It's the mat work. What's up everybody? It's Brian Manshawn and welcome to Music News That Matters where on the first of each month, we help you sift through the noise to bring you the most important industry news. We know there's so much information out there, but we're gonna focus on topics that are most relevant to you guys. And as always, we'll give you our perspective as well. In today's episode, we'll be talking about a very hot topic regarding the raging debate between artists and streaming platforms, mainly Spotify, about being paid more in royalties. And before we get started, since these videos are only once a month, make sure you sign up to our newsletter to get notified of the latest news and why it matters in between episodes. You can also listen to this podcast on the go now, along with this episode, along with all the future ones, because we're on Spotify, Apple Music, SoundCloud, and many more. All right. How you doing? Good, how are you man? Yeah, I'm all good. Yep, another week in lockdown, another month in lockdown. It's been a while since we've spoken about it, but another busy, busy month in the industry. Yeah, a busy slash not so busy, because of COVID type deal. What are we, just before we even get off of COVID, how long are we in? Is this two months now? It's got to be at least two months right, isn't it? I think, yeah, it's been eight of March, now we're near the end of May now, yeah. Hey, well, you know, best of wishes to you. I know that lockdown and lock-in is tough on you. Same for you as well, and same for all you guys listening and watching as well, because it's been a very tough time, not just for everyone in general, obviously for artists as well, and you guys watching, it's been pretty tricky. And one of the big debates this month, it's been sort of going on mainly in the UK, probably elsewhere as well, is about Spotify and other DSPs needing to do more to support artists with regards to helping them financially, because they're not getting any income from touring right now. Obviously, livestreaming has been helping to an extent, but there's a lot of lost income, and obviously there's been a lot of bad blood between artists and Spotify and Apple Music and Things for not getting enough money for years now, and it's really sort of like ramped up this debate of late. There's been a campaign called Broken Records over here, using the hashtag to try and campaign to get Spotify to pay more. It all kicked off at the beginning of the month, as an artist called Tim Burgess, who tweeted Spotify directly. He said, hey, Spotify, I feel like I'm working for you here. I really think we should look at how much you give to artists. We should work together on it. It's just not fair at the moment. You have an amazing thing, it just needs to be fairer. So it's all snowballed, there's loads of articles in the press about it, The Guardian covered it, Vice have covered it, Music Ally has done some pieces on it, and there's been a lot of new campaigns started since then. But what I thought we'd try and discuss is sort of like explain some of the potential options to give out a small money, and why it's not as simple as Spotify should triple their royalty pay amounts, for example. So I'm gonna try and explain to you guys a bit about, then you know, to give you the lowdown on what could be done and what situation is. Yeah, give me your words on the why it's not as simple as tripling the payment, that part, because we can really floor all kind of versions of the stakeholders or who should be giving up what, just the why it's not that simple part, what's your perspective? Yeah, because obviously I've been quite guilty of not really thinking it through myself, so I've been doing a lot of reading and it's been insightful, because obviously the first thing to point out is that Spotify doesn't pay you guys as artists or songwriters directly, they pay their money to labels and distributors and publishers and collecting societies, and then they pay you. So let's say, I think right now, Spotify has a royalty pool, and they pay about 65% of revenue to the labels, and also they keep the other 35% to help them run their business. And obviously this goes to the labels, they then give you some money, and obviously there's a lot of figures floating around about how much you get per stream, like there's a big one, which is like 0.0348 dollars. Now that this would have been worked out, obviously, after it's all been said and done, so you can turn that into a per stream rate by dividing your royalties by your number of streams after the fact, but also that's depending on how much the label actually gives you as an artist. So Spotify can't just triple this from 0.0348 to 0.01044 dollars, because that would mean it would have to triple its percentage from 65% to like 195%, not physically possible, obviously. So it's not up to Spotify to triple the royalty rate, they can't physically do that. That's something very important to understand from that regard. So who are we blaming? Who are we blaming? Well, I guess it all comes into everyone, so there's a few different options I'm gonna go through, but first one is an alternative method in terms of the way artists get paid, because one very popular system that people have been lobbying for for a few years is a user-centric payout system, because right now we operate on a pro-rata system. So this means that the biggest artists get most of the money. So for example, if Drake gets 5% of the total streamed on Spotify for that month, then his right-holder to get 5%, which means Drake's music gets 5% of your subscription. So even if you never listened to Drake on Spotify in that month, 5% of your money will still go to him. So the big artists always win, but in the user-centric model, your money goes to the artist you listen to only. So if you only listened to one artist that whole month somehow, and they'll get 9.99, they'll get all the money, plus subscription. Got it, interesting. I like that. You do, yeah.  So that means maybe Drake is pulling from a smaller pool because it might be a small number of people listening to him a lot of times in an extreme state. So that means that could easily, like even the playing field in some ways, or obviously the lesson, generally speaking, when you're talking about somebody like Drake, of course their level of commercial ability, they're getting listened to by a lot of people. But does that ever backfire at some point? So if I'm your fan base and now the split is between the 1,000 people that listen to you, all right? And so 1,000 times, let's just say this month, 9.99, well, no, we'll just stick with 10. So we'll say $100,000 to split, that's the pool, as far as the collective amount of money those people pay them. But then you have to split still between those other people that those people listen to, right? That's how that system will work. So you're pulling from a smaller pool, potentially at that point. And I wonder if it will benefit some people, but then some people, it'll obviously make their numbers even smaller.  So I mean, I think that one has to be thought through before you even demand the user-centric. It sounds better, but I would wanna walk down the line and really look at the stats on how many artists have an average of how many unique listeners. Yes, I guess monthly listeners is probably that gauge, but all right, but when we look at the full spectrum, how many artists are at what level? And then now what are you talking about? Because you need how many artists have, no, how many monthly listeners do artists have on average at different levels? And then you also need how many different artists an individual user listens to on average. Those are the two primary numbers in that equation, but I'm getting that correct. So I will be interested to see and hear more of that. So I could at least get some averages before saying that would be the go-to. I don't think it's a great idea in a sense that obviously the romantics will say that it's taking from the rich and giving to the poor, as in like, because the super fans might give them smaller artists more money than you usually get. However, we live in a very sort of like lean back listening culture at the moment. We've always streamed platforms and most of the big players people will put on will have the big artists on. So therefore they'll still be listening to those big artists. And the other point is that my concern with this system is that it can be very easily exploited. You could just constantly stream one artist on your account and they get all the money. So you could build like bot accounts and fake accounts and really drive up revenue. So there's a lot of things that we need to be ironed out with this. Yeah, that's interesting, even the bot angle. And also in some ways the rich deserve it because when you have a certain level of commercial success, there's a certain amount of fans that are on there and a certain level of legitimacy to the platform that made it that platform. So the company itself Spotify has to favor that in some way. If there is no far better option that gives, that makes everybody happy, you have to really favor the people that are the reason that your platform was able to hit a threshold in the first place. Exactly, yeah, but they're not gonna change it unless they're absolutely sure because obviously they keep Spotify alive with labels and then they feel they're not getting a fair share of the royalties now and they're gonna pull the plug and ask the end of Spotify. So obviously it sounds really harsh but at the end of the day it's a business and they've got to keep their best interests at heart and it just needs, this system could work but needs testing. I know that Deezer have been very keen in the past about trying to implement this. They were first doing a trial run this year just in France only, but it hasn't happened yet. But they are very keen on trying this model and seeing, I'm interested to see the results if it does go ahead but obviously given what's happened they're probably gonna pull the plug on that for a while. But it's certainly an interesting model. Yeah, so I mean, I kind of like the idea of really artists just getting a better deal in the first place on the front end when it comes to relationships with labels, managers or whatever because this will lose and it'll come and start to jump ahead honestly to, I know one or something else you wanna talk about which is the Joe Rogan deal. But it all speaks to one big pocket and one big elephant in the room that we don't address enough. All right, Spotify in their mission is this huge thing they wanna do for artists like helping so many but have a livable wage and all that stuff. It's a very pro artist mission that they have but the issue is, right, Spotify is a baby being born into a world of sin, right? They come into the music industry and it's already set up against them. You can't help the artist any more than you can get rid of the labels or go through the labels. You already have to go through the system that is set up against them. The labels have these artists locked in and they're the ones doing the licensing. You can't control or change the structure of their deals. You can only create a deal and whether it's 100% the best deal or not still doesn't change the fact that whatever your deal is the screwing that goes in on the back end of them getting a small portion of that. So it's an altruistic mission that is kind of set up to fail. Or no, not kind of, it is set up to fail as long as the labels or institutions that people think are scoring them over are the ones that are in control because also because of that control that they're given and gifted because of the catalog they have they have a district portion influence on Spotify because that's who you have to run through that's who you have to negotiate with. It might be more artists, it's society, right? Yes, there's far more people on the bottom but the people with the influence and what most of the weight is held is at the top. And unfortunately for artists in general it creates a situation whether or not Spotify truly wants to, right? It's not, it's almost unachievable which is why Spotify as a company when we look at like the deals like Joe Organ we start talking about the podcasting direction. I'm a firm believer that and to some extent Spotify has done just like, like so many people in the music industry, right? How do these, how does Jay-Z make his money? How does insert big artists make his money? Most of these people make their money outside of music, right? Especially not directly the sale of the music. Most of these people say, oh, I need to go somewhere else to get rich. And I think Spotify is saying, it is hard to make money in the music industry just like so many other people and say, how can we go make some money? And that's what it comes down to. Exactly. So you've touched upon like two points says in terms of two of your options I was gonna refer to. So obviously the first option we said was the user centric payout model. Now, another option would be for musicians to get a bigger share of streaming royalties from their own labels and management company. I'm not gonna go into too much detail about that but basically that would be a sense that, you know, the contract needs to be a negotiator needs to be a bit fairer at the start when they sign new deals. But the other point you touched upon is that should Spotify pay a higher percentage of its revenues out? So I said at the start they only pay 65% and obviously they keep the 35% back to, you know, keep the business afloat and keep it going and growing. Whereas you've got sites like Bandcamp that pay 90% of the money out. So should Spotify increase system or like 70 or 80% or higher? And this is what we get. You said they're at 60? 65%. 65? Yeah. This is when we get into the debate about where people get angry when they invest $100 million into the Joe Rogan podcast deal because obviously they keep them back the money to make these deals. So that's obviously in their best interest though to, you know, to grow and expand. So it's on one side should they increase the revenue on the other side they go around their business. And think about it. That's also showing you the value of your content. It does that so much so for creators in terms of podcasting. But it even gives you an idea even with the music, the value of your content. No, there's no single artist that's been paid $100 million deal. I get it. But if you look at it, 60%, right? Or 65%, if someone says, hey, you know, we'll give you 65% of the deal that doesn't sound that bad, right? It's not that violating. Yeah. But when it gets cut through all these other pieces then you end up with what you end up with. All right. So like, so, you know, in some senses I'm sure the licensing deal that these labels have are a little Joe Roganish, right? We just never think about what are the labels getting in mass as a whole? Because Joe Rogan's deal is a, to some extent not fully, right? But it's a licensing deal. I'll say that it is a licensing deal. I was gonna say music licensing deal, but because it's a licensing deal it does have some similarities. So when you consider that part, all right, what does it really look like? Okay, you're popping like this and I think it's three years, right? 100 million for the licensing and you still own it. That's the biggest difference between Joe Rogan and the artist, right? He still owns it so he can have control of it, license it and then at the end of the day if he wants to pop and keep moving he can do that, but just the fact that he's the one in control of the creative to a fuller extent changes the game versus artists who sign to this whole system or really the system is speaking for you. And then the other situation is artists who might own all their stuff but the leaders of your industry as a whole are still running through that same middleman, which is the labels. It's meaningful when the leader, right? Cause the leader sets the tone and Joe Rogan if Joe Rogan was signed to some other type of entity and kind of ran through a record label-ish type system himself then that also would have diluted instead of lower bar for how the other content creators but since he wasn't on that now you get to see a fuller vision and version of what that's worth. Exactly, this is why I want to talk about this topic really because the debate sort of feels like is the people versus Spotify but I'm not trying to defend Spotify here but I'm trying to be like objective but it's not all their fault. Everyone's got a part to play and they're not in control. They're not the gatekeepers. The labels keep Spotify afloat. They're not in control in this situation therefore it's not just them who should be getting attacked and that's what we're trying to do in this sort of discussion when I was trying to highlight that and it's the same when you talk about the Joe Rogan deal we know he's in control, Spotify are in his hands. He can pull out when he likes. They've got no control over what he talks about. They're obviously here to facilitate and move into the next level in terms of audience reach which is why the labels are on Spotify because they know they can get a lot of value from it. Yeah, and which is why Spotify is like F this music stuff. I want to go into this podcasting thing because Joe Rogan's setting the tone and he's legitimizing the platform even more so for podcasts but every guy's deal doesn't look like his and I'm not talking about payout. I'm talking about ownership. They bought the ringer I believe as a whole which is I don't know if you know that podcast but it's due Bill Spence Simmons. Very credible and dope podcasts and they're buying a lot of this other stuff outright whether they're owning. So it's cool. Okay, yeah, the worth of that, like the trickle down effect of even just licensing and having that exclusively even if we don't own it to trickle down to this other stuff that we actually own, it's you know, five billion dollars worth, right? How much the stock went up? Yeah, exactly. That's, it's a beautiful thing for them as a company and that puts them in a position where now you don't have this variable cost of whatever the licensing and what am I paying this month? You have a fixed cost because I own it and whatever costs to run this shit and any profit on top of that, whatever that looks like which I'm more interested in digging more into what that is. Do they, is it just the sponsorships that they're taking from or what? But whatever the profit is, you know, margins only grow, right? With the cost being fixed. Yeah. And obviously the funny thing is as well that a couple of years ago, Joe Rogan was asked about why is the podcast not on Spotify and he's like, you know, at the time he was like, we don't need to be like, I don't care about Spotify. And now here we are and he signed a deal to show you how the money talks on the business side of things. Like it wasn't in his best interest back then to be on Spotify. He didn't need to be, but now he's got the capital behind him. He's like, okay, I'll consider you now as an option. He was on Apple before? I think he was, I think he was independent. He obviously had a good relationship with Apple. He was one of the top podcasts on Apple, but he was just asked a couple years ago, why are you not on there? And he was like, it's not relevant for us right now. I didn't realize that he wasn't on it. Especially even like if he wasn't seriously on Apple, because that's even more so about your worth, right? If he was on Spotify already, he wouldn't have been able to get the deal that he got. It's particularly not to that extent. One, you're already on there.  We don't necessarily have to talk exclusive. Two, we also are gonna be valuing you less on the brand appreciation than that, what's the word? Good, it's good something what is based on brand. I can't remember what it's called. Goodwill, I believe, the goodwill of your brand, it's just based on the numbers. Cause we already see what your numbers do on our platform, right? Yeah, exactly. There's that additional aspect of, okay, taking people from other platforms that we make it exclusive, but that changes the negotiation completely. So the fact that he wasn't on there and in a sense held out, whether it was all strategic or not, there was a huge benefit to that deal and how it happened. I know people who are like that with TikTok because TikTok was trying to get people to come over, right? Just like so many of these platforms do these days. Yeah, yeah. And like, nah, I don't wanna get on yet because I want to go through their system versus just being on there and then they see how I operate. Let me get money to get onto the platform. So, yeah, that's, well, I did not realize or think about the fact that he wasn't on Spotify, but that part should be noted for anybody who probably think, let me go start a Spotify podcast and then get bought up by Spotify, right? I think it's a little different. It's a little different. Because a lot of his viewership is actually on YouTube. That's where a lot of the views came from because the video format's on there. So he was still, he was still, yeah, exactly. So that was his, he's in control of that. He obviously, he was on Apple podcast. He was the number one downloaded podcast last year above New York Times daily, but he wasn't actually with Apple like exclusively. So he just showed you that. And now, and obviously at the time, he didn't care about Spotify because he was doing well on his own, but now he's seen the potentials like, okay, I'm getting a lot of money here. I mean, it can take us even further now in terms of like our reach. Yeah. He's also seen the long term strategy behind it now, but at the time it wasn't really relevant to him, so. And still owns it, man. Yeah. I'm sure there's bonus incentives attached to things and like all type of performance and back end things that the deal, I would not be surprised if the deal was at least 200 million plus after all my money is allocated, but I don't, you know, I don't know. You should certainly shake up the industry now and the podcast in book is also it's having it's like, this is like a very big like wash head moment for like, you know, new big deals being signed. Yeah. We already saw the trend start where podcasts just started to pop up more and more out of nowhere. Anyway, it became a popping thing again. So I mean, you add on the fact that there's money in the game.  Like they weren't, that weren't even thinking about that kind of thing. It just automatically just should change your perspective. I get it. There's nobody who has a podcast, especially anybody who has a consistent audience no matter what level that is. They're now like, you know, this is a business opportunity. It's the same as shoot anything that starts more that could be niche, the love, like even sports, right? It was the culture in sports when people were making $30,000 a year or barely making more than anybody versus now you're making hundreds of millions, right? And now it goes from, I have like my godfather was like, he could have went to the league or he, but his mom was sick. So he rather just get a job closer to home, right? So he can take care of his mom. You try and take that till today. I need to go to the league so I can take care of my mom. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's a different level of money and people are farming their kids to go to the league. And now I think people will be farming maybe not necessarily training their kids for a podcast. All the, there are people doing that with their kids and in terms of influences. And takes out, yeah. Yeah, there'll be people a lot more strategically like saying, oh no, we're not just having fun conversations, it's like we can get some money. We might not get a hundred mil, but we can get a mil. We can get 400,000. It's gonna be interesting. And I think content as a whole though, I don't think artists felt it as much as they should, but that was a big win for content as a whole for anybody who noticed it and pays attention to the fact that that showed a sense of value, right? Like Drake should be looking at that, right?  Like all those things are like, okay, hold up. No, this content is worth some money. Like, oh, I can't just perform at Coachella and take the performance fee. I can get less on the front end, it's like anything else. And then resell us on the back end for $50 million more than they would have paid me just to perform. And it's something I'm already doing, play what? You know, the content, the way we think about content has to change and it's not just a podcast thing. Echoing what you've just said about big artists need to take notice. There's actually a nice quote from Ted, he's a music writer called Ted Yeower, I think I'm not trying to pronounce his name, his surname, but he said that a musician would need to generate 23 billion streams on Spotify to earn what they're paying Joe Rogan for his podcast rights. So what they're saying is that Spotify values Rogan more than any musician in the history of the world. So there you go. Yep, there it is, there it is. And, you know, that's just going through the record label system. Are they basing that, cause he's basing that on what artists get paid, right? Well, I imagine in a sentence though that, yeah, I guess they would take equivalent 23 billion streams and obviously no one's hitting that kind of numbers like. So I guess it's from that perspective as well. Yeah. In terms of the popularity, but.  Like I think with Taylor Swift, even though she's still the label systems and all that stuff, at least she had a point of leverage in terms of how long it took her to get on Spotify and went about that. Jay-Z did that to a less, to an extent, but I don't think the impact of him being on Spotify would be the same as, you know, Taylor Swift. Like they, there's artists out there to do some similar things, but one, they two things are working against them. Obviously there's probably just more artists in general. But two, that lack of just soul power and ownership to be able to say, look, you're doing a deal with me and I'm going to give you everything and then it's going to have all these streams. It's going to have all of, all of those things. Like that's lessening the deal. And three last but not least, which can't be ignored. It's about future business opportunity, right? Like the fact that Joe Rogan is legitimizing them as a podcast space, right? And where they move in the future, that that's about a future business versus, well, we already got, we started with this artist thing and then we did our deals and labels probably got more similar deals than some, and Joe Rogan, if you break some things down, but we're in this business already. The value of our future is far more valuable than you people that we already have on there.  It's just like Instagram, $1 billion from Facebook, WhatsApp, $19 billion from Facebook, but it's not necessarily worth that to every company. So that's also market timing as well. Taking this down to a really, really, really micro level about independent artists and how you should have these like business mindsets and conduct yourself. Obviously to get your foot in the door now and to get heard by a label and get in conversation, you have to have a big presence already. You have to have some social proof.  But if you do achieve that and get into that room, you need to use that as leverage because you're already in a position where you can negotiate that. And if you do that from the very start, then obviously the higher you go up, you'll have that reputation, you'll have that mindset and that's how you will grow because you can't get in the door now on talent alone. So you need to come in with your leverage and then utilize it. Yep, 100%. Drawing back to our sort of wider debate about the artist versus Spotify and even though getting ways we can sort of increase the royalty payouts. Another option which I am pretty like, I think this could be a good idea. It's not gonna revolutionize it or anything but the idea of people needing to pay more for their music subscription. So obviously right now in the West, it's very common that we pay $9.99 a month for Spotify or Apple Music or Diesel or Amazon Music. But I really think that they could take steps to increase this. So if someone said to me that, so if Spotify said next month, we're increasing our prices by 25%, so gosh you $12.50 a month for a subscription, I'd be totally okay with that. It wouldn't really, you get a lot for your money anyway and I'll see we've seen companies like Netflix very slowly raise their prices slightly over time. I don't think there's enough risk being taken from DSPs to like slowly raise these prices. And I'll see if they do that, then obviously that means there's more money going in anyway from subscribers, so there's more money to go out to artists. Right, right. So what would be your recommendations in terms of price? Well, if they said they'd be like $12.50, I'd be fine with, if they were to increase it by $2.50, then I'd be totally fine with that because I always think back to when I was younger, I would always just, I'd buy a 9.99 CD for an album of my favorite band. Now I get anything I want on the planet for 9.99 a month. It's just mind blowing because I would be spending so much more than that in the past. Yeah, consumers aren't trained to think like that. So it could be an interesting thing to see you go from 9.99 to 12.50 and then maybe another four or five years, it goes up another dollar and do it like that over time. That's what Netflix have done, isn't it? They've gone up a dollar, like when I first started from Netflix, I'm pretty sure it was at least $1.50 and over $2 cheaper than it is now. Yeah. And that's only in a space of like three years. You can do it very subtly. You could increase it by 50 cents and then just do that once every year or two. Like I think there has to be some sort of, someone needs to buy the bullet and try and instigate this going up, say, because also on the flip side of this, the average revenue per user is going down because obviously they're doing a lot of like promotions like get three months free premium. So for the first time in the last quarter on Spotify, for the first time ever, the average revenue per user went below $5. So under 50% now of your subscription. Yeah. It's because of the free giveaways and stuff. It's because of the free giveaways or is it because of, I don't have any COVID relation. No, no, no. It's just from the whole of Q1 for Spotify. So no, it'd only been the back end of COVID. I mean, it'd only be the eight days of COVID, I should say. So it actually got, it's actually dipped below $5 now for the first time. So below 50%. What exactly are they giving away for free? What do you mean? You said there's all the free giveaways that are taken away from revenue. Well, you know how they offer new subscribers deals? Like you used to be like three months for 99 cents, but now they're offering you three months free premium for that to be free. So a lot of new subscribers come in and they take this free travel and they'll see they stick to the free tier. And obviously there's a lot more users now, but obviously they're not paying into it there. So that's why there's been a massive nose-diving this other revenue for years now. It keeps going down each quarter. Now it's dipped below $5 for the first time. Yeah, they're on this aggressive scale. Well, I guess attempt within that just to continue to dominate market space, but it seems pretty tough to take away your qualifier, right? And free versus 99 cents, 99 cents is a lot, but from running plenty of campaigns, I do know a qualifier, somebody who pays, well, no matter how much that payment is, is more qualified than somebody who comes in for free as being someone who's likely to ever purchase. So yeah, that's tough. I wonder more about that move if the company sees it's worth it. Yes, the revenue per user is down, but do they from their perspective see it worth it for whatever other means that they're, well, whatever end they're trying to get to? On the flip side of this, on a more positive outlook in terms of, if you know, getting more royalties, over time it's gonna see more because obviously the business is gonna grow. So for example, 45.5% of all subscribers are actually premium subscribers anyway, which is quite a decent amount and that seems to be growing all the time. And since 2016, they've gained 229 million subscribers. So that's 229 million more, it's a lot more money. And obviously, three years time, it could be another 200 million. So it's a lot more money going in the pot anyway. Therefore artists will benefit and get more money over time. So like, things are still improving, Spotify is still growing, therefore the money is still gonna be growing as well. Yeah, sure, I can see that. I can see that. So that is more of a positive outlook on the situation. The other option or the other sort of thing that was been floating around obviously is that should fan funding play a bigger role in streaming? And obviously this has been the first whole month with the new COVID-19 relief button, the artist fundraising pick on Spotify. And I've seen that the quote is that 50,000 artists have used this so far, but I've been reading a few articles on artist feedback and stuff and they're not particularly impressed by the, and they're not reusing the feature because it's obviously still very hidden away and it's labeled as COVID-19 relief fund which makes it sound like a charity thing to do with COVID, not to do with like the radio money for the artists and I feel a bit iffy about actually promoting it and stuff. Yeah, I wonder if that's the problem then because I know an artist, well I've been waiting to get her feedback going in and she said it hasn't appeared on her stuff yet. Maybe she's even confused. Certainly on mobile as well. Certainly on the mobile app, not on desktop. And a lot of people are using desktop right now because they're working from home. Not committing, so. It needs some work and obviously, will it stick around now if it's all said and done as well? There's another question. Is it going to stick around? And if it is, it needs to change to be more of a positive thing like the stickers on TikTok or it's not been, as I said in the last podcast, I don't think it's been implemented very well. It feels very rushed and hasn't, the wording behind it all seems a bit iffy and there's a debate whereas do I promote a charity or do I promote myself? I don't want to promote myself as a feel guilty but at the same time I need the money and people just very hesitant over it, very weary about it and it's not been a, I don't think it's been a roaring success like Spotify might have been hoping for, put it that way. To me it sounds like they weren't hoping for it. Just the habit named in that way. It sounds more like we do this just to say we did it and maybe and kind of set it up to... Well, I mean, in a sense, it's not getting a positive PR because obviously all the PR, if you Google it now, like it's fundraising pick, all you're seeing is articles about, it's learning about it. Oh yeah. So obviously they were trying to, obviously maybe make it not impactful but at the same time, they are getting a lot of negative press about it which they won't be happy with. Yeah. Yeah, they could have did well by just not doing it at all. Maybe, maybe, but again, they need to show some sort of response, don't they? Because obviously they're getting always on the fire right now. Yeah, I was just saying. The whole thing was talking about it. People would have talked about they didn't do it or they weren't doing it. And then that lasted, that would have lasted the cycle that it lasted but they wouldn't have had the, hey, this is about to happen.  Wait, this is trash. And up now, whenever they take away the future, the future, did we talk about it again and the fact that it didn't work? But, who knows? Maybe the value of the attention from it. I don't, yeah, I don't know. I can't really figure Spotify out when it comes to that particular, that feature. Staying on this topic but leaving Spotify behind, the badges and fan funding is coming to Instagram, on Instagram Live. So you didn't have to purchase your own badges which you can send to creators to support them. Which is obviously a good thing. Obviously it's been done on TikTok a lot and now it's coming to Instagram for Live. So they've actually put out some interesting stats so that there's been a 70% increase in views of live streams between from February to March, which is obviously massive. Obviously, Kira's got a massive part to play now but 70% is still huge. How this is gonna work is that badges will appear next to a person's name throughout the live video. So fans who have bought these badges will stand out in the comments. And then they also apparently unlock additional features including placement on a creator's list of badge holders. So they'll be able to have some more engagement with the actual creator while supporting them. And they're gonna start rolling out of the badges with a small group of creators and businesses over the coming months. Mainly I think in the US right now but it's gonna roll out to Brazil, UK, Germany, France, Italy, elsewhere as well. But they're starting to dabble now in this fan funding which I think is a very good thing. Yeah, I mean, typically I would look at something like this as like just trying to keep up and not be able to do it well because your users aren't trained for it. All right, this is not the youthful audience on Instagram as much anymore. But I don't think that applies here because one, a lot of TikTokers are still on Instagram and they have some audience there. And then two, I think there's still enough celebrity incentive when it comes to Instagram that if people do it enough like people want that attention from those people. So it is all, it has a relation to get more attention from those people and things like that. I can see over time this becoming a part of the platform, like a norm of the platform. You can see people get donations while you're in lives and stuff. And I see your point about it's not the same audience to TikTok, for example, but that's why I brought up the fact that it's grown by the live stream viewers by 70%. That's probably a lot of first-time viewers that have experienced this and now we're getting more familiar with the live streaming. So therefore they were able to adopt this because they're very new to themselves. Yeah, yeah. The other news on Instagram is that IGTV is now gonna have adverts for the first time. So they're gonna start rolling out that. But obviously IGTV's got a long way to go right now. It's never really kicked off as they hoped, but they are now gonna start running ads for up to 15 seconds. They're gonna start testing it in the US and Canada in close beta over the next few years. They're gonna start running. Oh, okay, never mind. I get it. Ads on the videos for up to 10 seconds. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, yeah. But that, we'll see how that goes. But obviously IGTV's started out as its own app, moved into Instagram, then tried to improve the individual app. And now I just don't know where it's at now, like in terms of how many people use it. Yeah, yeah, they're trying to make it work however they do it. And I do know, well, I knew and predicted it, that yeah, IGTV will have ads just because it's been a year or two, but like for one, when I started having things that I uploaded and I could see the content ID system, try to block certain things on Instagram, like, okay, they're developing a content ID system. What is that for? That's just a predecessor to a system that to be able to support ads in that way. All right, and then also Facebook. You've been able to monetize shows and content on Facebook for a while.  IG creates a feature and then it gets thrown on the Facebook and Facebook creates a feature or two that gets thrown on the IG. So it was pretty clear to me for a while that that was gonna happen. And I don't think now that it has happened based on the climate, that it's really exciting people like they might want. Because obviously TikTok came along and obviously that's what's probably the standard of its growth in that regard. But speaking of new features, Facebook's throwing out a new feature as well. I don't know if you've seen, there's one called Collab, where like three independent videos are playing in sync at the same time with by three different users. So they're using it as a way of like making music together, which is quite a little quirky little thing. It's not gonna be very massive, but it could be useful and fun to explore for musicians. It's a new way to sort of like mix and match original videos. They're gonna roll that out over the, to US and Canada for the next couple of months. And now see what you can do when you created the Collab with your two Facebook friends. You can publish it and others can then take the individual videos and do their own videos on top of that, do their own mixes as well. So just starting to keep an eye out on them. If you wanna try out new things and try and get some more engagement, like collaborating with other Facebook musicians could be quite good. You can share obviously, you share your audience pages out reached in as well. So I'll go into more detail about this in the newsletter about how you can go about signing up and things. But yeah, it's a new feature on Facebook. And finally, there's a couple of news items about TikTok. First of all, it made $3 billion in net profit last year, which is mind blowing. It's over three, I should say, it's 17 billion in revenue last year as well. And then the three billion of that is net profit. Wow. Which is just extraordinary. Yeah. I think for context, it was the revenue the year before was 7.4 billion. So it went to 17 billion in the space of a year. Baby. No, bite dance.  Yeah, yeah, yeah. To go with that. Sheesh. That's a huge jump. That talk about me. You need 10 billion, yeah. You need 10 billion dollars, yeah. That's hyper growth. What was in that profit when they were at 7 billion? Oh, I don't know about that figure on my notes. Well, we make it congruent, all right? It wasn't even, it might have been. Maybe it might have been just under a billion. Yeah. Probably not, probably maybe even less than that. Yeah. Maybe like three quarters of a million, a billion, yeah. Yeah. And then you factor in the fact that you're probably investing in the future to scale. Yeah, that's crazy, man. That's crazy. I love it. They've also just bought, yeah. They've also bought a new office in Times Square, like loads of office blocks today. It's funny, man.  Exactly, literally, like it's gonna be sort of at least a 10 year lease for 232,000 square feet. I think it's about, it says 105 to 135 dollars per square foot. So it's gonna cost like two to three million dollars per month for the space. So yeah, you make the make-up with profit, we're gonna splash out on a nice office in Times Square. Must be nice to work for TikTok. I see they're, I always see them advertising, they're gonna be, talk about the job market being like smaller right now, but they're just advertising an absolute ton of jobs. Their expansion is absolutely rapid. Yeah, they are. And this makes me think about a live nation acquired some space, not too far from Tony, you mentioned it. And I forgot how ever much money it was and whatever the lease was, but then it was like a nice way nicer office space. And he was thinking that, you know, it might suck, they must have committed to that beforehand before COVID, but now dealing with COVID is live nation. And I actually thought possibly different because live nation does know that they're gonna still be around. They know that. That's potential takeover as well from Saudi Arabia. You said what? Potential takeover from Saudi Arabia as well, so. Okay, so there's that. At the end of the day, if we're gonna be here and we do have money, they could be investing in the future as well, where, hey, this is probably a great market for commercial leasing, where, yeah, the deals are better. There's a lot of uncertainty. You have a far better position in terms of negotiation. So I wouldn't be surprised that we heard more companies like this, or if somebody who really knew about it, like if there was an influx of these type of companies making these type of deals in this market because of the uncertainty is, because it's probably a discount on commercial real estate and offices. Probably, yeah. And the last thing we're gonna leave on, which I think I know you're pretty excited about, is ByteDance's streaming app, Rezo. Obviously, interlink with TikTok. So the new story about this is that, obviously, Rezo's only available in India right now, that are actually making the two apps, like TikTok and Rezo, like cross-compatible. So TikTok now gives users one tap access to the streaming app, Rezo. So if you see an original song playing on TikTok, you can click the button and it takes you through to Rezo directly. And it's also a back button that takes you back to TikTok. So trying to make, integrate these two apps and it could prove to be a massive success, Rezo, if all goes to plan. Yeah. I mean, I said this, you know, that's all I could say. You know that it was written of the world doesn't, which just makes me want to drop that article even more. But it's just, it only makes sense in terms of user behavior. I have, you know, some homies and people at the agency that say that they think TikTok itself will be a streaming app. And that just doesn't make sense in terms of, if you really understand tech and infrastructure and user experience and the need for user experience. Like if they became a streaming app, they would literally be sacrificing the thing that makes them who they are. Like, Yeah, and it leaves them too much in music now. Like TikTok is bigger than music. Yes, that is the primary driver, but it's still bigger than music, right? In terms of the app. So you have to be still built for that. So you can continue to scale that side, but then capitalize off the music. So it makes far more sense to have a handoff, a clean handoff versus becoming both of those things. But yeah, that focus, that focus is huge in business discipline. And I'm just curious to see what Reso really looks and feels like in English. I don't even want to try to play around with it. Yeah, when they launch their state side, yeah, yeah. If they can include just a few bits of what makes TikTok so popular, then they can really build a hit with the app. Like if they can just integrate in some of the videos that play while the music's playing and having these user comments that float around as well, like if they can just make it a lot more inclusive and social, then they might have the actual first true social media, music streaming platform. Yep. We haven't seen yet. So watch this space. And that is pretty much a wrap. But what I wanted to cover today was really deep dived into the whole the people versus Spotify debate. And I hope I've bought some more context to take the load a bit off Spotify and sort of shift it a bit more towards labels. But they're all equal in this. Like I'm not saying that Spotify should be doing more, but I'm not going to attack them in this. So I'm also not going to defend them. But it's just there's a lot more to it than just saying Spotify to triple their royalty rates because that is just not feasible. Yep, exactly. Yeah, I mean, you said it. I don't have anything to add, man. That's yet another episode of Music News that matters. 100%. Yeah, let us know what your thoughts are in the comments as always. And keep sharing the podcast and liking it. And we'll see you all next time. Peace. Ciao. It's the network.


Everybody forcing Jeff here. We're ripping One second. It's also immaculate baby immaculate. Yep case number four Okay, cool. We're good PYT here we got Brad E with a thunder Brandon S wizards Brian C Lakers Chad seed nets to you to what bulls Chen M Has the nicks Chew on with the Grizzlies ching L rockets ching Wah wolves Derek T Celtics Dion or Diane has the Hornets Eric W blazers pelicans Eric B magic Gavin K Kings Hans with the Bucks HG has the cabs in queue with the Clippers Jeremy S Nuggets John S Pistons Lee H heat Lee Hwan Sons Miguel M Jazz Nick E sixers or NW has the Warriors and the Pacers Chamez with the Raptors Terrence C Spurs Thomas C Mavericks and Wayne Y with the Hawks All right 30 seconds guess the logo man Make sure you're watching chat so you account for the delay if you may have one 20 seconds left 15 all you got to do is guess 10 seconds left. I don't have to be in the break discuss Hang it out five four three two and One time is up now. No more guesses Lot of guesses a lot of guesses All right, so last one I grabbed there would have been the maxi How come with the maxi? Did not guess by then yours was not counted make sure you guess on time guys again if If we do hit a logo man and multiple multiple people guessed it the bounty will be split That's just for the guests if you hit one you get 800 caps Hornets gone. Let's get the next one filled up everybody Bulls Lakers heat Bucks pelicans Nick Spurs and Wizards every team on sale Filled up if these things rockin do you get a little momentum, you know who your favorite vet player is a Redis Capone when he said Kaepernick No, you have to guess you have to guess every time It's for this for this for the break. So you have to guess every time Yeah, and you have to be present in chat to hit the guest one You can't guess ahead of time either. That's why I did 30 second thing It's a reward you for being in chat. That's literally it to get you all involved It's really just something we're due for you guys for hanging out with us Appreciate the war people for watching the more than ever get a chance of some credit Out of 99 as RJ bearer for the Knicks rookie Jersey for the wolves gonna be Wendell Moore Jr. Out of 99 triple Jersey Rookie's here. We had one of these last last break to 49. He got Paulo Ben caro Jalen Williams and Benedict Matherin Magic Thunder and Pacers random at the end Modern Mark's auto for Brooklyn giving Nick Klaxon in 99 you turk would be fire Circle the logo man Next is gonna be rookie introductions on card rookie auto Hornets Mark Williams at of 99. Oh It's just for sorry. Yeah, let me change the title. I read that. I read the correct names off I didn't change the title yet. This is for new metaphor. I call it out correctly There we go And who's my jang to 49 rookie sneaker swatch signature for the Thunder Thank You Thomas so that means that someone's reading the title Appreciate that Did read all I called out the crowd I did everything except that so of course I hope it will it'll be even better if we pull a logo man here out of 49 you've got Knicks RJ Barrett That's good though, man.  Don't be don't be getting Old coaches in the NBA 36 is young I feel not old anymore. Yeah, there you go young dude Jersey the standard Josh Hart the 99 for the Knicks I'll plenty of teams left on the next one. Let's get it filled up I marked them all down bulls Lakers heat bucks pelicans Nick Spurs and wizards were chasing logo man Got the big bouncy out there. It goes up a hundred bucks every case you're gonna hit one it resets if we do $500 is the floor for break credit for hitting a logo man of late sports cards. I'm on a case of immaculate rookie dual Jersey magic and Ivy magic and Ivy Paolo and Ivy magic pistons random at the end You're technically right though magic and yeah, it was right. It's a weird call Magic and Ivy Paolo and pistons Sneaker swatch signature Antoine Carr for the Spurs the 25 and one car is that an inscription? That's a big Big dog. What does that say? I'd be game-worn sneaker right that right there as well for the vet Antoine Carr Yeah, I've never pulled an Antoine Carr car before Crazy, right? Big dog.  Go bear on the patch auto wolves Big dog. That's what Tiger Woods calls the guy in the mean And we got Obi-Wan Genoble on the auto to 99 for the spurs signatures Manu About that couple nice spurs hits right there Let's go guys let's get these immaculate cases filled up We have fantastic pricing on the remaining teams Thanks everybody for hanging out Fantastic prices on the remaining teams Bulls heat bucks pelicans Nick Spurs down a six to go Can't make it up. Are they really shady? I thought he had a standalone one as well Five of five Kyle Kuzma Kyle Kuzma Wizards Jersey for the Celtics Al Horford 7 of 99 you see might be in a weird place on the checklist Antoine Carr sick a lot of them people put the Inscriptions pretty cool. Yeah game used on that sweet It looks like he has Yeah, so RPA he has an RPA logo man So the RPAs are weird they have the um They're all like the base set checklist so he has the logo man RPA Blazers Jersey to 99 Damian Lillard They just try to confuse everybody Yeah, it is this game is confusing. We're doing we're doing that earlier.  Yes, we from Miami Don't do right there. We'll get that one mags. There we go. We'll get that mag for you Miami Yeah, so if you're on Beckett Yeah, it would be sick. It's weird like I Go to like the base set and then you scroll down you see like rookie patch on that has this like logo man there I don't know why they'd be that I technically it technically is the base set They number of them like sequentially with the base cards. I think more sposh this came in bulls heat bucks pelicans and spurs guys Let's get it going bulls heat bucks pelicans and spurs Come on logo man. Where are we out here? Want to hit a logo man out of 99 sons or sorry to 49 sons Chris Paul Come on. Looney patch out of 10 for the Warriors You get a vets game use rookies will be non-game used Rick and Jersey Jaden Hardy out of 99 for the Mavericks Auto Memphis you got Zebo Zach Randolph the 30 to 75 Zebo Herald and signatures Debo and marks out of 10 I auto soon move for Chicago pretty car and legends autograph Lakers and Magic Johnson out of 49 Showtime Lakers right there So big-time RPA coming up come on Haven't hit one yet It's coming baby. Come on. Come on at a 25 cam Johnson for the nets jumbo patch Christian wood Mavericks number one of ten Was the uh, I'm playing about Darwin ham Christian would That was awesome Jersey out of 99 RJ Barrett nicks out of 99 we've got Jordan Clarkson for the jazz on these shadow box signatures Next up is redemption. We've got Malik Monk Malik Monk would be I believe the Warriors or no not Warriors Where was he last year? He was at the Lakers store, right? No Kings Kings Malik Monk little journeyman Yeah, Kings Kings. We wonk Dude and dude. This is chat home grin 7 of 10 gold RPA Jersey number Jersey number bro, bro, you hit a sigh young at that now Yes, they let us cook You know who just cooked at the Thunder Holy trap, dude Brad E with the okc Thunder. Let's go Brad. Congrats to you sir I'm dropping the insurance link You're gonna want to ensure The next package you get from late sports cards at least sleep it for you about that if you're watching after the fact It's under merch On the website email us with any question you have of course Yeah, you guys want to ensure your cards late and sports cards icon is insurance tab at the top If you have literally different tiers and different pricing based on how much insurance you actually want So I would just suggest maybe looking up what the card sells for and ensure for that amount if we're mean But sure the max amount you can for that one. Yeah, I think the max is like 10k. Yep I would think that part is a that's a big boy. All right Two multi-randoms. Let me check for majority on that in the triple real quick Whoo boy that's pretty sweet. Hello, Lane. Hello. Well Jersey match That would arguably be better is if they have the most That's honestly the only thing that like would be better That has been a quite a day logo man bounty goes up It's kind of wild Triple relic was magic thunder Pacers Palo J Dub and Maffarin that we had the Pistons magic Palo and Ivy there. Good luck on those We'll go seven times Roll them sevens triple relic first one two three four five six and seven the thunder get the triple dual one Two three four five six and seven the Pistons will get the dual Right quick recap here. This product is pretty immaculate. All right Relics of RJ Christian Wood, Kevon Looney, Jayden Hardy, Damian Lillard, Al Horford That's Josh Hart for the Knicks. I went down more junior Sometimes when I show it in the random Yeah, like monk shadow box editors Kings Redemption. We had wolves really go bear a patch auto redemption Jordan Clarkson I had a soon move magic Johnson that's Ebo for the gris artist Gilmore Max Christie and Nicholas Claxton and Mark Williams and Mono Ginobili.  Super cool car for the spurs and just a Ridiculously big card right here seven of ten Jersey number gold RPA Chet Holmgren. We mean business today. Thanks everybody


Well I'm finally starting to calm down about the horror of the torrent I had downloaded. I had realized that although I was getting bloody noses recently, the idea of it being in the same pattern as I said previously was just a mind of matter issue.  I never want to mention that again. I mean at times they would use some hyper realistic images in the show, like when Carl was crushed to death by Paul in the episode Couples Skate. You could briefly see that his eyes were hyper realistic for a few frames before his head popped off his body, and the episode ended with rave music. But what I saw was just horrifying. I want to apologize for not explaining who I was in the previous story. Don't forget, I wrote about that freak in Nightmare as if it was a diary entry. My name is Nicoli, and my other friends will be named as I resume writing this. Whenever time I go to take a shower, I'm always concerned that I'll see that face in the mirror or when I close my eyes to go to sleep. The experience really changed my perspective about the show. Now I'm frightened to watch any of the Aquatine Hunger Force episodes. I even got all my Aquatine Hunger Force DVDs and my Freiluck plush, yes, I do have a Freiluck plush, and put it in a box and put it in the garage. I had dropped my computer off at a nearby Best Buy about a week ago to get that gory background removed. I mean looking back, it was like as if it was melted with my computer screen. I had talked to my girlfriend about this and even showed her the screen on the computer before I had brought it to Best Buy. My girlfriend also is a fan of Aquatine Hunger Force, so she was surprised to hear about Freiluck viciously murdering Carl, carving his stomach up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I mean in the original episode Freiluck did kill Carl, but he just put a blade through his stomach. I eat Terminator 2, Judgment Day, and then threw him into a dumpster. I mean, that was like in less than 10 seconds, but what I saw on that torrent. Ug. I swear it felt like an eternity. Just the sounds that Carl made before it was all over. I'm scarred for life after that. I needed to take a break from watching Aquatine Hunger Force altogether. When me and my girlfriend Jennifer were at my friend's house last Friday night, I insisted to watch anything but Aquatine Hunger Force, so we watched some nostalgia critic episodes to get my mind off of that horrendous video. After we watched an episode where he gave his top 11 favorite Simpsons episodes and ended up arguing with the elephant about the Let's Play of Bart's nightmare he did last year, my friend Marvin started to ask me some questions about what had happened the night I downloaded Aquatine Hunger Force ISO. I got frightened by this and buried my face into a nearby couch pillow. My friends were starting to get concerned for me. After a few minutes I calmed down and explained to them both that I downloaded an odd type of torrent online under the name Aquatine Hunger Force ISO. I explained a little more in to detail, like about the sudden dip noises the computer would make at certain times in the video. There would be random blackout moments, lines and animation from the original episode had been changed, the word cannibal being written in random places, and Frylock's hyperalistic face. My girlfriend Jennifer was a bit skeptical about what I had told them and she said that we should look up the file to see if it was even there. I begged her not to find the file but she just keep looking online anyway. She clicked on the link to the website, but the link for the torrent wasn't there. She looked all over pirate day but the file didn't come up. She went back to Google where she saw another link, which was a forum site that had the same title of the episode. She clicked on it and literally the first picture that we saw was Frylock's disfigured, demonic, nightmare fueled face I had described earlier. It wasn't big enough to cover the screen like I had mentioned earlier, if anything, the size of the picture was only a bit bigger than a Facebook profile picture. My friends gave a little yelp in fright.  My friend lowered the page as fast as possible so we couldn't see that disturbing and cursed face again.  After I calmed down, my girlfriend continued to look down the page for info. I was still buried deep in my pillow at the time as my friend suddenly found something informative about the video I had watched. First said that over 63 people had also downloaded said torrent and had similar issues like I had, thinking that the bloody noses were in the pattern that Freylock's face had in the video or seeing sudden illusions, and many had to see therapists. Fortunately, no one had killed themselves from watching the video like in other cases, like in many of those lost SpongeBob episodes for example. My friends checked the rest of the page to make sure there were no other photos from the video and as soon as they confirmed that I decided to finally get up and look along with them about the video. There was a link about a recent arrest of a man who had tampered with the Aquatine Hunger Force series, and Aquatine Hunger Force ISO was in the tag. We clicked it and found out that this guy had been helping out with producing the animation since the second season. This man under the name of Jim Reno, had produced some wonderful animation in recent classic and horror movies in the past and him being stuck doing nothing but Flash had rendered his artistic career to a minimum. Granted it was easier than doing traditional animation but he felt cheated out of his professionalism. However, he was going through some serious mental problems and struggles with his personal life and considering that he's in his late 70s. That would make sense for some dementia. Then one day he lost it. During production of Super Birthday Snake, he had started to produce a different, more demented version of the episode in his spare time for his own gratification. He eventually decided to shelve the episode before anyone found out that he produced it. As I was reading this I started to realize that the different lines in the video sounded like as if the voices were slightly different, as if the actor was doing it all on the top of his head, like the manic depressive lady who voiced and produced SpongeBob in the SpongeCry episodes. As we read on, they explained the many glitches in the animation I had previously mentioned, like me quad turning into a gravestone instead of an igloo. As for the face we all saw, he also made that on Photoshop. Rumor has it that he did not model the face from scratch being how it was too realistic. He had to draw it while looking at something. And that something we all knew, had to have been from someone's facing looked exactly the same. Possibly at corpse. He had to have carefully detailed every part of the face all by himself. As we continued reading, we found out that the guy had made his own version of the second DVD volume of Aquatine Hunger Force. He used numerous programs to make it and fixed it so all the bit noises and brief moments of blank screens were inserted into the torrent. He even produced the artwork for the main menu. As for everything else on the torrent, there were no other episodes or anything except the one I had seen. We had stopped reading when something had suddenly occurred to me. I had only watched about five minutes of the episode, but I didn't know if there was anything left in the torrent, so I painstakingly asked my girlfriend to see if there was any more info about how long the episode was or something like that. We ended up finding the entire video online. It says, watch at your own risk, and only 18 end up should be allowed to watch this. Well I'm 21, and I nearly crapped bricks as soon as I found out that the freaking video was online, but to be fair, I was watching it at 2 in the morning and had the sound blasting, so maybe watching it in the daytime would have a different effect on me, whether for better or worse. It was uploaded privately on YouTube and the only way to view it was from a different website, such as the website we're on at the moment. At that point my friends were about to watch the video but I insisted that they should watch it in a different room, and keep the volume extremely low so I wouldn't had to hear the horrific noises or see Frylock's freaking cursed face again. My girlfriend was used to scary imagery suddenly popping up on the screen, and my other friend had read enough creepy pasta stories that watching this wouldn't be too frightening for him. They both went into the family room as I turned on the TV and watched some family die. After about 45 minutes, they finally returned with the laptop and they seemed a tad upset about the video. Jennifer seemed as if she was almost on the verge of crying, but it was reduced to minor sniffles, and my other friend seemed much comer, yet he still looked shaken, like me after I watched the video the first time. But why did it take them so long to finish watching the video, considering that the usual episode of Aquitaine Hunger Force is usually 11 minutes, 12 minutes tops? They had told me that the video was not 11 minutes, but it was 30. Not like commercials in the middle of it and stuff like when they had the deleted scenes in the episode, no. I mean a full freaking 30 minutes of that demented horror of an episode. They actually had to go back to certain parts of the video to see a few scenes over again to see the brief 1 over 8 of a second frames I had previously mentioned before. At that point I was just wondering out of sarcasm, and almost yelling to my friends. Why they didn't just add more freaking references towards Satanism, like just have Freilock randomly out of nowhere, come up to the screen and say, Satan is only here for you, there is no god.  After my sudden outburst, I calmed down and they explained the rest of the video. They noticed while watching the intro, all the stuff I had mentioned wrong about the beginning was true. They got to the end of the intro where they saw a brief image of static before it continued on to the episode. As I said before, it was about an eighth of a second that you could see it. They had apparently went back to that part of the video and they saw what the image was. It was an image of Master Shake on the floor with minor wounds on his body, and he was also eyeless, like as if someone had vouched them out. What was more bizarre was that he was smiling delightfully, and even gave a peace sign, like as if he was pleased with the loss of his eyeballs. They also saw me plod, who seems to be literally demolished into nothing but a tiny scrap of himself and had enough space for his face. Some of his remaining pieces are scattered around him. Again, just like Master Shake, he seemed delighted that he was nearly murdered. What's even stranger is that Freilock was in the picture, but not in the same demonic way he was in the video, but it had seemed to be that he was murdered with gunshot wounds in his body.  At that point my friends realized that Master Shake and Mequod had murdered Freilock in self-defense and they were smiling as they succeeded. My friends got past the first few minutes of the video I had described previously. After they got to the part about Freilock graphically murdering Carl, the screen once again went blank with another bit noise for about a good 45 seconds before the screen came back, and they saw a close-up of the house where you see Freilock looking actually kind of normal, excluding the blood that was still on his body. As he drags a large bag of what we can assume the bodies of the people he had recently murdered.    He floats into Mequod's room where he looks at the gory stains left on the walls and ground with delight. Then I was told that Freilock's voice sounded demented, less than in the first five minutes of the episode, but still frightening. As his face stared at the blood-covered walls, you hearly almost muted.   He chuckles again as he turns around, you can see his face. His face was nearly similar to the one he made when he first killed his roommates. Instead of him yelling loudly like last time, he gives out a near-pitching screech, but even though my friends had turned up the volume to hear what he was just saying, it wasn't ear-shattering for them as it was for me. The screen then blighted out for about another three seconds with a gip-sound in the middle. When that happened, the same image from where I barely saw previously reappeared for about a good one-half a second.  Then again, she has a freaking fetish for horror videos like this, so I didn't worry so much about her. She started to explain what happened after that scene where it suddenly cuts into the middle of the garbage dump, where you can see the bag from earlier that contains Freiloc's roommates and Carl.  At this point of the video it went back to the house, and what's even weirder is that it was going back to the original episode, which kinda relieved me a bit, especially thinking of the scene where Freiloc mimics Miquod's boy saying, I'm gonna have a pet. And for the next minute or so it stuck with the original episode. They told that they were relieved themselves that it seemed that the horror had finally ended for them. Boy, were they wrong. Like in the original episode, Freiloc hears something outside and turns around to see a lot was behind him and gasps in shock, but his eyes widen and then go completely black.  It seems that the blood, guts and hanging bodies was reused from the epic scene from the episode The Shaving, which had ironically aired later that year, and we find out later that Jim had also helped produced that episode too, so I guess if anything, this scene isn't that shocking. My friend described as the bodies were slowly swinging around the camera started to zoom in very slowly, and for the next five seconds brief images would flash onto the screen, such as Freiloc's face, Carl's mangled up body, the image of Freiloc murdered, and the word cannibal would pop up in between each image shown. I still remembered the word cannibal ribbon on the box where the snake came in and on the wall on the back of their house. I was starting to wonder if this all connected or not. By then it went to black and the next scene showed outside Freiloc's room where you can see Carl's corpse on the floor, but yet it looked like as if all of his previous wounds were healed up. It then blacks out for a fraction of a second as it now shows all the equitines, with Freiloc being dead in the background like from the picture my girlfriend earlier described to me. Now it's less blurry and you can see the video clearly again, as Shake is giving his peace sign as he was weak at that moment and was showing that he was happy for murdering Freiloc. The camera starts to zoom into Meatwad as he starts to speak, but it didn't sound like Meatwad's voice. It sounded like it came from the guy who produced this abomination of an episode. Meatwad then explains to us what just happened in the seven seconds of blankness. We did it. We released that cannibalistic demon out of Freiloc. We came back to stop him from killing anyone else in the city. Unfortunately Carl didn't survive, but Shake is at the moment tireless and I've been ripped to shreds. He then puts himself back together. Oh, never mind. Anyway, now we can live peacefully. Now that we know that the cannibal is finally young and Freiloc can rest in peace. The camera stops for a few seconds as it starts to slowly zoom into Meatwad's face, and he starts repeatedly saying, Cannibal. It then fades into a lot look like the original ending, but with Meatwad still repeatedly saying cannibal. At that moment, Meatwad takes off his virtual reality mask. Yes, he seemed to be practicing with virtual reality, and notices that no one is around. He looks around in complete fright as the camera zooms out to show that someone is watching him on the living room TV. It then shows Master Shake on the living room chair in question saying, We're aware to possess. The credits then come out of nowhere and go by fast, still crediting everyone who usually works on the episodes, except one new credit was inserted at the end saying, Reanimated by Jim Reno, and that's where the episode ends. At this point I was very confused about the ending, all of us was. The ending almost sounded rushed and it seemed cheap to reference the word cannibal over and over again just for it to be about a demon seemed a bit lazy at best. I still felt that there was more to be found out about this, so I asked Jennifer if she knew anything else about Jim Reno and she informed me that we could visit him at the county jail in San Francisco. We lived about an hour or so away from there, so the next day we packed up and traveled down to San Francisco.


Hello everyone, the name of the presentation is Accelerating the Search of Differential and Linear Characteristics with the SET method. In this presentation, we start with the Motivation and Contributions. Following that, we briefly recall some related preliminaries. Then we introduce how to integrate bounding conditions into the SET method. After that, we will show the Accelerating effect of the bounding condition. Then we illustrate the applications to several block ciphers. At last, we will draw a conclusion. So, let's start with the first part. The introduction of the automatic search boasts the quick analysis of symmetric key primitives to some degree. However, the performance of the automatic search is not always satisfactory for the search of long trails or separate large state sizes. Compared with the intensive attention on the enhancement for the search with MLP method, few works care for the acceleration of the automatic search with SET or SMT method. So, this paper is motivated by this vacancy. The contribution of this work can be divided into four parts. Firstly, we propose a novel method to encode measures bounding conditions. Following that, we provide a direction for the selection of the bounding condition. Then with the new method, we obtain complete bounds about differential and linear characteristics of multiple ciphers. The first one is we give a related key differential attack on 26th round, GIFT-64. Now, we briefly recall some necessary preliminaries. The Boolean satisfiability problem is the problem of determining whether there exists an evaluation for the binary variables, such that the value of the given Boolean formula equals 1. Every Boolean formula can be converted into an equivalent formula in conjunctive normal form. Each disjunction is called a clause. Each CIG can be a variable, a constant, or the negation of a variable. To discover useful distinguishes with the SET solver, we should specify the distinguisher searching problem with CNAF formulas. The clauses in CNAF formula regarding the search of differential or linear distinguisher are classified into two groups. The first group represents the propagation of difference or linear masks inside the sephir. And the second one measures the non-random feature of the trail, which can be set as a number of active S-boxes. The differential probability of the linear correlation. The first step to create clauses in the first group is decomposing the round function into a sequence of basic operations, including the linear operations and the non-linear operations. The second step should be generating set models for basic operations. Here we show the differential models for branching and axle operations. Models for other operations can be found in the paper. Then the second group of clauses characterizes the non-random feature of the trail. According to the specific goal, we should restrict the number of active S-boxes. The sequential probability of the linear correlation in the distinguisher searching problem. All these kinds of constraints can be abstracted as Boolean cardinality constraint. This constraint can be converted into CNAF formulas with the sequential encoding method. About n-multiply k auxiliary variables should be introduced, and the number of clauses is also about n-multiply k. The accelerating method in this paper is based on the branch and bound depth first searching algorithm. It is used to identify the optimal differential trails with the maximum probability of a symmetric k primitive. The efficiency of this algorithm comes from the manipulation of the known upper bounds on probabilities of short trails. Suppose that we obtain a partial trail covering the first r rounds. If the probability of the partial trail satisfies this inequality, this node will be removed from the searching tree. Otherwise, the subtree originating from this node will be further explored. Now let's move on to the next part. Before we show how to integrate bounding conditions into the set method, we first note that the conditions can be generalized. Unlike the manual search, the automatic method might not initialize the search from the input of the server. So for each partial trail from the R1's round to the R2's round, we can create a generalized bounding condition. In total, CR2-1 conditions can be constructed. For convenience discussion, the original objective function of the set problem can be abstracted in this form. In parallel, the generalized bounding condition can be converted into this form. Therefore, the essential of the problem should be how to simultaneously describe these two cardinality constraints. To address this issue, we go back to the sequential encoding method. This method is based on the sequential counter-circuit, and the circuit computes the partial sum for increasing the value of i from 0 to n-1. The partial sum si is represented with k Bouldin-Werlbos under the unary numeral system. In other words, si equals m is equivalent to the last m Bouldin-Werlbos equal 1, and the remaining Werlbos equal 0. With a careful study, we gave two observations on auxiliary Werlbos in the circuit, and these observations will be used in the encoding of the bounding condition. Firstly, the circuit already computes the partial sum of x with the index starting from 0. Secondly, the sequence of the partial sum is now decreasing. According to the index of the partial sum, the discussion should be divided into three cases. In the following, we only discussed the second case. Where the left and right nodes of the partial sum are located in the middle of the sequence. Based on the former observation, the circuit accomplishes the computation of the partial sum of x with the index starting from 0. Then the partial sum in consideration can be written by the subtraction of two known partial sums. Now, if s e1 minus 1j equals 0, then the summation of the first e1 elements in the sequence of x must be no more than j. Accompanied by the partial sum in consideration, we can derive that the summation of the first e2 elements in the sequence of x must be no more than j plus m. This inequality is equivalent to clam s e2 j plus m equals 0, and the discussion can be conducted for each index j. Then, with the circuit of the original objective function, we can establish the constraint on the partial sum. Note that this constraint can be converted into Boolean equations in cnf, and we finish the closer encoding for the second case. The discussion for the two remaining cases are similar. The advantage of this encoding method is they do not climb new variables, and the number of clauses is reduced. In the next part, we will show the accelerating effect of the encoding method. Since we generalize the bounding condition, we can create CR2 minus 1 bounding conditions. So, the problem is which sets of bounding conditions potentially result in extraordinary advances. The following tasks are implemented on a PC. We take the distinguishing searching problem of GIFT64 as an illustration. We compare the runtime for solving set problems with different sets of bounding conditions. We set the goal as searching for the optimal differential trials with a minimum number of active S-boxes for GIFT64 from 1 round to 28 round. The runtime for the standard set method with no bounding condition is about 4300 seconds, which is the benchmark for the accelerating effect. In the following, we use this notation to represent the bounding condition from the R1 round to the R2 round. In the first test, we consider the set of bounding conditions with the same initial or terminal round. A comparison of the runtime is illustrated in the figure. From the results, we note that all the 56 sets indeed shorten the runtime, thus the automatic search with the set method can be accelerated after integrating some of these bounding conditions. Besides, it also can be notified that the degrees of improvements for different sets exhibit parent variation. The sets say 0 star and say star 27 result in better performances. The second test checks the units of multiple sets defending the first test. As in the figure, all the 54 sets achieve improvements on the runtime in almost equal measure. Probably, we cannot significantly improve the runtime with 0 star and say star 27 by combining multiple sets. Besides, this test indicates that adding all the bounding conditions into the set problem does not always give the best performance.  The third test concentrates on the set of conditions covering the same number of rounds. From the runtime illustrated in the figure, we note that this kind of sets speeds up the search only when the value of R is relatively small. The performance is getting worse with the increasing value of R since long bounding conditions cannot be united into the search of short trail. By the way, when R takes relatively small value, the performance is not bad. Now, we summarize the strategy on how to select the sets of bounding conditions. First of all, we think the two sets say 0 star and say star R minus 1 as the first choice and are more likely to show remarkable improvements in the runtime over the standard method with no bounding condition.  The last thing we want to mention is that we also studied the efficiency of sets with randomly drawn bounding conditions and evaluate the outcome. The accelerating effect is not visible when the number of conditions in the set is not adequate. Therefore, we do not recommend using random set. According to a considerable amount of experiments for different primitives and our experience, these strategies can be generally applied to various block ciphers even though these ideas are explained with the test on gift 64. Now, we look at the application of the new method to several block ciphers. For present, we obtain full information about differential active S-box, differential probability, linear active S-box and linear correlation from 1 round to 31 round. As far as we know, we are the first one to provide all these results. Compared to the round time with MLP, the new method achieves significant improvements. This is the test result for gift 64. This page illustrates the test result for rectangle. They also apply the accelerating method to two fixed-tail ciphers. The first one is help log. The second one is string. For this ciphers, we obtain complete bounds on the number of active S-boxes, the differential probability as well as the linear correlation. For all versions in the semi-family of block ciphers, we obtain the full learning of differential probability and linear correlation. We claim that the result of the linear correlation is heuristic. The acceleration method is also practiced on all versions of spec-family of block ciphers. Our results reach the maximum length of differential and linear trail among all methods targeting the optimal trail. We also use the acceleration method to evaluate the cipher with 128-bit block size gift 128. We get complete knowledge of active S-boxes from one round to 40 rounds. Moreover, we discover the optimal differential trails for up to 29 rounds and the optimal linear characteristics for up to 25 rounds. Notice that the acceleration method also can be utilized to speed up the search of related k differential characteristics. With this method, for gift 64, we discover an 18-round related k differential trail with probability 2 to the minus 58. With the 18-round detinguisher, we launch a related k differential attack on 26th round gift 64. Now we finish all the contents in the paper and give a conclusion. In this work, we first propose a novel method to encode method's bounding conditions. Then we provide a direction for the selection of the bounding condition. With the new method, we obtain complete bounds about differential and linear characteristics of multiple servers.  Lastly, we note that our result is far from threatening the security of gift 64 since the authors recommended users to double the number of rounds under the related k attack setting. That's all for the presentation. Thank you for your attention.


Farmhouses, cattle pens and heavy machinery nestle among picturesque rolling fields. This is a typical Irish dairy farm. But just next door is a different kind of farm. All because of this mysterious metal box right here. Farms produce a lot of waste. And that box right here can turn that waste into digital gold. Yes, you heard it right. Let's find out more. The Irish government is targeting a 25% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. That's a pretty tall order. But one of the best ways to lower emissions is to invest in renewable energy sources. However, Ireland has a unique problem. Over 35% of its greenhouse gas emissions come from the agricultural sector. And a majority of those emissions come from, you guessed it, cows. This is a serious problem because in Ireland there are about one million more cows than there are people. There are 7.3 million cows in Ireland and fortunately they create a lot of waste. Cows like the Kerry cattle are one of the oldest breeds in Europe. Dairy farming is a pivotal part of Ireland's culture, history and economy. But the future of Irish farming is not so bright. Many farmers say that meeting targets could drive them into bankruptcy with the head of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association Pat McCormack warning that farmers could have to cull their livestock. If Ireland was to bring their greenhouse gas emissions to target right now they would have to cull 1.3 million cattle. Luckily a group of young Irish entrepreneurs think they might have found a rather unusual solution. Bitcoin mining. Nestled on the cusp of Armagh County lies a typical Irish farm tended to by a man who is perhaps ahead of his time. Tom Campbell is the first Irish farmer to mine Bitcoin. The amount of electricity Bitcoin requires is a contentious subject but it's coming purely from renewable sources here. It does sound like an outlandish thing to turn grass into Bitcoin but there is a way to do it. Farmers are increasingly pressured by the Irish government to reduce emissions to reach the country's greenhouse gas emission goals. In some cases these goals have driven farms to bankruptcy. For farmer Tom Campbell, Bitcoin mining was an interesting option to pay off investments he was obliged to make. The Bitcoin option here for consuming electricity on site while I'm just exporting it there was an exercise in trying to beat the grid price because we were being paid for export and it gives us another market for electricity and it's just a form of wealth stories I suppose on the farm. He produces renewable energy on his farm using a special method called anaerobic digestion. Anaerobic digestion is a method where microorganisms break down biodegradable material to a point where it creates methane gas which can be used to produce electricity. It's actually quite similar to a cow digesting grass and farting it out into the world but instead that fart is captured and used to create electricity in a purely renewable way. On average Tom's farm produces an electrical output of 500 kilowatts but can scale up to 700 kilowatts. That's the equivalent of powering nearly 12,000 households. If 41% of Ireland's farms installed anaerobic digesters they could produce enough electricity for every single home in Ireland all by using environmentally friendly and renewable biogas. We collect our crops from the fields during the summer months put them in our silage clamps in the yard and then every day we fill our feed hover here and that feed hover every hour feeds the predetermined amount 24 hours a day a predetermined amount down into our digester. The digester takes it and mixes it in this slurry as we feed them in it digests it and produces biogas which is about 50 to 53% methane. We run that the methane through the engines that run generators and we export our electricity to the grid. Anything we don't export to the grid we use it for mining bitcoin. You might be wondering why farmer Tom doesn't export every kilowatt of electricity to the grid. The answer is simple. The grid doesn't actually need all that energy but Tom can't let the excess energy he's created go to waste and so voila, bitcoin mining. When grid demand is low miners step in to scoop up the excess clean energy. So when the price from the grid is very low it makes more sense to mine bitcoin when it's very very high you sell the electricity to the grid as renewable green electricity. You keep your coffers happy and also the grid is happy that they're getting this green energy too. That's a no-brainer. I mean, yeah, switch on when you can, right? Yeah, yeah. Shall we switch it back on now? I think so. This particular mine is actually running 24-7. A constant stream of biogas generates a constant supply of energy and because the digester can be fed all the time there's no downtime on this energy source. It's always up and farting. Sorry, running. The brains behind the mining operation are a young team of Irish entrepreneurs who specialize in using stranded or untapped energy to mine bitcoin. So we looked at a number of energy sources wind and solar were the first ones that appeared to us but inevitably we realized that in order to get a better higher uptime source of energy we needed to delve a bit deeper and we ultimately came across anaerobic digestion. What we came across is that a lot of instances they have an export capacity of X amount but they can produce more but previously they had no financial incentive to do so because if they can only export X amount why would they produce more? They realized that if we come up with a containerized solution we can basically offer them a constant offered buyer of electricity so we're making use of their stranded energy and they're getting a buyer for their spare electricity so it's a match made in heaven for both of us. Now some of you may ask why bitcoin? Why not house something else like a data center for Amazon web services? You know farmers are really independent individuals anyway and they like to be in control of everything that's going on in their own farms and so in this instance this farmer in particular has complete custody over his own bitcoin the bitcoin is going into whatever wallet he or she wants to use on any given week or month and they're completely in control of that bitcoin and so also if they want to shut this thing off and do some maintenance and do whatever they want to do they're not asking another individual like AWS or whoever else could service into a unit like this they're in control of their own ASICs they're in control of their own bitcoin It takes approximately two and a half months to mine one bitcoin on this site which is a lot considering there are only 35 machines consuming purely excess energy and Tom Campbell who has a deep understanding of how bitcoin works is what's known in the space as a bitcoin maximalist When we looked at the bitcoin as opposed to which other coin to mine we felt bitcoin was the purest crypto right there it's not contaminated by outside influences it's on a network that needs a lot of consensus so we thought that's the one we went up for Obviously this particular project is a match made in heaven it's a win-win for both sides of the operation Stuart Hossford is an economist and the founder of Skilling Digital Mining the company that runs the mining operation on Tom's farm I asked him Can other farms do the same in Ireland and start mining bitcoin too? Can they replicate this concept? Yeah I hope so I hope so there's 135,000 farms in Ireland People talk about circular economy Joe I hear this term all the time and I'm a big fan of it right? But here's a perfect example of a circular economy You grow cattle they provide food, dairy produce, beef they grow waste the waste gets harnessed it gets turned into electricity which provides energy to our grid any excess energy can be used to mine bitcoin which secures a really important monetary network and out of the anaerobic digester comes a digester which is an awesome fertiliser that can be then used to spread back on the land this is the circular economy working The future of bitcoin mining in Ireland could be bright bright orange even although it's set against the backdrop of a European energy crisis If the idea of using untapped and renewable energy sources to mine bitcoin spreads across the country and even the globe we all might be looking at a brighter future and nonetheless there's still a huge amount of criticism and a lack of understanding surrounding bitcoin mining regulators want to ban bitcoin mining's mechanism called proof of work and this cloud of uncertainty could remain at least for the near term In this case, bitcoin mining could be the catalyst for the rollout of small scale anaerobic digestion across Ireland which is obviously a positive contribution so just focusing on X amount that bitcoin uses and not realising that a lot of that usage could be a net benefit to the environment is quite a narrow minded approach to have you know, it's quite bizarre to us that a lot of people don't even know what we're doing in Ireland yes, we're kind of operating under the radar people are solely but surely seeing what we're doing and becoming quite interested whether it be farmers themselves whether it be wind and solar guys it's just a case of educating people on bitcoin mining and showing them that it's here to stay Ultimately it's a really innovative energy solution that people will implement over the course of the next couple of years We start thinking about it as an energy source not only generating energy but also generating economic value and therefore, you know, turn it into a positive and then, you know, things change, right? It's that perception It's that perception, right? It's that perception As the sun sets over this beautiful Irish countryside I am hopeful about the future of bitcoin These guys are doing something peaceful productive, yet bold They're turning cow-pat into digital gold I mean this this renewable green grass This could be the future of bitcoin mining