Plague and the Meaning of Life

The coronavirus pandemic has taken away so much in the blink of an eye: lives, jobs, income, wealth, vacations, travel, live entertainment, eating out, socializing, family gatherings, birthday parties, graduations, sports, libraries, universities, among so many things we never knew we would (not) miss.

But the pandemic has also given us a moment to reflect; to reflect on life’s true meaning and value.

Plagues, like war, strip us down and lay us bare, the reason why they are constantly explored through our arts and literature.

So, as we #stayathome, quarantined away from the frantic life of just a few months ago, we have been given this unique opportunity of time to consider the important things in life. Not yesterday, not tomorrow. Today.

You can be sure binge-watching Netflix and Showtime is not one of them. Meaningless passive entertainment is a time killer, so why take the time this crisis is giving us and squander it?

Will 2020 be like the proverbial hole in the resumé of our lives?

No. Idle time, a thing so rare these days, will lead us back to our hearts and souls because the alternative is maddening. The constant barrage of the Information Age has robbed us of being alone with ourselves, to discover what makes us tick. It’s not just TikTok.

Instead, our creative spirits sing the language of our souls as we reach out with our hearts to communicate and share that song. Heart and soul. People are playing music, singing, cooking, baking, drawing, painting, writing, planting gardens – all dancing to the rhythm of life, no longer marching to the drumbeat of time and money. Technology, that two-edged sword, helps us make the connections that fill our need for social engagement. But one can only stare at a Zoom party screen for so long. We must create meaning to share meaning. It is that love of the creator in all of us.

And this, thanks to a global pandemic, is actually happening. And not a moment too soon.

Create—Share—Connect

Why Spotify is the Living Dead

Below I include a recent article from Barron’s Magazine, presenting the financial challenges to Spotify, the dominant music streaming service.  Here’s why I believe it’s dead:

Spotify [is] a “pure play on a loss-leader category.”

Streaming music has been priced as a loss leader, in other words the costs of streaming music exceed what platforms receive from subscribers in revenue. This is not atypical for networking platforms as the platforms hope to monetize the data these networks create through their users. Of course, a network does not really become valuable until it is of dominant size and able to maintain continued user engagement. Facebook is the one we are most familiar with. And Facebook did not become profitable until it had been in operation for 6 years and experienced phenomenal user growth. Also, FB has an ad revenue model (more on this later).

The problem with Spotify is that its major product line loses money, a lot of money. Streaming unlimited music costs a lot more than $10/month per subscriber. But raising the price merely loses subscribers, and customer acquisition costs (CAC) on the margin often increase over time. So, the desperate strategy is to find a way to generate revenue from the data sharing network.

But Spotify faces some serious competition: Apple, Amazon, and Google. All three of these tech titans can afford to lose money on streaming for a long time, much longer than Spotify can stay solvent or keep the support of its investors. Spotify is a dead man walking. Its subscriber base will be auctioned off before it depreciates to zero. Or not.

For example, how does Spotify compete with this?

Facebook may be next

I expect the revenue squeeze will also hit Facebook’s main advertising model. Digital advertising is dominated by Google and Facebook. Google monetizes search routines it gathers every time you invoke its search algorithms. Facebook monetizes social sharing and likes. Each then sell access to this data to third-party advertisers. Now, search is a more robust indicator of interest than likes, so Google’s ad reach and keyword auctions offer greater value than FB “likes.” FB tries to increase its value through social network dynamics, but there is so much noise there that there’s a real question how much that is really worth in terms of advertising conversions.

But both platforms need to look at the big shadow hovering just over their shoulders and bearing down on their ad models. Amazon knows what people buy on its platform, which reveals a far more robust indicator for what people will buy again. Access to Amazon’s data will be worth that much more than FB and even Google. I expect FB has the weakest attention model and thus Amazon and Google will continue to eat into its ad revenues. I’m sure FB is working overtime trying to figure out how to pivot and leverage its massive user base. Libra Coin is a clear indicator of that. FB is hoping to use crypto tokenization to monetize peer-to-peer finance and banking. Unfortunately it faces some serious regulatory opponents in the central banks and the commercial payments industry. But I suppose FB has much cash to burn trying to find its next lily pad.

The real problem with the scramble for data real estate is that there are only so many hours in a day. On top of that, users and consumers are becoming cognizant of the value of their personal data and will be less inclined to give it away for free. This blows up most of the “mobile app” bubbles vying for attention in the digital economy. The future, if one is to believe in technological progress, is a far more decentralized digital universe where users reap much more value from the data they create and share, and successful platforms will need to deliver much more value than a free app for their users.

The question for us all is who will eat whom on the way to this future? (If we believe Elizabeth Warren, she will be eating them all. Politics is always a wild card.)

Spotify Stock Has Had a Miserable 6 Months. Wall Street’s Optimists Are Wrong.

By Avi Salzman

Barron’s October 5, 2019

A miserable few months have made Spotify’s stock as dull as elevator music. Now, some analysts think the stock is beaten down enough that a rally is coming, and Wall Street is ready to groove on the remix.

Spotify Technology (SPOT) has fallen 17% since Barron’s wrote a skeptical cover article on the company (“Spotify Stock Is Risky Because the Music Industry Isn’t Changing Fast Enough,” April 19). Short interest on the stock, which was below 3% for much of the year, is now above 5%.

Yet two formerly bearish analysts have recently shifted to a more neutral stance, on the theory that the bad news is already in the stock’s price.

Spotify is the global leader in streaming music, and it passed 100 million paying users this year. Still, doubts have grown on Wall Street about the company’s ability to sustain subscriber growth.

In August, Spotify started giving new premium users three free months of service, up from one month, which “has supported fears of negative subscriber trends,” writes Credit Suisse analyst Brian Russo, one of the analysts who has become incrementally more positive about the shares. The company has launched other offers, too, including six free months of Spotify for people who buy an Xbox Game Pass.

Investors will have to wait until Oct. 28, when Spotify reports third-quarter earnings, to find out whether the generous offers are cutting into its margins. For now, the stock still seems stretched. Its market cap is $21 billion, more than the $19.1 billion that the music industry took in worldwide in 2018—and most of that money goes to labels and artists.

Spotify, meanwhile, is expected to lose $1.92 a share this year; in April, the loss had been projected to be $1.48. Kevin Rippey, an Evercore ISI analyst, calls Spotify a “pure play on a loss-leader category.”

Spotify is looking at new revenue opportunities. The company has branched out into podcasting, with plans to spend as much as $500 million this year on acquisitions in the space. But there is no obvious payoff from those purchases; the podcast ad market in the U.S. is still below $1 billion. Spotify didn’t respond to requests to hear the company’s case from top executives.

Spotify leads rivals like Amazon.com (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) among young customers, but it will probably need to find older fans in developed markets to hit Wall Street targets, Russo argues. That could be tough. Amazon’s smart speakers have helped it sell music packages to older customers and will make it difficult for Spotify to expand in that market, Russo says.

And Spotify’s rivals are increasing their offerings. Google-owned YouTube Music is promoting personalized playlists to help users find new music, an area that has been one of Spotify’s biggest strengths. Amazon has released a high-quality music service that costs $12.99 for Prime users—a small premium to Spotify’s $9.99—offering listeners CD-quality sound, or better. Unlike Spotify, those companies don’t depend on music to make money.

Because of the competition, Russo expects Spotify to grow disproportionately in emerging markets, “where disposable income is lower and monetization, both in terms of subscription and advertising, is more challenging.”

Spotify stock may well rise when the company reports third-quarter numbers, given the bearish setup in the market. But for it to become an attractive longer-term investment, it needs a clearer path to profitability.

Data Land Grab

FB-vs-Google

‘Good for the world’? Facebook emails reveal what really drives the site

As we can read from this article and Facebook’s internal management debates, Web 2.0 (of which the GAFA companies are the archetypes) is built on a data land grab. It’s rather similar to the actual land grab that the European powers battled over for the New World, then with the colonization of Africa and Asia.

Data is now a valuable resource that has been priced up there with land and capital. Naturally, the tech oligopolies and their startup wannabes all want to grab as much as possible. And who are they grabbing it from? The network users of course.

Web 3.0 is all about democratizing the value and monetization of personal networked data. It’s about decentralized ownership and control, much like the desire to own and control the fruits of one’s labor that ended slavery. Web 3.0 is the future, because Web 2.0 is unsustainable.

 

Data Privacy

facebook lobby

Good, thorough, and l-o-o-o-o-ng article on data privacy issues, legislation, and network value. From the NYT Magazine. Read about what’s being done to you behind closed doors…

The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley — and Won

Some excerpts:

Almost by accident, though, Mactaggart had thrust himself into the greatest resource grab of the 21st century. To Silicon Valley, personal information had become a kind of limitless natural deposit, formed in the digital ether by ordinary people as they browsed, used apps and messaged their friends. Like the oil barons before them, they had collected and refined that resource to build some of the most valuable companies in the world, including Facebook and Google, an emerging duopoly that today controls more than half of the worldwide market in online advertising. But the entire business model — what the philosopher and business theorist Shoshana Zuboff calls “surveillance capitalism” — rests on untrammeled access to your personal data. The tech industry didn’t want to give up its powers of surveillance. It wanted to entrench them. And as Mactaggart would soon learn, Silicon Valley almost always got what it wanted.

Through the Obama years, the tech industry enjoyed extraordinary cachet in Washington, not only among Republicans but also among Democrats. Partnering with Silicon Valley allowed Democrats to position themselves as pro-business and forward-thinking. The tech industry was both an American economic success story and a political ally to Democrats on issues like immigration. Google enjoyed particularly close ties to the Obama administration: Dozens of Google alumni would serve in the White House or elsewhere in the administration, and by one estimate Google representatives visited the White House an average of about once a week.

Mactaggart … faced an American political establishment that saw the key to its future in companies like Google and Facebook — not because of whom they supported but because of what they did. The surveillance capitalists didn’t just sell more deodorant; they had built one of the most powerful tools ever invented for winning elections. Roughly the same suite of technologies helped elect Obama, a pragmatic liberal who promised racial progress and a benevolent globalism, and Trump, a strident nationalist who adeptly employs social media to stoke racial panic and has set out to demolish the American-led world order.

In the end, not a single lawmaker in either chamber voted against the compromise.

Political power is a malleable thing, … an elaborate calculation of artifice and argument, votes and money. People and institutions — in politics, in Silicon Valley — can seem all-powerful right up to the moment they are not. And sometimes, … a thing that can’t possibly happen suddenly becomes a thing that cannot be stopped.

The promise of blockchain is to disrupt this Monopoly game.

The Creators Case for Blockchain

Social Media Connection

Nice article on Medium:

A Poet’s Case for Blockchain

I would add that the major problems for artists in the digital age stem from the explosion of new supply of content. This drives the price down and the search costs of discovery up. The failure then becomes that artists can’t find their audiences and consumers can’t find the content they desire. For poets this means finding an audience not necessarily to sell poetry; rather more important is to find readers and appreciators of their poetry.

Large centralized network servers based on algorithms can’t solve this problem without commoditizing content and delivering the most popular but mundane content churned out by those metrics.

We need to empower the human by connecting the creative.

OSN Heart