Barry Diller – Learn to Unlearn

  • I have posted a few interviews with Diller before (here and here).
  • One of the best podcast interviews with the legend was done by Reid Hoffman.
  • It is in two parts – the first is called infinite learner and the second learn to unlearn.
  • Diller has an almost uncanny ability to change and adapt to a fluctuating world, something that has helped him stay on top for so many years.

Spotify’s TikTok Problem

  • 63% of TikTok users (1bn worldwide) discover new music on TikTok before any other platform.
  • This is worrying for SPOT.
  • TikTok has already launched a competing service – Resso – in key emerging markets (Brazil, Indonesia and India).
  • iOS App download rank data for the recent 90-day period from App Annie (pictured, link) shows it still hasn’t hit Spotify’s dominance (it has only reached 2nd place in Music category in Indonesia, and lingers in 4th for the other two launch countries).

Newsletters

  • There is a growing trend of financial newsletters being acquired.
  • Abrdn (the newly renamed Aberdeen Asset Management) has acquired Finimize and their 1m subs (40,000 premium).
  • Morning Brew went to Business Insider for $75m (ca. 3.8x sales or $25 per each of its 3m subs).
  • Robinhood acquired MarketSnacks.
  • Others are looking to deploy serious capital into financial media.
  • Big media is also noticing (e.g. The Information launched a tech stack for newsletters).

Spoken Word

  • Spoken word audio (think podcasts, audiobooks etc) is taking share of listening away from music.
  • 22m more people in the US are listening to spoken word than seven years ago.
  • The biggest growth driver has been podcasts – which represent 22% of spoken word, up from 8% in 2014.
  • Lots more stats in this NPR/Edison Research report.

Disney World

  • Collection Disney World maps through the years.
  • This enormous land parcel is also unique in that it’s a kind of self-governing municipality, with its own fire department and emergency services. The district—officially known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District—is governed by a five-person Board of Supervisors elected by the landowners in the district. As a result, high-level Disney employees essentially run the entire region encompassing WDW.
  • The area is so vast that “The Magic Kingdom parking lot, for example, is actually larger than the theme park itself.

Creator Economy

  • The creator economy is booming.
  • New platforms are largely to thank – they have transformed the economics of creating.
  • This is seen in the table from The Independent Creator Manifesto.
  • In aggregating monetization across these 50 platforms, we’ve found that creators will soon pass more than $10 billion in aggregate earnings. While 2020 saw a jump in new creators, it wasn’t a one-time spike. A year later, creators are still coming online at a record clip: the number of creators is up a whopping 48% year-over-year. In total, these platforms have onboarded 668,000 creators.
  • Substack just announced they have hit 1 million paid subscribers.

Online Display Eating TV

  • Online display advertising is rapidly displacing TV in the UK.
  • However, despite the increase in online, TV advertising remains the medium of choice for big brands wanting to reach an audience quickly and at scale, with advertisers citing TV’s ability to drive both short-term sales and longer-term brand equity as a major advantage.” 
  • Source: Ofcom.

Technology Transformation

  • Company IT systems are vital but understudied by investors (e.g. here).
  • This is a great post on how Fox went about setting up its technology capabilities after the deal between 21st Century Fox and Disney.
  • To whet your appetite – “we left almost all of our systems and infrastructure behind and embarked on a two-year journey and radical transformation
  • What follows is a set of principles that is fascinating to read for investors and corporate insiders alike.

SVOD Content Hours

  • Nice chart from Ofcom report tracking hours of content by various streaming services in the UK.
  • Interesting to see Amazon in the lead but trimming its library recently.
  • Disney+ is seeing the biggest growth (addition of the Star channel).
  • NOW set to get a big boost in H2 from addition of 7,000 hours from parent NBCUniversal’s Peacock.

Music Streaming Market

  • There are 487m music streaming subscribers globally at Q1 2021.
  • Emerging markets are now central to this market accounting for 60% of all 2020 subscriber growth.
  • Spotify is still the leader with 32% but has lost two points of market share since Q1 2020.
  • Google’s Youtube Music has been the standout story – “The early signs are that YouTube Music is becoming to Gen Z what Spotify was to Millennials half a decade ago.
  • Source.

Movies

  • Movies are the second most popular out of home experience in the US.
  • the industry sold 1 billion movie theater tickets in the United States, 1 billion. It’s the third most popular out-of-home — sorry, it’s the second most popular out-of-home experience in the United States. Other than going out to eat a meal in a restaurant. If you take the attendance of all 5 major professional sports leagues together, all 150-ish teams, all sports, all games, all season long, movie theaters sold 7x the quantity of every sports event tickets sold in the United States in 2019.Source.
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