Smart sleep is worth the cost

On today's show: sleep gadgets, AI DJs, and sneaky TVs. Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her experiences with the Eight Sleep mattress pad, the Oura Ring 4, and other sleep gadgets. Can you really measure your way to a better night of sleep? After that, Allison Johnson gives us her take on Spotify's AI DJ, and we wonder exactly how an AI tool is supposed to help us find and listen to music. Finally, Nilay Patel comes on to answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline about the Samsung Frame TVs — and how to figure out whether you need a TV at all. Further reading: Eight Sleep Pod 4 Ultra review: for sale, good night’s sleep, just $4,700 Ozlo Sleepbuds hands-on: resurrected and I’ve slept so good Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now Spotify’s AI is no match for a real DJ Samsung’s Frame TV is finally getting the knockoffs it deserves Email us at [email protected] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. 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.

• 0:03David Pierce?

  Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Quantified REM Cycles. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am playing Batman: Arkham Shadow on The Quest 3. I tend to always have one game that I like to play on The Quest, usually for just like 15 or 20 minutes at a time, in between meetings or at night, just to kind of move around. I like this better than, you know, sitting on the couch playing video games, even though frankly, I do a lot of that too. This at least kind of gets the blood going in a way that I really like. For a long time, it was super-hot VR, then it was supernatural when I was feeling like exercis-y. Then there was a tennis simulator that I got strangely into, but I kept hitting the ceiling trying to do serves, so that didn't last. And now, I'm playing Arkham Shadow.

• 0:48David Pierce?

  I have loved all of the Arkham games over the years. They're like the perfect mix for me of lots to do, but pretty straightforward, and they don't require me to just wander aimlessly for hours. Very much my kind of game. By the way, there's a decent chance you've heard ads for this game on this podcast. I've gotten some complaints from people who were like, "Too many meta ads in a row", and I can only assume they're for Arkham Shadow. So, trust me, this is not one of those ads. I'm happy to tell you all of the things I hate about both this game and The Quest in general. But this game's pretty great. I'm having a nice time. Anyway, that is not what we're here to talk about today. We are here to do two things on the show. First, we're gonna talk to V Song about kind of a year of experiments in quantified sleep

• 1:33David Pierce?

  that she's been doing. She's tried some gadgets, she's tried some more expensive gadgets, she's tried some really expensive gadgets, and we're gonna talk about whether any of them are actually worth it and have made her sleep better. Then, we're gonna talk to Allison Johnson about the AI DJ on Spotify, and what it means to have a computer decide what is good and what you should listen to. She wrote a really great piece about it. I have some thoughts. I actually disagree with her in some ways, so we're gonna get into it. We also have a question from the hotline to do. Lots of fun stuff coming up on this episode. But first, we'll get to that, but I have to go beat up some bad guys on the streets of Gotham. This is The Vergecast. We'll be right back.

• 2:17Speaker 01

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• 2:52David Pierce?

  Welcome back. So we talk a lot on this show about the idea of tracking yourself and using wearables to get data about your biometrics and the whole idea of the quantified self, which to be honest is a phrase that I really hate, but it just means tracking something in order to be able to do it better. The thing we don't talk about as much with that, I think, is sleep. We talk a lot about exercise. We talk some about food and things like that. And all that stuff is good. But I think if you wanted to make everyone's lives better immediately, getting everybody better sleep would be the way. So V Song on our team has been testing a bunch of sleep-related gadgets. She's actually been doing this for a long time,

• 3:35David Pierce?

  both as part of testing lots of wearables, but also just because, like the rest of us, she'd like to get more sleep. So I figured now would be a super fun time to have her on the show and talk through all of this. She's tried some cheap stuff. She's tried some absurdly expensive stuff. And we're going to see if any of it is actually worth the money and actually helps you sleep. V Song, hello. Hello. Okay, so a few weeks ago, you were here on the show and I said something about how I think sleep tracking is stupid. I don't think I said those exact words, but I said something like those exact words. And I would say a surprising number of people have had feelings at me about that feeling and have told me that I'm wrong.

• 4:17David Pierce?

  And it turns out that you, without even telling me at that moment, when you could have told me, have been doing all kinds of interesting sleep tracking research over the last several months. So I want to talk about it. And I want to talk especially about the thing that you tried to do where you tried to convince people that it's not insane to spend many thousands of dollars on your bed. But before we get to all of that, I want to talk about sleep maxing. Because you you brought up in one of your recent stories, this thing that I find really fascinating, which is that sleep tracking has become the thing in a way that I can't remember this sort of quantified self trend being mainstream quite like this, maybe ever,

• 5:01David Pierce?

  or at least since the like, get 10,000 steps craze sort of took over everybody. Like, sleep is, it's such a thing. It's having such a moment. And I'm curious what you make of that. Like, how, why do you think sleep has gone viral in the way that it has?

• 5:18Speaker 02

  So I think that we all feel a lot of existential dread. And there are so many things that are externally out of our control. At the same time, like, you have a lot of really health conscious people at this point in time. I attribute that in like my little bubble to like all of these devices that Apple, Samsung, Google say will save your life. And, you know, these are things you can by and large control. Sleep, you know, talk to any doctor, they're gonna tell you, get a good night's worth of sleep. Sleep, eat nutrient dense foods, exercise. Every single health professional is gonna tell you that if you can master these three things, your life will be better. Like, they, you know, and I think that message really does kind of

• 6:02Speaker 02

  just solidify when you hit your 30s and things start creaking and you have disposable income. And you just realize, oh, man, like, sleep actually is pretty important. These doctors, they're actually not lying. If my sleep is bad, I feel bad. If my sleep is good, I feel good. So it's a very easy way to just dramatically improve the things that you can control. Like, your anxiety will go down if you sleep well. Your health will improve if you sleep well. It'll be easier for you to lose weight if you sleep well. It'll be easier for you to build muscle if you sleep well. It'll be easier for you to just do literally anything and have better mental health if you sleep well.

• 6:44Speaker 02

  So I think that's kind of where this intensity around sleep maxing comes from. And, you know, like, what is sleep maxing? Sleep maxing is literally just buying several products to try and hack your sleep. So it's it's like really a convergence of late stage capitalism and existential dread, shaking hands like that meme in your TikTok shop. To tell you, like, if you just do this one thing, you might sleep a little bit better and feel better while you deal with a bunch of other crap. And so I think that's honestly where it comes from. And they're not wrong, is the thing I'm gonna say.

• 7:21David Pierce?

  Well, and I think it's true. I mean, it strikes me as you explain those three things, the eat better, exercise more and sleep more, essentially. Sleep better is by far the least costly of those three things. Like, eating better is hard. It like

• 7:39Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:39David Pierce?

  All the tasty foods are bad for you. It's just, it's just a fact of the universe.

• 7:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. It's hard. It's the thing I struggle with the most.

• 7:46David Pierce?

  It's, it's more expensive. It's more complicated. Like, it's very hard to eat well. It's also hard to exercise a lot. It just requires a lot of commitment and dedication. And the opportunity cost is high because I could be sitting on my couch, watching television and I'm not.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Also, it's painful.

• 8:03David Pierce?

  Yeah, it sucks.

• 8:03Speaker 02

  It's painful. Yeah.

• 8:05David Pierce?

  And kudos to you, who you get up and do it anyway. Sleep has, in theory, none of those costs. Like, if I can, I'm going to lie in bed for eight hours at night. If I can make those eight hours more efficient, that is all upside. Right? Like, it's the only one of those three that in, that if getting better sleep has zero downsides.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  It's also enjoyable. Getting a good night's sleep is really great. It is the most enjoyable of these three things that you can fix your life.

• 8:37David Pierce?

  It would be one thing if, like, the activity of going to sleep really sucked. But like, going to sleep is great.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  It's so good.

• 8:42David Pierce?

  It's not like exercise that way, where you feel really good at the end, but not during. Sleep is just awesome the whole time.

• 8:48Speaker 02

  It's just great, the whole, like, whenever you see someone going to bed and they're sleeping, it's, they're always like sleeping with a little smile on their face, a sleeping baby, is good vibes. And like, you look at insomniacs, they have bags under their eyes. They generally don't look good. So like, just culturally speaking, sleep is by far the easiest thing you can do. And it's, you know, In terms of like effort put in to result immediately seen, you will immediately feel the effects of good sleep, whereas you will not immediately feel the effects of sticking to a nutritious diet or exercising over a long period of time. Like those, those things are all like, I, you know, you should do them. They're gonna suck while you do them and you have to have delayed gratification. There's none of that complicatedness with sleep.

• 9:33Speaker 02

  Sleep, instant gratification.

• 9:35David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  It'll feel good literally in hours and you won't have to do anything at all.

• 9:41David Pierce?

  It's pretty great. Yeah. So it seems like i- in that vein of trying to do better with sleep. A, there's a lot of snake oil. I mostly don't wanna talk about the snake oil, but I think by and large, if you see a thing on TikTok, in the TikTok shop, you should assume it's nonsense. I think that's true of everything, definitely including sleep maxing.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Mouth tape, I legitimately, that makes me angry. Mouth tape.

• 10:04David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 02

  But yeah.

• 10:04David Pierce?

  Yeah, we're just gonna leave that aside. But it seems to me there are sort of two separate things that the tech industry has to figure out here. One is how to successfully tell how you're sleeping, right? Like the, and the sleep tracking thing has been happening for forever. The reason we were talking about this a few weeks ago, so we were talking about the Oura ring. Like, the idea of using some device or another to track your sleep goes back a long ways. So I would assume we're pretty good at that now. Are we pretty good at that now?

• 10:33Speaker 02

  We are okay at that now. So what we are really good at is telling when you go to sleep and when you wake up. The sleep stages, so like the REM sleep, the deep sleep, the light sleep. Dubious.

• 10:49David Pierce?

  Okay, and that stuff is really important.

• 10:51Speaker 02

  That stuff is important if you wanna get more granular or if you're having sleep problems and you're trying to self, like, figure out like what's going on.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  You know, so Aura, they put a lot of research into it, but even there, only like our algorithm is like, I think it's 70 to 80% in agreement with the gold standard, which is polysomnography. And that's when you go into a little clinic and they put stuff on you and you sleep there for a night and the scientists watch you and measure your brainwaves. So that's the clinical gold standard and most consumer grade sleep trackers that are out there on the market, we're at best, we are getting around 70%, 70 to 80% in that range. So, you know, like, eh, so we're much better than we used to be. But in the grand scheme of things, you do have to really take it as a very unsatisfying, oh, this is my baseline.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  I probably will know when I have a crappy night of sleep. Yeah.

• 11:50David Pierce?

  Right.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  But you can, from that baseline view trends, like, oh, you have a lot of breathing disturbances. Maybe you have sleep apnea and you should go to a doctor and maybe get a CPAP and see how that improves your sleep quality. So like, that's kind of the real thought process behind sleep tracking, as well as like, another really valuable thing is having a sleep routine. So something that a sleep tracker can do is help you build that sleep routine by going, you regularly go to sleep at this time and wake up at this time. Good job, buddy. You are super consistent with that.

• 12:28David Pierce?

  Right.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  Or, you know, if you're just really having crappy sleep and you see that you wake up a ton of times in the night and you go, aha, that is the 3 a.m. cat is angry at standard time and that kibble is not coming at the time that they are used to, so they screamed and woke me up. Like, you can view patterns and trends kind of easily in that way. It just, it's not super automatic, right? Because you have to tag, like, angry cat. Like, some of my sleep tracking devices, it's literally got an angry cat tag. And I can tell you, they wake me up quite frequently because they're angry. But I don't need a sleep tracker for that because obviously the cat is hitting me in the face and whatnot.

• 13:04David Pierce?

  Well, so that's been the challenge with me with sleep tracking for forever, right? Which is, I think the idea that it tells you when you went to bed and when you woke up is nothing. Like, I know that. It's it's like it's like if the only thing a fitness tracker could tell me was that I went for a walk. Like, I don't need that. That's that's not helpful. But I will say, to the credit of these devices, I think the thing you just said about these kind of macro trends that it can give back to you. One thing that happened to me very recently was, uh, my wife and I got a Sleep Number bed a few years ago. We went from trying to perpetually compromise on firmness to just being like, we need a bed with two different firmnesses.

• 13:47David Pierce?

  So we got a Sleep Number bed. Uh, it's fine. We got like the cheapest, crappiest one. It's fine, but it does the thing we needed to do. Uh, and it gives me like a sleep score every morning. And I think, uh, the sleep score is mostly meaningless, generally speaking. But one thing it did for me over time was it said, hey, dated, just FYI, your sleep scores tend to be the best when you go to bed about 11 and you wake up about 6:30. And it's just like that, just that one thing. It was like, okay, this seven and a half hour window of sleep seems to be what you need in order to be successful. And that was so, it was one of those things I like, never really paid attention to, but was so helpful that like, A, that's about the amount of sleep I need

• 14:28David Pierce?

  to be a successful functioning adult, but also this window actually kind of works. Was very helpful. And I'm like, that that alone is like, okay, we've now, you've done something for me that I would not have done on my own.

• 14:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, that's honestly the thing about self quantification is that it takes a really long time to tell you something useful. And and sometimes the stuff that it points out to, uh, you is going to be super obvious to everyone else, but to yourself, you're like, oh, I never really thought about that. Oh, I never really paid attention to that. So on the surface, it's all really dumb. But one thing that they show time and time again is that logging these things will make you more aware of them. So like, I personally hate calorie tracking. I hate logging food. I also have learned a lot about logging my food over time. Like, I'm just like, oh, I was extremely protein deficient. I thought I was getting enough protein. No, I wasn't. Um, oh, I tend to like stress eat.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. That like, when you have to log all the things that you're stress eating, you will be more aware of those habits. So that's primarily the benefit of sleep tracking, even if on the surface you look at it and you're just like, well. Duh, like.

• 15:40David Pierce?

  Yeah, I had one the other night where my, my sleep score was 14 because I, I went to bed and I got up at 2 o'clock with a toddler who didn't want to go back to sleep and I spent the whole rest of the night in his room. And it's like, yeah, thanks, Bed. I got a notification that I got a 14. Like, that's how, that, thank you. Great, cool, helpful. Uh, which brings me to the second thing that I think is, is complicated and interesting in this space right now is, step one is like, figure out how you're doing, right? And step two is make it better. And I think the challenge with a lot of these devices, all these wearables, and this is a thing we've talked about many times, is the, the so what, the like, what do I do about this thing, right? And like, you, you've seen this on the Apple Watch where

• 16:22David Pierce?

  it'll like prompt you to go for a walk at the end of the night to hit your goals. And sometimes that's good. And sometimes I'm like, shut up. I don't want to go for a 61-minute walk at 10:00 PM to hit my goals. Yeah, like, I'm good. Thank you, Apple. Uh, but I think the, the trick with sleep is figuring out how to make things better. And I think this is what brings us to these adventures in $5,000 mattresses. Uh, let's just, just explain this thing to me that you've been sleeping on for the last few months.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  I've been sleeping on the 8Sleep Pod 4 Ultra. I have previously tested the 8Sleep Pod 2 Pro cover. And basically, this is a smart mattress cover. It's not even the mattress. The mattress is my mattress that I spent a good amount of money on because I really do think you should invest in sleep. Uh, clearly.

• 17:13David Pierce?

  A good couch and a good mattress are like the two grown-up purchases I think are worth all of the outrageous amounts of dollars you will spend on them.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  I, I, I personally spent seven years in Japan sleeping on a really cheap futon and I actually got several musculoskeletal like pain, to the point where my doctor sat me down in Japan and in Japanese was just like, ah, Victoria-san, you need to buy an actual mattress. So, you know, that was a huge life lessons for me. So take this into context that when I was saying, you know, I was willing to test and seriously consider a $4,700 mattress for, uh, not mattress, but mattress cover.

• 17:57David Pierce?

  Right. Not even a mattress.

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Not even a mattress, a cover with a, a base at the bottom. So the base will elevate. So you can use that manually and be like, hey, I feel like being comfy while I read. And so it'll elevate you in that way. But the more like sleep maxing bits of it is that there is like a special position where it slightly elevates your feet. For sleep position and supposedly the AI in this thing will adjust the position of the bed while you're sleeping to minimize snoring. I have woken up while it's been moving the bed to, to make my spouse stop snoring.

• 18:33David Pierce?

  I was just about to say, who's the snorer in the bed?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  It's not me. I have quantifiable proof in our marriage that I am not the one snoring. So, haha. So, you know, you know, this can be great fodder or not in your marriage to be like, I am not the snorer. You, sir, are the snorer. But, you know, I have actually woken up while this bed has been adjusting and watched as they're snoring dramatically lessened and just like in a sleep addled state going like, oh, you mean, I don't have to like smack you and be like, wake up, you're snoring. It's woken me up. I can just go like, oh, this is a fever dream going back to sleep and whatnot. So that is one thing that it does. But the thing that they're most famous for doing, I certainly buried this lead, is that it adjusts the temperature.

• 19:20David Pierce?

  Right.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  So there's tubing inside of this smart mattress and water runs through it from this hub and I am perpetually cold. So I like to crank it up and it's warm and it's toasty and I fall asleep so quickly. Normally I like tossing and turning.

• 19:37David Pierce?

  Wait, all right, let's just confession time here on the Vergecast. Left to your own devices, what's the thermostat at when you're sleeping?

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Uh, warm, like in the winter, a minimum seventy-five.

• 19:49David Pierce?

  Wow.

• 19:50Speaker 02

  I, I, I need to be toasty. I need to be warm. I need a heavy blanket year round. Like, I get cold so easily. And if I'm cold, I don't fall asleep. Uh, so I need to be toasty.

• 20:04David Pierce?

  I'm the opposite. I used to get in trouble when I was a kid because I would sleep with a window open in like the dead of winter. Because for me, it's like cold face, giant blanket. That's, that's the life. That's where I want to be. But then getting out of bed is awful. These like the worst.

• 20:21Speaker 02

  No, I, I don't, I don't, I don't mess around with cold stuff. I like to be warm, toasty, snug as a bug in the fetal position. That's me. My, my spouse, however, like this summer, like I think the max cold setting you can go on this bed is negative ten and they were just like, negative ten. I want to sleep on a slab of ice. I'm living this penguin life. And honestly, they can do that on their side of the bed. I can be in toasty heaven and they can be in ice cold hell. And we can both be super happy about that.

• 20:54David Pierce?

  Wait, but there, there's something interesting in that though, because I think on the one hand, we have lots of science at this point about like optimal temperatures for getting good sleep. And things you mentioned, like the, the position your body should be at to not snore. So I can imagine in some world that like what this mattress pad ought to do for you is optimize all of it automatically and be like, no, trust me. I, I know what is required to get. Oh, it does do that. Okay. Cause I was gonna say, giving you a lot of buttons and knobs might actually not be helpful, but it will attempt to solve these problems for you. Okay.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It has this AI feature which is locked behind a subscription, which is why everyone's like, are you crazy? And yes, actually.

• 21:33David Pierce?

  To be fair, I do think a subscription mattress is just in principle ridiculous, even though I sort of understand why it exists. In principle, it's ridiculous.

• 21:42Speaker 02

  In principle, subscribing to your mattress is ludicrous. And I think I wrote that in my review. It is absolutely batshit insane ludicrous. But you're not even subscribing to the mattress. You're subscribing to the mattress cover. So it's absolutely bonkers, honky tonk insane. But at the same time, I cannot lie. I have been sleeping so well, even when external circumstances in this world are crazy. I sleep like a baby.

• 22:10David Pierce?

  If you have that mode on, it will attempt to balance all the temperature and and space and adjustments of the positioning. It'll try to just do all that for you.

• 22:20Speaker 02

  It does all of that for you. And then when you look it up in the app in the morning, it's so proud. It's like autopilot made four adjustments last night to help you sleep longer. So like I, I look at it and it's like these micro adjustments to temperature. So I need to be very toasty to fall asleep, but to stay asleep, I apparently need to sleep cooler. So it'll do that. It'll adjust during the middle of the night to the temperature to help me stay asleep. And the longer you test this stuff, the better it gets. And to the point where I'm just like, this is so, my God, like all my other corroborating sleep tracker data has basically said my sleep has been spectacular for the last six months. And I'm putting on muscle. I am losing fat at the same time.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  It's, it's, I wake up like, I wake up at 4:30 AM now, feeling completely rested because I go to bed at like an insane grandpa time, like 9:30, nine, nine 30 or whatever. And I'm out here, I just pop out of bed in the mornings a lot of times, just like, hi, I'm super rested. Time to go on a run, which I never thought was possible for me. It's like I am, I have a history of insomnia. I don't fall asleep easily. I previously in the past, and I have the data to back it up. I have had really crappy sleep scores. So it's, it's just wild to see that and to feel the improvement in my life and then think.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  This is $4,799 and it comes with a $300 per year subscription or something along those lines. So really testing this, my whole thing has just been like, uh, how much is a good night's sleep worth? How much is the best night's sleep worth to me?

• 24:08David Pierce?

  Well, so let's actually separate those questions, right? Because I think if you look at the Eight Sleep thing as kind of the very end of a spectrum, right? Which is like, it is, it is doing the most and it is charging the most.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  It's actually doing the middle. Sleep Number has like $10,000 beds.

• 24:25David Pierce?

  Do they really?

• 24:26Speaker 02

  So this being, oh, they do. So this being modular and fitting on your existing mattress is actually kind of like mid-high spectrum. It's not the craziest end of the spectrum.

• 24:35David Pierce?

  All right, so we'll put that at like a seven out of 10. Sleep Number, I can't even fathom what, I don't, I don't want to know because I can't afford it and I don't want to know. But I'm curious, like, I remember, I don't even know if these are still really a thing, but there was this run of like sleep tracking apps and there were the gadgets that would sit on your bedside table that would try to do this. And have we gotten anywhere with those? Like, can these approximate some of the stuff you're talking about?

• 24:58Speaker 02

  Uh, some of them can, like, I actually really liked the Amazon Halo Rise, which is rare for me because all of the Amazon Halo products I hated with like a burning passion.

• 25:08David Pierce?

  You and everybody else, it turns out.

• 25:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, me and everybody, that was not special, that was not a hot take. But that, I, I liked this bedside lamp that gently woke you up with, um, light, uh, because that's actually quite effective. I've tested a bunch of these. It's really effective to wake up with light. Um, so smart lights, really great if you hate alarms. They just come on, you wake up kind of naturally because that's just how circadian rhythms in your brain works. Uh, I actually liked that. It's sleep tracking, uh, my cat got in the way, so I got a lot of really inaccurate results. So when you have these non-invasive, non-invasive in the sense that they're not on your body in any way, uh, on the nightstand, they can be very hit or miss.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  They, they can be great if you sleep alone, don't have pets, don't have a bed partner. That can be cool, I guess, but. You know, there, this is an option. It's there. I've tested the Withing Sleep, which is like a little mattress that you stick under your mattress. So it's like a little pad that you stick under your mattress.

• 26:12David Pierce?

  Oh, right. It looks like a little heating pad kind of deal, right?

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:15David Pierce?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Super affordable. I think that's a really great budget option if you want to track your sleep, but you are like, these people are crazy. I am not spending thousands of dollars on this mattress that does all of these things, which is totally valid. I think you are probably fiscally very responsible if that's your reaction.

• 26:34David Pierce?

  But every morning you wake up feeling a little smug about your decisions.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  I feel so good waking up on this mattress, let me tell you. I, I hate, I, nobody hates this more than me. I hate this the most for me personally.

• 26:47David Pierce?

  I think this goes on the list of like, never try the really expensive thing because once you know.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  You can't go back. You can't go back.

• 26:54David Pierce?

  It's the recommendation I always give with headphones. Like, if you don't want to buy a really nice pair of headphones, don't ever try a really nice pair of headphones because it will ruin everything else for you. And I feel like this is the same thing.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  You can't miss what you don't know.

• 27:05David Pierce?

  A hundred percent.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  A hundred percent it. Uh, there's, uh, yeah. So there are cheaper versions of those things. Uh, I actually think the smart home is really great if you want to just hack it and have stuff that is multifunctional because the other problem with a lot of the stuff is it's very one, one dimensional, one function. It does one thing. Smart lights, you can program them. So you can wake up naturally that way. That's great. It can really help with you setting a routine. Uh, smart thermostat, you can, is not going to stop your marital problems and, and fights over what temperature the thermostat is, but you can schedule it. So, you know, that, that can help create a much more inviting sleep environment for

• 27:51Speaker 02

  you. So those, those are all much more affordable hacks that have multifunctional purposes that I personally have used and found to be good. Uh, does it beat this expensive bed? No, no, it does not. But at the same time, it is really about what. Is it worse to you? And how good do you want to feel after your night of sleep?

• 28:16David Pierce?

  Totally.

• 28:17Speaker 02

  And you know, I have sleep problems, so it means a lot to me. But if you're someone who sleeps like the dead on the crappiest Ikea mattress, you don't need this stuff. You're good. You're Gucci. Like, so it is, I definitely understand the criticism. And I'm just sitting there alongside you, nodding my head and going, yes, yes, you are, you are completely correct. I agree with you 100%.

• 28:43David Pierce?

  At the same time, though, if you're listening to this and you are desperately looking for a reason to buy this, here it is. This is not like buying a really fancy pair of running shoes you might never have, or like over investing in workout equipment that you're never gonna use. This'll work. This is like, you just put this on your bed and it will start doing things. In the same way that sleep has, it's happening anyway. Like, adding something like this into the repertoire just helps. It's just, it's just gonna help. This is why, like, I want the version of this that is like, 60% is good and 20% of the price, because it's like, that's the one that it's like, just give me the magic pillow and everything will be fine. You know what I mean? Like, that's the dream.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  Oh, speaking of magic pillows, many, many, many years ago, I tested a smart pillow, which was the most insane thing, because it had a speaker inside of the pillow. So it would track your sleeping and your snoring, because there's a microphone in there. And then it would wake you up to your music inside the pillow. It was one of the most ridiculous pieces of sleep tech I've ever tested. But yeah, another thing I tested was the Oslo Sleep Buds.

• 29:53David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask you about that.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  Which is the Bose Sleep Buds Resurrected. They had a lot of, a lot of people who are fans of those. And it's really great if you have a noisy environment, because that's the one thing that this bed can't solve, right? It can't solve if you live in a city and your neighbor upstairs loves to practice salsa at 3 a.m. in the morning, or in my case, if Hackensack loves to send garbage trucks outside of your house at exactly 5 a.m. and you're just like, oh, I'm awake now. Having these buds in your ear. It can muffle a lot of the noise. So I, I used to be a religious user of that.

• 30:36Speaker 02

  My, my spouse is a religious user of not, not the Bose ones, because those, once again, very expensive, or the Oslo ones are expensive. But he has the cheaper Anchor Sound Core, which allows them to play their true crime podcasts, which why you want to go to bed listening to murder is a thing I don't necessarily understand, but it works for them. So they do that. They love it. It falls out of their ear, which we don't love, but the Bose design is very good for side sleepers. I don't feel discomfort. They don't fall out of my ear. Pretty great. Those will apparently come with sleep tracking sometime in 2025. So yeah, we're, we're out here. We're sleep maxing. We're just sleep maxing and just trying to figure it out.

• 31:20David Pierce?

  The earbuds are one that I have always felt like could be more than they are. So I'm, I'm actually encouraged to hear that they're going to do some sleep tracking stuff with it because like, one thing you and I have heard a lot of over the years, people saying like the, the ears are a really interesting place to do wearables stuff. And especially if you're going to start to think about like, how do I, you know, gently help you go to sleep and gently help you wake up? Like that's a thing you can do with a thing in your ears. Like, I don't know if it can help you not snore or fix the temperature, probably not. But there's like little things that if you're just doing like a tracker, you probably can't do. But if you have this device that is just going to sit in your ears all night, it feels like there's more you could do. So maybe there's, maybe there is a roadmap of interesting stuff to come there.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Especially for like helping you fall asleep, because I think that's something that a lot of people have issues with is just falling asleep, figuring out ways to fall asleep. So staying asleep, it's a, it's a valuable thing because I have tried the smart alarm clocks. I've tried the Hatch Restore. That TikTok made me try it. It's on my nightstand and that, you know, just having a sleep partner doesn't really work out well for me. Like the, the light, great. Love that waking up.

• 32:37David Pierce?

  How does it feel to know that you and my one-year-old son have the same alarm clock? Is that, is that good? Is that cool? He loves it. Works great for him.

• 32:44Speaker 02

  He sleeps like a baby. So honestly. Honestly, I'm trying to, I'm trying to live that life. So it makes me feel great.

• 32:54David Pierce?

  That's good. All right. Before I let you go, any other, any other sleep gadgets on your mind? Anything else you've been looking at or trying or hoping to try?

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Honestly, I'm just going to reiterate one last time that you should invest in your sleep in, in whatever way and don't cheap out on it.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  Sometimes the right decision is to buy a $5,000 mattress cover. Sometimes that is the right decision.

• 33:20David Pierce?

  This is where we were gonna land because The Verge's editorial policies dictate that you don't get to keep this thing. At some point, this beautiful device that has changed your life is going to leave your house. What happens then? Can you go back?

• 33:35Speaker 02

  I'm gonna buy it, but it's either gonna be a long-term sleep testing control device so that I can test it for our sleep trackers.

• 33:43David Pierce?

  Right. For journalism, everyone.

• 33:45Speaker 02

  For journalism purposes, for journalism purposes. Or, you know, just have to buy the thing because I can't go back. And, you know, like, if it was just a simple matter of also returning it and knowing that that's what it was gonna be, that'd be cool. But because this has my biological material on it, they will not necessarily return it. They will destroy it. And then that just feels like e-waste. So I'll figure out a way. I'll figure out financing. I will do long-term test tracking, but this is one of the things where, yeah, I'm just gonna have to buy it, honestly. If it comes, comes down to it and that's just, it has a huge impact on my life.

• 34:30Speaker 02

  My, my sleep quality is so much better. You can think I'm crazy all you like. Um, I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. My husband does not agree with me, but I'll figure it out. So.

• 34:41David Pierce?

  That's their problem, not yours.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  That's their problem, not mine. I will be figuring this out and I will be paying an absurd subscription. So.

• 34:49David Pierce?

  That's how they get you. Don't test it unless you're willing to buy it, people.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  I'm not proud of my life choices, but they are mine.

• 34:56David Pierce?

  These are the things we do for our audience, V. We spend outrageous amounts of money on beautiful nights of sleep.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  You know, I'm winning. So there you go.

• 35:07David Pierce?

  All right, V. Thank you as always.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 35:12David Pierce?

  All right, we gotta take a break and then we're gonna come back and we're gonna talk about music. We'll be right back.

• 35:20Speaker 03

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• 35:52David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. If you use Spotify, I'm sure you know the DJ feature. You click on it, it has this AI-generated voice that greets you and then it plays you music. And that's the idea. It is supposed to be a sort of constantly updated, AI-curated playlist of music that you'd like. I love this feature. I listen to it all the time. I think the voice bit is kind of weird, but I think the idea that I can just sit down and essentially press play and have something play music for me that I'm going to like is very powerful. Allison Johnson on our team feels slightly differently. She has also been testing AI DJ stuff, has a lot of thoughts, and I figured we just need

• 36:37David Pierce?

  to hash this out. I'm also working on a big story about what the best music app is because I'm sort of over Spotify and trying to find something else and finding something else is a challenge. So I'm hoping Allison can help me talk through this one piece of it and try to make sense of things. Let's just get into it. Allison, hello.

• 36:55Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 36:56David Pierce?

  I should tell everybody that I'm interrupting a day off for you to do this. So I and everyone listening owe you a great debt of gratitude.

• 37:03Speaker 04

  I'm happy to be here. I get to talk to another adult before a little bit before I go to the children's museum, so.

• 37:11David Pierce?

  This is, I'm happy to, I'm happy to do it. So. Real quick, I want to talk about AI DJs. But first, I want to know kind of your theory of the case about Spotify's AI DJ in particular. This is very clearly a thing you have been thinking about a lot. And there's a lot of interesting context, but you've you've come to a conclusion about these things. And I want to know what that is.

• 37:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, so Spotify, like every other tech company with an app, has been shoving AI into everything over the past year. And the one that caught my eye recently is this AI DJ, which is not actually new. It's been around like a year, but it just kind of popped up in my feed. And I was like, sure, I'll try this weird thing. And and right out of the gate, it's just so strange because it it talks to you. It goes, hey, Alison, blah, blah, blah. They kind of launch into a like DJ spiel about what they're going to play. And then, you know, it gets into the music and not surprisingly, in any way,

• 38:17Speaker 04

  it's all stuff that I really like because what company has more data about what music I like to listen to than Spotify?

• 38:28Speaker 04

  I was just kind of like, what is this? And I try, I listened to it, I like kept with it for a day. And like off and on throughout a week, just to be like, what is going on here?

• 38:40David Pierce?

  But you don't like that. You just described such a good thing. What you just, and this is why I think this is so interesting and why I want to talk about it. What you just said, I just, I'm just going to say it back to you, you you clicked on a thing that greeted you by name and then played a bunch of music in a row that you really like. And this feels like a problem.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  Terrible. Yeah. No, so here here's the thing.

• 39:03Speaker 04

  Kind of the the flip side is that we have a local radio station in Seattle, KEXP, that I've I've listened to forever since before I moved to Seattle. And it's just kind of like a daily. Habit, it's on in the background all the time. It's on in the car. And I don't know if it's a Seattle thing or a me thing or what it is, but the osmosis of like, you, you get, you have these like parasocial relationships with the DJs that kind of start, you like have your favorite DJs. And then the weird thing in Seattle is like, I'll be out on the bike path and I'll see Kevin Cole going the other direction after his show. I'm like,

• 39:44Speaker 04

  oh, they're, they're real humans. They're out here, just like we are.

• 39:49David Pierce?

  And I feel like in, in Seattle, like a very music-y town, that counts as like an actual celebrity setting. Like that's, that's legit.

• 39:55Speaker 04

  For sure. Yeah. The whole rest of my bike ride. I was like, oh my God, Kevin Cole was going the other way.

• 40:02Speaker 04

  So that's, that's kind of like the background where I, maybe I bring a little more skepticism to it, where I'm like, you know, I, to me, a, a radio DJ is like a real person and I have favorite radio DJs in, um, yeah, hearing, hearing this, which is just an imitation of that, just like, maybe I was just not gonna like it right out of the gate, but, um, that's my bias I brought to it, I guess.

• 40:32David Pierce?

  So this is part of why I wanted to talk about this because I think trying to figure out what feels wrong about the AI DJ actually feels like a really useful sort of metaphor for all of AI. And I think this is a lot of what you were getting at in this piece and I think why it struck me too. There's this question of, okay, is it a bad thing that it is pretty much exclusively playing music? I definitely for sure am going to like, like for me, I was listening to my DJ all morning. And I mean, it is just down the middle David bait, right? One of it was like, there, there was this guy I found who was doing like punk rock covers of old songs on TikTok. And then I listened to a bunch of his stuff on Spotify. And it was just like, what if we just played nine of his songs in a row?

• 41:16David Pierce?

  I was like, great, I'm in, let's do it.

• 41:18Speaker 04

  Yeah, let's go.

• 41:19David Pierce?

  And then, and then there was a bunch of like, uh, synthy eighties pop music, which Spotify, like you said, has immense knowledge of the fact that that is music I am always gonna like. And so it, it was like a no skips playlist for an hour and a half. And I got to the end and I was like, was, did I, did I get anything out of any of that? Like, could I tell you what songs it played? It was just sort of music. So there's the question like, is that the right thing? And then there's the question of like, is this, is this product even a good idea? And that goes back to the like, it's a, it's a person, quote unquote, talking to you, quote unquote, as it goes. And there, there is this thing about this, this thing is obviously trying to seem like a person.

• 42:03David Pierce?

  And I think one of the things we're seeing about AI a lot is AI that is trying to seem like a person. And, and I think in some ways, this is just the most sort of nakedly straightforward version of that. And it rubs me the wrong way too. And I can't figure out if it's just because it's not very good, or if it's because it's the wrong idea.

• 42:22Speaker 04

  Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's pretty convincing. Like it, it just sounds like a person talking to you. And I think like, I, to me, it just feels like this is not somewhere I need AI. Like I'm good with Spotify putting together a playlist for me. You know, I use the playlist feature, the AI playlist feature quite a bit where I'm like, I want to hear upbeat jazz. There can't be any lyrics because I'm writing a blog, you know? And like, it spits out a playlist and it's great.

• 42:58David Pierce?

  Which is also AI, by the way.

• 42:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:00David Pierce?

  It's a different flavor of it, but that is still very much AI.

• 43:04Speaker 04

  And I'm totally good with that. I'm like, do not try to insert a human into this interaction, you know? It's, it's a very like transactional, like this is fine. So that's where, where I think I'm just weirded out by the DJs. Like we have human DJs. We have people, if you want to listen to the radio, you can do that. Like why, who is asking for this? If, I put it in the box of who was asking for this?

• 43:34David Pierce?

  No, I, I think that's totally right. And I think, uh, I made a lot of fun of Apple Music when Apple Music came out and they had, you know, Beats One and all of these. Celebrity driven radio stations essentially is I and my theory then was like, who wants this, right? Like in a, I have a library full of infinite music. Why am I going to spend two hours a week listening to like whatever John Mayer feels like playing?

• 44:02David Pierce?

  I was wrong about that. Uh, for I think exactly the reason you're describing that there is a lot of time that I just want what I want, right? Which is like a giant library full of music and I'm going to go in and I'm going to be like, I would like to listen to the wicked soundtrack, please.

• 44:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:19David Pierce?

  Go listen to the wicked soundtrack. Great. That is better than the radio. And then there's all the way on the other side, there is the like, just expand my brain a little bit, right? And I think that AI is not doing successfully at all.

• 44:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 44:36David Pierce?

  And, and this goes back to the like, is it right to just play me songs that I like a bunch of times in a row? I think that, that is such an easy win if your goal is to just get people to keep listening. But it doesn't feel good. Like in, in a way that like you, you, you talked about, you know, some of the stuff you've gotten from KEXP as like meaningful stuff and you like remember the experience and it feels cool and you feel like part of community. I don't think it's possible to get any of that from this AI stuff.

• 45:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's exactly it. And the, the metaphor I landed on is like, listening to KEXP is sort of like a well-rounded meal. Like there's stuff I really like. There's stuff I'm sort of into. There's stuff I, I just straight up do not like. But it's, it feels like a balanced experience and the AI DJ is just straight up feeding me like all this stuff I like. I'm like, I love M&Ms. I don't want to eat M&Ms all day long, you know, like you, you get a stomach ache eventually. That, and that's just kind of how it feels to me. And there is like, yeah, it, it just, it hits different. There's like, I hear,

• 45:47Speaker 04

  Tears for Fears come on in the grocery store and I'm like, well, they know that a woman in her late 30s is probably shopping is going to love this. And they're right. Um, but then my, you know, favorite DJ plays it on KEXP because she really loves it. I'm like, oh, this is, it just, it's more meaningful, I think.

• 46:10David Pierce?

  Yeah. The one part of it I have trouble with is the is it good to play me stuff that I hate side of things, right? Because I think, and you made this case a little bit in your piece, and I think it's been a thing for you of like, the the percentage of things that I hear from these DJs or whatever that I actively don't like is good and important.

• 46:30Speaker 04

  And Yeah.

• 46:31David Pierce?

  There's part of me that sort of intellectually understands that, but then part of me that's like, well, A, that's the time when I turn off the radio, right?

• 46:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 46:40David Pierce?

  Or, or B, what if it just only played things that I liked? And then I'm back to the AI DJ thing that it's like, again, you can see how you get there, right? Where it's like, if we just keep playing songs that you like, you you won't turn the thing off. And so what responsibility does it have to just inject randomness into your life in even on the grand likelihood that you're gonna hate it? And in a weird way, I feel like this is something we're not dealing with at all in the rest of AI, but it's the kind of question we're gonna have to have all the time when we get to things like all of these sort of information retrieval services and the way that we think about generating images and text, like, should it write you a bad email

• 47:24David Pierce?

  one out of 10 times just to like, keep you on your toes?

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Just to feel more real, yeah.

• 47:28David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 47:29Speaker 04

  There's a weird like, personalization echo chamber, I think, that you can get into. And it's, I don't know, maybe like, there's times when I'm like, yeah, I want to be in the echo chamber of music I like. I don't feel like, you know, eating my vegetables today. I just want to hear the stuff I like. But I think it's like, that's probably different for every person. And I think there's a different limit of like, when do I feel like, okay, I've, I should probably listen to something else and like, get get something else mixed in here? And then, I don't know, then when I go back to listening to washed out or whatever I'm doing,

• 48:12Speaker 04

  that's like, it sounds great. I'm like, yeah, I love this.

• 48:17David Pierce?

  Yeah, I like the M and M's analogy a lot, right? It's like, it's good to have comfort food.

• 48:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 48:22David Pierce?

  But if you only eat comfort food, like comfort food is comfort food because you don't eat it all the time. That is kind of the point.

• 48:27Speaker 04

  Right, exactly.

• 48:29David Pierce?

  Yeah. Do you think that's something AI can get better at? Like, is there someone at Spotify who can tweak that algorithm to make that work?

• 48:37Speaker 04

  I think it, I mean, it probably could, but so, you know, someone commented on the article and it really resonated with me that when a human plays something that you don't like, they like it, like they have a reason for playing it. And you kind of like weigh it differently in your head and you kind of give it a chance, maybe more than than if this robot, like I'm, I'm like more offended when the robot plays something I don't like. I'm like, excuse me? Where did you come up with this?

• 49:10David Pierce?

  That's so true.

• 49:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:11David Pierce?

  And there's a sense of like you, the robot should know.

• 49:14Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:15David Pierce?

  Right? Like you, you dumb ass Spotify DJ.

• 49:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 49:19David Pierce?

  You know everything about what I like. Why are you playing me this?

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Get out of here with this. It tried to do that. There was, I turned it on the other day and it was like, here are some songs that are shaping rock music right now. And I was like, absolutely not.

• 49:35Speaker 04

  I'm good, just, just play the stuff I want to hear.

• 49:39David Pierce?

  Yeah, it is, I don't know. Again, I keep coming back to this question of like, can we, can better AI get closer to these things? I think I'm just so stuck on this question of like, what is necessary for humans to do? And, and I think that the point our commenter was making about having someone say that they like this to you is really powerful. I mean, we talk to people all the time about like recommendation systems and, and like we, we think about this with like buying guides and all this stuff, right? Like someone you trust liking something. Is an incredibly good predictor of whether you're going to like that thing. Because you're more likely to like that thing because you like the person who recommended it.

• 50:19David Pierce?

  Like, there is some wild human nature thing inside of that that I think you just can't replicate with a computer. And it's true of like the Netflix algorithm and everything else, right? Even if it puts the perfect thing at the top, I'm still probably more likely to like the thing that you told me to watch than the thing that Netflix told me to watch. Even if statistically Netflix is right, you know what I mean?

• 50:42Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 50:42David Pierce?

  And so I wonder to some extent if it's a matter of Spotify and everyone else doing this kind of thing, just totally barking up the wrong tree. Or if it's like, maybe if the voice was 10% more convincing, I wouldn't even know. And it would start to feel like a person.

• 51:00Speaker 04

  I feel like there's a, you feel the intention behind it a little bit. Like when I hear something on the radio and it's maybe something I don't like, like the, there's a person playing it. It's their job to curate music and they like it. The intention behind the Spotify AI DJ is a little murkier where it's like, I think you just want me to keep using Spotify, you know? Or it's like, I just can't shake that feeling of like, this is a, this is a robot. It's a convincing robot. You are basically like the voice of, I don't know, a corporate entity.

• 51:43Speaker 04

  Like, that's not at the front of my mind when I'm listening to it, but I think it's somewhere in the back where I'm sort of like, I don't quite trust the intentions. Like when it's trying to introduce me to, but whatever's coming next in rock music, I'm like, well, are they sponsored? Or are they just like? Did a human pick these? Like, I just don't know where it's coming from. It feels, yeah, it feels murkier, I think.

• 52:11David Pierce?

  Yeah, and then ironically, I think there are probably similar questions worth asking about a lot of radio DJs.

• 52:17Speaker 04

  True.

• 52:17David Pierce?

  But it feels different even when it's not, right? And I think that that thing is really important. And like for Spotify, I think if you rewind a bunch of years, Spotify and everybody else always talked about, we need the sort of human computer combo to do this stuff really well. And I think my experience at least was, there was a long time where Spotify's curated playlists were where I did the vast majority of my listening.

• 52:44Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah.

• 52:45David Pierce?

  And it was, it was a mix of like, you know, Rap Caviar was like the biggest playlist on planet Earth. And it was, it was a person. They had a ton of machine help. They get all kinds of listening data. They get all kinds of like, you know, quantitative and qualitative data about the songs themselves and, but ultimately they're putting the thing together. And I feel like Spotify probably most of all, but to some extent, kind of all of these media services of any kind, have just leaned further and further and further into the machine. And maybe the right answer is just like a human face on the machine.

• 53:21Speaker 04

  Right.

• 53:21David Pierce?

  The cynical answer is they hire a DJ to just say the words to you instead of

• 53:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 53:27David Pierce?

  a machine saying the words to you. But it does feel like that combination is being lost. And I think part of the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is I'm curious about your own music habits, because I was thinking about my own after reading your story. And I spend a shocking amount of my time in the like daily mixes that Spotify does. It has like six of them. One of mine is always country. One of mine is always like movie soundtracks, which is awesome, because that's why I listen to it during work all day. Like it rips. It's great. But I spend a lot of time in those and that's AI. There's no person involved in that. That is the computer curating music for me. But that's not like I get to the end of those playlists and I couldn't tell you anything about them. They're just kind of the noise I have on during the day.

• 54:11Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 54:12David Pierce?

  And reading your article, I was like, oh, I need to go back to listening to the radio in the car just as like a new kind of sensory experience for music. Because I know all, all music is background noise to me now in a way that I kind of hate. And I think Spotify has done that to me.

• 54:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah, that's, it's funny because like, I feel like that's a big reason why we all signed up for Spotify. Was like, whoa, the algorithm is really good and you're gonna find stuff that you actually like. And that was like, kind of a, in a groundbreaking concept at the time. And I, I do find a lot of music I like through recommended stuff on Spotify. Um, but yeah, it is, it is a different like, you, you do get into the too many M and M's situation, or at least I do, pretty quickly.

• 55:04Speaker 04

  Um, because I will just happily keep listening to my, yeah, eighties inspired synth pop bands and then, um, yeah, it, it, it feels good to like, there, there's a couple of, um, DJs I, I like a lot on KXP. I think one, one of the things they do is play the songs that I didn't realize I wanted to hear. And they feel kind of out of left field and there's like, love the Spotify algorithm for what it does. But then I do want, it, it's like gratifying when I hear something.

• 55:43Speaker 04

  I'm like, I had no idea that I needed to hear Stevie Wonder like as much as I did. And, and you hear it on the radio, it's like, that was perfect. I, I feel like it just, it just comes down to feeling like, There is something there with AI and Spotify's had a lot of success with it. I think they're kind of leaning into that is getting to a point of like, well, yeah, the AI was good, but I didn't want to like, talk to the AI. Like, it wasn't the AI that I was here for. I was here because the AI was helping me get to good music that I like. It's not the entity I want to be interacting with.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  And it's like such a cringey moment right now where everybody's like, you know, you log into Instagram, it's like, do you want to interact with AI?

• 56:37David Pierce?

  Right.

• 56:38Speaker 04

  No, I want to see what my friends are doing.

• 56:41David Pierce?

  I know. I have come to the point where I'm like, I think we need to get to the point where we think of AI like we think of, you know, TCP IP, like crucial infrastructure to how all of this works. And if it works correctly, you should never, ever for one second have to think about it, right?

• 56:56Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 56:57David Pierce?

  I don't, I don't spend time thinking about packet loss on the internet anymore because it works now. But that's not the point of any of it. All of it enables other stuff. And I think right now we are, we are at a moment where AI is like the main character. And what it should be is like the camera, you know what I mean?

• 57:16Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 57:17David Pierce?

  It's, I don't know, it's a bad metaphor, but I'm totally with you. So now that you've been messing with this way of music consumption, what do you feel like is the right answer? How are you going to do your own music to make sure you're getting the right kind of diet?

• 57:30Speaker 04

  I feel like I have a pretty, I mean, our, our use case is kind of weird in that like, I can't listen to songs with lyrics during the day.

• 57:39David Pierce?

  Fair.

• 57:39Speaker 04

  And when I'm writing, so.

• 57:41David Pierce?

  Movie soundtracks, it's the only way.

• 57:42Speaker 04

  Movie soundtracks is good. I like that.

• 57:44David Pierce?

  The Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack for like five years was all I wrote to.

• 57:47Speaker 04

  Oh my God. If everything I start writing sounds like super epic and like, you'll know I've been putting on the Pirates of the Caribbean.

• 57:56David Pierce?

  Cannot recommend it enough.

• 57:57Speaker 04

  Yeah. Yeah. So I have like kind of my, my genre for when I'm writing and working during the day. I think probably in there, there's even a little room to experiment. Like I've listened to the same. Like coffee table jazz playlist, probably a hundred times. But then, yeah, it's like when the working day is over, I kind of like, I like having KEXP on while I'm doing the dishes and while I'm in the car picking up my kid. And yeah, it doesn't feel, it's like, I don't need everything to be a banger. I don't know. Like maybe in different situations, I'm a little more like, okay, I want to listen to whatever it is right now.

• 58:37Speaker 04

  But sort of feels like a nice way to unplug from the day and, and hear a person, hear some, probably a lot of songs I like.

• 58:48David Pierce?

  Yeah, I think there's something to the kind of unoptimizedness of that that is really, I don't know, encouraging and compelling in a way that listening to a playlist of things that are sort of ruthlessly constructed for your oral pleasure is like,

• 59:08David Pierce?

  you get to the point where you're like, okay, this is, these are great songs and I'm kind of over it.

• 59:12Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:12David Pierce?

  But then the, the like, the peaks and valleys of like, oh my God, I love that song. Versus what is this trash that they're playing for me for the next three minutes? It's, it is, it's just so hard to replicate. And I think we're going to see a lot of companies and products try to emulate that.

• 59:31David Pierce?

  I'm not sure it's possible. I just don't know if you can do that with computers in a way that people doing people things is

• 59:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 59:38David Pierce?

  gonna keep working like that. So should everyone listen to KEXP? Like, is the move here find your own local radio station? Or just get into KEXP and it'll solve all your problems?

• 59:46Speaker 04

  I think it is. KEXP is streaming worldwide, online. I am not a paid spokesperson for KEXP. I just don't really like it. But yeah, no, I, that was the really amazing thing about this, comments on this article are people chiming in like, yeah, I have this station and. Uh, you know, shout out to the station in Milwaukee or wherever you are and they're, they're out there. It was, it was really gratifying to hear that people have their favorite indie radio stations in, um, in our super optimized, super Spotify time. So it was great to hear.

• 1:00:25David Pierce?

  Yeah. I will say the one other thing I would add, uh, in, in terms of like places to go for this kind of thing is, uh, YouTube is a surprisingly rich place for people basically just doing radio. Uh, like I think a lot of people know lofi girl and stuff like that, which is a thing I really like for sort of the, the right vibe, but new music. Uh, I, I use it sort of as a mood setting thing, which I'm very happy to outsource. Like I don't need to know what the songs are called. I just want, I trust them to sort of make me feel the way that I'm looking for. But there are also lots of people out there doing really interesting mixes of like different kinds of genres and doing all kinds of really long radio DJ sets essentially. And, uh, there's

• 1:01:10David Pierce?

  tons of great radio to do there, but I also, uh, would encourage people to go poke around on the sort of endlessly streaming YouTube stations. Yeah. Because there's, there's some very cool stuff out there. Yeah. Awesome. I think we, we all need a little more of the like weird, random discovery in our lives.

• 1:01:27Speaker 04

  It's good. Eat your vegetables. Don't eat M&Ms all day.

• 1:01:29David Pierce?

  As much as I hate to say it, John Mayer's Apple Music radio station is very good. It's very good. It's like, I, I like John Mayer a lot against my will, but here we are. This is just, this is just what happened.

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  He's a good musician. It's, he, he's like undeniable. However you feel about him. Yeah.

• 1:01:47David Pierce?

  Yeah, exactly. You, this is, this is where I've landed. Uh, all right. Give us a music recommendation, then I'm gonna let you leave. We're, while we're telling people to listen, what should everybody go listen to?

• 1:01:55Speaker 04

  Oh gosh. Um, I just heard, oh, Sudan Archives. I saw her at a festival. I hear her on KXB all the time. She's a Cincinnati girl like I am. Um, check her out. I, I love everything she's doing.

• 1:02:13David Pierce?

  Love that. Uh, I have been listening to Kacey Musgraves nonstop for like two weeks, so it's probably good for me to go and branch out. This'll be good.

• 1:02:21Speaker 04

  Let's switch it up.

• 1:02:22David Pierce?

  Allison, go have fun at the Children's Museum. Thank you as always.

• 1:02:26Speaker 04

  Thanks.

• 1:02:28David Pierce?

  All right. We gotta take one more break and then we're gonna come back and take a question from the Vergecast hotline. We'll be right back.

• 1:02:37Speaker 03

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• 1:03:12David Pierce?

  All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866-VERGE11. The email is [email protected]. We love all of your questions and we try to answer at least one on the show every week. Thank you to everybody who has reached out with thoughts about how we should be covering politics and the next Trump administration and just the next four years of life in America. We have a lot to think about. It's been really great to hear your thoughts on what you do and don't want us to talk about and do and don't care about yourselves and how we as The Verge can make this stuff make sense both kind of in our world, but in a broader world. Thank you to everybody who's reached out. But this week, we do not have a question about that. We have a question about one of the true central tenants of The Vergecast,

• 1:03:57David Pierce?

  and that is the Frame TV. Let's hear it.

• 1:04:02Speaker 05

  This is Pete from North Carolina. I need some advice on the Frame TV. I'm probably not a normal TV buyer in that I'm almost 40 and I've never bought a TV. The only reason I'm in the market now is that we had some inclement weather out here recently and our old TV that was going on like 20 years old, I got a piece of a window through it. So what I'm looking at is the only place in our house for a TV is the main room up on the mantle place. It's pretty central and I hate the idea of having a big, empty, black void staring at the room, especially with our little kids, because they're just going to demand that some sort of cartoon is played on it. It's also, well, it used to be next to a big window that is getting repaired. And so it gets a lot of light.

• 1:04:42Speaker 05

  And between that, it kind of seemed like the Frame TV or something like it would be a good fit, so that it's not getting too much glare and when it's off, it's not just begging for something to be turned on.

• 1:04:58Speaker 05

  So that being said... I see 50, 55 inch TVs on Best Buy for like $200 to $300. Well, the Frame TV is over a thousand. Can I justify paying that much for something that hopefully will look nice? Is that a good trade off? Is the Frame TV actually what I want in the middle of my main room that I'm going to be looking at all the time? I would love any advice you can give me. Thanks. Bye.

• 1:05:28David Pierce?

  When someone asks the question, is the Frame TV actually what I want? There is only one person to bring in and it's Neel Patel. Hi, Neel.

• 1:05:35Nilay Patel?

  I'm just going to answer that question with a statement, which is that Hollywood is doomed. Embedded in that question, if you listen to it carefully, is the complete destruction of the film and TV industry as we know it.

• 1:05:50David Pierce?

  Say more.

• 1:05:51Nilay Patel?

  Pete, you don't want a TV. You're 40 years old. You've gone your entire life without purchasing a TV. And you're just got broken and you're like, I should have a TV in this space because you think you need a TV. And maybe you watch it sometimes and you don't want your kids to watch cartoons on a TV. So you're going to buy something else out of obligation to cultural norms. And you're actively looking to spend money on a TV whose picture quality sucks to prioritize how it looks when it's turned off. It is just a little, it's a little hop from there to not having a TV. I don't know how more clearly I can say this. Hollywood is doomed. People don't want to watch the TVs.

• 1:06:35Nilay Patel?

  They want to watch TikTok.

• 1:06:38David Pierce?

  I mean, it is, it is true in a way that I had never really thought about until you said that, that you are just assumed to have a television. Like we watch a lot of HGTV in our house. And one of the things that drives me the most crazy is whenever they stage the houses at the end, they're always beautiful and perfect and well set up. And you always sit there and go, well, where's the TV going to go? They're going to have to flip all this around because they're going to have to have a TV because you have to have a TV.

• 1:07:03Nilay Patel?

  The fact that people will spend money, I will answer the actual question with the Frame TV, but I'm just embedded in this question, in this thought process, is the end of the assumption that everyone's going to watch TV.

• 1:07:18Nilay Patel?

  And once you break that assumption, everything goes to hell.

• 1:07:21David Pierce?

  The description is kind of, I have a space on a wall where I'm supposed to put a TV, not, I want a TV. That is kind of the premise of this question. You're right.

• 1:07:29Nilay Patel?

  Yeah. Put up, hang up a picture.

• 1:07:33David Pierce?

  But what if you bought a thousand dollar TV that let you hang up all the pictures?

• 1:07:36Nilay Patel?

  Right.

• 1:07:37David Pierce?

  Can I interest you in that?

• 1:07:38Nilay Patel?

  Maybe, and maybe that's what you want. And you should spend the money on that. Right? But if what you want is to sometimes watch TV, you should spend $200 on a 55 inch TV and put it on a roller stand and roll it into the garage. And then roll it back out when you want to watch TV like, and you will quickly find that maybe you never wanted to watch TV at all. And I, I just, as a person who has giant expensive TVs and wants to watch movies on them, I, every single day, think, boy, this TV is off most of the time. Like, we don't have it on all the time. I have friends and family that keep their TVs on 24/7. Fine. That's another way to go. But it doesn't sound like that's what Pete wants to do.

• 1:08:22David Pierce?

  No.

• 1:08:23Nilay Patel?

  The reason I'm always ranting and raving about the frame TV is that the TV of it is pretty compromised, right? It's a, it's a very old panel. It doesn't have local dimming backlight. It's not Samsung's latest LCD tech. It doesn't have Dolby Vision, which is a Samsung choice. It runs Tizen. Like, I'm just sorry.

• 1:08:43David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:43Nilay Patel?

  Right? Like, it's all, it's all this stuff. Uh, but it has the matte finish and it has the art store. And you can put a frame on it and you can hang it on the wall and people prioritize how it looks way over the picture quality.

• 1:08:56David Pierce?

  Right.

• 1:08:57Nilay Patel?

  Or that how the TV of it works. And that's, and that's fine. I'm just saying it's just a short hop to the next thing. So Pete, what I recommend is you really feel like you need to have a matte finish TV showing a picture. There are now much cheaper rifts on a frame TV from a bunch of companies. TCL has one, Hisense has one. Right, like, everyone knows this is the market and I think the prices will come down. The frame TV itself is whatever. Like, the art store, Samsung has done a great job with the art store. They have spent a lot of time and energy making the deals and getting the licenses and da, da, da, da. But are you gonna pay fifty dollars a month for the art store? If you're not, then you should just get another matte finished TV that can be framed, of which now there are several, and put up a picture of your family or something.

• 1:09:42David Pierce?

  Yeah, ironically, Pete, I think, is coming into this thinking he's, he's kind of like, really trying to decide which is the best TV to buy, which like, would make him Eli people. He's actually my people. He's like, I don't care about my TV, I just need to have one. Right, like, I think if you're starting from a twenty year old TV, frankly, the frame TV is probably gonna look great. The twenty year old panel you had on your wall, it's probably a big upgrade to even the frame TV. But I do think you're right, that clearly, the, the goal is not, I want the best television, is it the frame TV? Like, I don't think anyone is arguing that it's that, and that's not what Pete wants either.

• 1:10:16Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, if you wanna spend a thousand dollars on a TV that's on a crate, you should buy a fifty-five inch OLED.

• 1:10:21David Pierce?

  Right, but I think, if, if, if the question is like, how do I solve this specific problem that I have? It seems like the cheapest riff on the frame TV is probably what you're after.

• 1:10:31Nilay Patel?

  Or get, uh, what's that, Samsung's easel TV, uh, these are all expensive.

• 1:10:34David Pierce?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:10:35Nilay Patel?

  Uh, get that LG suitcase TV. I'm not kidding.

• 1:10:39David Pierce?

  That's actually, that might be the solve.

• 1:10:41Nilay Patel?

  Buy the TV that goes in a suitcase and put it on the kitchen table once a month when you wanna watch a movie, like.

• 1:10:46David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:47Nilay Patel?

  There, there are just many, many more ways to solve the problem of sometimes we all want to sit around a screen. Get a projector and hang up a bed sheet.

• 1:10:57David Pierce?

  I had the projector thought, but I think the place it sits in Pete's house, where it's like a space that gets a lot of light and is kinda screwy, that might be, that might undo the projector. But, but I think the, the TV you can put away theory here in some way is actually maybe the solution.

• 1:11:13Nilay Patel?

  Yeah, I looked it up. I'd forgotten what it's called. It's the LG Stand By Me Go.

• 1:11:19Nilay Patel?

  It's a 27 inch TV. It's in a, you know, it's something like one of those like James Bond metal briefcases. It's expensive. It lists it over a thousand. I bet on Black Friday, it gets really cheap. Buy a smart monitor. I have a 40 inch Samsung smart monitor that I bought for $300. Throw that in a closet. Like, I'm just saying, there are many, many more ways to solve this problem. Or buy a cheap frame TV. But I just, every time I get this question out, I hear from people who are like, I want a TV that looks good when it's off. And I'm constantly coming back to, it is just a tiny jump to, I don't need this at all.

• 1:11:59David Pierce?

  Right. Yeah, I mean, it makes you think, do you remember that CES a few years ago where LG had that rollable TV that you like pulled up out of a case? Like, that's the kind of thing we all need. Just like, I just, I want to be able to hide that behind a bunch of books and then pull it out, unroll it and watch a movie and then put it away. And I think, like, that's the sort of thing that would be great. And I think the thing about Pete's question I keep thinking about is, is if I put this TV here, my kids will want something on it. And like, I'm sure you feel that, but like, oh God, do I feel that. I would love to be able to, I hide the remote now. Because if he can't find the remote, I'm like, oh, sorry, I can't find the remote. But he goes, he just points at the TV, which is at his eye level and is like, put it on.

• 1:12:43David Pierce?

  And it would be, it's like, there is more and more appeal to putting the TV away than ever for me.

• 1:12:50Nilay Patel?

  It's all, it's all fun and games until they get iPads. The problem instantly resolves. The second the iPad or the Chromebook is delivered, right? For better and for worse. Even things that I've tried to turn into like, this is a TV thing. The era's tour. We're gonna watch this on the TV. She instantly figured out how to get it on Disney Plus, right? Like, everything moved. Yesterday, I walked into our kitchen and she was listening to music on her iPad speakers in a house where she is surrounded by speakers, can just speak into the void to ask a music service to start playing, and knows how to use AirPlay. I've taught my six-year-old how to use AirPlay. Still listening to music on her iPad speakers. What are we gonna do about this?

• 1:13:31David Pierce?

  Yeah. I bought a whole Sonos system and my wife listens to podcasts out of the speaker on her phone. And it will never, ever stop making me crazy.

• 1:13:39Nilay Patel?

  Mine as well. I'm just saying, Pete, buy what you, buy what you want, buy what fits your budget. But most people just prioritize size.

• 1:13:47David Pierce?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:13:47Nilay Patel?

  All TVs are bright. I'm gonna call out Casey Newton here. Casey asked me on TV to buy, and I told him, and then he bought a Frame TV. And I said, how's the picture? And he was like, it's so bright. And that was the end of that conversation.

• 1:14:01David Pierce?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:02Nilay Patel?

  And that's, that's

• 1:14:03David Pierce?

  Casey is also my people when it comes to TVs.

• 1:14:05Nilay Patel?

  We're talking about this in early November. So we're just a few days away from Black Friday. So the Frame TV will go on huge sale. Always does. Last year's Frame TV, which is fine, they're Samsung spends no money developing these. It's the same TV every year and they just collect huge margins on them. Last year's Frame TV will go on even deeper sale. And then you've got the new class of competitors, right? You've got the HighSense Canvas TV, the TCL NXT Frame TV, the NexFrame TV. Amazon has the Fire TV Omni, which has adaptive brightness and art. There's just a lot of these and they're all gonna go on sale on Black Friday. And it's, it's worth just looking at them and thinking, will this solve my problem of it's there?

• 1:14:51Nilay Patel?

  That's the problem you're trying to solve.

• 1:14:54David Pierce?

  Yeah, I just looked it up, by the way, the 55 inch Omni TV currently on sale for $369. Like, this is, this is a cheaper problem to solve than a thousand dollar Frame TV. However you choose to solve it, you can do it for less than a thousand dollar Frame TV. I feel pretty good about that.

• 1:15:08Nilay Patel?

  And I'm 100% confident that they'll be even cheaper on Black Friday.

• 1:15:13David Pierce?

  Yeah, there we go.

• 1:15:13Nilay Patel?

  That's just the way it goes.

• 1:15:14David Pierce?

  Awesome. All right. I hope this helps. Pete, let us know what you end up doing and send us pictures of your setup. I'm very curious. Neelai, thank you as always.

• 1:15:22Nilay Patel?

  You're dead to me.

• 1:15:24David Pierce?

  All right, that is it for The Vergecast today. Thank you to everyone who came on the show and thank you as always for listening. There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com. V's review of the 8-sleep thing is great. Allison's story about AI DJs, all of our many, many, too many, frankly, stories about Frame TVs. All of it on the website. I'll put some links in the show notes, but as always, read theverge.com. It's a good website. I like it. And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or other televisions that you'd like to spend too much money on, you can always email us at [email protected]. Or, like I said, call the hotline, 866-VERGE11. We love hearing from you. The Slack room that all the questions get pumped into is bumpin', my friends.

• 1:16:09David Pierce?

  It's great times in there. Thank you to everybody who calls and thank you to everybody who emails. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poor, and Eric Gomez. Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Neil and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the AI news, some more Mac stuff. Just a whole lot going on right now. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.

• 1:16:40Speaker 07

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