Nazis and Glass Crucibles👓👓
Spotify moves further into podcasting at its own peril🛑, Apple breaks the glass👓 and Amazon tries the troubled waters of gaming🌊
Hi everyone! I hope you’re doing well, and wish you a short quarantine. This week's version was written a bit ad-hoc but, nevertheless, tech must go on…
After writing of Spotify’s deep dive into podcasts as of late in a previous newsletter, the company made waves this past week by acquiring yet another podcast, proving that they’re playing chess, not checkers. This time it was The Joe Rogan Experience that made the switch to become exclusive to Spotify in exchange for more than $100M, provided the podcast can reach the stipulated performance targets. The company went up in value by around $1B in the days after the announcement. Rogan’s podcast reportedly made $30M from advertising last year and claims 190M downloads per month.
Spotify is doing a good job of going in early and setting the idea in people’s minds that if you’re looking for a good podcast or one made by your favorite content creator, this is the place to go. I’d be surprised if the Rogan acquisition decision wasn’t helped along by data from existing users searching for the podcast already. Big signings like Rogan, Gimlet, and TheRinger will bring in a large number of consumers to the platform that are sure to delve into other podcasts and enjoy the musical content on top. That larger number of users will, in turn, allow Spotify to charge advertisers more, which will allow the company to invest in mode content creation. And round and round we go…
Spotify’s investment into the podcasting ecosystem has now reached half a billion dollars in the effort to pull away from dealing with music labels but also other podcasting platforms like Apple and YouTube. With more music streaming services sharing similar libraries, it will make this type of media a commodity and services that offer subscribers ‘more than music’ are sure to come up on top. The big issue that arises with brining these opinion-makers in-house compared to streaming —music— content created and owned by someone else is the associations that come out of it. It’s well known that Rogan has given a platform in the past to white supremacists and conspiracy theorists everywhere, now that will transform into ‘Spotify is giving nazis a voice’.
With YouTube distracted by the million avenues they’re exploring at any given time, and Apple seemingly not interested to join the advertising business anytime soon it looks like the coast is clear for Spotify. If the podcasting wars have begun, the odds look very much stacked in favor of a single competitor. ‘Spodcasting’ sounds kinda rough though🤔
The big gossip-level news of the week comes from yet another leak of Apple’s AR Glasses product, now speculated to be named ‘Apple Glass’. I usually like to stay from unconfirmed rumors but all these details got me thinking…
The high-level specs go like this:
Displays in both lenses;
All processing is done on the phone and sent to the glasses;
Integrated LiDAR sensor, no actual cameras;
$499 price tag without subscription lenses;
The potential announcement coming in September and public release next year;
With the heavy lifting being done on the phone Apple gives the impression that, at least the first version of the device, will be more of an accessory than a standalone product. From the initial description, it sounds like Apple Glass’ industrial design is almost indistinguishable from a normal pair of glasses and if they’re made by Apple you can bet that industrial design was a starting point in the development process instead of an afterthought at the end. I’m willing to risk an arm and a leg saying that whatever ends up coming out of Cupertino will look better than the best-looking competing product out in the market right now.
With the amount of space available for the battery and electronics closer to that seen on the AirPods rather than that of the Watch, it makes sense that the design team made the compromise of tethering wirelessly to the capabilities of other mobile devices in their roster. As technology advances in future years and more posibilities open up, future versions might slowly transition to on-device processing and independent operation. If this sounds familiar it’s because it is, the Apple Watch lineup had a similar progression as time went by.
The LiDAR-enabled, camera-less design is a tough one to defend though. I can see Apple’s values around privacy developed over the years influencing this decision and not wanting to risk a Glasshole moment but it feels like they’re giving up a lot here. My gut instinct says that in the end, when it will become acceptable to wear AR glasses in public, consumers will value functionality over privacy. I’m sure this is on the minds of several people at Apple and that future versions will play it by ear in terms of sensors.
It this sense, the Apple Watch has become a de facto development mule for the miniaturization and power consumption optimization of various sensors for Glass, with the sensors going into the latter being developed and tested out on the former. With all the acquisitions and partnerships Apple has made in past years within the medical space, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a non-invasive glucose sensor and/or a blood oxygen one by launch date. In the meantime, you can bet your A-S-S that all that data from consumers using the LiDAR sensor on the current-gen iPads and future-gen iPhones will be used by the Glass team to improve the product before launch.
While the stipulated launch price of $499 is in line with the limited capabilities of the device, the announcement-launch date timeline is not very common for Apple. The company rarely announces products 12 months before they’re ready for release, and I don’t see them putting out Apple Glass before September of 2021. I think this will be both announced and released at some point next year and not earlier, perhaps announced in early Summer and then released with the iPhones in Fall.
Finally, as long as the name goes, I can’t say I’m a huge fan and hope they re-think it more towards the initial iGlass monicker. I can see why you’d name a product ‘Gorilla Glass’, but 'Apple Glass’?? As in ‘it doesn’t last very long outside the fridge’?
Amazon Studios launched the first of two large-scale videogames slated for this summer and it’s not too shabby. Crucible is a free-to-play product that mixes MOBA mechanics along with a smidge of battle royale functionality, all in an alien Sci-Fi setting. Ten is the number of characters that you’re able to choose from with each of them having different strengths and weaknesses, and different difficulty curves when it comes to controlling their actions.
The development team at Relentless brought a lot of remix-driven innovation in the game’s mechanics like the preference for upgrades instead of rigid character archetypes and the ability to switch partners in the 16v16 mode if your original one dies. But in this day and age the success of such games is less dependent on the mechanics and more on marketing; and marketing means ‘streamers’.
When put against Riot Games’ ‘Valorant’ and the seismic impact it had on the industry two months before it even launched, Crucible stands little to no chance in its current form but Amazon’s bottomless pockets and the fact that they own Twitch could, in theory, fix that later.
Uber announced it was cutting 3000 jobs last week and closing 45 offices as the ride-hailing businesses fell off their respective cliffs during the pandemic, with Uber’s business down 80% compared to the year before. Uber Eats saw an increase in revenue but with rides making up 75% of the company’s revenue, this was not enough to keep the company afloat in its existing form. However, the thing that stood out during this were not numbers, but the way the company handled the situation. Uber set up a jobs page listing all the people they let go and the company’s CEO promoted it to his 100k+ Twitter followers even going as far as tagging competitors that might be interested to hire them. This a 21st century CEO if I ever saw one clap👏👏
Consumers spent over $100M on Oculus Quest content alone in the past year. It’s hard to believe that the Quest has been out for only one year, maybe because it’s been in the headlines so often. Oculus made a device that managed to attract developers of high-quality products which in turn attracted a passionate community of consumers in a way not so dissimilar from Apple with the first iPod and later with the iPhone. The updates that came with hand gesture support for a controller-free experience plus the ability to run the device in wired mode for better visual quality just sweetened the deal at the 6 months mark. Over the past few years, VR went from a gimmick to a sustainable business model with consolidation and outright failures for some companies, both signs that this space is coming into its own 💰💰
The report from SensorTower showing Roblox as the 3rd top grosser in Q1 was of little surprise, if anything I see it as being too low for what it is. The $96M over the first three months of the year might seem like a lot for a single product, but Roblox is not a single product, it’s an amalgam of games developed by a large community of creators and consumed by an even larger audience. It would only make sense that once the company implements more optimized ways of creators monetizing, a platform containing multiple games would bring in more than any individual one money🕹️🕹️
AdultSwim is picking up a show canceled by Netflix and oh how the times have changed. It feels like just yesterday the roles were reversed with Netflix picking off the scraps, it took less than a decade for this to happen, an unheard amount of time for a turnaround in this business 📺📺
Just weeks after announcing they were looking to raise funds or go public, Magic Leap has raised $350M. The even better news is that, as a result, many employees won’t lose their jobs in the process. I guess that creating a new hardware company in this ecosystem is not that easy after all👓👓
This sounds like a tough secret to keep for over a year…
The look of AR devices being produced on a massive scale…
Please consider subscribing for FREE below⤵️⤵️ and check us on Medium or Twitter