Gadgetory

good morning on the first day of March in 2018 it is episode 363 at the 359 podcast and your team today consists of but may not be restricted to Ben Jonah and Alfred what's up everybody hey what if you may not be restricted to music that's just legal mumbo-jumbo I got a coverall everybody jumping out of it someone's popping out a table isn't it's just covering yeah it's Roger all right let's get to the lineup today we're gonna we got joan here to talk about the spotify IPO they filed yesterday Joan wrote all about it so we'll be quizzing her on all sorts of Spotify and Apple music and streaming stuff Alfred is also here to talk about various things relating to the cyber and the internets and pipes thanks for thanks for reducing might be to that ok whatever in the internet and the pipe so there's more information about the Equifax leak apparently even more people were affected I don't know how much this could possibly matter because literally everybody was already affected and then alfred is also gonna be talking about samsung's new intelligent scan which is a multi-tiered biometric yes and it's not as secure as they say it is and and that's on the galaxy samsung s 9 and s 9 plus anyway send in your questions and comments BVG we'll get to as many as you can at the end of the show let's get to the podcast and we'll see you soon all right here we go for the recording of the audio podcast we'll be back to take your question comments in the chats in 3 minutes and 59 seconds from 3 to welcome to the 359 I'm Ben Fox Ruben I'm Joni salzman I'm alfred hang spotify filed its long-awaited IPO yesterday it's apparently like this is a placeholder but apparently it's gonna be like a billion dollar IPO everybody's really excited about this Joan you wrote all about it and apparently they released some numbers for the first time tell us a little bit about that right so we've always had outside numbers about how big Spotify is relative to competitors like Apple music and title and and others but by nature of having to go public Spotify has to really show its cards and say not only how many subscribers it has which is 71 million but also how many monthly active users it has which is like 149 million people visit every single month in addition to how many subscribers and you can have a million yeah in every region and say how big they are compared to their competitors which makes them they said we believe we're twice as big as Apple music okay the next closest competitor which means Spotify is very much here to stay they seem like they like Netflix also really became like huge as the video streaming player it seems that Spotify is very well positioned to do basically the same thing in music streaming right yeah in terms of their adoption they're doing great still growing it's their finances that are just a wreck and that's not just them it's everybody that has streaming music because royalties just they eat up so much of your money Spotify is argument has always been the bigger we get the only way to make streaming money and make the finances work is just to have just to have that scale and it seems like it is working but even as they get bigger their losses get bigger too so really quick what are they hoping to get out of this IPO why are they going public well they're doing it in a really weird way normally an IPO like a company is trying to raise a bunch of money and they have banks go on a thing called a roadshow and they pitch it to people and people get to kick the tires and figure out what the company is all about and then they put in these safety things they buy some shares in advance to make sure the shares don't go crazy Spotify is just basically like here's here's our ticker symbol anyone who has our shares can trade them now they letter they're just like flipping a switch to let them be public and they have to thing they're doing that they're not raising any money they're just making it liquid to be able to trade publicly because of some terms and some debt and investment that they have they need to they need to go public they just don't want to do it in a way that is normal it sounds pretty grunge and edgy I suppose also the we've got some more news about Equifax the massive data breach that compromised personal data of 143 million Equifax users last year also impacted in an additional 2.4 million users the credit reporting agency revealed this morning right yep so Spotify likes to talk about how to has 159 million users right that's about as many people that were affected by the Equifax breach so ouch it started with one hundred and forty five million Americans that were affected by it 143 million sorry and then a month later decide oops sorry oh is actually one hundred forty five million so with this breach today with this announcement it's not a new breach they just found more additional 2.4 million it brings the number up to 147 million Americans affected by it they're catching up to Spotify but the idea is the best way vasa the reason why this wasn't announced originally is because they were only looking for stolen social security numbers this additional 2.4 million is only names and driver's license but only partially so it doesn't have like your home address that you know all that info on your driver's license but it does have like other info that would be on your driver's license on there I'm so relieved we also really quick wanted to get to Alfred you and sharra tip c'n wrote about Samsung's new intelligence can tell us a bit about so they announced that Mobile World Congress on Sunday this is a combination of IRIScan and facial recognition IRIScan is much more secure than facial recognition is just because you can put a photo up - we've written stories about this before with face face scan you put a photo up to it and it gets tricked by so they're saying oh why don't we do iris scan so that you know you can just scan your eyes on it and then it works better yeah but the problem of that is that even though it's more secure it's not as convenient as facial recognition because it's hard to like track a lot so like oh why don't we combine it the issue of that there was like when you combine it you're adding a less secure element to it so you're essentially like kind of like poisoning the water here where it's like oh now we have this less security measure kind of like dragging down like IRIScan - so eventually they'll figure out something I guess yeah anyway if you want to read more about these stories check us out on CNN I'm Ben Fox Ruben Jeni Salzman malphur ding thanks for listening thank you for that offer we were missing that yeah you said you missed it yes yeah totally threw me off my game I had no rhythm left over I like the rhetoric of this being all the intelligence scan as if it's like well if you're a dum-dum I'm not gonna open my phone for you yeah but it's I mean so so we didn't talk about this on the podcast but is what's the best thing to use just use a pin just users it's like what about the pattern thing that's what I yes I've talked to you about this before so the pattern thing is like theoretically more like as secure as a pin is because in the sense like a government can't like tell you like put your put your pattern in like because it's like it's like knowledge that like you contained it's not like your face or your hands or anything like that the issue with that though is that like and it's it's very stupid so like if you continue to do the pattern a bunch of times it'll probably leave like a smudge on your phone so if I like have your phone and I don't know what your pattern password is but it's like if I put in like certain lighting or something and I see like there's a smudge on there and that if you see the Mark of Zorro yes yeah what am i yeah so like if I just see like a Z like like smudge on your phone like that's probably is like pin/password and like I can try that alright you maybe I'll switch to a pen good obscure reference by the way Ben I appreciate that the Mark of Zorro yeah of course this is I'm kid of the nineties yeah so a lot of security researchers usually just recommend like biometrics aren't really there as like a way to like be the most secure thing possible they're usually there like make it really convenient for you like oh I can just look at my owner what about what about the fingerprint scan it's also like a convenience thing no blame I thought that was it it's no like they're all secured to a degree but if we're saying like what's the most secure it's like most of the times it's a pin okay that is that is useful information and also you've mentioned this on the podcast before the big difference is from a legal perspective the government can compel you to use a biometric they can have you put your fingerprint down to open your zone with Jesse so they can't compel you to do passwords passwords are protected by the Fifth Amendment like you can't like self-incriminate yourself on these things so passwords they consider that self incriminating because like you have to give up something that you know like that's like knowledge that's like not out there but like biometrics like I scanned your face like a thumbprint like police can already ask you to do that with like oh you give them your prints anywhere I make ID you like mug shots and things like that so they're already capable of asking you that's so that's not like self incriminating to like give up like something like that to unlock your devices sounds blame to me but they kind of get it from a legal perspective I mean elephant in the room imagine soggies asking you know whatever happened to the fingerprint scanner why is that never even part of the conversation anymore all right it still is I still use it for the s9 I think it's not part of the conversation for Apple anymore because I got rid of it for the X 10 X 10 X 10 gonna give it to you but is it but it's the same problem as alfred was mentioning with all the other biometrics is they could just point your phone at your face and open it up yeah I say I just went through setting up a brand new phone myself the last couple of days and I had to go through the whole iris scan face scan for the first one the first time in my experience I have been working with some Stone Age tech don't tell my bosses at scene at that but finally I finally joined the 21st century and yeah that was a little bizarre and yeah it doesn't work I did not like the way did you I've actually never used it so is it better like is the IRIScan like worse and like the facial recognition or it's just janky it's yeah that's the right before and and I feel like yeah I have to take my glasses off a lot of the time that's if there's not enough light part of it that's why they introduced intelligent scan though that's like it's it's more convenience than anything else so it combines both of them so that like say you're wearing a scarf because like it's cold out or something like that so facial recognition would not be able to pick up your face but like because your eyes are still there like you can pick that up instead or like yeah if you want to weigh our wear scarves but sure or if you're wearing like sunglasses you know but like the rest of your face is still there it's like a combination of both of them that does mean that like the the threshold to get through it unlike unlock your phone though is not that great it's it's really weird that they like that they like promote this so much when it's like if you look at the fine details you know that they don't trust it that much themselves because like you still can't use it for like Samsung pay right we're secure folders or like anything that contains their password it's like you can't use that to unlock that so it's like we'll let you do this to unlock your phone but like all the stuff that has to deal with money and like actually important things don't use this so this is also a good conversation I have but just to to convey how broad the spectrum is sometimes I have a family member that I know that doesn't lock their phone at all oh it makes me nervous your butt dials me I'm like hello hello and it's just like this muffled you know in in the pocket type of thing so lock your phone it's usually better even if it's biometrics than not locking it at all the entire thought of somebody not locking their phone just gives me the inherit anxiety anymore I don't what to even do with that information so let's talk about music I love how anytime we bring up Spotify Joan thank you for this it instantly turns into a war in the chat about what service is better than Spotify is it Apple music and Google Play and to bread and it's like okay they're all kind of on par these days it's also whatever floats your boat yeah exactly yeah the distinctions and music services are mostly product distinctions because at this point almost with the exception of Apple and title that aggressively try to court exclusive you know like a Frank Ocean release and you know jay-z and Beyonce and all the people that good musicians all the good ones no that's um except for those like exclusive basically they all have the same catalog and so the reason that you like one versus the other is if you generally if you've already invested a lot of time in building your own playlist and one because you can't port them to other ones that's a reason why you'll of course together or if you just like the product like if you like discover weekly on Spotify that would be for you if you like Radio beeps radio one on Apple you know like it's really all product distinction yeah and the pricing is all well know Spotify is like much cheaper for me because I share it with the six members of my family that I definitely live with well that you know family memberships it's like Apple has family memberships title has family oh they do yeah yeah that's not unique to look into that yeah my six family I do think Spotify might have done that first though yeah but you know the the reason they can do that is because of these deals and so they did at first because they struck the deal earlier than the I don't I I I still stand by Spotify not religiously or militantly only because I do enjoy their interface I think it's a very pleasant product presentation overall but like you said the catalogs are largely the same but once you get invested in y balance around I will give a nod to Google Play because I signed up for that first because they let you upload and I have obscure stuff that's not catalogued yeah there's yeah there are some distinctions like Spotify has like the Google Play Store ajay Ganic distinction for Google Play and then Spotify it's big distinction is that it has the ad supported free tier which nobody else has like nobody else has the opportunity for you to go to the service play whatever you want for free and then decide later if you want to sign up they're really the only ones that can do that which has given them a huge advantage they said and they're you know one of the things I said in their release I think yeah 60% of their paid subscribers come like the the free tier is their gateway right it's a premium kind of thing so yeah but it's one that nobody else has yeah I used I used Spotify like free for like a really long time until I got an echo actually because you can only have like every time I try to listen to songs on it my girlfriend whose account is on that like would tell me like I'm trying to listen music can you stop so I had to get my own Spotify account oh yeah I was on their prime music what's the paid one on Amazon Prime right but I think prime music is included are they are they much of a competitor in this whole set like are they are they in the Mex like yeah yeah and one likes to say that they're because they they use their prime subscriber base as they like to say that the second biggest streaming site because it's like look at all our Prime members that we won't tell you how many we have but trust us that's the same thing that like Google started doing when they like our voice assistant is way bigger than Amazon's because it's on a bunch of phones and it's like okay you just put put it there and now it's in 400 million device right I remember I tried using prime music for a bit because I pay for prime so like oh here's this cool new like music service for me that I don't have to pay extra for and it was just like really hard to like search through their stuff yeah and when I was echo that's pretty common like yeah they're really bad at writing stuff too like yeah like the worst Kanye West song I don't I don't know any like like much about this because mostly I play music through an echo so the interface is not actually that useful to me and you know I'll just tell my echo play XYZ on Spotify or I could even default it on my echo you know that actually that makes finding and retrieving music a lot easier so what you're considered is what the what they call lean back whereas off words more of really know like you're just more of an advocate and know what you want like when you're how our user is a power user your lean back I just want to listen it tygo stargazing 30 times in a row cool in its own ways and that exactly how we describe been on a regular daily basis in my own right I want to give a shout out to do or do not in the chat who is bringing up kind of an evil elephant in the room about some of the sticky wickets about Spotify and their their lack of representation and possible proper financial distribution among their artists I don't know if that's something we really want to address but considering we are on the topic of finances with Spotify right is this something that's going to impact them long term are they going to make some business changes it's always it's always hard to talk about how artists are getting paid because I'm like does he have a specific complaint or is he just like is it just a generalized artists don't get me it's very much the that same generalized argument we've heard several times now that like Spotify cheats their artists ok well then the artists most artists are participating in Spotify through their label and so the people that are screwing over the artists are the label because the label is the one that strikes the deals and correct and decides how much there are strikes deal so the artist decides how much they're gonna pay the artists and also strikes the deal with Spotify to determine how much Spotify how much they're telling Spotify they have to pay it so when oh I understand like there's definitely like a as we have this shift in people moving from buying music to streaming it with a subscription and that's where most of the money comes there's a lot of people in transition that are getting a short end of a stick artists are one of them but it's not necessarily Spotify that's the bad act Spotify doesn't want to screw over artists they want them to make money it's just they don't have that control over how much they make unless you're an artist that does that owns your own master recordings you own your own rights you don't have a label and you deal directly as possible with Spotify then you're in the most control which sounds to be very rare right like there aren't any did they change that that system fairly recently about how you can directly interact as I remember used to be a real big uphill battle if you were an independent artist to try to get your content onto Spotify I don't think it's as hard as it used to be it's just a hard thing to do being an artist's on you're out to completely independent art it's just hard to do because there's so much you have to do not only have to be the artist have to be your own PR you have to be your own publicist you have to be your own distribution you have to do your own like song I mean it's just a lot to do and so anything additional to that's difficult like getting onto Spotify is hard but there's things like cobalt which is this sort of pseudo label that lets you it's like a white label thing that lets you own your own master recordings and helps you to get onto Spotify even though you aren't having to seat any of that sort of copywriter royalty power thank you I'm really glad you brought that up because people do forget that it's not just like Spotify is doling out checks there's a whole line of bureaucracy in the way yeah and artists do ultimately probably get cheated a lot of times but you can't just point one finger in this process it's a whole system this the part of Spotify that doesn't pay out subscriptions on Spotify pay relatively well compared to the ad-supported when you're listening to a Kanye song with an ad versus when you're listening as a subscriber that listen ah with an ad pays less to Kanye ultimately that I know for Kanye but the thing that really hurts artists pockets is lots of masa streaming on YouTube because that pays like thousands and there have been very vocal complaints about that industry has been very vocal that they are it's happy about yeah yeah but like who is the industry going to what you were talking about with Spotify is that also related to the labels because the labels don't like labels also don't know the labels hate you up until but YouTube is going to be launching a new streaming service this is their third attempt to have a Spotify like Apple music like service and so in the last six months they've been part of the reason that the music engine has been so vocal in the last six months year about how much they hate you just because they've been renegotiating with YouTube to get better rates for the third iteration of a subscription service that they want to launch this year do they name it yet anime music videos 2014 this is a further distinction from YouTube red yes Wow to blue always blue always broke alright more questions we just have a few minutes left but loud we hit the throw backs Yahoo music oh shout out to Scott my at a man after my own heart is always vinyl Google vinyl I want to see Google vinyl and the radio so like besides streaming music vinyl is the area of most growth in the music industry because collecting is fun collecting is fun it's a retro like you know normal human beings and our collectors I have vinyl it's like a surgeon so it's definitely like and like so much so that there's not enough the production of vinyl is completely like overbooked like there's not enough people that can actually press the vinyl um to keep up with demand right now that's kind of cool but it does make sense to me to a certain extent the like and also sorry and also EDM is I don't even know what that is electronic dance music oh man you're cool in your own special you know back in my day come to a rave all used to be called electronica that's what I knew it is and I would go to Paul Oakenfold concerts and whatnot no you did did you wear the big pants and it was a not a great answer would go to electronic and stuff and or sorry well effects effects doing this grill I mean like drop the face anyway whatever okay so just with a few minutes left we have Huey yang do you think you will see music streaming services turning the waste video streaming did with more services emerging trying to lure customers with exclusive content expanding on this and I thought this was a very fascinating topic was Gopal who says what if these music streaming services became their own record label right yeah so those are good questions and this come up a lot in conversation about where then she's gonna go so for first question like moving in the direction of a Netflix original content yes like Spotify is already trying to do that Apple music is already doing that titles already doing it in the way that it has like concert series and stuff but but Spotify and Apple are both making apples original television stuff initially has been based out of Apple music out of there streaming music product and they're only just now widening it to non music related content but in terms of being a label pretty much uniformly across definitely apples like we're never gonna be a label cuz they've been they've been asked that over the course of like a decade ever so high they say they're never gonna be in they're never gonna be a label they're not interested in that Spotify I've never picked up any interest in them and being a label but it's and you know and it the reason is because the economics of music are so much different than the economics of video and so for Netflix it was there was an economic incentive for them to own their own IP of all this stuff not have to deal with licensing with other people whereas with music you don't really have that benefit because all you get if you become a label is you own master recordings and you have to get more embroiled and that's ridiculous insane for music is just the worst it's just so complicated oh it is yeah it's it's it's a nightmare and so that's the like effort the labor you have to take a lot for that it's like more risk than reward if you were to become a label but I could be wrong I mean they could be oh it could be a way to actually change the music industry so it can be more functional as if there somebody that came through is like we're gonna be a gigantic lay ball and it's not gonna have any other portion I never never thought that deeply into it but holy cow you kind of like opened a door in my brain this concept I just loved that Gopal was saying like Netflix originals for music right yeah I mean we've seen like technically the BBC one that's an original radio show that Apple owns yeah in itself is an IP yeah why not original concept albums fake and I think because the marketing because not like different with with video like music is more than just producing a show putting it out in the world and marketing it or producing a movie putting out in the world market like music also involves live performance involves a lot more merch that merch is crucial and it's just it's just a lot more complex than as an owner like the thing that you do as a label is a lot more complex than what a production company does or movie or a TV show Ben do you like Kraftwerk serene joy needs to know you can say yes why not we don't is that does that relate to like warcraft electronica legend no I don't even know who those are my god guys guys I'm a square in the New Jersey suburbs and I don't need you guys to think I'm cool or not anyway thanks for you sound like you mean it no no no it's cool I should go to a rave 3:59 rave Edition that would be awesome milestone we'll just have a rave with closed eggs still good questions coming in on the chat but we are out of time for today and for the week sorry guys we'll definitely have to come back to this I always have talking music with you Jones that Roger will be back I'm pretty sure on RAAM Monday just kidding boss he'll be Boz he'll be able to tell us all about Mobile World Congress he'll be coming back from that and we'll be back we'll be back on Monday so Joan thanks very much for telling us all about the music industry and me what EQ Emma's and EDM no really EVM sorry guys sorry was it yeah I'm joining dance yeah mary j blige marriage a bud I totally know who that is okay the 359 podcast is available on iTunes tune in stitcher feedburner google play music the amazon echo sir enjoy told me to say this live stream also you can stream youtube and periscope daily every morning and of course cnet.com thanks everybody for watching it's been a great week and we'll see you ride your back and everybody else hopefully on Monday hopefully not us maybe after this I don't know I'll be gone on after Wednesday okay I'll just cry by myself cool story bro