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  I mean, the person at the core is also a brilliant person too, right? And then you look at somebody who is, the other people who are as brilliant as she is, uh, you look at Beyonce or Jay-Z too. Who have built these industries around their thing. And the music is not what they're making all their money off of.

• 55:03Nilay Patel?

  Absolutely not.

• 55:03Speaker 02

  But Beyonce still packages her music in a way that has tremendous value, right? Because it, when you buy the Beyonce album on iTunes or whatever, you're buying like a very like high end product is what it felt like. So then when you buy other Beyonce products, you associate it with like, oh, she is of a certain quality. She has, her things represent value, represent quality. Is that the same thing with this Taylor Swift, like coming out of Spotify that?

• 55:30Nilay Patel?

  No, I just think we're, we're in the middle of a, like, we're in the middle of a, and we were connecting it actually earlier today, Dieter connected net neutrality.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Dude, you can get, you can get 33% off. You can get $5 off, uh, Taylor Swift Fearless Blackberry Curve 8330 phone

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  How do you sell that?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  It's only $9.99.

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  How do you have respect for yourself and sell Curve cases with your face on it?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  You can get one for the original Motorola Droid 2.

• 55:56Nilay Patel?

  I mean, I

• 55:56Speaker 01

  No, not Droid 2, the original Motorola Droid, comma, also.

• 56:01Nilay Patel?

  Uh, come on, man.

• 56:02Speaker 03

  You're way too deep in this.

• 56:03Nilay Patel?

  No, it's like, like store.taylorswift.com is where Taylor Swift makes her money.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Store dot

• 56:08Speaker 03

  So, wait, wait, wait, Neil, I want to know what your vision of the way forward is.

• 56:12Nilay Patel?

  I think we're, I, and I really should just write this down.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Put it on the website.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  I should put it on the website.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  We're on the website right now, technically.

• 56:20Nilay Patel?

  Right? We're, we're everything. We're all, we're all things.

• 56:23Speaker 03

  We are everything and we are the future.

• 56:25Nilay Patel?

  No, we're in the, in a moment and you can connect it directly to net neutrality, right? We're in a moment where unbundling threatens every established media interest in the world. And music, interestingly enough, has gotten unbundled to the point of listens. I think video got unbundled way faster because people were very rarely buying like whole videos, right? So that, the economics of that were like understood by the industry. So now like YouTube views are like a thing, right? And so like Taylor Swift makes more money on Viva, which is hosted on YouTube, which by the way, partnered with Google, which when you type in Taylor Swift, sends you to YouTube, like, there's a whole little circle of life there, right? Uh, and you can see how she's playing into it.

• 57:06Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 57:06Nilay Patel?

  Um, so like, yeah, we know how to monetize video views.

• 57:10Speaker 03

  Right.

• 57:10Nilay Patel?

  As an industry, as a society.

• 57:11Speaker 03

  So it's, the streaming price is gonna raise? Like, is that what's gonna happen? Am I gonna pay $20 a month for Spotify instead of 10?

• 57:17Nilay Patel?

  But like, just on the meta point is, is everything gets unbundled as consumer preferences shift towards like more and more unbundled things. Like what you're getting is all the old media companies and the access industries struggling to find ways to preserve the bundle or create new bundles. So like, the net neutrality fight is about the ability to create new bundles of things. Right? Like you can buy faster YouTube and faster Netflix, but we'll slow down Apple. And like, here's the tier that has that. And if you want the next one, you can buy the next one.

• 57:46Speaker 03

  So why is it that, why, why is it that streaming videos is, uh, you know, more profitable than streaming music?

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Uh, because Higher ad rates, because there's way more attention on the ads.

• 57:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, but if Taylor Swift has 50 million plays on Spotify, doesn't that mean something?

• 58:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, no, but so nobody knows the like, think of like

• 58:06Nilay Patel?

  in the history of the world, no one has ever monetized a listen of a song like no one has ever like tried to assign a value to that. Like that's what Spotify is trying to do.

• 58:16Speaker 03

  They listen to the song on YouTube with like the lyrics on the screen.

• 58:19Nilay Patel?

  Right, but it's it's YouTube, right? Like, right, it's all like YouTube has different deals. Vivo is a creation of the record industry.

• 58:26Speaker 03

  Right, but if the numbers are there in Spotify, shouldn't there be some sort of balance created there too?

• 58:31Speaker 01

  I think the thing that we have to like.

• 58:33Nilay Patel?

  YouTube and Vivo are owned by like gigantic companies.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Right, all right, you hang on, hang on. You've been ranting for a good 45 minutes about the dynamics of the music industry. And I think that the thing, the actual thing to say that to sum up that 45 minutes is the dynamics of how the music industry is changing because of the internet are that a bunch of people are going to make a lot less money.

• 58:52Nilay Patel?

  Maybe. But the answer is just maybe.

• 58:55Speaker 03

  Probably because that's also because of ton of external, external factors that are you don't, you don't buy an album anymore and put it on a record vinyl and listen to it with your friends. A vinyl or a CD.

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Actually, actually vinyl sales are have started growing again.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  When in history would you buy a record and put it on a vinyl?

• 59:13Speaker 03

  You know what I'm trying to say?

• 59:14Nilay Patel?

  I don't actually, I'm very confused.

• 59:16Speaker 03

  You're trolling me. Basically, what I'm trying to say is that.

• 59:18Nilay Patel?

  Hype check this description.

• 59:20Speaker 03

  I you I've lost my train of thought.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  He makes artisan, you know, hipster vinyls in his apartment. He hand crafts them.

• 59:27Nilay Patel?

  He's got a knife. He's like drawing the grills. And Chris, what do you think? Sam, I want you to finish your thought and then I want to hear Chris. Go ahead.

• 59:34Speaker 03

  I I just, I would like to know why you like YouTube and Vivo and all of those things exist. And I'm happy to pay Spotify $10 a month to get my streaming music. I I it's it's confusing to me why playing a thing on a youtube.com, you know, HTML5 player is different than listening to an app on Spotify.

• 59:55Nilay Patel?

  No, but I can answer your question, right? Because YouTube is a bundle of different kinds of media. And some of that media subsidizes the other media. So the ad rates for movies on YouTube are at like video. Shows, videos on YouTube are higher than the ad rates.

• 1:00:10Speaker 03

  So you're saying it's because YouTube has music, YouTube has music videos, YouTube has shows, YouTube has original content.

• 1:00:14Nilay Patel?

  So YouTube makes a ton of money, so they have multiple revenue streams and those revenue streams can balance each other out so that they can run a small business against music and a big business against whatever, right? Spotify just has the one. And so they're really jealously protective of it and they are not, they haven't diversified their revenue stream and they're struggling to figure it out. And I think their idealism about what their business model should be is what's keeping them from winning.

• 1:00:39Speaker 03

  So what should it be?

• 1:00:39Nilay Patel?

  I mean, they should diversify, right? They should also sell the music. They should have other kinds of services. They should like, they should try to be a, they should do what businesses do. They should mitigate their risk. Right? Because what Taylor Swift represents to them is a huge risk, right? And they don't have any answers to that risk.

• 1:00:54Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:00:55Nilay Patel?

  And that's fine. I just think like, I mean, I look, I think Spotify is, is like, as an app, like as a user experience is like hot garbage. Like it, I use it because they have the most stuff. If they stop having the most stuff, like I'll walk away from them. Right? But if you like, the VP of Ardea was like tweeting this morning. He's like, the music industry is so stupid. They're so mad about the deals they made with these companies, they don't pay them anything. And it's because they're afraid of their own consumer. The music industry is constantly afraid of music listeners because what they know is that music listeners don't, they don't value the product as highly as they want them to.

• 1:01:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:01:28Nilay Patel?

  And they've only ever been good at forcing them into windows where they have to pay high amounts for bundles. All right. And so what we're, the project, like, and I call it a project because it's like happening over time and we're all deciding is how much is it, how much is it worth?

• 1:01:40Speaker 03

  How much does a play worth?

• 1:01:41Nilay Patel?

  To listen to a song.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Right. And listening to a song in a subway is very different than sitting on your couch and consuming a movie or consuming a TV show.

• 1:01:48Nilay Patel?

  So Spotify set one number. The music industry wants that number to be higher and consumers have kind of said like, maybe it's just zero.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  The Wall Street Journal has just reported that, uh, the US Justice Department owns a bunch of Cessna aircraft and they have put fake cell phone towers on them called dirt boxes. They fly them around major metro areas and they use it so that your cell phone attaches to their dirt boxes instead of to your, your cell phone carrier. So that they can use it to track and identify criminals.

• 1:02:15Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:02:16Nilay Patel?

  Dirt box.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Just FYI.

• 1:02:17Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  That, that, that's happening.

• 1:02:18Nilay Patel?

  I've checked dirt boxes.

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  That is a pile of bullshit.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically it means that they can, they can like gather information about your location without having to issue a subpoena to the phone companies.

• 1:02:32Speaker 03

  And then presumably they're connected to the NSA and they can just get you regardless.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, let's not, let's not over, you know.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Let's not overreach as much as our government.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I don't know, this, this just came out and it's wild. That's why I was like bending down and looking at my computers and listening to you guys talk about music.

• 1:02:51Speaker 03

  It just, the name even sounds gross. Dirt boxes. We'll get them with our dirt boxes.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:57Speaker 03

  That's Scooby Doo from the 60s, ladies and gentlemen.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  I will say that David is just, it just hate tweeting me right now.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:03:08Speaker 02

  I agree with you.

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 1:03:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I, I think the one other thing, if you're gonna talk about all the, the great unbundling, the book you're eventually going to write after you write this one post about Taylor Swift.

• 1:03:19Speaker 01

  Gonna do it, guys.

• 1:03:19Speaker 02

  First actually that, is that the idea that the artist was not paid, especially as a middle income entity.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:29Speaker 02

  Until the last 60 years or so, and that it was always a very weird, fragile thing that that existed. And now we live in a time where it makes even more sense, but on an individual basis.

• 1:03:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:43Speaker 02

  So, every, the, the great thing that is happening now is tools. When, when you, these big companies, any CMS, or Chorus if you work for us, uh, Twitter or Facebook.

• 1:03:55Speaker 01

  Somewhere Trey just like got a dollar.

• 1:03:58Speaker 02

  They're all distribution tools, but then you have like great ways to make video with your computer, and you have great ways to make music with your computer, and all these things that used to require multiple people, if not dozens of people, if not hundreds of people, to take care of. PR, like we, we have indie video games where you can make the game on your computer, you can send emails to all the press because there's a press listserv that's publicly available to you, you can just throw screenshots and video, which we used to take hours, if not days, to get all that handled. One person can handle all that while they're making their game. So now one person can do the whole process. When you talk about these companies that want to make more money off Taylor Swift, again, it's not, it's not just Taylor Swift.

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  It's these large companies that want to be the company that's making money off of the talent and off of the product. And you see it everywhere. I mean, we were gonna talk about Amazon and his shit, right? And that's literally two companies who are both fighting over, no, I want to be the person who's making money off of the person who's writing that. No, I played a bigger role in that person's success. Sure, you edited them, but I just rode them.

• 1:05:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:02Speaker 02

  And, and really, we're getting closer and closer to a point where theoretically, hopefully, it's just the talent has a direct line.

• 1:05:10Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  And it will never be foldy there, obviously, but that shift is happening so fast. And distribution companies are the ones who are obviously trying to take advantage of it.

• 1:05:21Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  Because that's the last line, right?

• 1:05:24Nilay Patel?

  And if you, and if you look at all of the battles, it has always been the publishers of whatever versus the distribution networks, right? That's a Viacom versus Google on YouTube. Fundamentally, that's Amazon. What are your notes for Amazon versus Hachette? I'm dying to know.

• 1:05:37Speaker 02

  Wait a second. Amazon and Hachette. Oh, always read it as mushet, like machete. And then I said, that's all good for Christmas, right?

• 1:05:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:48Speaker 02

  No, good for Christmas, right? Because, uh, because they had to get the deal done before Christmas because that's when you're gonna get a touchdown. I've read about this.

• 1:05:58Nilay Patel?

  What else you got?

• 1:05:58Speaker 02

  Uh, let's see. Spotify, no, I wrote Spotify, Taylor Swift.

• 1:06:04Nilay Patel?

  Spotify.

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  Um, no, that's dumb.

• 1:06:11Speaker 02

  For some reason, I wrote lollipop, lollipop, lolly, lolly, lolly, lollipop, pow.

• 1:06:19Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:06:19Nilay Patel?

  Stop how it's.

• 1:06:21Speaker 02

  I can't do that.

• 1:06:22Nilay Patel?

  Really? It's really?

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  I can make my tongue into like three little circles. Well, uh, Microsoft band would be better if it was a Microsoft employee band. Think about it.

• 1:06:34Nilay Patel?

  I like how these notes are actually one-line jokes.

• 1:06:36Speaker 02

  I do, I just, I, it's like, I don't stop and I don't look for typos. VSCO on iPad, the rise of the uncles and grandmas.

• 1:06:45Nilay Patel?

  What?

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, what?

• 1:06:48Nilay Patel?

  Oh, because they use the iPad to take pictures and so now they can take VSCO and actually...

• 1:06:52Speaker 02

  When you're on vacation, they make it nice.

• 1:06:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:55Speaker 02

  Oh, and just we were gonna talk about does Twitter have a secret weapon for alienating trolls? And I wrote, no, fuck them. Twitter fucking sucks. And I make it makes money off hate. Seriously, fuck them.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  Well, that's the thing is they actually they were actually preemptively censoring hate speech.

• 1:07:11Speaker 02

  Yes, and I still get it constantly.

• 1:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  And when I I had a sharp turn with I do we already talk about this? How I like have filed complaints to Twitter?

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and and they don't give a shit.

• 1:07:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:07:22Speaker 02

  And it's like, no.

• 1:07:23Nilay Patel?

  Now, there's a tool on the back end where they're like doing it. Do you see this?

• 1:07:26Speaker 02

  Yes, I I saw it, but I don't believe it. I I've been getting shit all day.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  That's part of the thing is they only they only did it for some relatively famous, um, like, uh, people in the politicians in the UK right before they did a Twitter visit.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  So I need I need this now.

• 1:07:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:42Speaker 02

  I want to see it.

• 1:07:43Speaker 01

  But no, but it's all but there's anyway.

• 1:07:45Speaker 02

  I'm just.

• 1:07:46Speaker 01

  We should we should wrap up. It's been over an hour.

• 1:07:49Speaker 03

  The first episode of Scooby Doo aired in 1969. Boom, the 60s. I was right without even looking at Wikipedia.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  Who is wait, who is the that the voice of Scooby Doo?

• 1:07:58Nilay Patel?

  Here's what I want to know about you right now. Are you kind of sad that your laptop is closed? Are you kind of wondering when you're gonna open it again?

• 1:08:05Speaker 03

  I can just do this.

• 1:08:06Nilay Patel?

  Are you worried Slack won't reconnect when you when you turn your wifi turns back?

• 1:08:10Speaker 03

  Look, I was just really proud of myself that I knew a fact.

• 1:08:13Nilay Patel?

  No, it's good. It was like a there was like a Foley effect. There was like a whole thing going on like the sound. No, it's a good fact.

• 1:08:18Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:08:19Nilay Patel?

  I've checked Scooby Doo.

• 1:08:20Speaker 03

  Again, two thumbs up. Beef, double beef. Two pieces of beef.

• 1:08:26Nilay Patel?

  All right, that that I think is our show.

• 1:08:29Speaker 03

  Uh, Alexis Ohanian is back at Reddit. That's huge.

• 1:08:31Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, we should do it for two seconds.

• 1:08:33Speaker 03

  Two seconds.

• 1:08:33Nilay Patel?

  It's executive chairman. Reddit has had, uh, what I would call. Uh, just a bad year. Sam's doing a wavy thing.

• 1:08:39Speaker 03

  A roller coaster.

• 1:08:40Nilay Patel?

  I would say mostly just a bad year. It's not a roller coaster. Like, they're they're not going.

• 1:08:45Speaker 02

  Is that a roller coaster or are you clubbing?

• 1:08:47Speaker 03

  I'm raving. Friday nights.

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  Sorry. It's Thursday.

• 1:08:51Nilay Patel?

  Hey, we're going out tonight. Are you coming?

• 1:08:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:08:53Nilay Patel?

  It's a Virg's third birthday party now. We're going out. We're taking New York by storm.

• 1:08:56Speaker 03

  Hashtag happy birthday, Virg.

• 1:08:58Nilay Patel?

  Going to one bar for a couple hours.

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  We'll be done by nine.

• 1:09:02Nilay Patel?

  That'll be cool.

• 1:09:03Speaker 03

  Alexis is back at Reddit, which is really interesting because he left Reddit.

• 1:09:07Nilay Patel?

  So, uh, um, ethics and games journalism.

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:09:11Nilay Patel?

  I will say Alexis makes a show with us called.

• 1:09:14Speaker 03

  Oh, yes.

• 1:09:15Nilay Patel?

  You know him. It's a fact.

• 1:09:17Speaker 03

  Yep. Cool dude. Nice dude.

• 1:09:18Nilay Patel?

  Went on his book tour. He's a nice guy, but Reddit has had a really bad year.

• 1:09:22Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 1:09:22Nilay Patel?

  Their CEO put out that crazy, like every man is a nation.

• 1:09:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:27Nilay Patel?

  Whatever the hell that meant. Uh, and they, they had the same problem.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  He like misread John Donne is what happened.

• 1:09:32Nilay Patel?

  Um, go ahead.

• 1:09:35Speaker 01

  No, I'm done.

• 1:09:38Nilay Patel?

  Uh, uh, no, but Reddit, the fappening, like Reddit is also this platform for like abuse and crazy and all this stuff. It's true.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  You hear that word? It's just, it's so gross.

• 1:09:48Nilay Patel?

  It's a terrible word. Uh, anyway, and so he quit and there was an interim CEO and Alexis is back to like run it as executive chairman.

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. And he's going to be like doing things now.

• 1:09:57Nilay Patel?

  We.

• 1:09:58Speaker 03

  Mobile experience. I mean, that's what he says, but.

• 1:10:00Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. I don't know. I'm gonna, we'll, we'll talk to Alexis and see what he says.

• 1:10:04Speaker 03

  It's interesting. It's really interesting. Yeah.

• 1:10:06Nilay Patel?

  It's a thing. Okay.

• 1:10:07Speaker 01

  My girlfriend says I can't buy Taylor Swift sheets.

• 1:10:11Nilay Patel?

  I think that everyone's girlfriends.

• 1:10:16Nilay Patel?

  No matter who you are, where you are in your life, like your orientation, whatever, like when you presented your, is it gonna be another word? Like, can I?

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  I wasn't going to.

• 1:10:25Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  I just, yeah.

• 1:10:27Nilay Patel?

  If you're in a relationship where the answer is like, yes, I wish to sleep with you.

• 1:10:33Nilay Patel?

  Run, just run.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Please show up tonight with anime waifu. Ben, this is like a full Ben pillow. Like no Taylor Swift, but hey.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  I can do whatever I want.

• 1:10:44Nilay Patel?

  Let's send here. Hype check. Hype check BMW i8.

• 1:10:47Speaker 03

  That thing is fucking hot.

• 1:10:49Nilay Patel?

  That's our show, everybody. By the way, you should read the i8 review on the, on the site. Chris went and did it with our amazing video team.

• 1:10:55Speaker 03

  Yeah. Chris Ziegler, not Plant.

• 1:10:57Nilay Patel?

  Chris, no, sorry. Plant did nothing.

• 1:10:58Speaker 02

  Thanks. Like always. It's like I do all the show up. What's that one? Technology?

• 1:11:05Speaker 03

  Video games.

• 1:11:07Nilay Patel?

  There are many, many ways for us to be engaged with.

• 1:11:12Speaker 03

  I know you're there's Snapchat.

• 1:11:14Nilay Patel?

  You're just saying.

• 1:11:14Speaker 03

  Snapchat. We're the Real Verge on Snapchat. We're on Instagram. We're at Verge on Instagram.

• 1:11:19Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  We're on Twitter. We're at Verge on Twitter. You can read us on theverge.com.

• 1:11:22Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 1:11:22Speaker 03

  You should also go on iTunes and rate the podcast five stars.

• 1:11:26Nilay Patel?

  Wait, no, no, no, no, no. Don't do the podcast. The podcast one is mine. The iTunes one is mine.

• 1:11:30Speaker 03

  Take it. It's yours.

• 1:11:31Nilay Patel?

  You can have all the other channels.

• 1:11:32Speaker 03

  Hit us up on all the social channels and I will snap you back if you snap me.

• 1:11:34Nilay Patel?

  But here's what I know. The Bee for Bus troll on iTunes is one of the best things the listeners of the Vergecast have ever done. So I would like to continue this troll by giving you another task.

• 1:11:46Speaker 03

  Here we go.

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Oh, this is interesting.

• 1:11:47Nilay Patel?

  I have to quickly think of what that task is.

• 1:11:50Speaker 02

  Oh, I actually had one.

• 1:11:50Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:51Speaker 02

  It was about, it was about the thing that we were thinking about piloting next week. If people wanted it, they could say a yea or nay and leave a review.

• 1:11:57Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  So, yeah, shall I do that?

• 1:11:59Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:59Speaker 02

  So we're thinking about piloting another show.

• 1:12:02Nilay Patel?

  A Chris Plant show.

• 1:12:03Speaker 02

  I shit you not. It's called What's Tech? starring Chris Plant, where I don't know what technology is.

• 1:12:09Nilay Patel?

  That name is up in the air.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  What's Tech? No, What's Tech's great. And I'm gonna get, there's all these brilliant, talented people in the office.

• 1:12:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:16Speaker 02

  I'm going to talk to them about these things that they know a tremendous amount about. I want to make it easier for people who maybe are afraid to ask what an HTC is. What's a DLC or HBO? And each episode is going to answer really interesting questions. I'm going to probably talk to Ben Popper about drones. We're going to talk some more about net neutrality.

• 1:12:35Nilay Patel?

  That's what the people want from iTunes.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  If you, if you are interested at all, leave a review, make it five stars and say yes. And if you really don't want it, say no, but leave five stars on the podcast. And, and let us know and send it to me and I'll still make you a gift.

• 1:12:50Speaker 03

  We are actively asking people to leave a review for this podcast saying, I want another podcast.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:57Speaker 03

  Is that kind of a bad review?

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  No, that's great. They want more.

• 1:13:00Nilay Patel?

  What they're saying is they want more.

• 1:13:01Speaker 02

  It's so good. They want even more.

• 1:13:03Nilay Patel?

  And it accomplishes my goal of getting Chris off of this podcast.

• 1:13:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:13:07Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm kidding.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  We can have both. It's like more Scrappy Doo. Everybody wanted the Scrappy Show. No?

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  It was always pretty exciting when it was a Scrappy Doo show.

• 1:13:14Nilay Patel?

  I'm saying Scrappy Doo.

• 1:13:16Speaker 03

  He's alright.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Once they gave Scrappy a whole show, it's a ruin. It's like, it's a special treat when you get him.

• 1:13:25Nilay Patel?

  That unfortunately has been our show. I would say a real collection of feels on the show. There was a stabbing, potentially.

• 1:13:34Nilay Patel?

  There were some politics. And there's Taylor Swift. The Vergecast, everybody. Goodnight.

• 1:13:38Speaker 02

  Bye. Bye.

• 1:13:39Speaker 03

  Bye.