There are many things you can do better than a 10-year-old — accurately describe puberty, contribute to a 401(k), buy cigarettes — but there’s one thing you’re absolutely not going to do better than one specific Argentine 10-year-old: play chess. Faustino Oro, AKA “Golden Boy,” beat 33-year-old world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen in a quick-fire game. Real impressive, kid.
In today’s email:
Tidal: Trying out a new music-sharing playbook.
SunnyD: The urban legend that toppled ’90s kids’ drink of choice.
Game on: The sports memorabilia business is about to take off.
Around the web: A fun word game, useful PDF tools, yelling in tandem, and more.
👇 Listen: Dissecting the Visa & Mastercard settlement that may save businesses $30B.
The Big Idea
Tidal’s music sharing play
Can Tidal prove that playing nice with others is the right move?
2024-03-27T00:00:00Z
Juliet Bennett Rylah
Sharing links cross-platform is often irritating, taking your friends to the home page and not the link in question or requiring them to log in.
But Tidal just rolled out universal links, perThe Verge. This allows music lovers to share tracks with friends on multiple platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music.
Tidal…
… is a little guy as far as music streaming services are concerned.
It began as a small Norwegian streaming service until Jay-Z bought it in 2015, rebranding it as an artist-owned platform. That didn’t pan out, and in 2021, Block Inc. (formerly Square) paid $297m for majority ownership.
As of 2022, it held less than 2% of market share, despite higher-quality audio and more lucrative payout tiers for artists.
Why it’s interesting
Both individual consumers and government regulators are growing weary of big platforms and their difficult-to-leave walled gardens.
We’re seeing big antitrust crackdowns in both the EU and US, plus a rising interest in the fediverse, a collection of interoperable social media platforms. Even Meta added Threads, its Twitter rival, to the fediverse.
While there are decentralized music platforms, such as Funkwhale, some users find the sign-up process intimidating or the music selection limiting.
Tidal’s move could build goodwill among potential customers looking to ditch larger companies, and their ever-increasing costs, for something novel that doesn’t feel like yet another closed-off subscription.
Fun fact: There are a few other ways to listen to links on your preferred platform. Wired offers four here.
Free Resource
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Officials announced Barcelona’s landmark Sagrada Familia basilica will — finally — be completed in 2026, a whole 140+ years after construction began. It’s nearly impossible to know how much money has been poured into the church, but here’s a glimpse: A 2019 building permit references a ~$405m completion budget.
SNIPPETS
OpenAIshared seven clips made by filmmakers and visual artists using Sora, its buzzy text-to-video AI tool, including a short film about a balloon man (who dangerously walks through a store’s cactus aisle) and a clip of a hybrid giraffe-flamingo.
Canva acquired Affinity,taking ownership of the creative software’s Affinity Designer, Photo, and Publisher apps. Canva, which has 170m+ monthly global users, is aiming to attract professional designers away from Adobe.
Visa and Mastercard agreed to limit credit-card swipe fees as part of an antitrust settlement. Merchants will save an estimated $30B over the next five years.
McDonald’s is expanding its partnership with Krispy Kreme to all US locations by the end of 2026. The donut chain, whose stock was up 28% yesterday, will more than 2x its distribution to meet the new demand.
Uh-oh: Trader Joe’s raised the price of its individually sold bananas by ~20% — from 19 cents to 23 cents — for the first time since 2001.
A judge dismissed X’s lawsuit against the Center for Countering Digital Hate, ruling that it was just to “punish” the nonprofit for unflattering research regarding hate speech on the platform.
Update: Cocoa prices have hit a record $10k+ per ton, up ~138% YoY. Poor weather and crop disease in West Africa are to blame.
The hottest new brand: PepsiCo formally split Flamin’ Hot into a unique brand within its broader $28B+ snacking division. The phenomenon that started with Cheetos that turned your fingers red now extends to 25 products.
Canada Goose — the manufacturer of outerwear worn by rich people pretending to be Arctic explorers, even though it’s 45 degrees out — is cutting 17% of its workforce, citing a familiar story: corporate’s focus on “achieving efficiency and margin expansion.”
Don’t miss this…
What are 1k+ startup founders saying about AI? What do 86% of them agree on? You want these stats, we promise — check ’em out in this week’s Trends.
Liquid sunshine
Did SunnyD really turn a girl orange?
Two days after Christmas in 1999, on the cusp of Y2K, a news story broke: A doctor in Rhyl, a seaside town in Wales, said he’d just seen a 5-year-old patient at the hospital.
Her skin, he said, was orange, and the culprit was too much Sunny Delight.
SunnyD was a hot commodity at the time:
It was marketed as a fruit juice, though it contained mostly water and corn syrup.
It was also cheaper than juices like Tropicana.
This combined to make SunnyD the UK’s third-ranked soft drink, behind only Coke and Pepsi.
And then the girl turned orange — or so the urban legend goes — and Sunny Delight’s fortunes changed forever.
Was she real? And, even if she wasn’t, why did her story send the brand down the drain?
There are thousands of companies valued at $1B+. How many clues do you need to identify today’s billion-dollar brand?
Clue 1: Its founder has multiple MIT degrees and a Stanford PhD, and spent 25 years at Texas Instruments producing groundbreaking tech and rising to a VP spot — all low-grade successes compared to the $600B+ juggernaut he built next.
Clue 2: At the founder’s retirement party, he was lauded by the head of Nvidia, who said the multitrillion-dollar AI-chip darling simply wouldn’t exist without this company.
Clue 3: No disrespect to companies like Microtek, Lite-On, and Zyxel, which all seem lovely, but this company is the true pride and joy of Taiwan’s Hsinchu Science Park. Sorry, other companies — try being the world’s biggest microprocessor manufacturer and maybe you’ll take the top spot.
👇 Scroll to the bottom for the answer 👇
Data Point
A real slam dunk: The already huge market of sports collectibles is about to get even bigger. The industry’s global value is estimated to jump from $26.1B in 2021 to $227.2B by 2032, according to a Market Decipher report. And one business in particular is benefiting from the uptick: the auction house. Sotheby’s is introducing “Sports Week” to attract younger bidders — its average sports memorabilia client is between 20 and 40 years old, and 50% are first-time bidders — and meet the increased demand for athletic collectibles. Some of the big-ticket items up for grabs during next month’s inaugural Sports Week include a pair of Muhammad Ali’s shorts, estimated to fetch $4m-$6m, and a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey that’s expected to go for $1.5m-$2.5m.
AROUND THE WEB
🔍 On this day: In 1905, a fingerprint on a cash box was used to solve a double homicide in south London, marking the first time the method was employed in a high-profile case.
🎧 Podcast: In this episode of Hustle & Flowchart, Joe Fier explores the paradox of productivity and the importance of finding a balance between hustling and flowing.
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