Google Wants the Tools. Meta Wants Your Face. Walmart Wants the Ads. (538)

Speaker A: I wanted to ask you first because, uh, I mean, it's just very interesting what your answer might be, but have you bought, have you purchased any Wendy's stock over the past few days?

Speaker B: I didn't even know Wendy's had gone public.

Speaker A: I didn't even know what to say to that. Yeah, this, ladies and gentlemen, and all people throughout the world, uh, this is a person that doesn't follow the stock market. No.

Speaker B: Very well. Hello.

Speaker A: Well, I am going to, uh, I'm going to. Did they IPO when. When. No, no, no, no. Forget that. They've been public for a long, long time. Oh, okay. Let. I'll just fill you in, and then we could talk about something else. So, uh, Wendy's is, Is a restaurant chain, uh, founded near me in col.

Speaker B: Thank you very much.

Speaker A: Thousands of chains throughout the world. I guess now, uh, they've become the, the latest MEM stock.

Speaker B: Oh, really?

Speaker A: Interesting. Yes. So basically what happened is, is that it got, uh, you know, when we covered Gamestop and AMC for sure. With the power of that, that Reddit, like Wall street bets, Reddit community.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Well, Wendy's is one of the most shorted stocks in the world, which means that, Right. People are betting against them. 32. I'm reading this from a Morning Brew article. 30. 32% of Wendy's stock, of which the. The stock has gone down 70% since 2023, is being sold short. So some people got wind of this. They hired a new CFO or whatever the case is, but really, uh, Reddit got to it, and they pumped it up. And right now, like, I don't know where it's at, but as of yesterday, it was up 25%. It was up as much as 40% yesterday. And I thought for sure that you were going to get out, get in on, uh, on, uh, the craziness.

Speaker B: No, Wendy, I, uh, I, I have not. I have not been a patron of Wendy's in more than a decade. I have not partaken of the Wendy's. I don't even.

Speaker A: Haven't eaten at a Wendy's for more than a decade. Don't they have Wendy's out in California? Because you go to. In and out.

Speaker B: I do. No, they have them. We have. We have in and out here. So there's no need to go to a Wendy's.

Speaker A: Don't you ever. Did you ever go for just a frosty.

Speaker B: No, I, No, I, I'm not. I, I'm not a Wendy's aficionado at all. I, I'm either going to a McDonald's for my breakfast. Because that's what I like for a good breakfast. Um, and my. Actually, interestingly enough, my. My m. My rave. This show will be about McDonald's, but. But no in and out. I mean, in, in and out. In. That's end of sentence. That's. That's. That's all you do here in California.

Speaker A: Yeah, but, you know, first of all, it's shows like these that I realize how different we are.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because sometimes I think, oh, we're. We're the same. We're from the same ilk. Arby's. We got the beef, we've got the meat. That's the. That's the one. But anyways, yes, I do on occasion, I do like a single with cheese from. From Wendy's. And, uh, we have, uh, Both my kids will square. Right. They're squarish. Yeah, There's. They start square, they start square, and then when they go on the fryer, they sort of end. It's, you know, it's curved edges, octagonal. Yeah, no, I don't. I don't know what you would say. But anyways, my kids love the Frosties. Okay. So they will do. And they had a mint chocolate chip Frosty or something that came out a while back that they just went nuts over. And they do the Shamrock Frosty now. Like they do shamrock shakes.

Speaker B: And that's a lot of knowledge about.

Speaker A: Anyways, this whole opening was whether or not you bought Wendy's stock. And I. It could have just been a really quick one.

Speaker B: Yeah. Let me save you some time.

Speaker A: No, we'll just leave it. We'll leave it right there, folks.

Speaker B: And now, for your listening pleasure, here's Polizi and Rose covering the week of media marketing and digital content news. Take it away, boys. Well, hello, friends. Welcome to this old marketing proudly brought to you by the HubSpot podcast network, the audio destination for. Well, you know who. You're a business professional. Anyway, I'm Robert Rose, and as always, with me is my co host, my pal, my friend, and the guy who definitely took a knife to the whole reflecting pool, Mr. Joe Polizzi.

Speaker A: Took a knife? Is that one of the.

Speaker B: That's the thing. Have you not. Have you not been keeping up with this?

Speaker A: Well, I. I, uh, did see. Well, first of all, as many people who listen to this know, I don't really follow the news.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: On a regular basis because I like to keep my sanity.

Speaker B: This is idiocracy. At its. At its. At its. Okay, so it's finest. I Have to tell you.

Speaker A: All right, so I want to get your take, but this is what I heard, and then I'll. I'll leave it go. I heard that there was a, uh, no bid that went out to. To basically hire these people that worked on another project of the presidents in the past or something like that. And they went and they, uh, then painted Freedom Blue to the bottom. But apparently, because that color, like something with the sun and the oxidation and whatever creates this out. Because it's painted this way. Is that right? It wasn't. So far.

Speaker B: You've got it exactly right. Yes.

Speaker A: Oh, okay. They.

Speaker B: Basically what they did was they put a liner down, which is. That was a very dark color. And then they painted over that. They put a sealant over it, basically. And so what happened was, is then because the, uh, the dark liner basically ostensibly soaks up the sun because you remember, it was marble under there before it was marble. And. And, um. And. And. And it. And by the way, it also leaked.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker B: But leaked was a good thing because m. It meant that you were constantly replenishing the water, but now they sort of took away the leaks by putting the liner in and then putting the sealant over it. And then, of course, the darkness made the water, like, just perfect for algae. So it became. It became infest. I mean, just like. I mean, it just.

Speaker A: I've seen huge algae blue. The green.

Speaker B: It's. I mean, it was like pea green, like the whole thing.

Speaker A: And by the way, just for clarifications, because we didn't say this is the reflecting pool outside of the Washington monument in Washington, D.C. that's correct. We didn't say that. Some people. We. We do have international listeners.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: That follow the idiocracy. That is.

Speaker B: That's right.

Speaker A: United States.

Speaker B: And so. Yes. And so you have this pea green soup now, basically. And there's all kinds of memes going around that are just so delicious about. You know, it's like they got the Star wars characters in there, like, you know, like when they were in the trash heap in the Death Star. It's like, oh, uh, it's so good.

Speaker A: But I saw the Cousin Eddie one from the Christmas vacation.

Speaker B: Yes, exactly.

Speaker A: Yeah. The crapper's full or whatever.

Speaker B: Reflected.

Speaker A: Okay, so what's. What's the night?

Speaker B: So basically that. So that's what caused it. Right. And now what happened is because of all the algae and because of the heat, um, the paint, the sealant, and the liner is starting to peel. Um, and so it's peeling up and basically causing all Kinds of issues. So now people are, like, taking photos of that and taking videos of that and all that, all the paint peeling and all that kind of stuff. So Drumpf, basically, from his office, basically said that there was, of course, that there were vandals that took a box cutter. Oh, it's so good. He took that, took a box cutter basically, to all that and, and cut it and vandalize the reflecting pool. And he's, he's gonna set the Justice Department on finding the vandals and arresting them and all that kind of stuff. And it's just, it's, it's, it's. We are literally at the point of the show where we're watching paint peel. This is, this is where we are. This is where we are right now. We're watching. We're literally watching paint peel and being amused by it. It's like. O m. Um, G. Yeah, that's, that's where we are with our country right now.

Speaker A: And only. We're only halfway.

Speaker B: Yeah, I know.

Speaker A: We're not even.

Speaker B: We're not even halfway through this whole four years.

Speaker A: Like, where is this, is this the part in the movie where there's actually an intermission and we go and we kind of. Or do we have to just plow through and say, there's no intermission in this thing? We're just going to the end and, and we're gonna get to the credits and just.

Speaker B: Yeah. And who knows?

Speaker A: Speaking of credits, I saw Masters of the Universe this week.

Speaker B: Oh, gosh. You're just, you're just on top of these movies. That's so fantastic.

Speaker A: We go to, like, one a week. I, I, I like the good, uh, for you, Pam and my dad, we, we all went to the movies together.

Speaker B: And how was it?

Speaker A: It was lovely. Um, if you are a fan of Masters of the Universe, you'll love it. Okay. It's, it's, it's a, There's a lot of, uh, fan service. A lot of fan service.

Speaker B: Okay, good.

Speaker A: And Jared Leto as Skeletor is hilarious

Speaker B: because he just choose the scenery. He's got to just.

Speaker A: It's just. Oh, my God. He's like, uh, I mean. And the extended laughs are. They're pretty funny. You know, they do the. And then everybody's looking at each other. They'll keep going. It's kind of. It's campy and fun, and if you want.

Speaker B: Oh, good. I'm glad they didn't take themselves too seriously.

Speaker A: That's. Oh, my God. Yeah. Ah. There's nothing serious. There's nothing Serious. I mean, a few. A few things, you know, the friendship and family and.

Speaker B: Of course. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But that's what it's all about. That's what that show is all about.

Speaker A: All the stuff. But no, I would give it a, uh, solid 7.5. Only because I've never been a, like a big He man fan, but my wife, who grew up apparently watching he man, loved it. Loved it.

Speaker B: I did, too. I. I totally grew up with, uh, he man and the Masters of the Universe. Oh, my God, that Skeletor and the whole thing. I mean, it's so good.

Speaker A: It's.

Speaker B: I, I, um. Yeah, it's. I. I can't wait. I think I can't wait.

Speaker A: Yeah, but you could probably wait for, for the video.

Speaker B: Oh, I'm gonna wait for it to come to streaming. Trust me, I'm not going to.

Speaker A: Yeah. You're not gonna go out to be seated public. No. Well, peasants might run into you. Honestly.

Speaker B: Because.

Speaker A: What would you say?

Speaker B: Well, because here's A, I have no friends, um, other than you, and, you know, you're not here. Um, and. And so B, my wife is definitely not going to this movie. So I would be going by myself. I would be going by myself.

Speaker A: Okay. It. So what you should suggest, and I'm not giving you marital advice, but what you should suggest is because you take wonderful picnics and hikes, you should say, you know what? I think what we should do is we'll get all of our picnic stuff and we'll take it to the movie theater. Do with that what you will. But then you can then afterward to walk off the popcorn or Raisinets, uh, or Jujubes or whatever you consume during these things.

Speaker B: Yeah, I was gonna say, clearly you have not met my wife.

Speaker A: Hummus and dip hummus and I don't know, um, go. By the way, I'm a big hummus fan, and hummus at the movies is not a bad thing. You can absolutely do that.

Speaker B: No, I know. Well, my wife now loves hummus, so that might be the one turnkey thing that could.

Speaker A: Could work.

Speaker B: But I do realize promising hummus. Yeah.

Speaker A: And. And finishing up this whole thought. I do realize that. I don't know if we are for business professionals, as you said in the opening. I don't think.

Speaker B: Well, that's what they pay us to say. That's what they pay us to say.

Speaker A: So people listen to this. They're not listening with their business professional hat on. Good Lord, I hope they're listening to this old crumpy hat that they found in the closet somewhere. I mean, that's the kind of hat that they're wearing.

Speaker B: We're giving them the jokes that they use at dinner with their significant others. They're basically that. We're giving them the. The comedy is what it is. You know, when they comment on the

Speaker A: news telling yourself that, brother. Yeah, we're, um. Yeah. I mean, I've been really getting into the whole, like, you, uh, know, what is the meaning of life thing. What. What are. Are we meaningful to people?

Speaker B: I know you're probably. Your posts have been. Your posts have been so existential lately.

Speaker A: It's like, I got another one. It's like, you. You were.

Speaker B: You've been reading Kierkegaard or something.

Speaker A: Oh, my God. I'm, like, so down the. Uh. I. And I'll tell you, I'm reading enough. Okay? I gotta. I gotta tell you this, and then we'll get on with the show. I'm reading another book. I'm not gonna say what it is until I'm done. It's a very short book, but I'm reading the last chapter. I'm literally crying my eyes out. I.

Speaker B: Well, what book you gotta say?

Speaker A: You can't just teach. It's. It's a. It's a. It's about a doctor's journey who finds out that he's dying. And the. The last chat. And I'm reading it. Uh, I'm gonna. I'm gonna start crying now. I'm reading it, and I read the last chapter. Just like, you're gonna go to the next one and the next chapters from his wife because he died, and I'm like, oh, God, I don't know. Like, I don't know if I can take this anymore. Uh, and it.

Speaker B: You know what?

Speaker A: You know when you're reading a book and I'm reading it in the living room, and, you know, my wife is doing her thing, walking through, and I'm like, I'm just a mess. And I'm like, is this something that I want to explain or is this. And I just. I just, like, ran up to my office. I don't wanna. I don't want to talk to anybody right now. I just want to be me. And, uh, this pain that I'm feeling for this family, that's. That's all. I.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker A: There you go.

Speaker B: Well, that's lovely. That's.

Speaker A: I'm.

Speaker B: I'm so glad you're spending the summer finding all the feels. Yeah. You're finding all the feels. Yeah.

Speaker A: All right. Uh, what are we Talking about. Well, we got it.

Speaker B: We got a great show. We got a great show. We're going to open with some breaking news, um, that we'll talk about in just a second. And then we'll cover the fact that Google is investing in a 24 the filmmaking, uh, with a bunch of AI tools and we'll get our takes on that. Then Meta is delivering their own eyeglasses. I thought they had, but now I guess.

Speaker A: Oh, no, no, but they're switching them.

Speaker B: I know, I get it, I get it. And then Mr. Is going to go direct, um, because of course he is. Um, and then we'll get to our winners and losers, uh, where I'm going to talk about the winner that is McDonald's as we opened in the cold open. Um, and Joe will talk about Time Canada. And then Joe, uh, is going to rant and rave on a book, um, that he is reading. I'm sure we're going to get. We'll all be in tears. We'll all be in tears.

Speaker A: The other. I, I read four or five books at the same time. So, so there, there we go.

Speaker B: And then I have a rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant, rant. Um, so stay tuned for that, um, about Tunecore and AI and music and Google and yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's worth staying around for if you're interested in AI music and my little Lila project and all that kind of stuff.

Speaker A: So, but we had, we had a couple breaking pieces of content that we're going to cover first.

Speaker B: Yes, that's right. So, yeah, so let's, let's cover those two. So, so the two stories that we'll cover. This is coming out of the so can lion is happening this week. Um, my invitation from the Informa overlords got lost in the mail. Um, but, uh, rest of my Content Marketing Institute colleagues are there enjoying champagne on the cross set. Um, and uh, this is Walmart has announced at can, uh, that um, basically they have bought Vibe Co for a reported $1.4 billion. This is coming from Business Insider, by the way. Um, breaking news here. Literally as, as we record this, eyes are bulging at the size of the deal, says Business Insider. For a company that has said the valuation at 410 million this past September when it raised capital. And basically Vibe's core premise is that the platform can make buying streaming TV ads as simple as using Google or Meta. And then it's got a link to its, uh, investor pitch deck. Um, basically uh, the E marketer had estimated Walmart's, uh, ad business will generate $8.23 billion in worldwide. That's amazing. Amazing. Um, to put that in context, Meta will bring in 243 billion and Google with 239 billion and Amazon at 82 billion. Um, so it's a drop in the bucket when compared to their, their major, uh, sort of colleagues in this, in this industry. Um, do you want to talk about this first and then do the other one or do you want me to bring.

Speaker A: I would, I wanted your take on it because I know they bought Vizio. Walmart bought Vizio.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And now they have this ad component that at least if you read the article, which we'll put in the show notes. Yeah. It sounds like they feel that this could be a significant revenue stream for Walmart. And it's so out of, it seems out of character. Is it out of character? And is this a good purchase for Walmart?

Speaker B: It's a huge and amazing purchase for Walmart. I'm not sure it was worth $1.4 billion, but I'm not sure.

Speaker A: Money to them. Yeah, that's what. That's in Sam, Sam Walton's old couch. That's on the side of the road.

Speaker B: That's right. That's right. And so here's why I love this is because, so you've heard me and the audience here that has been around for a while have heard me talk about retail media networks for forever, right? And they were such a weird little niche thing really until Amazon started making a bunch of money from doing retail media network sort of search ads as well as enabling retail brands to build little websites on Amazon.com and, and even with video and all, uh, that kind of thing. Um, and by the way, they do a very similar thing with Amazon Web services on the B2B side. So you can go build like little websites that market where people can go buy your product never having gone to your website.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: You know, if you sell software or those sorts of things. So the retail media network, which of course historically has been like in house tv, you know, you walk into a CVS or something and you see the TV going with ads for makeup or whatever. And that sort of thing has now gone to digital for selling real estate on the website. And Walmart and Target and all of the sort of big box retailers have had this for a long time, which is you can, you know, if you're a, if you're, um, a merchant on, on these platforms, you can buy search ads. You can buy video, you know, ads, et cetera, so that people shopping see your stuff. And this is just that sort of at a much bigger and wider level. I mean, they're now basically going to become. Adding the interfaces of, you know, whether it's Roku, whether it's, you know, Pluto tv, whether it's, um, all these streaming networks, probably Netflix at some point, where they're ostensibly turning those streaming platforms into Walmart's retail media network. And that's, that's just a huge, huge thing for them.

Speaker A: It's.

Speaker B: So basically it's a genius buy. Basically.

Speaker A: Okay, so a plus on the buy. Yeah, on the price. But I don't think it mattered.

Speaker B: I mean, no, not in the scheme of. Not. Not in the scheme of things.

Speaker A: Yeah, we're in a SpaceX world right now.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Speaker A: Price doesn't mean anything. It will, by the way, it.

Speaker B: You will if you will.

Speaker A: You will be you. Yeah. So, and then, uh, wonderful listener of ours, Andy sent this next.

Speaker B: Yes, yes. So this next one that we're going to cover is also breaking news here, uh, which is because we talked about this last week, I think, or two weeks ago, where we talked about the brilliant. It was a winner, actually. We had said Levi's was a winner because, um. So FIFA historically, uh, has basically changed the rules for the stadiums that they, that they go into. And they, you know, they pull a Darth Vader and change the rules and say, hey, you can't name. They're going to rename your stadium even

Speaker A: though, even though you paid all this money for naming rights for the stadium. This is our stadium for the next two weeks.

Speaker B: Exactly. The genius move that Levi's did is basically they wrapped the logo of, you know, uh, Levi's Stadium up in San Francisco with, in the perfect shape of the Levi's brand. So of course it's unmistakably Levi's. And then of course it went viral on social media and they're getting all kinds of brand love because of being able to do this. Well, this article that Andy sent to us basically talks about how FIFA has basically enabled this entire newsjacking side hustle way of brands getting more attention for their brands by. It's, you know, it's a Streisand effect. Right? They're totally with the Streisand effect. They're basically, by blocking them, brands are getting really creative about how do they actually use the blockchain to, you know. And they talk about Bavaria pants, where basically the FIFA people made people take off their trousers before they Walked into a match because they were, had Bavaria logos on them. And then ostensibly they got free advertising because everybody that was trouserless was talking about Bavaria pants. Right. So it's, it's fascinating, uh, idea that, that, you know, you talked about this a while back with the, I think it was the Masters or some golf basically thing that was basically blocking people from uh, having phones there. And you were saying you're basically that, that they're not, you know, the, the act of blocking it is actually doing worse than, than actually letting people do it. Right.

Speaker A: It's like, I love, but I love what's interesting with the Levi's thing but also with like Heinz is in the same state. They, they're doing a, uh, limited edition taped up bottle release.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Speaker A: I mean the, the. It's really some creative thinking that's happening where they're like, oh, we can take advantages. I just thought it was super. It's interesting and it's probably a win, win because FIFA after some, you know, we don't know how it's gonna go and we didn't know about World cup attendance. Now we know World cup attendance is. They're selling out all these things. There's record revenue and ads being sold. Like it's a big win from that standpoint. And it looks like it's a win from the other ones that are being blocked as well, you know.

Speaker B: And you know, what I have to say is that I'm genuinely surprised at is the, the, the sort of. It's almost, it's almost like it's off to the side of everything else that's shitty that's going on in our country right now. But sort of this, the World cup fever, if you will, and all the wholesomeness of the fans of the, you know, of the fans of the teams hosting Scotland taking over Boston and all the bars running out of beer and the Norwegians with their rowing thing.

Speaker A: Oh, that's beautiful.

Speaker B: It's so, it's so, you know, and the player from Norway, who's the Viking, you know, who's, you know, he's becoming a star. It's like just. And the, uh, I think it was Kansas where one of the teams ended up. And it was like all of the town in Kansas sort of Kansas.

Speaker A: I think that's the Algerian team, which we're going to see on Saturday, by the way.

Speaker B: It's just so wonderful and wholesome and fun and there's, there's so much lightness in it. It's just, it's Very refreshing. I'm genuinely surprised that it's happening, and I'm genuinely, happily surprised that it's happening. But it's really nice thing.

Speaker A: We were, um, last thought on this. We were watching South Korea, South Africa play yesterday, and my youngest came down and we were watching it and all. There was a whole group of, uh, Koreans together. And they. They couldn't have been more than like, 20 years old. 20, 21. And my son goes, where do they get the money? Like, where. Like, that was his first thought. I thought that was interesting. He's like. He knows that it's gonna. It costs a thousand dollars a ticket to get into these, plus all the travel and the stay and whatever. So, uh, if you're going there and you're going for multiple games, most likely. So they probably have been there for two weeks doing three games. It's like, wow, the expense to make that happen. Yeah. Something. A lot of money being spent. It's probably right now really saving the.

Speaker B: The U.S. well, yeah, well, I'm gonna. I'm gonna tell you right now, South Korea is crushing it in their economy right now. I mean, they're. They're doing very well. They're doing very well. They're, you know, with their. With. With. With how their government and. And sort of economy is handling the assimilation of AI. It's very different than what's happening here. It's. It's. It's really fascinating to go. Go. You can do something.

Speaker A: I have not done research on. I only. All I saw was that, um, their stock market, along with a few others around, like, really got hit hard because there. There's just a lot of. There's a lot of anxiety going on about all this investment in. In AI. Sure. Whatever you deem.

Speaker B: That's right. That's right. But they're looking at it as an infrastructure play. Like, it's like truly an infrastructure play. Whereas, um. Yeah, it's. It's. It's really interesting.

Speaker A: Speaking of infrast, when we go to the.

Speaker B: Yeah, let's go. Look at you moving the whole show right along here.

Speaker A: I don't mess around, man. We got. Hey, yeah. I got people in my ear saying, okay, next. Don't. Don't let.

Speaker B: By the way, we had so many people.

Speaker A: Robert. I gotta say, Robert's going on too long. You got to move.

Speaker B: Yeah. So many people, by the way, reached out to us about the whole Jamie thing. I just. I was again, talking about wholesome, right? Just sort of so wonderful. People reaching out, saying, I'll be your Jamie it's like, so we have that.

Speaker A: We have the best, we have the best fans. Yeah, we do.

Speaker B: Um, okay, so yes, our main story that we're covering here is that Google has Now invested in a 24. Uh, this is coming to us from the Daily Variety. Um, although it's just called Variety now, I know it is a daily Variety when I used to read the actual print version of it. Um, and the headline is Google invests $75 million in A24 to develop AI powered filmmaking tools. A24 and Google have struck an AI research partnership that will see the independent studio work with Google's DeepMind unit to develop new AI powered technologies for filmmakers. Google's roughly $75 million investment is tied to the partnership and is in line with what Thrive Capital invested during the studio's last funding round. The partnership will give a 24 access to DeepMind's research and infrastructure. While DeepMind researchers will work with the studio to build out new workflows. The deal does not give Google access to a24's content library or its data. This deal represents the latest marriage between a Hollywood studio AI in an era where companies have oscillated between partnerships and lawsuits. Uh, Disney short lived deal with OpenAI to license this suite. Uh, basically went that's my editorial, not the articles. Uh, and then basically uh, as it sued simultaneously AI companies like Minimax and Mid Journey, uh, and, and, and my, I'll get later into the whole UMG and music and Warner Brothers and all that. It's like that's a whole other thing. Um, basically Netflix also purchased Ben Affleck's AI startup Interpositive, aimed at building tools for filmmakers, earlier this year. And the article goes on then to talk about some of the details of the deal, uh, some very press release, written quotes from the various people. Um, I definitely have a take on this. What is yours?

Speaker A: I mean just everything. We seem to always focus on the shiny object which is the final piece of content. So everybody's like, oh my God, AI movies or AI blogs or AI whatever. But really what we're going to see and what we have been seeing is that the workflow, the workflow is where it's all changing. You might not even notice the difference with the end product. But it's all the workflow that happens. And I remember vividly because when I started at Pen Media, which was at the time were primarily print magazines, that's when QuarkXPress came in and it was like instead of doing everything by hand, you're Actually blocking things out to, to go into the magazine. You used a computer program to do that and that, I mean you, the change that you saw in the workforce and how we did the workflow and then take this, what's going on now, and then multiply it times a million and now we've got this. And I, I guess it just reminds me, first of all, I think it's a great little, if there is a marketing move by Google DeepMind, this is a nice little. Hey, I think this is a good way to, to do, to kind of sneak in and say this is a good thing. Like we're trying to work on the workflow. But the other thing is this is where the change is happening. This is where the change is going to happen. Let's take our eye off that, oh, is it AI content or not? And those types of things and really say, okay, well we're going to see this entire workflow change before our eyes and it's going to happen really quickly.

Speaker B: Yeah. And that's what you're going to see. And by the way, it's a less sexy thing, but it does really still talk to the idea of which jobs and roles get replaced.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Because, you know, we, uh, haven't talked about it that much, but there's been a lot of talk on, like Galloway talks about this when they talk about the, you know, when they talked about the cancellation of the Late show and you know, some of the late night TV where they talk about, you know, the fact that it takes 200 people on, you know, those shows to pull them together. And you know, for a podcast with two talking heads, literally it's the two people. Right? I mean, so it's, it's, it's an extreme level of, of difference in terms of the democratization of the tools that enable you to produce content at some level of quality without the number of people that you need, which are mostly enforced here in the Los Angeles and Hollywood industry through unions and through legacy workflows and the way that things are done. Right. You know, in other words, you have to have X number of people to run a lighting rig to do this, this, that and the other. And so if all of a sudden the tools, the cameras, the lighting rigs, the editing tools, the editing bay, the ability to produce B roll, all of those things start to get made more efficient or made more, I, uh, guess effective, uh, through the use of AI oriented tools, that's just going to streamline costs basically in terms of what you used to need a person to do, you no longer need a person to do, or what you need a person to do is very different than what that person did before. So, um, I think that's, that's really the thrust here for a company like A24 that is focused on producing at cost, at efficiency, rather than, you know, worrying about, you know, whether it's going to be an AI actor in the middle of something else. You know, there's no reason for them to not use human actors. The whole. The easy fruit to pick off the tree is the efficiency in the workflow, just like you say.

Speaker A: Well, I saw an interview with Demis Sabas, who runs Google DeepMind, and he was talking about the technology that they've used for a long time, and they let other people kind of copy that, where they will put like a synth or something, like a watermark behind AI generated video and content. So you can't see it. Like, we can't see it, but somebody else could see it to know, oh, this is AI generated. That's been, I think, the focus by a lot of people. But I don't. But really we're in the assembly age. It's being assembled by AI and that's what this kind of projects. And I think sometimes we take that, take our eye off the ball. You got to remember, oh, workflow's changing. AI is assembling this content. But the final. You might not even notice anything different in the final bit.

Speaker B: Well, just so you know, um, this is going to be a tease to my rant later. That's. That is also true. But it's so also as part of this, I am sure, um, as it was, as it also is for the music, um, side of things, what, what you get and what the studios get are very different. In other words, they don't have to do the watermarking. They don't. They're not going to have to do all of this disclosure. They're not going to have to do all of this stuff because they're making special deals behind the scenes here. And they're going to pay the money. They're going to get paid and pay the money to be able to do that. Whereas people like you and me, the amateur creators or the creators that are sort of not UMG, not Paramount, not a 24, we aren't going to get those tools. So there's. There's 100% gatekeeping going on here. There's a hundred percent gatekeeping going on here.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I mean, we talked about it in the last episode. There's more gatekeeping going on than we've ever seen ever before. We thought social media was a gatekeeper, but I, I, my question is, is this a temporary thing and at some point everyone will get access to.

Speaker B: No, I think, I think it isn't.

Speaker A: Everyone will get the Glengarry leads, right?

Speaker B: Uh, yeah, I don't think so. I don't think so. But I'll, I'll talk more about that in my, in my rant. Yeah, yeah, maybe. Let's, um, while we're here, we have the last. Is, Is this the last or this

Speaker A: is the last one?

Speaker B: This is the last one. And I have, I have a fun surprise for, for, for, uh, for July. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker A: Okay. But let's talk. We'll enjoy this one.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Because it was, it was a good one. As they all are. Oh.

Speaker C: 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 4. Well, we had a green daddy oh, real darn pure Just a couple hip cats with a podcast cure no commercials cutting up a hot little show Just a little bit of Archie digs Daddy O We was prowling the alley with the stand up space beat Two stray cats jabbing on a one way street Then a wheeler with a rain come knocking Loud bills was piling up like a Memphis crowd Mama said boys need a real career so we slicked back the hair and we shifted gear where we Paying the bills, paying the bills, paying the bills Go cat, go Sold our souls to the highest bidder now we're sitting pretty, ain't no quitter HubSpot honey, hit us with that bread we sell out uh, sweetheart off our hip little head paying those.

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Speaker A: Yeah.

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Speaker C: Well, paying the bills, paying the bills,

Speaker B: paying the bills yeah Daddy O these

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Speaker A: Yeah, Daddy O yeah, uh, I, I, that's again. I always see something new every time. And I realized that we sleep in the same bedroom.

Speaker B: We do. We do a shared alarm clock. And we, and we, by the way, we're wearing matching pajamas.

Speaker A: I like the fact that. Yes. Uh, like we both go to the alarm. And yours, your hand nudges on top of mine and it's just, it's so romantic.

Speaker B: Oh my God. What is Frank Sinatra doing there?

Speaker A: Like, I don't know. Frank's just like. And he's not approving.

Speaker B: He's not, he's definitely not approving of whatever this is going on.

Speaker A: Whatever.

Speaker B: I particularly like how in the beginning, you and I, like, switch bodies. Like, like there's the whole, like, you're different, I'm different.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. It's just every once in a while. No, my favorite is right before the ending where my I'm gone and you're singing and you're playing guitar. I'm like, that's the one that Robert wanted to do. It's like, how do I make, how can I make a video where Joe's not in it at all?

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And. And you did it.

Speaker B: So, so next month we have. So starting next week, um, we have our new one, which will be, uh, in celebration of Masters of the Universe. It will be the theme song. The genre is the theme song, uh, from 80s cartoons like GI Joe, Transformers.

Speaker A: Uh, I cannot wait.

Speaker B: It's. I have to tell you, because I've been Ultron. It's so good. It's so good. My, my, my lyrics are, first of all, awesome. I'm gonna brag. Totally brag. Cause I had so much fun writing this because it's my genre. It's like 80s techno music.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Because of course, that's what those things were. Um, and then it's like the cartoon video. It did such a nice job of, uh, What I'm finding is that if you do cartoons, it's way easier to do the video side of things. It makes it so much more consistent. If you do like cartoon and sort

Speaker A: of just maybe we're doing.

Speaker B: The more ridiculous you go, the more consistent it becomes. I'm find.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's, that's. By the way, when you were talking about the. Doing the ad there for the findability, have you seen, you saw the latest trend, I'm sure with all of our friends doing the. The in the weights dot com.

Speaker B: Yes, I did mine. Did you do yours?

Speaker A: I did, I did, yes. Uh, so basically we should put it.

Speaker B: We should put a link in the show notes.

Speaker A: I'll put a link in the show notes in the. Let me write that down in the weights dot com.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And basically the whole idea is you can see what, what the different, uh, language, large language models, how they find you, if they find you, what they say. And then you get a percentage like you're 98 or 87 or 50 or whatever.

Speaker B: What, you're in your top. Is it what percentile you're in? Right, so you're in the top 90%. You're in the top 2%, you're in the whatever. Right, so where did you, where did you end up? Uh, I don't know.

Speaker A: It's pretty good. I'm sure it was like 7%.

Speaker B: No, you're in the top three. You're looking for a smaller number. Right, so you're in the top. Probably in the top 2 or 3%. Right.

Speaker A: Well, I'm gonna do her. I'm gonna do it right now.

Speaker B: I'm in the top 10% because I'm. I scored. Yeah, I only scored a 415. Or something like that. Or something like that. You know where everybody else.

Speaker A: It says top 2%.

Speaker B: All the cool kids. Yeah, all the cool kids like you and Mitch, Joel and some of those people all scoring in the top two, 2 to 3% and scoring in the 800s or something like that. Mine, uh, is fascinating. Like for Claude and for ChatGPT, I score super high. But I am, I'm zeroed out in meta. Like, like meta doesn't know who the hell I am. Zero in meta. It's fast.

Speaker A: Uh, is that because you don't post very much on Facebook, you think?

Speaker B: I don't know where I, I just. It's whatever the tr. Whatever their training data is, I'm just not there.

Speaker C: I'm just.

Speaker A: I don't know why. Robert, where. Why are you this way? I don't know why. Why I'm that. Why. I'm sorry.

Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.

Speaker A: I apologize. Yeah.

Speaker B: All right, speaking of Meta, let's get to our next story here. Keeps things moving along here. So, uh, this is coming to us courtesy of Morning Brew. Uh, it is. Meta designed its own glasses in the race for your face, and I'm sure the authors.

Speaker A: Face.

Speaker B: Yeah, the race for your face. Get it? See what they did there? Um, and then they have two pictures of people wearing the ugliest glasses that I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker A: Um, one was. The one was. Well, it can't be the Kylie Jenner one because that one's. That one's kind of. Well, the other ones.

Speaker B: Well, Kylie Jenner's beautiful, but. But, you know, so the guy on the right just looks like. It just looks stupid.

Speaker A: I think that was designed by Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah. Maybe particular ones.

Speaker B: Um, anyway, so the, the article opens up by saying, as smart glasses slowly graduate from being a niche gadget that geeks use. Wow, that's a hell of a first sentence. Uh, big tech companies are vying for the perch atop your nose. He is really, really working it. And market leader Meta just made a big change. The company unveiled a new set of smart glasses designed in house without the Ray Ban branding of other models. The, uh, new glasses, $299 starting price, is meant to be a cheaper alternative to the Ray Ban and Oakley branded metaspecs that go for 379 plus. But they're still producing partnership with the Ray Ban parent company, Esselor Luxottica and offer similar functionality like built in camera and audio enabled AI assistant. The article goes on to talk about that. There's three versions of it. The Adventurer, the Fury and. Oh, my God, the Adventurer, the Fury and the slim ovoid Starfire.

Speaker A: I want a little Starfire.

Speaker B: This is the first time I'm reading this, by the way, and it's just like.

Speaker A: Oh.

Speaker B: Um, Meta suggests it might later release a cheaper cameraless. Cameraless model with more style options. Starfire. Have you got your Starfire glasses on?

Speaker A: I'm going to get my Starfire on. You. Darn right I am.

Speaker B: This is redonkulous. Um, what is your take on this? I think this is stupid, but what do you think? Maybe this is why I'm not in the Meta training data.

Speaker A: Well, I mean, I think. I really do think that the whole augmented reality thing is. Is going to happen with a large group of people. I think that when you walk down the street, you're going to be able to see and interact. I don't, I think it's much slower process than what we're working on with AI But I do think it's going to be like another gatekeeper between you and. And then we're going to be asking, oh, it was, oh, how do I get found in search and Google. And then it's now it's how do I get found with AEO and Geo and all that stuff? And then it's going to be, oh, well, uh, people are walking around. How do I get, how can I be in part of that process as well? Uh, we're not there yet, but we're getting close, I think. But, but they have to make better looking sunglasses for people to want to wear. But it's gonna, it's gonna happen because. And then at the same time, which we're really not covering. But Snap launched theirs. Yeah. For like 20, 100 bucks or 20. I don't know what this. I didn't get into the Snap. Like, why is Snap so much more expensive? Because they're really going with augmented reality.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: Here's what I want to know is that what's the point? Like what? Like the, uh, if you're gonna build a fashion product, why not lean into the fashion brand? You know what I mean? It's like if you're meta, why do you care that. I mean, other than paying a royalty to, you know, which is probably why, because it's a lower margin, I guess. But other than paying the royalty to Ray Ban and or other designers, why wouldn't you just build the technology that resides in the design and make a bunch of deals with, with amazing designers? I mean, I just don't understand why they would, why they would take on the, the design themselves. I just, it doesn't make any sense to me because. Cheaper, cheaper. I get that, I get that. I mean, but, but okay, but then you get the sort of. You get what you're looking at in this stupid picture of this guy wearing like, I mean it literally looks like the kind of sunglasses that you'd buy on the beach because you forgot to buy sunglasses for your vacation. So you buy a cheap pair of $3 sunglasses. It's like it's.

Speaker A: I got out of the fashion business a long time ago. Sometimes I don't get it. I mean, maybe, maybe uh, that's, maybe that's the look and people are going to walk. Uh, maybe that's the dork look is in Bring back the dorks.

Speaker B: The dork look. You just can't Miss by Starfire.

Speaker A: So, so quick take if, if you're wearing the meta glasses, whatever they're called, Starfire. It's very utilitarian because you can use it for, uh, translation. And like I say, I need to get around. I need to do things better, faster, cheaper, whatever. I'm wearing those glasses. If I'm wearing the snap glasses, which are going to cost you like, 10 times as much, that is for real augmented reality. So that means you're probably a Pokemon Go player where you're like, literally walking around and you got. You want to see the Pokemon. And by the way, that's a big benefit. Like, I watched people in groups, like, go to their little Pokemon wherever a Pokemon is in Cleveland, Ohio, and they're going like, it's a thing. Yeah, it's still hot. So I think that that's.

Speaker B: Where did you hear about the person who, like, fell off a cliff because they were at a Pokemon spot and they were like, looking around through the things.

Speaker A: Totally believe it, though. I absolutely believe that could happen.

Speaker B: Oh, m G. All right, yeah. Uh, let's get to our winners and losers here. Um, basically, so we're going to talk about the last week in something that was a winner in the world of marketing or a loser in the world of marketing. And, uh, let me go first. I'll go first because mine's quick. Um, uh, basically. So I'm going to. We'll link to it in the show notes, although you don't really need a link to understand this. Um, McDonald's has done kind of what they did with the McRib. They're now bringing back the fried apple

Speaker A: pie, which happens to be glorious.

Speaker B: One of my favorite things that McDonald's ever did. And I was really bummed when they actually let it go. Um, you know, it's. It's literally molten lava in your mouth. And you would burn the. I mean, I, like, look at it and go. And can already feel the roof of my mouth peeling off. Like, like the reflecting pool. The roof of my mouth is like.

Speaker A: Oh, good, good callback. There you go.

Speaker B: Um, but basically the, the, what they've done is, is that they've. They, they killed it off in the 90s and, um, actually and replaced it with a baked. This is when McDonald's was trying to go all, uh, healthy, uh, and they replaced it with the, the healthy baked version, which was not nearly as good. And now they've brought back the fan favorite of the fried apple pie little, ah, bar. And it's just. And it's kicking, uh, literally kicking off this week as we record. They're kicking off and making it available in various, uh, locations around you. So if you're a McDonald's fan, I think this is a big win for them. That's a big win from a marketing perspective, It's a big win from a brand perspective and it's a big win from a product perspective. Um, and they can do with this. I'm sure the next thing we're going to hear is the scarcity.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: We're gonna, we're gonna hear sold out.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: They just don't, they can't keep up with the demand. Um, and so that's.

Speaker A: I would believe that.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, that's what we're gonna hear next is.

Speaker A: And then they're all gonna be rushing to Wendy's.

Speaker B: Exactly. For the Frosties. Yeah.

Speaker A: And some square patties.

Speaker B: Yeah, There you go.

Speaker A: There you go, patties. Um, all right, what do you got? Uh, mine is very brief. Uh, well, I guess not a rave. It's a winner to Time and Can and the great country of Canada. All right, so, uh, Time is launching a licensed Canadian edition called Time Canada.

Speaker B: Moose Outside should have told you with

Speaker A: our, with Arts House Media Group. Uh, and basically that's the Toronto company behind Billboard Canada and Rolling Stone Canada. Super Smart, where they're taking these beloved brands like Time and giving them the local feel and flair. And we've talked about some of this. I really do believe that there's a great opportunity with brands and local news. This is a media brand, mind you, but I think there's an opportunity here. Trusted editorial brands, uh, going into certain areas or certain niches, whatever. I think it's probably a, uh, it was probably a no lose scenario for Time and for Arts House, who wants to, you know, generate something new. Yeah, that's a, it's a, it's a big winner. And it's not just because they're going to do a print magazine, which I think is great, but that's not it. I think that this is just a local.

Speaker B: It's local. It's local. It's all, it's all about local because,

Speaker A: uh, we're seeing just more of these, these news deserts all over the place. And it's, it's a little bit scary as you start to see like all these local areas that used to have little newspapers just get picked off. I know this is a little bit different, but I think like if you were a local company and you wanted to make a big impact covering what happens locally in Your area could be your content marketing play.

Speaker B: Yeah, that's right.

Speaker A: Doesn't, um, have to be more than that.

Speaker B: So I think that's, I think that's exactly, exactly right. I mean, I've been talking with my clients about this all the time, which is, how do you, you know, so how do you, how do you differentiate these days in a world of noise, right? You know, like, if you're a law firm or an accounting firm or a small, uh, manufacturing company or, you know, whatever it is that you're, you're sort of. Your whole customer base is ostensibly a local customer base, whether that's state, county, city, whatever it is that you don't write a blog post about your industry. You write a blog post about your industry in your town and you make reference to the local football stadium and you, you make reference, you make it very specific to your locality so that you, when you rank, you're ranking for your local audience, right? And it's. That's Adding that local flavor is such a huge important thing for those, for those kinds of businesses.

Speaker A: I agree. I agree with you 100%. And that never happens.

Speaker B: There it is.

Speaker A: That's happened today. I probably could go next, right, because.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, Ransom race. Ransom race, where we go off on a little bit of a rant or a little bit of a rave that makes us feel like, well, like Trump, dude, you have to see them. There's some, there's some great video with, with Trump, basically.

Speaker A: Where do I go? Where would I go for this video?

Speaker B: Is this a YouTuber, YouTube or any of your favorite social video places? But, but basically just search for Trump talks about the Reflecting Pool vandals. He, he's got a whole, he's got a whole thing working, right? He's got a whole. He's got the park police in it literally today. The park police. Oh, it's just, it's, it's like, it's literally a comedy if it wasn't so stupid. Um, he has the park police now in on this. So they've now arrested, arresting people for touching the water. Like, if you go down to the reflecting pool and, like, touch the water, you're getting arrested. Um, and they have, they've really. The park police today, because I saw this in my feed, released video of a woman. You can see her, like, you know, and they're like, can anybody identify this suspect, this individual who is maybe damaging the reflecting pool?

Speaker A: And it's literally. Are they doing a tongue in cheek?

Speaker B: They're not.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: This is, this is totally real the

Speaker A: park police, because that would be even better if they're like this, this.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's basically a tourist, which you can tell because she's wearing like khaki shorts and flip flops and you know, and she's just like reaching down into the water from the security camera and she like pulls up a piece of the, the sort of peeling off paint. They're like, they want, they want to, they want to speak with this, you know, this suspect. Oh my God, it's, it's so ridiculous. Anyway, yeah, yes, you go first because, um, I definitely have a bit of a longer situation.

Speaker A: Yeah. Mine is, is uh, very brief, but uh, Paul Reitzer from Smarter X, you know, asked me, as I said, I said what are you reading right now? And he said the Infinity Machine by Sebastian Malibi. And uh, I just about done, like I'm in the last 15 minutes of it. That one I'm listening to, listening to, not reading. Um, and I gotta say that it has really. I don't know if it's changed my perspective on what's going on in the AI race, but I'm, I'm so much more informed as to how we got here. Demis Hassabis, sort of the founder of DeepMind and a bunch of other smart scientists and engineers and the purchase from Google and then why open AI was created and why anthropic was created and why certain decisions were made and certain things were held back. It's just, it's, it's fascinating. It's like a soap opera. If you can get through. There's really a lot of technical information in there because they really go through some of the different models and how, uh, Google's mo, You know, Google basically

Speaker B: family tree, as it were. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker A: But DeepMind was like pushing away from large language models for a long time where OpenAI was all into it. And then I hear all these names coming back that, oh, started a DeepMind, then open AI, then on their own. Like it's really kind of the same players throughout. It's fascinating. So if you really want sort of of behind the scenes look at how we got to this point with Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, all the players. It's a worthy read and really, really smart writing.

Speaker B: It sounds. Like I said last week, it's in my queue. It's my next book on my list. So I'm Gonna maybe take the 4th of July weekend and read it.

Speaker A: Yeah, the dedication from uh, the author to start the interviewing process with him so long ago. This is Such a long project that has taken him to get here to this point because he basically has comments from him from a decade ago. Yeah. On, uh, it's really good stuff. So I recommend it.

Speaker B: Nice. And you.

Speaker A: And you find. Sir, what happened to you?

Speaker B: Okay, so pull up a chair. Um, so let me just. I'll tee up the background here. So for any of the listeners who don't know, I have had and have a current project that I've been completely transparent about, or at least try to be transparent about it. I don't know if that's, you know, I'm succeeding, but. But I try to be as much as I can. Which is my Lila Ray Hightower project, which is I, uh, created a fictional character using AI and I'm taking all my music that I wrote, you know, 10, 15 years ago over the last 10 or 15 years, and I'm using my original compositions to create music using AI tools. And primarily Suno, because it's really the only tool out there that is, um, any good. Right. I've tried them all. I've tried Udo, I've tried Google Flow Music, which I'll talk about more in just a moment. Um, I've tried some of the other ones. The 11 labs has something. They all suck. Um, Suno is the only one that's good and it even has its issues, um, especially in the later models, but that's a whole different rant. Um, so with that, I basically created. So she's got a Spotify channel, she's got a YouTube, uh, OAC, which is what they call the official artists channel. Um, she's on Apple Music. Um, she's on, um, and then I have her. She's got her own YouTube channel and all the sort of things. Um, and she's on Amazon Music. And I'm making exactly $0 from this, by the way. I think my total earnings at this point is something around the, the $15 mark, which is way less than I've spent on all the things. But I have a project in mind because I'm, I'm writing a book and I'm writing, you know, so I'm writing a book about this and it's a novel and I have a whole sort of experience that I'm trying to create sort of later in the year. And I have, you know, it's an art project for me for sure. Um, and whether I make money at it or not, I don't care. The art project is more important. So, anyway, so here we go. This week, um, I used a Company called tunecore. And tunecore is what they call a distributor and publisher partner. So there are a few of them out there. TuneCore and DistroKid are the two major competitors. Um, and so what they handle is they handle two things. One, they distribute all your music. It's a little bit like Libsyn is for podcasting. It basically distributes your music out to all the Apple Music and Spotify's and all that kind of stuff. And then on the back side of things, it also handles your publishing into whatever you happen to be a member of. I'm happen to be a BMI member, which is the publishing which makes sure you get all your royalties if basically your music gets used somewhere. And so there's ASCAP and then there's bmi. And I happen to be a BMI member, so it connects with that. All right, so this week, uh, m. Basically I got a letter from TuneCore Publishing, very clean, cold corporate boilerplate. And they basically informed me in no uncertain terms that effective immediately they were terminating my account. Um, and why? Well, because of the quote unquote volume of AI generated content. I have a total of seven songs up there by the way. Um, so I'm not some AI slop creator. It's like there's a total of seven songs that I've published through TuneCore at the moment. Um, and so, uh, the amount and volume of AI generated identified on your account, they are terminating the publishing back end for my project, basically terminating my relationship between the bridge between them and ASCAP and bmi. Right. So in other words, I can't get royalties anymore through that them. And basically they also threw in the fact that they might even investigate my current royalties, all $15 of which I have not withdrawn from the account. They might even investigate that to see if they were going to claw that back. Now on the surface you go, okay, well, sucks to be you, right? You know, rented land, all that kind of stuff. Industry is just trying to protect itself from AI Slop. They're practicing copyright protection and all that kind of stuff and training data and all that kind of stuff. And it's like, like yes, that's a fine opinion to have and that's all good. But this is what I want you to think about. If you even scratch, and I did scratch the surface of this, uh, what you find out is that this isn't about proper licensing one little bit. It's basically a very calculated, very anti competitive, multi billion dollar corporate shakedown. And the reason how this is happening is because just as TuneCore is now going through all of their accounts and basically punishing and terminating the agreements with anybody who uses Suno. It's only people who use Suno or, uh, Udo. It's really Suno, because Udo doesn't really do a good job. But so it's 95% people who use Suno for their, for their music. You log into TuneCore and of course they have a huge banner ad that says, you should use Google Flow Music. Basically they have a partnership with Google now, basically saying, you should use Google Flow Music. We'll totally allow you to use Google Flow Music. Why? Because as the CEO of TuneCore said, Google has properly licensed all of their music. Now let's talk about what properly licensed means, because basically when you say properly licensed from Google, there's two sides of that coin. And we touched on this earlier in the show. You have all of the artists like Drake and, you know, Taylor Swift and all those people, right? Google made a deal 10 years ago, 15 years ago with YouTube, you know, through YouTube, with the record companies basically saying, hey, look, look, we're going to pay you basically to license this stuff so that when people use your music and their videos and all that, you get paid. Basically the record companies get paid. And it was a big thing because artists were going to get paid, right? Artists were going to get paid for that. Well, they made another deal not that long ago, I think it's a year ago or a year and a half ago. They made another deal. Not get a lot of coverage on the AI side of things, but the AI side of things. The deal with the record companies is very different. The deal they made with the record companies is basically all of the Data that's in YouTube now that includes every Billy Joel song, that includes every. All that, all that stuff. We're going to pay you a lump sum, a couple of hundred million dollars, I think it was. And. But we can't tell you which artists or which or what. What happens there. So you do with the money, with whatever you're going to do with it. Do you think the record companies paid the artists for that? No. Do you think they're going to pay the artist for that? No. And in fact, Google goes one step further. They strip all of the artist authorship, all of the metadata out of the, uh, out of the training data. So even if they wanted to say X song with their, basically with Google Lyria 3, Google Flow Music, they can't tell you which artist this might be drawing from. They did that purposely, of course. Now here's the other thing. The other side of that coin is for people like you and me who uploaded our music, anything we did to YouTube. And basically Google's position there is. Yeah, when you, when you click the box that said you accepted the terms of service with Google, you gave us license to do whatever the hell we want with it. So they didn't pay us. They basically said we have license to use this for our Lyria 3 training. So basically independent artists who maybe used YouTube and for, for their music and uploading their own music videos and their band and whatever, they agreed to a terms that they didn't get a $200 million payout, they just got basically. Yeah, you check the terms of service box. Sucks to be. We get licensed to use your music for training data. Now is that proper licensing? Is that proper? Is that the way that proper licensing should actually work? And so basically if you're a massive major label artist backed by Universal or Sony or you know, whoever, Google didn't touch your music basically forever until of course they did and then paid a big bill for it. And if you're an independent artist, yeah, it just sucks to be you. And so all of this basically comes down to the fact that now artists like me that are sort of using our own music, we're trying to do things the right way and using AI as a tool using our own music. We can't. Anymore. We can't use our own music. We can't use our own music because, and this is the sort of kicker of the whole thing, you'd go, well, you just should use Google Flow music because that's an approved thing. No, because what Google has done based on the pressure that they got from the record company is completely nerfed. The tool on Google Flow music. You can't create a music, uh, a song over four minutes. You can't do covers. Like I can't upload my own music. I can't do a cover. I'm um, not allowed because they, they can't control it. Right. So I can't do a cover of my own music. I can't use it to basically, you know, the only thing I can do is maybe use my own voice, but, but I can't sing and so it won't create a voice person for me based on my singing or by melodies or those sorts of things. The only thing you can do is prompt it like you would, you know, a general prompt that everybody hates that comes back with crap, you know, and basically you can generate, you know, a two minute song or two and a half minute song. So they completely. That's not a technical limitation because they can of course get around that. That is completely nerfing the product based on the fact that they're trying to gatekeep just for that element of music. So it's complete bullshit in my mind, but it is what it is. I'm dealing with it. Rented land, rented land, rented land. I get it. Um, I'm all in on that. But now the question is, what do I do? Do I go to Distrokid, which actually does allow you to upload AI music from Suno? You have to disclose it, which I'm fine to do. I'm fine to disclose that it's AI created, fine to do all of that. But what happens when the pressure gets to them too and they turn me off? Right? So do I do that? Do I just go. And I recognize the irony here. Do I just go straight and make, you know, Lila's thing just a YouTube channel with videos, right, and just upload it directly to YouTube and forget Spotify and forget Apple Music and forget Amazon Music and all of that? I don't know. I still have to figure all that out because I think it's very undetermined, the future at this point. And it just sucks for independent artists that are trying to do something the right way with the music and AI and use it as a tool that we're getting punished because the music industry can't figure out their own shit. Um, so that's my rant.

Speaker A: It's, uh, not. Doesn't sound like a happy ending.

Speaker B: I don't think it's going to be. I don't think it's going to be a happy ending for independent artists. And I think it's, you know, I mean, and you know, what will happen is that the music industry will generally applaud the fact that AI music has been you know, ultimately sequestered off to a. To a ghetto.

Speaker A: So.

Speaker B: Which is fine, I guess. I mean, you know, but it's just, you know, I think Spotify will do a lot because Spotify has said if it's AI identified that they're fine with it actually. But we'll see how long that lasts. We'll.

Speaker A: We'll.

Speaker B: We'll see how long that actually lasts. I'm.

Speaker A: I'm, um. It feels temporary because right now it's just. It. I. I don't think this doesn't seem like it'd be a problem in tour.

Speaker B: Well, here's the, the problem with it. It in my Mind is that just like we talked about with the Google tools, with a 24, this means that the record companies can create AI augmented music and it's fine, right? Because guess what? They're getting the tools that we don't get. In other words, they, they can actually use the tools to augment Taylor Swift or to augment Drake or to do a sample or to do these kinds of tools and all those sorts of things and upload it to Spotify and do all the things and that the general consumer, the independent artist can't do. I guarantee you those, that they're, that they're allowed to do it and we are not allowed to do it. And it's that, that, that is the only thing that really grinds my gears is the gatekeeping part of this. Because it's the. It, you know, it's truly keeping independent artists, you know, down low. And it's, it's awful.

Speaker A: It sort of feels, um, like the next few years is going to be a lot of that, like where we either have to figure out how we're going to live within this world that we don't like, uh, whatever this digital world is, or we figure out a way to. How can we stay outside the gates.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And by the way, have a huge audience. But.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Well, exactly. And by the way, I'm, I'm totally, you know, I'm game on. Right. You know what I mean? It's like I'm not discouraged to stop my project or to, you know, I just got to figure it out. Right. It's just a puzzle that I have to figure out. The, the, you know, the, the thing that makes me the most mad is the, is the, is the disparity, the sort of cynic, the cynical sort of nature of this.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: If they had said, you know, if they'd come out and said, well, Google cares about the independent artists and so we're going to get this tool and it's for real and it's, you know, properly fine. That's a legal thing, that's a business decision, all uh, that kind of stuff. And still keeping the playing field equal is fine in that regard. But by basically nerfing the whole tool, then they're ostensibly saying, no, no, no, you as an independent artist are not allowed to do things with the tool of AI at the proper level. But the people who are part of the record companies can. And that's our, I mean that's a classic record company move. I mean that's a, you know, the record industry move is classically built around that making, you know what's good for me is not good for you, and what gets good for you is not good for me. Right.

Speaker A: I think the only solution to this is you need to go to a movie. Right?

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: And take your hummus. You take my hummus and your blanket. Yeah. And enjoy your, uh, Masters of the

Speaker B: Universe pull up over my head. Yeah. Uh, oh.

Speaker A: All right. Well, here you go. Keep us posted on that. Oh, I will. As I'm sure you will. And then what, uh. What do you got going on?

Speaker B: Well, my birthday is this weekend, so I'm going away for a couple days.

Speaker C: Yay.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going away for a couple days. I'm gonna go sit at a pool, and I'm gonna go sit underneath a blanket and ponder my life.

Speaker A: I swear, you need to add a movie to your, like, maybe. So. Yeah, I think that. I think you should. Yeah. Uh, but don't. Don't see disclosures, Jay. See Masters of the Universe.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker A: I want to see Toy Story 5.

Speaker C: Actually.

Speaker B: Actually, I hear it's good.

Speaker A: I would like to. There's another. Another time I can cry my eyes out in public.

Speaker B: There you go.

Speaker A: Going through that. No, but I'll, uh. While you're enjoying your birthday. Yeah. I, uh, will be, uh, in Kansas City.

Speaker B: Nice. Enjoying the Algerian game. Yeah.

Speaker A: And we're. I'm Sue. We're super excited about it. We're gonna go. We're gonna go do barbecue. We're gonna go do. Get some German beer, because we all love German beer.

Speaker B: Kansas City barbecue is, um. I'm gonna get. I'm gonna get notes from all the. Kansas City.

Speaker A: Kansas City barbecue is. Are you joking? You're. You're gonna get hate mail.

Speaker B: I'm gonna get hate mail.

Speaker A: But I think barbecue is a thing.

Speaker B: No, it. It is. It is. It shouldn't be a thing, but it is.

Speaker A: Here you go. We have a nice episode where people love us, and then you just. You end with this. Yeah. Horrible. But I will. I'll let you know how it is. I will be the judge.

Speaker B: It's sweet is what it is. Is what. Is what you're gonna find. Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah. You like sour, uh, barbecue.

Speaker B: I like no sauce. I'm a bar. I'm a Texas barbecue guy.

Speaker A: You can order it without sauce.

Speaker B: Yeah. Then it's not Kansas City barbecue.

Speaker A: Kansas City barbecue. I get. I get. Yeah, I'll let you. I'll let you know.

Speaker B: There you go. All right, I'm out.

Speaker A: I'm out.

Speaker B: Fantastic. All right. Thank you. All my apologies to those of you in Kansas City. Um, so forgive me, Send me notes. I don't care. Um, we will see you again next week after my birthday and after Joe, uh, gets back from Kansas City. We'll be back next week with a regular show. And until we see you again next week, just remember, it's your story. Story to tell. Tell it well. See you next week on this Old Marketing. Hey, thanks a lot for making it this far in this week's episode. And thank you all for being a part of this old marketing. You can check out all the show notes of what we talked about today@thisoldmarketing.com and it's also where you can leave us a review or a voicemail. We need those reviews and comments on whichever platform you follow us on. And if you haven't followed the podcast, please go do that. And make sure you catch the latest, latest and greatest episodes every Friday morning. We're on Apple and Spotify and all your other favorite podcasters, of course, but we'd love it if you went over and subscribed to us on YouTube. That's right, YouTube. YouTube.com this old market. We'll see you again next week, folks, with another episode of this Old Market.