Worldwide!

Shoutout to music! Shoutout to stars! Shoutout to hearts! This week on The Vergecast, Nilay, Dieter, and Emily are joined by Racked's Nicola Fumo in the hype seat to discuss Apple Music, Beats 1 radio, the cultural force that is Magic Mike XXL, and the fate of comments. Crank it up and get ready to join us in motivational chants. 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.

• 0:05Nilay Patel?

  Hello. Hey. Welcome to the Vergecast.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:09Nilay Patel?

  How's it going?

• 0:10Speaker 01

  Hello.

• 0:11Nilay Patel?

  So Emily's here.

• 0:13Speaker 02

  100 countries around the world.

• 0:17Nilay Patel?

  Worldwide.

• 0:18Speaker 02

  Always on. Always on.

• 0:20Nilay Patel?

  Except for that half hour.

• 0:23Speaker 02

  Shout out to Rome. Shout out to Surrey. Shout out to Bristol.

• 0:27Nilay Patel?

  No, you can't just say English phrases. You have to say random.

• 0:31Speaker 02

  Shout out to my parents in New Zealand.

• 0:35Nilay Patel?

  Oklahoma repping.

• 0:37Speaker 02

  Wisconsin.

• 0:40Nilay Patel?

  So this is our show.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Sorry. I'm awake.

• 0:45Nilay Patel?

  That's good. Emily's had like, she was real down. She literally switched headphones off of Beats 1 and onto her Vergecast headphones and then started screaming in a British accent.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:56Nilay Patel?

  So this is the Vergecast. It is July 1, which I was informed earlier today is the current date. I'm here. Dieter's here. Hi. Emily, I think you've heard.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  I'm present.

• 1:08Nilay Patel?

  Shout out to Bristol. And then in the hype seat, celebrating our nation's independence, Nicola Fumo from Racked. How's it going? Yeah.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  I'm kinda tired. But it's gonna be okay.

• 1:22Nilay Patel?

  Just do some shout outs and station IDs.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  I love the idea of doing jumping jacks or some kind of like, something to get my blood pumping, but I neglected to do that.

• 1:29Nilay Patel?

  You're just do this, do me this one favor. Just scream the world, the word worldwide as loud as you can.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  I don't think I'm gonna do that.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  Do it!

• 1:38Nilay Patel?

  I think, look, I think if Apple is gonna try to do like, you know, worldwide monoculture radio, I think what we can accomplish on this podcast right now is that at this moment, everybody who's listening to it is gonna scream the world, the word worldwide.

• 1:54Speaker 01

  We can do it all together.

• 1:56Nilay Patel?

  You wanna do it in three?

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Wait, are you gonna trick me though?

• 1:58Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm not gonna trick you. It'll be one, two, three, worldwide. Ready?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  Okay, but you know I'm gonna like, pause and wait for everyone else to do it because I know I'm gonna be tricked.

• 2:05Nilay Patel?

  No, this is a place of trust. Ready? Ready? You ready? One, two, three. Worldwide! See, people like randomly, people in their cars are just screaming this all over the place.

• 2:17Speaker 02

  That's not gonna be the last time that I say that word during this podcast. Just a fair warning.

• 2:22Nilay Patel?

  Uh, I think there's a real chance the hype seed is located wherever Emily is screaming worldwide. Uh, so it's a merge cast. It's, uh, obviously we're doing it. We're recording a day early, uh, cause short week, holiday coming at the end of the week. But there's really one thing that happened this week that is big news and we're just gonna talk about it for a while. And then I know Nicola has some ideas about Magic Mike that she'd like to discuss.

• 2:43Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you were gonna say it was Magic Mike.

• 2:45Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah, no, it should be. We're not gonna talk about Apple Music. We're just doing an hour of Magic Mike.

• 2:49Speaker 03

  Speaking of music, Luxury Singleton has just posted an exclusive scoop that Facebook is talking to music labels.

• 2:55Nilay Patel?

  Everyone, everyone with the same bad idea. How about this business that looks terrible? Let's get into it.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:01Nilay Patel?

  But anyways, Apple Music launched. I will say yesterday was a, um, it was just a weird day. Like we, like the world listened to the radio together. Like it was the, the thirties or something.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  It was great.

• 3:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. You need to get closer to this microphone.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  It was, it was great. I don't know. I feel like, uh, I mean, the, I think the thing, we can get into more of the nitty gritty about Beats, Beats One.

• 3:22Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Speaker 02

  But, uh, I thought it was, I mean, I, I, I think it's sort of funny when people are like, why would I, why would I, uh, hashtag a tweet to request a song when I can just look it up on Apple Music if I want to hear it? It's like, that kind of takes away from the effervescence of what radio is like the.

• 3:43Nilay Patel?

  Participatory.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And it's like, the, the appeal of requesting a song on, like, they have one request show, but I think, uh, I think Ebro is also doing requests to like, kind of informally, um, the appeal of that is not, I want to hear the song and this is the only way I can hear it. It's like, you wanna kind of put your stamp out in the world in some way or another, just by requesting a song that you like. And, and, uh, you know, I, I, I think that there's still a lot of appeal to that. I think there's more appeal to that now that everything's so segmented in the way that we listen to music. So it was really interesting. I mean, it's not like perfect, it's not a perfect listening experience by any means, but, um, I think it was cool.

• 4:22Nilay Patel?

  Well, we have like a moment. So we, obviously there's many pieces of this for us to cover, right? There's like a new app and a new service and it, but then there was also like, this radio station is gonna start for the first time, which is a strange occurrence. Like it doesn't happen a lot.

• 4:38Speaker 03

  And so we like set up this.

• 4:39Nilay Patel?

  It happens all the time.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 4:43Nilay Patel?

  Giant radio stations have to get launched all the time.

• 4:46Speaker 03

  Not, not, I don't think that happens all the time.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  They get, they switch over.

• 4:48Nilay Patel?

  They switch over, they get bought, they get, they, they switch formats, they relaunch.

• 4:52Speaker 03

  But they're never for like the first, like, I can think of four or five radio stations in Chicago that did all that, but it was always like, there was always a lot of continuity. Right? It wasn't like the radio station didn't exist and then they like literally flipped it on and they were like excited to like have it.

• 5:06Nilay Patel?

  Right. I guess like my formative like musical experience was a radio station launching in the Twin Cities.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 5:13Nilay Patel?

  What was that?

• 5:13Speaker 03

  It was, uh, Rev 105.

• 5:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 5:16Speaker 03

  And then they got shut down because they got bought by Clear Channel.

• 5:19Nilay Patel?

  That's what happened.

• 5:19Speaker 03

  And then like 15 years later, um, uh, the current like took the people that used to run Rev 105 and brought them over to public radio and launched a music station again. And it was a big deal.

• 5:30Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  But yeah, Rev 105 was a huge deal in the Twin Cities.

• 5:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Mine was Q101, which like was the biggest deal in Chicago. And then it was shut down. They turned into a talk radio station. And then it now it's on like 91 something and they just moved it.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Right.

• 5:43Nilay Patel?

  But I don't know. Anyway, none of it like, I just think it was like a moment. Like we set up a speaker. We were all listening to it. They were playing Brian Eno for a long time. I got a lot of notes from other people who work at our company who don't work at The Verge. And like, why are you just playing tones at us?

• 5:58Nilay Patel?

  And then I literally, once, once they started, they started with a lot of yelling from Zane Lowe and like rock music. And I just got a note from one of our product managers, actually Racks product manager Elliot, who was like, literally all it said is what is your strategy here right now?

• 6:13Nilay Patel?

  It's like, we're just listening to this Apple thing.

• 6:15Speaker 02

  Cold. Wait, asking us about our strategy?

• 6:18Nilay Patel?

  No, he was, cause it was just his, cause he was just like, we were disturbing every, cause you're blasting music in the office, right?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:23Nilay Patel?

  At like 9am or it was noon, at noon. And he was just like, what is the strategy right now? Like, what are you doing?

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Did they hate us all while we were, I mean?

• 6:32Nilay Patel?

  They, they, then they, then they realized it was a big Apple thing and then they started reading all of our coverage.

• 6:36Speaker 02

  Ah, okay.

• 6:37Nilay Patel?

  Like the idea that we were just like blasting like an English DJ and rock music. They were like, what, what's?

• 6:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's not even just like playing music. You're playing a guy yelling about music. Yeah. There's a lot of yelling.

• 6:47Nilay Patel?

  But that was like a moment. I thought that, that's actually of all the Apple music stuff. I, somebody tweeted at me. Earlier today, it's like, what is with the wall to wall Beats One coverage? And I, that's just the more interesting piece of this.

• 6:58Speaker 03

  Well, I mean, Beats One has the potential to be the most important radio station on the planet. Like, there's, yeah, there's other, there's other like streaming internet radio stations that are worldwide, 24/7, worldwide. Uh, but not with the, not with a giant frickin' huge button and free to everybody that has an iPhone.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  There's nothing that does, that's this convenient to listen to that you can have on your mobile device. And now you can have on your desktop. That was the big thing that was annoying yesterday is you had to listen to it on your phone.

• 7:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  But yeah, I mean, like, I, yeah, I think you can still, I actually haven't even looked for a really long time. But I know that iTunes used to have the thing where you go through all the different, these different streaming stations. And I used to listen to those a lot, but like, I don't, I feel like they've kind of phased that out, but yeah.

• 7:45Nilay Patel?

  They're, they're, they're in the Apple Music app on the phone. Oh, really? Scroll down, you can, you get to like, alternative in country. So next, have you played with this app?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:53Nilay Patel?

  What do you think?

• 7:54Speaker 01

  I did it just for this.

• 7:55Nilay Patel?

  I know you did.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Um, I liked the bubbles and you can pick what you like.

• 7:59Nilay Patel?

  You like the bubbles? What'd you pick?

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Like, it was like double tap hip hop and like one tap R and B. And then it's like, hey, which artists do you like? And then it says the bubbles, the artists. It's like, oh, one tap Future, one tap Nicki Minaj, whatever. And then more and more, and then it made me some playlists.

• 8:15Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  And I listened to one of them called Ride in Shotgun. Which opened with, uh, collard greens, which was suitable and to my interests, based on the buttons that I had tapped. And I felt good. It was fun.

• 8:32Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What was the next one?

• 8:34Speaker 01

  Um, then I listened to Young Jock.

• 8:36Nilay Patel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  But I picked that.

• 8:37Nilay Patel?

  To hip hop.

• 8:38Speaker 01

  And I actually was, I was like, oh, this sounds different than Spotify. And I asked Dan, I was like, are these, is this different now? Is this better? Because it sounded much more nuanced.

• 8:49Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  My Young Jock song did, yeah.

• 8:53Nilay Patel?

  Is there nuance to that?

• 8:55Speaker 01

  I didn't know until today.

• 8:56Nilay Patel?

  All right, fair.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  Um, that's interesting because I feel like if there's one part of Apple Music that I have not explored at all, it's just searching for music, specific songs that I want to hear.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  That actually works okay.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  It works fine.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  I'm fine with it.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  So actually, on the topic of playlists, two things. One, they kept on saying like, intro to so and so. I was like, yeah, I told you that I like so and so. I don't need an intro.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:19Speaker 03

  And then I just want to point out that Lauren Good got recommended a playlist called Mom Jeans.

• 9:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. And it says, it's like, literally the description is like, get comfy with these party hits. And none of that makes sense. Like, none of those three elements should be together in that way.

• 9:41Speaker 02

  Wait, what is it? Is it like, is it like, well, I think of it as like mom's vacuuming music, like feel good eighties, like Carly Simon type stuff.

• 9:49Nilay Patel?

  No, the Fury 7 soundtrack is in there.

• 9:51Speaker 03

  And the Fifty Shades soundtrack, which actually is good.

• 9:53Speaker 02

  That's really weird.

• 9:54Speaker 03

  It's just like a really weird. If this were a Twitter card, I would tell you. Fight Song by Rachel Platten.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Was See You Again was gleeful.

• 10:02Speaker 02

  That's actually kind of interesting that they're labeling all this mom music, because it kind of is.

• 10:08Speaker 03

  See You Again falls into every demographic category.

• 10:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. See You Again has been like, top of the charts. Or I don't know if it still is right now, but it's been on forever, which shocks me. It's so not, it's such a.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  It's a real snoozer.

• 10:19Speaker 02

  It's a real downtempo.

• 10:21Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  But it's kind of. Hype check, that song.

• 10:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  Quite low. Quite low.

• 10:25Speaker 03

  But also high, because it's everywhere. It's a hype paradox.

• 10:29Speaker 02

  Things that many people don't like, don't make them good things.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  But literally, that's hype. Yeah, but there are things that are everywhere that aren't hype.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Hype quantity versus hype quality.

• 10:40Speaker 03

  What is, what is your personal hype formula, I think is the question that we're really grilling into right now.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Um, well, I'd like to think that I'm here as like a hype.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Like tastemaker and not just one to to factually call out these things are by the numbers hype, but to call out these things deserve hype based on.

• 10:59Speaker 02

  It's it's really overrated versus underrated.

• 11:02Nilay Patel?

  No, I think what Nicole's saying is she's more of a.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  But I don't want to be like, I don't want to be very, I don't want to be like, oh, it's popular. So it's not great because some things that are popular are great.

• 11:11Nilay Patel?

  You're more of a qualitative hype checker rather than a quant quant hype.

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. So like.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  And I won't be swayed by the masses.

• 11:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:18Speaker 02

  Like if something's great and everybody loves it, it's properly rated.

• 11:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:23Speaker 02

  And that's fine. That's like the best place you can be.

• 11:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  If you're overrated, then it's like, yeah, you're not that great. You're everybody's going to find out soon.

• 11:30Nilay Patel?

  This is like a real hype matrix that you're constructing. It's like how much you're how popular you are versus your overall, your absolute goodness.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  How much you're appreciated.

• 11:38Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 11:40Nilay Patel?

  Someone make us an app that plots that out for us.

• 11:42Speaker 02

  Um, what did you think? What's the hype check on on Apple pre liking things for you when you're listening to?

• 11:54Nilay Patel?

  Wait, explain to the listener what you mean because I actually didn't get what you're talking about. And so I read this long thing that you read about it that we haven't published yet, but explain what you mean.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah. So a lot of times on Beats One, so when a song comes up on Beats One, sometimes, not all the time, it's not really, I can't really understand why it's available sometimes and not, but you can click on the song and get like the add to my music or favorite it or whatever. And there's like a little red heart, you know, just the same as any other social media thing. And most of the time that's not filled in, you can click the heart if you like the song, but some of them come pre liked for you. I think Ross Miller had this experience with Where Are You Now, Justin Bieber's song.

• 12:35Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Which.

• 12:37Nilay Patel?

  That's a bold pre like.

• 12:38Speaker 03

  Can you see a list of all the likes until you could figure out what was pre liked for you?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know. I that's the other thing is I don't know where this stuff goes unless I add it to my music. I don't know where, what happens to a like if that just informs like my what happens to my recommended playlist and stuff like that. I mean, I guess that's probably it, but it just is like, it's like a thumbs up on Pandora or whatever.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 13:05Nilay Patel?

  I mean, so we actually, do we put up this post today at Teter?

• 13:08Speaker 03

  No, I think we're gonna put it up tomorrow. You can talk about it if you want to.

• 13:10Nilay Patel?

  I'm going to, I'm gonna ruin this post.

• 13:12Speaker 03

  That's fine.

• 13:12Nilay Patel?

  So Nicola, I'm gonna, I'm gonna ask you a series of questions.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:16Nilay Patel?

  I'll set them up. So in Apple Music now, you can, there are two independent rating systems.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:24Nilay Patel?

  There's like five, you know, the stars, yeah, and I T and so they're still there, but they've added hearts.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 13:29Nilay Patel?

  So you now you can give something like two stars and a heart.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  What?

• 13:34Nilay Patel?

  Mind blowing. Like, I don't understand it. Like, I understand it and there's a very pedantic reason.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Is this like emotional versus like emotional?

• 13:40Nilay Patel?

  I don't, I don't wanna tell her. You ruined it. We ruined this joke for like an hour and a half because we told people the reason our staff lied.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:48Nilay Patel?

  So I don't, I'm not telling you why. I'm just saying.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Don't tweet at us right now because we do know what the answer is.

• 13:54Nilay Patel?

  I'm aware of why there are stars and hearts. I'm just saying, can you imagine a world in which you give something one star and a heart? And what song would that be?

• 14:02Speaker 01

  Oh, my God. I mean, almost everything I listen to is like, I'm embarrassed.

• 14:05Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  To admit it. Like, I love, like, God, um, right now.

• 14:12Nilay Patel?

  Just so everybody knows, Nicola is now physically embarrassed. She's like blushing. It looks like she's a little teary.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  What song is in your heart right now? Just tell us.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  I'm thinking about this, I'm thinking about a particular playlist I made this week.

• 14:27Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 14:28Speaker 01

  Uh, that has like a lot of jams on there that are like, what I listen to when I'm alone at home.

• 14:35Nilay Patel?

  Mom, mom jeans songs?

• 14:36Speaker 01

  On repeat.

• 14:38Speaker 02

  Did you get comfy?

• 14:40Speaker 01

  No, it's like the dream, like just lots of like the dream, like knew the dream, very loud.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  And repeated.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  That's fine.

• 14:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, okay.

• 14:49Speaker 02

  The dream's good.

• 14:49Speaker 01

  I feel okay about the dream. There's like this old candy track, like the woman who's on, um, Real Housewives of Atlanta.

• 14:56Speaker 02

  That candy?

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:58Nilay Patel?

  Oh, my God.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  One of those, um. Um, I mean, no, there's definitely music where you're like, I don't want anyone to know.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:05Nilay Patel?

  Wait, so we just said, so one star heart, by the way, which I believe should be the name of my Tumblr and young adult novel series.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  And next band.

• 15:15Nilay Patel?

  Right, one star heart. It's like, good, right? Okay, so what is it? And when we're saying that's music that you love, but you're embarrassed by. And you literally, in thinking of that concept, had a physical reaction of embarrassment and shame, which was amazing. What's a two star heart?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  Two, wait, so you're like, this is good, but I only feel this much about it?

• 15:32Nilay Patel?

  Two out of five, though, so.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Nilay Patel?

  Two out of five, so you give it two out of five stars and a heart?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I feel like any, like Iggy Azalea, anything, pretty much. You're like, this is fine, no hearts.

• 15:41Nilay Patel?

  But why would you, why would you heart that?

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Cause sometimes you get emotional and you have to listen to Iggy Azalea in your house. Iggy season, there are times.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  If there's any situation where Apple Music is like randomly just throwing Iggy Azalea songs at me, I've failed.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  Listen, three months ago, I would have been you and things have changed. Ariana Grande, same thing. Something turned the corner with me. I don't know what happened.

• 16:03Nilay Patel?

  Okay, well, let's go to the other end. So four stars, no heart.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Oh, like this is technically good, but I just have no feelings for it?

• 16:11Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. It's like any, like, Donald Fagen record.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  I'm trying to think of something.

• 16:18Nilay Patel?

  It's rough.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  It's mostly, most of my favorite artists, to be honest, like, I don't want to hear them all the time.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:24Nilay Patel?

  Like, yeah.

• 16:24Speaker 02

  I don't know, I would do that for Bjork. Like, I love Bjork, he's one of my all time favorites, but I don't want to listen to Bjork, like nine times out of 10, like.

• 16:32Nilay Patel?

  But it's like, you know, but you know, you know what the heart means. Once you know what the heart means, it changes the whole game.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  The heart, well, I'm just going by, I'm assuming the heart is stuff that you feel like you feel for.

• 16:44Nilay Patel?

  I think that's, and I think that's what most people, how most people react to hearts.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  And the star is for stuff that you're like, this is technically good. This is proficient.

• 16:50Nilay Patel?

  What's a five star heart?

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Five star, one heart?

• 16:54Nilay Patel?

  You only get one heart. Hearts on or off.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  Oh, oh, so then you're just saving it, I'm assuming. I thought you could five, I thought it was like.

• 17:01Nilay Patel?

  Don't try and game the system. Just tell us what your feelings are.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 17:06Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, see, everyone thinks they know what the heart's for.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  I think it's to save it for later.

• 17:11Nilay Patel?

  No.

• 17:13Nilay Patel?

  It's a good guess.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  I think it's like, this is five stars and let me make sure it's bookmarked.

• 17:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I mean, it's close. It's way, it tells the streaming service what to like, put into the algorithm.

• 17:22Speaker 03

  It says, give me more like this.

• 17:23Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But I just think a world, I think a world in which you can rate anything with three stars and a heart is like crazy. That's like, you're medium, but I love you.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  That's a hype matrix of its own.

• 17:34Nilay Patel?

  That's just, that's just like a really average college relationship.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  What you wanna.

• 17:38Nilay Patel?

  It's like the one you don't remember. It's like the one that didn't matter to you a lot. Cause you have the one in college that like breaks you, but then you have the one just before it. It's like, you know what? I learned about how to like split a check at dinner with you and that was really, really fond memories there. Moving on to this disaster.

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Your fond college memories are way more boring than mine.

• 17:55Nilay Patel?

  No, that's a three star heart. It's like, I fondly remember you and this time together and what? We fucking drifted. Like, I don't know. The next one, that was a wreck. That one made me who I am today.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  One star and heart or five stars and heart?

• 18:09Nilay Patel?

  Three star heart.

• 18:10Speaker 03

  Three star heart.

• 18:11Speaker 02

  There's a really big difference between what you want to listen to and what you like, though. Like, there is. I don't know. Like, I'm like, the bulk of my using these streaming music services is workout music and it's the worst music.

• 18:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 18:24Speaker 02

  But it's what I want to listen to when I'm running. It's, it's like, and that's why when I'm going through doing the bubble thing, when you're giving it your taste, I'm like, well, I should probably click on Zed.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  And I don't like that. Like, it's not, it's not me that I'm defining there. I am defining an experience I want to have.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Well, cause there are a couple of different views when you're listening to music.

• 18:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  You're not always, you don't always have the same taste. Kind of like, you don't always want to eat the same things. Like, that would be weird.

• 18:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. But like, but if you, I've put that, one of the most defining questions of like, who are you is like, what is your favorite food? And that's like I

• 18:59Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 19:00Nilay Patel?

  Huh?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 19:01Nilay Patel?

  It's like in like in the

• 19:02Speaker 03

  Twelve.

• 19:03Nilay Patel?

  No, in like a really like basic, fundamental, like get to know you.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll tell you what, what the real decider is, is whether or not you have a favorite food or not. Cause I know a lot of people who don't, they're like, oh, I don't know. And I'm like, okay, that's a red flag.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  I have like a three, like a top three.

• 19:19Nilay Patel?

  What are your top three?

• 19:20Speaker 01

  Steak, yams and champagne.

• 19:22Nilay Patel?

  That's exactly, you just have a good meal.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:26Nilay Patel?

  Your top three foods are just like a great Saturday.

• 19:28Speaker 01

  Also chocolate chip cookies.

• 19:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Nice night out.

• 19:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  I like what I like in school.

• 19:35Nilay Patel?

  That's pretty good. All right. Did you think the app was messy when you used it?

• 19:39Speaker 01

  Um, I was a lot more, there was a lot, it was asking a lot more of me than I anticipated.

• 19:45Nilay Patel?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  So I opened it up, I was like, all right, cool. Let's do this, whatever. And then I was like, oh, okay, okay. We're gonna like, I'm gonna be here for a minute, setting, setting this up.

• 19:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  Um, there is a lot, there is a lot to click.

• 19:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 03

  Three dot menus.

• 19:58Nilay Patel?

  Everything's hidden. Everything's, everything is a sheet that rolls up.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I was so, I, I remembered that there was the curator thing on it. Like they have, they have these lists that are curated by, you know, like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone and stuff like that. And I remember that was there and it took me several minutes to remember where it was, like what tab it was under, how far I had to scroll down and all that. Like it was under a couple of different sub menus to find that list. It's like, yeah, that's

• 20:23Speaker 03

  Those sub menus are gonna end up moving.

• 20:25Nilay Patel?

  You know what button I really want is when you go into your music and you like, cause it's, I think, I think we are now in a national moment where everyone is rediscovering their iTunes library.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Yep. Uh, we're gonna have a story about that tomorrow.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  Cause I have a bunch of weird stuff on here from when I used iTunes, however long.

• 20:40Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. What's the weirdest, what's the weirdest track you have in there?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Um, I'm looking right now.

• 20:45Nilay Patel?

  Mine is a bunch of like 2007 era, like DJ mixes. And they're just like all terrible and I don't want them anymore, but there they are.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Um, man, I'm trying to decide how much I want to reveal about myself.

• 20:59Nilay Patel?

  You've already revealed.

• 20:59Speaker 03

  No, you're revealing stuff about your 2011 self, so it doesn't count. It's totally fine.

• 21:02Nilay Patel?

  What was your favorite food in 2011?

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Ooh, probably like, um, I loved euros.

• 21:11Speaker 02

  Like a big Euro moment for me.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  Super big upgrade. Steak yams and champagne. Four years ago, those straight Euros out of a cart. By the way, Emily and Nicola are now both just scrolling in horror.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  I'm just trying to figure out where my, where my music that I added from, from Beats is.

• 21:30Speaker 03

  It's hard.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  Like, I can't figure it out for the trending searches. Okay, uh, Big Bang. I'm gonna look, I'm gonna try to get.

• 21:38Nilay Patel?

  Well, so it, the, everybody who's listened to this show has heard me complain endlessly about how confusing Spotify's interface is. And this one is just as confusing in a different set of ways.

• 21:50Speaker 03

  Right.

• 21:51Nilay Patel?

  Right, like you, you have all of these files on your phone that you were once able to sort very easily by like, artist, song, album, and those are the primary organizations of the entire app. And now the primary organization are these tabs.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  Of stuff that Apple wants to show you.

• 22:08Nilay Patel?

  Right, and there's some weird, there's some weird stuff in there, because remember, every time Apple gets you to play a song, somebody gets paid.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  I, I paid for Ain't Too Proud to Beg, I'm finding.

• 22:18Nilay Patel?

  There you go.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  Why did I pay for that? This is really weird.

• 22:21Nilay Patel?

  I have.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  Why did I need it with me?

• 22:23Nilay Patel?

  Everyone's just reacting to iTunes right now.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  I, no, I just, I just can't, like, I, I just added a song and now I don't know where it exists. The only way I can find it is if I search for it.

• 22:34Nilay Patel?

  But it's not, it doesn't go into your library?

• 22:36Speaker 02

  No, it's not in my music.

• 22:38Nilay Patel?

  But it should be.

• 22:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  There's been some people running into that.

• 22:42Nilay Patel?

  The one button that I really want, so anyway, so I have all these like half completed albums in my old iTunes.

• 22:47Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, complete all my albums.

• 22:48Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just finish that, finish everything.

• 22:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:50Nilay Patel?

  And it's just not there. It's like, why wouldn't you just be able to do that for me?

• 22:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:53Nilay Patel?

  That's the main thing it should be able to do.

• 22:55Speaker 03

  Way back in time, you used to be able to, you could go to iTunes and it like, this is like 2010, you could be like, finish my albums, it would cost you, you know, $200 to upsample all the songs that we know are crappy, that we have better versions of, and complete the albums that you have that are uncompleted.

• 23:12Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 23:13Speaker 03

  So I did that like a long time ago.

• 23:15Nilay Patel?

  Long time ago. Like the first iteration of.

• 23:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was like way back in the day.

• 23:19Nilay Patel?

  No, but it's just all these things where the link between what you already have and what Apple can provide to you doesn't exist. And that's like, that's, I think that's the primary failing here because Spotify doesn't have files. It doesn't have your old collection. It can kind of import it, but it's always in a weird little other zone. It sucks.

• 23:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 23:37Nilay Patel?

  It's just like a different, it's a different kind of mess. It's still a huge mess.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  So I have, since I can't actually talk about music, the way you, you folks can, because I'm, I'm bad.

• 23:45Nilay Patel?

  What's your favorite young jock song?

• 23:47Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. Don't, don't make me feel stupid, Neelai. I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say two.

• 23:52Nilay Patel?

  There's no right or wrong.

• 23:53Speaker 03

  I'm gonna say two super, super nerdy things and then we can move on. I have two sick burns about the, the interface. One is that that slide up menu reminds me of the BlackBerry menu.

• 24:02Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 24:03Speaker 03

  And then two, and this isn't really a burn because I kind of like it, is that the whole thing reminds me of the Zune music interface on Windows when it first launched, where there was just like stuff everywhere and like bubbles and squares and colors and artists and you don't know where you are. Like, that's how I feel often in this.

• 24:19Nilay Patel?

  That Zune interface is really bad. I don't think anybody remembers this. The Zune did.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  I think I saw someone with a Zune on the subway the other day.

• 24:25Nilay Patel?

  Nicola, I own a Joy Division Zune. It is the most wonderful and embarrassing thing that I own.

• 24:30Speaker 03

  The Windows music interface that you use to sync to the Zune.

• 24:33Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah. That app tried to do everything all the time.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Right.

• 24:36Nilay Patel?

  But yes, I own a Zune. Every now and again, I pull it up. It's in its box in my house. And every, once a year, I clean my office and I gaze at it and then I put it away.

• 24:43Speaker 02

  From 2002?

• 24:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I have a, it's so embarrassing. I have, I have a Joy Division unknown pleasure Zune.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  Oh, my God. I don't even know what that means.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Why would, because it's so weird. It's such a weird object.

• 25:00Speaker 02

  It's a really, really weird artifact.

• 25:01Speaker 01

  Man, I remember the Christmas of iPods, the first one. And we all got iPods and my best friend got a Zune and it just looked like.

• 25:09Speaker 03

  Oh, that's the worst.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  A living cringe. It was terrible.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  A living cringe?

• 25:14Speaker 01

  She was just so like cast to the side. Like, probably when we walked down the street, like, she was probably on the edge.

• 25:22Speaker 02

  Didn't, didn't Zunes have, uh, it had basically airdrop, though? You could send songs.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. It was called squirting.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Like, a room full of people were like, what should be called dysfunction on our, on our device? Hmm. Squirtin'. That's where we want to go. Nobody's gonna, nobody's gonna find any way to make a joke out of that.

• 25:45Nilay Patel?

  Let me squirt this young jock.

• 25:48Nilay Patel?

  It was all real bad. Oh, my God, people are just explaining the hearts things to me.

• 25:55Speaker 03

  I told them, I told you not to.

• 25:57Nilay Patel?

  Oh, that.

• 25:59Nilay Patel?

  Someone just said, I don't know what this means, but this is the world we live in now. The DJ controls heart ability on Beats One.

• 26:07Nilay Patel?

  So I think the DJs are.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  That's the thing on Beats One, you can't heart or save all the music. They are playing songs on Beats One that aren't part of the Apple Music corpus. And so you can't like, listen to them. You can't hit the button to save.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Some of that is like, so they keep playing this song by this grime artist Skepta. And that one, you can't ever, at least a couple of times I saw it on there. You can't add it. You can't do anything when that's playing, but it exists in Apple Music. You can look it up. It just doesn't let you from there. But then like, Julie, the, the, the London DJ, she plays a bunch of stuff that's just not on Apple Music.

• 26:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Which I actually like a lot, which is, and that also to me is kind of a showing of goodwill or like good faith or whatever, because it's like not just stuff that's here so that you continue to use the service. Like she actually is just playing stuff she likes.

• 26:59Nilay Patel?

  And that's in a weird balance because if you, I listened to Beats One a bunch yesterday. And what's really strange is when they're like, just press the button on your iPhone to like, look at more songs. Or like, thanks for downloading our app. And it's like, this is not a radio, it's not a media crossover, like regular radio people. I guess they say, don't hit that dial.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:20Nilay Patel?

  Like, right, like, there's like little stuff that is now cliche, but the idea of like, just open the third interface and press the three dot button to save this song to your library is like not, don't turn that dial. Like, you know, it's not, it's just a very confusing.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's because they, they know a certain percentage of your experience while you're listening to the music. They know that you have an iPhone next to you and that enough, that that's enough for them to like, be able to give you instruction, like very specific instruction or call to action or whatever.

• 27:47Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, and like in really direct ways, I don't think they've even like, they haven't really gotten deep into what they could be able to do with that.

• 27:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Can you play this in a car?

• 27:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 27:58Nilay Patel?

  Well, it would stream, it would just use your data.

• 28:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:01Nilay Patel?

  There's actually a little bit of like a controversy about the data right now.

• 28:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's a hassle.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Could you play it out of your car's speakers though?

• 28:07Speaker 02

  If you have Bluetooth.

• 28:08Nilay Patel?

  Or cable. I mean, it's just like playing songs off your thing.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I listened to I I thought the most interesting experience I had with it was listening to it while walking around New York streaming.

• 28:20Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  That's that's weird because it's like, yeah, I remember having a radio Walkman when I was a kid that I would use sometimes, but like I haven't listened to something live on headphones while walking around an environment for ages. And that was a very strange feeling.

• 28:35Nilay Patel?

  That's weird.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I was like, kind of like, I was looking around, I was like, oh, is anybody else, do you think anybody else is listening to Beats Radio? I could see it was like really weird. Yeah.

• 28:45Nilay Patel?

  And suddenly, off in distance, someone just screamed, worldwide, you're my guy.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's my guy.

• 28:51Nilay Patel?

  You're like 20.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Zane heads.

• 28:53Nilay Patel?

  Zane heads.

• 28:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but you know what's strange about that is whenever we take trips and I rent cars, I was listening, I never plug in my phone.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, no.

• 29:01Nilay Patel?

  I always listen to local radio.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  The car and radio are like synonymous.

• 29:04Nilay Patel?

  But it's weird, like even if you just from here, like you just drive upstate, like the the nature of all the radio station completely changes. Like, I don't, New York City doesn't have like a banging country music scene.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Oh, that's like the majority of what I listen to up there. Yeah.

• 29:19Nilay Patel?

  Right. But you like drive away and like Z100 like literally fades out and like a top 40 station fades in and then like country stations fill it. It's it's a very like regional thing that happens and Beats One is just like, like you're in Tokyo, you're listening to the exact same thing as a person. And that's wild. Zane Lowe talked about it a lot. Like, it was like blowing his mind as he was

• 29:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:38Nilay Patel?

  running the station.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Even though like BBC Radio is the closest thing to that that there's been, it shouldn't blow his mind that much, but.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  This doesn't blow my mind at all.

• 29:48Speaker 02

  Oh, high check.

• 29:49Nilay Patel?

  High check zero. Why does it blow your mind at all? We, I mean, the running joke has been like millennials react to radio is like a hilarious concept, right?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  I mean, because we already all can do the same thing at the same time, no matter where we are. So that element has nothing. That's like, sure.

• 30:07Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, that element adds nothing.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  Like live streaming things also, just sure.

• 30:12Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  I mean, it's like musical Twitter, right? Like, it's just, but but Twitter is even even that is personalized. I don't know. I don't, I don't think that there are that many experiences where we're doing.

• 30:21Nilay Patel?

  All the same thing at the same time.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  The same thing.

• 30:23Nilay Patel?

  Look, didn't we all watch the, didn't we all watch the Llamas escape together around the world? Like, there are these moments.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's like news. I mean, anyone who's listening to this, it doesn't matter where they are, we're all here.

• 30:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but a lot of people listen to this as a podcast later, too.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 30:37Nilay Patel?

  The Super Bowl.

• 30:38Speaker 01

  The Super Bowl.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  The Super Bowl, that's why the Super Bowl is fun.

• 30:42Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Like, that's, I didn't really care for a lot of the disparate parts of the Super Bowl, but I like the fact that everybody's watching it. Like, I liked American Idol when it was big for that reason.

• 30:50Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 30:51Speaker 01

  It sounds like you guys are all very seduced by like, the, the like, anticipation and the like, togetherness in this world where we're all so pulled apart and then we can like, be together in the radio, like.

• 31:01Nilay Patel?

  What you guys don't know is that Nicola was rolling her eyes through that entire speech.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  So, it sounds like you're more interested in that than anything else that's going on. And like, the clown DJ dude, or whatever.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Clown.

• 31:13Nilay Patel?

  Oh, DJ Clown Dude is the best DJ.

• 31:16Speaker 01

  The one who yells.

• 31:17Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  Uh, and can't believe it.

• 31:20Nilay Patel?

  If, if, if Dieter had a DJ name.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  Like, you're talking more about that. Like, you seem more fixated on that than you seem fixated on what you're listening to.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  The actual content?

• 31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's more like.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  You're more in the vehicle. Like, the vehicle of it is what's driving you all nuts with the content.

• 31:34Nilay Patel?

  Here are the things, and they're probably, they're nerdy or boring things, and I suspect what Emily, why Emily is so interested in it. But the ones that get me are, it is the world's most valuable company, the world's richest company, saying, "We should have one musical culture around the world, and these are the people who are gonna give it to you." One of them is an Australian or New Zealand guy who's in LA. Like, that's, it's like weird mishmash of like, global influence. Two is that the music they choose, just by definition, is like, crazy all over the map. And then three is like, how do you, how do you reconcile that with how Apple wants to make money on this thing? Which is, every time you stream a song, everyone gets paid. Right? That's really weird. Like, that's

• 32:16Nilay Patel?

  really strange to me. And like, all those preferential slots, like, there's a world in which record labels can like, try to get their stuff on Beats One, because that means more people will stream it and they'll get more money. Or they can jockey for better position in all those playlists, because they'll get more money. And that's like, really interesting, to see how they balance all that. And that's like, those are the three that fascinate me.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  No, I agree. That is fascinating.

• 32:36Nilay Patel?

  It's, but it, it is and isn't. It's also just a radio station, right? And I, I think those are the, that's the push and pull of this thing.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  I think also the, to go back to the actual content, the actual music that's being played, and we talked about this a little bit, but like, it is kind of interesting to try to figure out what the demographic is, because right now, the demographic seems to be internet music person.

• 32:57Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  And that's, I, you know, I feel like that's a growing portion of how people listen to music. It's like, yeah, I know Taylor Swift songs, and I also, like, I'm interested in, you know, like, UK grime stuff. Like, I'll listen to everything because I want to know what's happening right now, which is how I am, and I feel like a lot of, like, people I consider my peers are, but I don't, I, I have a hard time imagining how big that audience is around the world.

• 33:25Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  And we were talking about, like, they, they repeat the show right now, like, the, or the, the main shows, they, they, they broadcast them again, I guess, when the other half of the world is awake, which is sort of not what it seemed like it was going to be at first.

• 33:40Nilay Patel?

  It's not worldwide.

• 33:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's not worldwide, and it's not, it's not, like, all live. But, I mean, I was saying, like, I would love it if they add, and, and I feel like this is something they're going to do, like, if they add a DJ in a studio in, like, Seoul or something.

• 33:54Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I'd be really into that, because then you would actually, as the day progressed, you would have the part of the globe that's awake, getting music that's more specific to where they are, and the people who stay up late at night, who tend to be people who want to hear other things anyway, like, they can get a sampling of some different stuff.

• 34:12Nilay Patel?

  But is that local? I mean, that's like a...

• 34:15Speaker 02

  It's like time zones.

• 34:16Nilay Patel?

  Well, one, how amazing would it be if Apple put, like, a radio station, like, right in front of, like, Samsung's headquarters in South Korea? Just, like, straight up, with, like, the Apple logo spinning, and, like, the, the weird little antenna things coming off it, being like, "Apple Radio's here!"

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Beep, beep, beep, beep.

• 34:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:30Nilay Patel?

  Like, "Not available on your Galaxy phones." I don't know. It's not really the cultural imperialism that I'm going for, but there's something very different about programming a show for locals in a different culture, and then programming a show for Americans diving into that.

• 34:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 34:46Nilay Patel?

  Right. And like, that's like a really hard, that's, that's gonna be their hardest thing to do.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  I don't even know if they would need it, though. Like, if they want to be truly international, I feel like you have a much more hungry audience for music that would, like, that actually even buys music and stuff, and like, Korean pop and stuff like that than you do here. Like, there's more of a monoculture there than there is here, so it would be pretty easy to program that. And it, yeah, it wouldn't be as, like, pulling together all these disparate genres as much.

• 35:14Nilay Patel?

  I've been, okay, I've gotta read an ad and then I'll come back. This is the best ad we've ever had. You ready?

• 35:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:20Nilay Patel?

  There's a cash register sound, and then I say,

• 35:25Nilay Patel?

  "Twenty years ago, James Murphy came up with an idea to change the harsh turnstile beeps of the NYC subway into music. He calls it Subway Symphony. Instead of hearing this cacophony of stressful sounding beats, you would hear something pleasant and even calming. And during rush hour, when more people are passing through the turnstiles, the effect would be even more pronounced. For years, his idea just sat there. But more recently, Murphy got together with Heineken. And because Heineken believes in making cities greater, they've teamed up to make Subway Symphony happen. The goal is to generate support to make Subway Symphony a reality. The turnstiles have to make a sound, so why not make it a beautiful sound? If you want to help make Subway Symphony happen, it's really easy. Just use the hashtag #SubwaySymphony to share your support. Subway Symphony is just the first in a series of legacy projects backed by Heineken. Heineken wants to champion

• 36:10Nilay Patel?

  those who have an idea to make their city greater. So be on the lookout for more projects in cities around the country in the future. And watch the documentary of the journey to make Subway Symphony a reality and learn more about the project at subwaysymphony.com."

• 36:24Speaker 02

  I've got fifteen cases of Heineken in my house. My house!

• 36:30Nilay Patel?

  I mean, you have to understand, I've been sitting here with this ad copy in front of me this whole time.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  I didn't know that it was that. That's amazing.

• 36:36Nilay Patel?

  Just waiting, just waiting for this moment. No, so the thing I was saying is, Emily, I was talking about it like, just a little bit ago, where it's like, Are they advertising 100 countries just to make me feel cool? Or because they want to be big in 100 countries? Keep saying companies. Do they just want to make Americans feel cool that this stuff is on in Stockholm? Is that why he keeps yelling cities? Or does he want to be big in Stockholm?

• 37:01Speaker 02

  Well.

• 37:02Nilay Patel?

  Can he be big in Stockholm?

• 37:03Speaker 02

  I mean, I don't, I don't see this as, as America centric as I think you see it. Like, it seems actually more Euro. Like, um, you know, I mean, there's so much grime. There's like, I mean, there's a lot of like dance stuff during Gillian Anuga's sets. And I mean, the most specifically American stuff is Ebro's stuff because he's just doing a lot of like New York centric hip hop and stuff like that. Which is, but I feel like that's, you know, a decent export if we're going to export some kind of music for our New York block. I mean, yeah, I, I don't know. I, I don't feel like it's, I don't feel like it's to flatter American culture or anything.

• 37:41Speaker 02

  Like, it does seem like it's, it is, it is, if anything, it's just flattering like Euro American culture.

• 37:49Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:50Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. Did you, did you listen to Beats One at all yesterday? Would you listen to Beats One?

• 37:55Speaker 02

  I will for research, but.

• 37:58Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, just an interest here. This is the thing, the rest of it is just a streaming app and it's kind of a messy streaming app. Like, there's no cohesion to it.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  No, there's some. There's more cohesion to it than, I don't know, Spotify?

• 38:12Nilay Patel?

  I mean, look, yes and no, right? I mean, it doesn't, it didn't, it's not the revolutionary thing I thought it was going to be. I'll, I'll put it that way. Maybe my expectations are too high. And then literally all Connect will show me is like Michael Buble at a piano.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm ignoring Connect. I'm do not, I do not go, do not venture into that dark Connect.

• 38:31Speaker 03

  You used to be able to customize your tabs at the bottom of music for the stuff you actually wanted? And you can't do that here?

• 38:36Nilay Patel?

  You can't because it's how people get paid.

• 38:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know.

• 38:39Nilay Patel?

  Well, if you sign up for Apple Music, here's what I want to know. If you sign up for Apple Music and just listen to your own music the whole time, does anybody get paid? Does Apple just take the $10? How do they split that out?

• 38:47Speaker 03

  I don't know.

• 38:48Nilay Patel?

  So many questions.

• 38:49Speaker 03

  Oh, do you think that they like track what I'm listening to even if it's, I'm not streaming it? It's in my own library and they pay them that way?

• 38:56Speaker 02

  I mean, they, they have definitely taken stuff out of my own library and used that to inform the playlist that they send me. Like, even though it doesn't really have anything to do with what I clicked on in the bubble stage.

• 39:06Speaker 03

  All right, you guys, should I follow One Direction, Pitbull, or Miley Cyrus in Connect?

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Pitbull.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:13Speaker 03

  There it is.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Dolly.

• 39:15Speaker 03

  I'm gonna be so mad when this.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  Pitbull is one star heart.

• 39:18Nilay Patel?

  Alright, Pitbull is one star heart? One star, I'm telling you, three, one star heart and three star heart are maybe the hardest problems in ratings. What is a three star heart? Who are you?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Is that, okay, out of five, so it's something that you?

• 39:33Nilay Patel?

  Like, what do you give three stars to? That you would have?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  I give three stars to like, majority of like mainstream pop music.

• 39:41Nilay Patel?

  Right, but do you have it?

• 39:43Speaker 01

  Do I have it?

• 39:44Nilay Patel?

  I always thought the idea of stars in my own personal music library is like strange. Cause like, why am I sitting here?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't do that.

• 39:51Nilay Patel?

  Like, everything, I, there was some, one of my friends in college actually once told me, everything in your library is one star or five stars. Like, why don't you use any of these middle ones? I was like, cuz these are the tracks in the albums I don't like, and these are the tracks I do like, and literally, that's all that matters.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 40:03Nilay Patel?

  Right?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  And then that just, like, that helps decide if you put things on shuffle, what comes up?

• 40:08Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, cuz you could like, you could make a smart playlist, it was like, just play my five star songs.

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Maybe I would give Big Sean three stars, heart.

• 40:15Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Actually, that's a good call.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  You know, because he's not changing my life. Or anyone's.

• 40:22Nilay Patel?

  Hey, well, he just went.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Separate Ariana.

• 40:24Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, right, he had a, alright, hang on a moment.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  I know, um, but, yeah, I don't love it, I'm not like, oh, I believe in you, you have such a message and talent, and you're gonna be around forever. But I'm also like, I'll listen to this.

• 40:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm not gonna skip it.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 02

  That comes on, yeah.

• 40:38Nilay Patel?

  I believe in you. You know, when you, whenever you give somebody five stars in iTunes, it sends them a note that says, I believe in you.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Well, Drake is like, I believe in you, you're saying things, Kendrick, you're saying things, Big Sean, you're there.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Do you believe in, do you believe in Taylor Swift?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I think we went through this.

• 40:56Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  Oh, we gotta talk about Taylor Swift again, though.

• 40:59Nilay Patel?

  Great, Taylor Swift, this is our new hype check system, it's hearts and stars for you. Hype check Taylor Swift.

• 41:05Speaker 01

  I'm not a fan, she evokes something in me.

• 41:07Nilay Patel?

  So is that low stars or no heart?

• 41:09Speaker 02

  No heart.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  There's nothing there.

• 41:15Nilay Patel?

  No star, no heart.

• 41:17Speaker 01

  The only time that I willingly listened to Taylor Swift is when I was in a four year old's bedroom playing Barbie dolls and it was that or the Frozen soundtrack. I was like, fine, 1989, let's do this. There's no way we're listening to the Frozen soundtrack. And then she got up and she put on the Frozen soundtrack. I was like, fine, even you don't want to listen to this.

• 41:36Nilay Patel?

  No, that's fair. All right, I want you guys to talk about Magic Mike. We need to do that and then we need to read another thing and then we can need to wrap up.

• 41:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Wait, did you see Magic Mike XXL?

• 41:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Oh, I thought you saw it.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:49Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 41:49Nilay Patel?

  She's just, she's just prodding you into talking.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  No, I want to talk about, because on Rack this week, we had a video about Magic Mike and I thought it was just going to be like, it was going to be like history of like shirtless men in film.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Uh huh.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  Or like objectifying men in film. And I thought it was going to just be like totally smut and then I didn't work on it at all. Um, but it ended up being really smart and they talked about the female gaze and like,

• 42:09Speaker 02

  The female gaze.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  When men try to like assume what the female gaze is.

• 42:13Nilay Patel?

  Hmm.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Um, and like showing these like, like beefcake dudes that are like oily or whatever.

• 42:18Nilay Patel?

  Quickly go through the, the concept of gaze. Actually, you're the film school.

• 42:22Speaker 03

  Real quick.

• 42:23Speaker 02

  Oh, it's just, it's just the, the, the, the point of view, like socio, socio slash economic, I guess, point of view of where the film is coming from. So like most film up until semi recently has mostly been from the male gaze. Uh, just the way that characters are written, the way that character, like how much time characters get, what characters are worried about, like that's, yeah.

• 42:45Nilay Patel?

  Right. Cause the writer and the director and the cinematographer are all dudes.

• 42:49Speaker 01

  Usually dudes.

• 42:50Nilay Patel?

  Anyway, carry on.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  Um, I saw Dope last weekend.

• 42:53Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  And the scene with Chanelle Mon, the like, mother may I scene, I don't know if you've seen it, was fully just like, no woman would ever behave like this. And like, this is clearly written by a man who did not consult, like, and but also like, again, it's supposed to be kind of fantastical. It's not like an accurate representation of youths.

• 43:11Nilay Patel?

  I do not understand the Dope trailer at all. Like in terms of setting expectations for a movie that is not grounded in reality, the trailer that it's basically just like, old video game trailers.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:21Nilay Patel?

  Is very confusing.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  I, B minus from me, but that's not what we're talking about.

• 43:26Nilay Patel?

  Stars and hearts on Dope.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  Three, three stars, maybe a heart.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  Wait, that sounds pretty positive then.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  B minus. It was good. I enjoyed it.

• 43:37Nilay Patel?

  It's a big shot.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Didn't like, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. But it didn't, like, it got so much hype. It didn't, like, blow me. I keep telling my friends, it was kind of like if someone, like, you know, they would, like, kind of punch you with something, but they wouldn't, like, knock you out. It wasn't like something they said or did where you're just like, oh, I can't believe that.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  It was just a romp.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  It was a fun romp.

• 43:55Nilay Patel?

  It was a romp.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:57Speaker 02

  Nothing wrong with a good romp.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Anyway, but it isn't, I guess Magic Mike is a fun romp, too.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  Magic Mike is essentially a romp. It's funny because there are really fun comments on my review of it, which is on the website today. I mean, just accusing the first one of being sexist because of how it objectified men, but that's what we're talking about.

• 44:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:18Speaker 02

  It's cool. It's totally, it's totally different to objectify men than objectify women. Like, it's not the same thing. It's just like how you can't be racist against white people. Like, it's just not, the, the power dynamics that are already very, very well entrenched in our, our culture make it impossible to do that. Like, and also, like, and this is discussed in the video, like, the way that women do that is not the same as the way that men do that. Just because it's not as much of a thing. There's not one way to be a dick to a dude, like.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  But yeah, that's like, this idea of like, okay, same formula as like when we objectify women. Let's take his clothes mostly off, make it oily and very lean.

• 45:05Speaker 01

  So it's like, this, this like creature that emerges where it's like, oh, this is what women are supposed to be

• 45:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  lusting for. But it's like, if I saw that person on the street, I wouldn't, I wouldn't, like, I wouldn't think twice. I'd be like, oh, I'm kind of scared of you.

• 45:18Nilay Patel?

  If you saw Channing Tatum on the street, you'd be like, I'm kind of scared of you.

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I wouldn't be, I'm not that into Channing Tatum is like.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  No, no, it wouldn't like, it wouldn't be like, oh, I can't believe it. Like, let me get up on that.

• 45:32Nilay Patel?

  Are you, how oily are you right now? That's like, that would be my reaction. Do you think he's currently oiled, or does he oil selectively?

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Well, so this is actually an idea that Magic Mike XXL deals with. Tell me. Okay, so, so this is not a spoiler, but, but Matthew McConaughey's character Dallas, who's like the emcee of the original club, is not back. And a lot of the-

• 45:57Nilay Patel?

  The McConnaissance is over.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's pretty much over, I think. But, uh, so they're kind of figuring out what to do for this last, you know, hurrah show that they're gonna do. And a lot of that centers on them tossing out these things that he had kind of made a part of their act, like firemen costumes and cops and like sexy rodeo and stuff like that, and making their own act.

• 46:20Nilay Patel?

  Man, how are you gonna burn McConaughey on the way out, though? That's rough. Like, old man didn't know what he was doing.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  Somebody actually says, "All right, all right, all right," in reference to him. It's like, very winky. But, yeah, but it's like, and, and, uh, and the new emcee who kind of like, you know, pumps up the crowd is Jada Pinkett Smith, which is very interesting to have a woman in that role now, who's like, addressing the audience as queens and asking if they want to be exalted by these beautiful men and stuff. I mean, it's very, it's like, it's, it's pretty different, I would say. Like, the first one is, it's, it's much more political, I feel like, than the first one was. The first one was just like, "Oh, let's hang out with these dudes," and like, in kind of a crappy, very warm, underlit version of Florida. And it still feels like that, too, because Steven Soderbergh also shot this one.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  So it looks and feels exactly the same.

• 47:11Nilay Patel?

  What I think is, I was reading your view, and that like, struck me, because the, the comp you keep making is to Pitch Perfect 2. And Pitch Perfect, to me, is, it's in that tradition of taking something that usually happens in crappy places and making it seem spectacular.

• 47:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:28Nilay Patel?

  Right? It's like, the, the a cappella championships of the world-

• 47:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:32Nilay Patel?

  Are in this like, massive theater with like, fire, and it's like, nah, that, nah.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:36Nilay Patel?

  Nah, that, this shit happens in like, a Hilton ballroom.

• 47:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 47:39Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it very much, it very much- Looks like, yeah, just a, just a convention center. Although Pitch Perfect 2 is weird because its final competition took place in some random like acapella festival in Copenhagen.

• 47:51Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 02

  It looks really, really like kind of low key. But then, of course, when they actually do the performance, it's all like very glossily shot. And, and also the voices just sound insane in that, like very processed. So, um, but yeah, no, it's, I mean, it's got good dance routines in it. Which is great. I mean, that's like half of what you want. Uh, I don't know. It's like, it's almost too slow. It's almost too chill, but I like that as opposed to the Pitch Perfect 2 version of doing things.

• 48:19Nilay Patel?

  I think, I think between the Entourage movie, the Magic Mike movie, and then my personal current hate obsession, which is Ballers. There's a lot of places where you can just like hang out with some chill bros in the media right now.

• 48:31Speaker 02

  How chill are they on Ballers, though? I feel like they're not that chill and definitely they're not chill on Entourage.

• 48:37Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, but it's like everything in Ballers is act two. Like it's a show that's act two, right? It's like the, the setup is like literally immediately dealt with in like five minutes.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 48:46Nilay Patel?

  And then you're just sort of like, now we're gonna experience what it's like to be in this world. And nothing happens beyond that.

• 48:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:53Nilay Patel?

  Like it's just that. And I think that's actually the problem with virtually every Netflix show. Like Netflix shows are just endless act one. And you're like, dude, just become Daredevil, like do it.

• 49:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:05Nilay Patel?

  Just do some stuff. Like, I get it.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  We're here for Daredevil.

• 49:09Nilay Patel?

  Where are you?

• 49:09Speaker 02

  We won't have questions if we just get introduced to a superhero. Like, we kind of know what a superhero is. It's okay.

• 49:16Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, that's weird that Netflix like just never takes that opportunity to just like stretch out act two. They're always like act one, act one, act one, a little bit of a problem. And now it's act three and now he's the Daredevil. And it's like, but could we just hang out?

• 49:28Speaker 02

  Freaking out over here.

• 49:29Nilay Patel?

  So, uh, Ryan Airhold on Twitter just tweeted the most insane thing at me at us. If you go into the parental restrictions in the general settings of the iPhone, you can disable connect, access to connect and it gets replaced with a playlist button. That's the best thing I've ever seen. You have, it's like, yeah. Parents around the world. You go into, you go to settings, general restrictions, and that's where your parental restrictions are. And then you like. Everyone is doing this. Take your permission away to access Apple Connect or Music Connect, whatever it's called. And then it just turns into a playlists tab.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  What?

• 50:09Nilay Patel?

  That's the best. And that really, every parent in America should be currently looking at their children's phone and taking away connect.

• 50:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:15Nilay Patel?

  That's what should be happening.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  Is that just so you can't get content from Miley Cyrus and like pollute their minds? That's amazing.

• 50:21Speaker 03

  What else do I want to not get myself access to?

• 50:23Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 50:24Speaker 03

  I think I'm not going to give myself access to all kinds of crazy things.

• 50:27Nilay Patel?

  Okay, I gotta, we're like running behind. I need to read this one. And then I want, I want everyone to think about the fact that Apple is censoring the music. They're playing the clean versions of songs.

• 50:38Speaker 03

  Just ask us after the ad, man.

• 50:39Nilay Patel?

  It's cool.

• 50:42Nilay Patel?

  What is Automatic? Automatic is a connected card adapter that plugs into your car's diagnostic port, the one your mechanic uses. Every car since 1996 has one of these ports. It pairs with your phone and integrates with over 20 apps to give you a better driving experience. Paired with the Automatic iPhone or Android app, Automatic helps you in several ways. If your check engine light comes on, Automatic explains in plain English what's going on and helps you clear the light. It gives you a log of your trips and parking locations, so you never lose your car. It calls emergency services in case of an accident, and it scores you on your driving. It's a little game, driving, so you can save money on gas. You may have seen Automatic just launched a new app store for the car. Over 20 apps are available, allowing you to use your car's data in all kinds of ways, like Concur, the expense program that we actually use here at Vox, lets you pull your trips easily into expense reports.

• 51:26Nilay Patel?

  If this, then that gives you the power to build all kinds of recipes based on your driving, which is an insane sentence that I want everyone to consider here in 2015. Dash Command shows you minute levels of details on your engine's performance, and you can see all the rest of them at automatic.com/apps. Automatic is usually $100, but 20% off for Vergecast listeners. Go to automatic.com/vergecast or use code VERGECAST20 at checkout. You get free shipping. There's a 45-day return policy, because one month just ain't enough. And that is Automatic. Automatic.com/vergecast.

• 51:58Nilay Patel?

  Back out of the zone. So they're playing the clean versions of songs.

• 52:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 52:03Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Are they going to censor what the artist put in Connect? And if so, why would they restrict your parents?

• 52:08Speaker 02

  If you're listening to the radio, I think it usually plays the clean version.

• 52:11Nilay Patel?

  I find no, like, I'm not outraged by them playing the clean versions of songs.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Neither am I.

• 52:16Nilay Patel?

  Like, whatever.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  Well, some of them, some of them just come out like Swiss cheese, though, like, depending on the song. I mean, some of them, it doesn't really affect it that much, but yeah.

• 52:24Nilay Patel?

  But are they going to censor Connect, too? Is like, Justin Bieber going to be like? Doing weird stuff.

• 52:29Speaker 01

  But what if you're trying to listen to Miguel Coffee and you like, just don't want to listen to the version that has the word coffee subbed in for the word that you want to hear? Like, that's a big, it's like, I mean, what if you set the mood with that? And then it was like, coffee in the morning? And you're like, what?

• 52:43Nilay Patel?

  If you are setting the mood with Beats One, you have fucked up. You are, you are just not, it's not gonna happen for you.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Well, why?

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Sounds super hype.

• 52:55Nilay Patel?

  All over the world.

• 52:58Nilay Patel?

  Repping Bristol, repping Long Beach, repping Australia, repping these two getting down. Like, it's like, you can't do that. Oh, man.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I mean, I don't know. I feel like, I feel like, I actually feel like the coffee version is more romantic.

• 53:11Speaker 01

  It's nice. It's romantic, yeah.

• 53:14Speaker 02

  It's coffee in the morning. That's very cute.

• 53:16Speaker 01

  Everyone does that.

• 53:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  Except for tea people.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Wait, can I say, can I say the F word on this show?

• 53:24Nilay Patel?

  We've been doing it nonstop.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I have, I have a no profanity impulse in my head because of my old, my old podcast can do it. Yeah, fuck you, tea drinkers.

• 53:37Nilay Patel?

  Wait, there's all that buildup for fuck you, tea drinkers?

• 53:42Speaker 03

  Wow, I didn't know you felt that strongly.

• 53:44Nilay Patel?

  Wow, that's rough.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  No, she did. I was just echoing her.

• 53:46Nilay Patel?

  Oh, I see. Oh, I see. It's just like your, your little echo chamber of hating tea people. Those are my people.

• 53:52Speaker 02

  We got, we got some energy going here.

• 53:53Nilay Patel?

  No, I'm just an Indian.

• 53:58Nilay Patel?

  I don't know. I enjoy it from time to time. I'm a coffee person. Aren't we all? Aren't we all an American coffee people?

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Wait, um, can we talk, wait, I want to talk about something else on having to do with Beats.

• 54:10Speaker 03

  Did we, we can't stop talking about. Did the Vergecast ever talk about Taylor, like, making apple, bending apple to her will?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Did you guys talk about that last week?

• 54:17Nilay Patel?

  We did not.

• 54:18Speaker 03

  No, we did not, yeah.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  I'm kind of over it.

• 54:20Speaker 03

  Walt and Lauren thing.

• 54:21Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, we did. No, we like brushed over it.

• 54:25Speaker 03

  Right.

• 54:25Nilay Patel?

  With Lauren.

• 54:26Speaker 03

  I would say I like have a lot of feelings about it, but I don't anymore.

• 54:30Nilay Patel?

  Right. Yeah, everyone's just over it. Like it happened. Like massive corporations. Taylor Swift is a massive corporation, negotiates with other massive.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they do it in public. They fight in public and we all kind of cheer and watch.

• 54:41Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Um, I mean, yeah, I mean, we were talking today about like, we're already talking about verge fifty and was like, well, it feels like right now it feels like Taylor Swift should be on that again, even though her album was out last year and she was also on the verge fifty last year. But I don't know. I, I feel like I'm just, I think, I think she needs to, she won't because she's still on tour. She's still promoting this album for like the rest of the year. But I just kind of want her to back off for a second and just let other people talk and um, make their mark on the music business. Like Drake, just Drake, put Drake out there in his apple jacket a little more and you know.

• 55:19Nilay Patel?

  Put Drake out there in his apple. Do you think he's gonna wear it on tour?

• 55:22Speaker 03

  I hope so.

• 55:23Nilay Patel?

  Um, okay. So there's one thing that we should talk about before.

• 55:27Speaker 02

  Heineken?

• 55:28Nilay Patel?

  It's, it's not Heineken, although that's coming again at the end of the show. I want to talk about our comments because something is gonna happen to our comments.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Right.

• 55:35Nilay Patel?

  And by the time you come back to the verb, by the time you listen to this, it might have already happened. And I just want to talk about it because I know Emily has a lot of thoughts about comments and I have a lot of thoughts about comments.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  I do, but.

• 55:46Nilay Patel?

  And so does Dieter. I don't know.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Been a while since I've.

• 55:48Nilay Patel?

  Does Racks have comments?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:50Nilay Patel?

  Do you find them valuable?

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Hmm, I mean.

• 55:54Speaker 02

  And then it's not as, is it not a big?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  We have one woman who's like a superstar. We love her. Shout out Pam B. She doesn't even know. I don't think there's any reason she would ever listen to this, but we know so much about her.

• 56:05Nilay Patel?

  Really?

• 56:05Speaker 01

  Because she leaves these like, there's like Easter eggs in her comments, but where she lives, how old her daughter is, and she leaves like insightful, long, amazing. We love her. She's our mascot.

• 56:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Pam like lamb, but it's really Pam B.

• 56:17Nilay Patel?

  Wow.

• 56:18Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 56:18Nilay Patel?

  Okay.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Everyone else, I don't know, whatever. It's fine. Hi.

• 56:22Nilay Patel?

  Hi. Hey, columnists. So we have, we also have some superstars and then we have a lot of white people.

• 56:27Speaker 01

  I bet you guys have lots of superstars.

• 56:29Nilay Patel?

  We do have lots of them. We do. We love them very much, but here's what we're gonna do for a minute. We're gonna turn off our comments in July. By default, we can still turn them on.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 56:37Nilay Patel?

  And we'll turn them on in some places, and we'll still have the forums, but I think our comments are like out of control right now.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Ooh, so you're trying to quell beasts?

• 56:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I've done it before. So when we ran Engadget, we turned off comments, I think, twice for weeks at a time.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  How was it?

• 56:51Nilay Patel?

  And banned lots of people. It was fun.

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Does it really work? Or when you come back, is the vibe different?

• 56:56Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, the vibe is radically different, because people know that you can take it away. It's like, there's so many things about this that are basically, you could map one-to-one to like the things dictators say about their country. Right? You're like, "You must show the people that you are firmly in control."

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Take away all the grain.

• 57:14Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's like, "And then when you give the grain back, they will be grateful to you."

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Oh, my god.

• 57:18Nilay Patel?

  And it's like, that's basically what I, in my head, what this all sounds like. But, yeah, we're a little out of control. We're a little, we've got a lot of new people. Emily is new, but like six months new, but we have actual, like, very new people.

• 57:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:31Nilay Patel?

  First posts on the site, comment warfare, which is just, I think, a disaster.

• 57:35Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 57:35Nilay Patel?

  So we're just, we're gonna turn it down. We're gonna turn down the heat.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kinda cool. Like, an easy summer moment.

• 57:42Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, July. It's a lot of, everyone chill out, you know? If you've got something to say, put it in the forums. If you make a really good forum post, we're gonna start putting those back on the front page.

• 57:49Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 57:50Nilay Patel?

  We're just, everyone, everyone take a minute.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:53Nilay Patel?

  A languid.

• 57:54Speaker 03

  We're gonna reorganize the forums a little bit, too. Like, make some new ones and merge some old ones.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  And those will still be fully active and everything. It's not like nobody's gonna be able to write anything of their own on The Verge. I mean, there's so many interesting arguments that come up around comments, and it's really interesting to see what people feel entitled to in their internet experience. By interesting, I mean, like, head-smacking, but

• 58:18Speaker 02

  but still, interesting to learn about. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think, I think the thing that it comes down to, for me, is when, you know, we'll inevitably get people on our other social media platforms saying that we, our, our skin is too thin, and we can't handle the feedback from our, like, honest feedback and complaints from our readers, but like... I don't know. We didn't like fall into these positions like we've, like you said, I think in another post, like we've been doing this for a while. It's not like there can, there's not really a referendum to be made by the readers on us writing on the site. So that's not going to change anything. And if you don't like the stuff that we're

• 59:01Speaker 02

  doing, you are free to read something else. And in the meantime, it does not help us do good work.

• 59:07Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 59:08Speaker 02

  To have people yelling at us all the time.

• 59:10Nilay Patel?

  Right. And I think that's actually my, I, I've done, like, this is not a good idea. And I don't think anybody should do this, but I did it. I read through three years of Meta Forum comments, like over the past three, yeah.

• 59:24Nilay Patel?

  That's rough. That's some like crazy shit. And the complaints are always the same. The complaints are, why is this site growing this way? Why don't you do the thing I want? Like, why don't you have customizable RSS feeds come up a lot? Why can't I program the homepage the way? Like, they're the same. It's, and it's a lot of it is like, why do you cover entertainment? Why do you cover rocket launches? Like, it's all about as we expand and do different things. There's a lot of questions. But the tone of our comments has completely changed. And you can literally just like mark the day that it changed. And that is like Gamergate happened. And Gamergate totally amped up the vitriol. It made our entire staff decline to participate because they couldn't. There was just no safe space to get involved with the audience. So we all walked away.

• 1:00:06Nilay Patel?

  It got terrible in there. And now there's no more entry point back into it. Right? Like, and I think everybody, like, it's gonna be good for us. We're all just gonna chill out.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Nilay Patel?

  Breathe. Summer.

• 1:00:17Speaker 02

  I love this.

• 1:00:18Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. We're gonna listen to some Apple Beats One for whenever we need to get turned. Zane Lowe, like, do the yelling for us.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  You're gonna let the music pick you and you're not gonna engage with the comments? And it's just gonna be like an easy, like, fewer choices summer?

• 1:00:32Nilay Patel?

  Let the music pick you.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Nilay Patel?

  Oh, fewer choices summer is great. Right? Where we just like reject the, the, the paradox of endless choice.

• 1:00:42Speaker 02

  You just put as much of your life on autopilot as possible. And then you just enjoy.

• 1:00:46Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, dude, I knew there was a reason you're on this show today. Just chill out.

• 1:00:50Speaker 02

  Just summer.

• 1:00:50Nilay Patel?

  Can you do like a, like a big deep breath sound effect in the microphone right now?

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  No, seems like they'll get used for something weird.

• 1:00:58Speaker 01

  It's very safe.

• 1:00:59Nilay Patel?

  Why don't you yell or do the things that I command you to do?

• 1:01:02Speaker 01

  I already weird stuff happening from my first appearance on the Vergecast in my own

• 1:01:07Nilay Patel?

  Nick was a star now. We did a, we did a Periscope last night and people were like, oh, it's Nicola. When are you coming back on the Vergecast?

• 1:01:12Speaker 01

  That was really cool.

• 1:01:12Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 1:01:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it was wild.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was cool.

• 1:01:15Nilay Patel?

  Do we have more to talk about?

• 1:01:16Speaker 03

  I mean, I could get into my deep feelings about the principle of charity, but I think that's not worth it.

• 1:01:21Nilay Patel?

  I mean, the comment, the comment thing, I feel like the people who listen to this show are people who are like commenters on our site and they're like, it's worth talking about a little bit, but it's gonna happen. We promise you'll turn it back on. I promise you'll be cool. No, no choices.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  You should keep a diary until then. Keep a diary about how you feel. I recently gave up talking about a certain subject in my life. And I still just write everything down. I just don't talk about it out loud with my friends.

• 1:01:45Nilay Patel?

  Was that kind of a three star, no heart relationship? Because that's what that sounds like to me. His name is Tim.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  It's been good. You wind up being light and you have better things to talk about with people.

• 1:01:58Nilay Patel?

  We're actually doing a video of plants working out right now about how to stop using your friends so much.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Wait, I just learned about Jomo, joy of missing out, and I have it.

• 1:02:06Nilay Patel?

  Whoa.

• 1:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:07Nilay Patel?

  That's something. You should write that for our site.

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  I think someone wrote it for the New York Times like 2012.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  You know what I had Jomo about?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Governor's ball.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, total festival Jomo for sure. I checked Jomo quite high.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Because you have to be strong.

• 1:02:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you have to be really mature too.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  You have to be strong, mature and know yourself.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Know yourself.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  Fewer choices, more Jomo. Have a summer. Don't write comments. Get vitamin D from the sun.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Did you say have a summer?

• 1:02:39Nilay Patel?

  Dude, summer's starting strong on the Vergecast right now.

• 1:02:42Speaker 01

  July 1.

• 1:02:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, it's here.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  Worldwide.

• 1:02:45Nilay Patel?

  Worldwide! One, two, three.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Worldwide!

• 1:02:49Nilay Patel?

  All right, that, for better or worse, was our show this week.

• 1:02:53Speaker 02

  We're good.

• 1:02:54Nilay Patel?

  All right, I have to do this stuff. Sam isn't here and you don't know what I'm talking about. So, uh, thank you for listening. Please follow The Verge on Twitter. We're The Real Verge on Snapchat. Uh, like I said, we're doing more and more Periscopes all the time. Look us up there. Uh, you can rate and review us. Wait, people. Nicola is Nicola underscore Fumo, F U M O on Twitter. Dieter is Backlon. I'm Reckless. Emily is Emily Yoshida. Um, I recommend following both Emily and Nicola.

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  I'm following Nicola right now.

• 1:03:19Nilay Patel?

  They have, uh, excellent Twitter experiences to offer you. And in here in the summer, a few are choices. Just do what I say.

• 1:03:25Speaker 02

  You've got a big butt on your Twitter page.

• 1:03:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:03:29Nilay Patel?

  A big old butt on your Twitter page.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  I'm gonna buy that painting from that girl.

• 1:03:33Nilay Patel?

  Um, anyway, summer of your choices. Just do it. Just follow them.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:37Nilay Patel?

  Just live a life that they curate for you.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  No, that you curate for you. Autopilot. Yeah. Pick what you like. Stick to it.

• 1:03:44Nilay Patel?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:03:45Nilay Patel?

  Don't try anything.

• 1:03:45Speaker 01

  More to come.

• 1:03:47Nilay Patel?

  You should just have me do this, like, life coach for The Verge audience every morning.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Oh, bring me a Verge and his problems.

• 1:03:54Speaker 02

  A Verge. And I'll talk like really open.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  The Verge has so many problems.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  I'll talk really open-ended like, like.

• 1:04:06Speaker 02

  Like, you should do, well, you should have, you should have an advice column. We should have an advice column for commenters who are sad about not being able to comment. I'll do it.

• 1:04:16Nilay Patel?

  We're launching advice, we're launching advice columns. We can do it. We're gonna have like, we already have two in the bag. We should just start up a third.

• 1:04:23Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I'll do it.

• 1:04:26Nilay Patel?

  Do you wanna do one too?

• 1:04:27Speaker 02

  Uh, please.

• 1:04:29Nilay Patel?

  No. Nicola, like, literally just looked at a text incoming out of her phone as any means of escape. Uh, all right, you can rate, review us on iTunes. Please give us five stars. I would like to know.

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  And a heart.

• 1:04:43Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Well, I wanna know, what is your three-star heart? That's, go on iTunes. We actually, I didn't mention this anywhere. We are over a thousand five-star reviews on iTunes. People.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Last time I was here, you were almost there. Now you're there.

• 1:04:55Nilay Patel?

  We're like way over it now. But yeah, so go on iTunes, give us some, some love. Emily has a great new podcast called Verge ESP with.

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Yes, we do.

• 1:05:02Nilay Patel?

  Liz Lepato. Uh, I think we have a new episode coming out next week.

• 1:05:04Speaker 01

  Next week, yes.

• 1:05:05Nilay Patel?

  So check that out. Chris Plant has his great podcast, What's Tech? There are, there's a rogue podcast happening in the halls of The Verge right now. One of our video producers, Rondo, is just literally walking around with a microphone. You'll see that leaking out here and there. Yeah, that's it. We're iTunes.com/theverge. That's everything's there. And that was Richast. I've got to read one more thing about Heineken. Ready?

• 1:05:27Speaker 03

  Super.

• 1:05:29Nilay Patel?

  Look, here's what I want you to do. James Murphy got together at Heineken to make Subway Symphony happen. They're gonna make it happen, but they need your support. So how do you, how do you make it so the turnstiles in our city make beautiful sounds? Just tweet hashtags Subway Symphony. You can make it happen. And you can go to SubwaySymphony.com and demonstrate your support for Heineken, James Murphy, and Subway Symphony. That was Richast. Goodbye.

• 1:05:52Speaker 03

  Bye.

• 1:05:53Nilay Patel?

  Rock and roll.