Your Robot DJ

Plus: The streaming business is like a Squid Game outtake ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

February 24, 2023

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TOGETHER WITH

Good morning and happy Friday.

Google wants employees to return to the office… just not all at once.

The tech giant has been at the forefront of the anti-remote work movement, requiring employees to show up in person three times a week since the spring of last year — with the eventual goal of eliminating remote work altogether. But the company has also decreased office space recently in cost-cutting moves, forcing employees in its Cloud division to share desks and coordinate in-office workdays. It’s a not-so-complicated math problem we think Google engineers should be able to solve.

Morning Brief

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Netflix is charging more and less at the same time.

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AI killed the radio star. Well, it’s trying.

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Ozy Media makes headlines.

Streaming

Netflix Cuts Prices in More Than 30 Countries

How much is a Netflix subscription? Throw a dart at a world map and the answer will differ.

Despite raising prices in its bigger markets, Netflix has actually cut subscription costs – sometimes by more than half – in roughly three dozen countries and territories, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The move comes as the streaming market has become officially oversaturated.

57,000 Channels (And Nothin’ On)

Netflix and long-time rival Hulu used to be in a league of their own, but now they’re facing competition from the likes of HBO Max, Amazon Prime, AppleTV, and many more. If you’re a parent of young children, you pretty much have to have Disney+. Also, there are free services like Tubi and Vudu, which actually offer some decent films and TV series if you don’t mind commercial breaks.

And even though Netflix is cutting prices to stay competitive in a few parts of the world, it’s doing the exact opposite — and then some — in other areas. At the start of 2022, the company that put the N in FAANG raised its base monthly subscription by a dollar in the US, and it recently began rolling out paid-sharing much to the chagrin of Canadians, Spaniards, and New Zealanders who will now need to pay extra to watch Emily in Paris at a friend’s house:

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Netflix operates in more than 190 nations, and some of the countries seeing price reductions include Yemen, Kenya, Croatia, Ecuador, and the Philippines – places all around the world, so the strategy hasn’t been isolated to just one region. And those price cuts range between 20% and 60% for the base tier. Sorry, America, you’re still on the hook for the full $9.99 each month.

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Netflix’s cost of doing business has gone way up, especially now that nearly 50% of its content is original. And though it has more paying subscribers than ever at roughly 230 million, the company recently had its first dip in net income since 2015, prompting co-founder Reed Hastings to step down as chief executive last month.

“We know members have never had more choices when it comes to entertainment,” a Netflix rep told the WSJ, mastering understatement.

The Sweet Spot: Netflix hasn’t jumped on the live sports bandwagon just yet, but that doesn’t mean it’s not interested in sports. Drive to Survive remains one of its most popular docuseries and got more viewers interested in Formula 1 racing. Now, Netflix is trying to recreate that magic yet again with Full Swing, a show about the lives of professional golfers on and off the course. WSJ’s Jason Gay wrote, “If you’ve ever thought, ‘The only thing better than watching people play golf is watching people talk about playing golf,’ then this is the series for you, my friends.”

-Griffin Kelly

Tech

Spotify Rolls Out AI DJ Feature

Did you ever wish Spotify could talk to you about the songs it’s playing? No? Well, they’re doing it anyway.

Spotify is rolling out an AI-powered DJ, a computer-generated voice that talks you through the songs the app has selected for you. So essentially Spotify is riding the ChatGPT craze to layer a slightly more loquacious Alexa over your music. Sounds good to… we don’t know who.

Don’t Hang the DJ Just Yet

Technology from ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI had a direct hand in the creation of Spotify’s new DJ feature, according to Spotify’s press release. It says this tech will in some way work in conjunction with human editors. A Spotify exec also told The Verge the feature will use “a high element of human touch.” Such intensive human curation runs slightly counter to the point of a generative AI tool, especially for a company that’s feeling the same budgetary constraints as the rest of techland — but maybe it’s better to keep the AI under tight supervision rather than let it riff (we’re looking at you, Sydney).

The AI-generated voice was designed by Sonantic AI, a startup Spotify acquired in June last year. The voice does sound pretty natural, but the question remains: do Spotify listeners really want to be chatted at while they’re listening to music, or is the company falling for the AI hype?

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Investors are pouring money into any company with AI attached to its name, not unlike when they started flooding metaverse-adjacent companies with cash. AI is admittedly a more versatile technology, but it also encompasses a vast range of tools, not all of which are particularly revolutionary.

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“It is total buyer-beware unless you know what you’re doing and have proper risk management,” one CEO of Tuttle Capital Management Matthew Tuttle told Bloomberg earlier this month, adding: “You can’t just go in and buy any company that says they’re in AI.”

Poor, Unfortunate Souls: Given how much human supervision Spotify’s robo-DJ needs just to spit out some fun trivia and rub together sentences, talk radio hosts can breathe easy for now. For voice actors, however, the threat is more imminent. Rest of World reported voice actors who make a living off dubbing, particularly in Latin America, are being hired to train generative AI voice technology only to later find out they’re being replaced by it. It’s the modern equivalent of being asked to sing into a shell by a charismatic octopus-witch.

– Isobel Asher Hamilton

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Media

Ozy Media Chief Executive Arrested on Fraud Charges

Digital media startup Ozy Media is billing its upcoming OzyFest 2023 as “TED meets Coachella,” but it’s looking like Fyre Festival may be the more apt comparison.

On Thursday, founder and chief executive of the multi-pronged media operation, Carlos Watson, was arrested on charges of conspiring to commit securities fraud and wire fraud, according to law enforcement officials. He’s just the latest domino to fall after an explosive New York Times exposé on the company a million news cycles ago… in 2021.

The Road to Jail is Paved by Bad Impressions

Let’s file this under “things that shouldn’t need to be explained”: it is not technically legal to impersonate an executive of one of the world’s largest companies while on a fundraising call with a major investment bank. But that’s exactly what former Ozy COO Samir Rao did two years ago, when he pretended to be a higher-up at Google while chatting with Goldman Sachs.

The stunt, first reported by the NYT, got the company into heaps of trouble. Rao finally pleaded guilty to fraud and identity theft charges in federal court on Tuesday — and now it appears those silly antics are catching up to his former colleagues:

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Ozy’s former chief of staff Suzee Han pleaded guilty last week to fraud conspiracy charges and told a judge that she manipulated financial information about the company at the behest of two unnamed executives.

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It’s a digital media star’s fall from grace. Per Pitchbook data, Ozy had raised a total of $83 million by April 2020 and had a valuation at the time of $159 million.

Look On My Works, Ye Mighty: “We are really disappointed,” Watson’s lawyer (and former US assistant attorney general) Lanny Breuer said following the arrest. “We have been acting in good faith and believe we had a constructive dialogue with the government and are shocked by the actions this morning.” Ozy has not responded to The Daily Upside’s request for comment. Fittingly, the name Ozy is short for Ozymandias, the sonnet by the English poet Shelley about the impermanence of all things and people.

– Brian Boyle

Extra Upside

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Saving for a rainy day: Americans have $21 billion in unspent gift cards.

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Maybe less fights with tennis players: New York City just opened its first indoor pickleball court.

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Just For Fun

Splitting arrows.

Stunts before computers.

Have a great weekend!

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