Here are a few of the stories I’ve found interesting over the past few days, including why Spotify Needs Joe Rogan more than he needs Spotify.
Joe Rogan is Bad, But Spotify Needs Him
In 2020 Spotify gave Joe Rogan a $100 Million deal for him to exclusively distribute his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, on the Spotify platform. Joe Rogan has been controversial for many years, and that has gone up to 11 as he continues to spread misinformation about COVID-19 during the pandemic.
I’m not going to get too much into how problematic Joe Rogan is. The most recent story isn’t even about this situation isn’t even about the pandemic. Spotify has removed about 70 back catalog epidoes of The Joe Rogan Experience over his use of racist terms. Those facts about Joe Rogan speak for themselves. But what has happened is that Spotify has tied itself as a company to him, and that move may be backfiring. This is a shocking revelation that no one could have seen coming....
The Verge has done excellent reporting about this, I’ll link only one of the more recent articles about the situation below, but the shortest version is that Spotify’s entire business model rests on Joe Rogan. It is reported that Spotify uses the reach of Joe Rogan’s podcast to fuel ad sales. Advertising on The Joe Rogan Experience is an expensive buy, and the reporting is that Spotify requires companies that buy advertising on Joe Rogan to also buy advertising on other Spotify podcasts. The company uses Joe Rogan to make its other podcasts more valuable, and that means that Spotify is tied to him.
The secret of Spotify that the company actually loses money on every song it streams to users. If Spotify were just a music streaming service, it likely would not survive, as it loses money on those streams. Spotify’s other ventures, like Podcasts, are what the company uses to make money. And since The Joe Rogan Experience is the biggest driver of that podcast revenue, it is highly unlikely that Spotify will even attempt to get ouf of the Joe Rogan deal. Spotify needs Joe Rogan, the company has tied its future to him, and now it is paying the price.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22921608/spotify-joe-rogan-moderation-guidelines-episode-deletion
Nvidia Gives up on ARM Acquisition
Nvidia is abandoning its proposed $40 Billion USD deal to buy ARM from SoftBank. First announced in 2019, the deal was not going to be allowed to proceed by the United Kingdom, and likely would have been blocked in the US as well. ARM, the company that designs the processing architecture that powers virtually every computing device that doesn’t run Windows, is frankly too big to be sold to a technology firm, due to its outsized influence on the market. This is not officially confirmed, but it is believed that SoftBank will instead look to spin out ARM into a separate company in the future instead.
https://www.thurrott.com/hardware/262401/nvidia-gives-up-on-its-40-billion-acquisition-of-arm
Steam Deck Reaches Reviewer’s Hands
Valve has seeded Steam Deck Review Units to a few hand picked YouTube reviewers, and some early details are being shared. At this time, the hand picked reviewers can only talk about the hardware and a few select games, but it is our first real look at the Steam Deck in action. The early impression from a few games show that with expectations kept in check on the capabilites of the device, it works very well, though the battery life claims of 2-8 hours seem to be a bit ambitious. The full review embargos lift on February 25th, the same day Valve will send out the first emails for those that reserved the system to actually start buying them.
I have a Steam Deck reservation, and hope to be in that first group on the 25th. I look forward to getting the device and being able to look at it myself.
https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/7/22921979/valve-steam-deck-early-reviews-handheld-gaming-pc
Apple Bringing Contactless Payments to iPhone in the US
This has the potential to be huge. We have had the ability to pay for things using Apple Pay on an iPhone for several years now, but now Apple is working on a solution to allow people to take payments on an iPhone, like how Square works. Instead of needing a separate Square reader and app, the iPhone will be able to serve as a tap to pay reader, and take payments.
In somewhat of a surprise, this functionality will work with 3rd party apps and payment solutions, with the Canadian based Shopify being one of the highlighted companies working with the new system. Unfortunately, this will only launch in the United States later this year. This follows a similar pattern of Apple’s payment systems launching in the US first, before making their way in some capacity to other jurisdictions. There is no guarantee we see this in Canada, however, as products The Apple Card credit card have yet to make their way north. But still, this is a big enough deal I think it is worth highlighting.
It is likely we will see this functionality shown off at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference, usually held in early June.
https://mobilesyrup.com/2022/02/08/apple-launches-tap-to-pay-contactless-payment-u-s/
Google May Have Botched Another Pixel 6 Update
I haven’t covered the Pixel 6 software saga, as that occurred during my hiatus. But the short version is that Google’s December update caused so many issues on Pixel 6 phones that it pulled the update and never re-issued it, instead waiting until January to release fixes for the phone. Now, the February update is here and there are reports of wifi connectivity issues from those who have updated.
It is worth noting that this could be a vocal minority, and that for most people the update is applying fine with no issues. But Google’s track record of software updates causing issues on Pixel phones is well documented, and troubling. It was hoped that with the Pixel 6 using more custom built hardware specifically for Google phones, these issues would become less frequent, but they look to be worse than ever this year. Considering Google is the primary developer of Android, this is troubling, and makes it hard to recommend purchasing Google branded phones.
https://www.androidcentral.com/google-pixel-6-february-update-wi-fi-bluetooth-bugs
Twitter Testing Downvote Feature
Just a quickie. Twitter is starting to test a feature to allow downvotes on tweets. Downvote counts do not show publicly, nor does Twitter say specifically how the data will be used. It is likely that tweets with significant numbers of downvotes will receive a lower ranking in the algorithm and show up less in searches, for example, but we don’t know that for sure.
Perhaps instead of these things, Twitter could put more people strengthening it’s reporting tools into something useful and on taking down tweets that violate its own terms of service. that seems like a better idea.