Together with
British invasion. Hey Future Party people, we’re still feeling the vibes from this weekend’s Grammy Awards festivities and thought we’d share a fun music fact we just learned. On February 7, 1964, The Beatles (who many consider the original GOAT) landed in NYC for the first time to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show for 73 million viewers — kickstarting “Beatlemania” and turning the band into an overnight sensation in the US. Crazy, right?
What’s even crazier is that some folks have never even listened to John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Zoomers, we’re looking at you.
In other news… Big Tech puts generative AI to work, the Grammys goes full circle, and Jack Antonoff breaks down the economics of touring.
Top Trends
YouTube → Scream VI
Twitter → #TheGrammys
Google → Hogwarts Legacy
Reddit → Hyperion
TikTok → “Dumb Ways to Die” - Tangerine Kitty
Spotify → “Blood And Butter” - Caroline Polachek
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BUSINESS
Big Tech is swimming in generative AI // Illustration by Kate Walker
Big Tech feeds the public’s appetite for generative AI
The Future. Although every major tech company has invested in AI for years, their hunger for a piece of the generative AI pie has magnified since the overnight success of ChatGPT. As Big Tech overhauls its product plans to capitalize on the machine of the moment, they might be getting ahead of themselves, as it’s still unclear how generative AI will impact our lives over the long run… or if it’ll just turn out to be a fad.
It went from 0 to 100 real quickChatGPT has 100 million monthly active users, with about 5 million daily users, reports the NYT. This phenomenon has sent a ripple through the tech industry, which is fast-tracking several generative AI-related projects, according to Axios.
Microsoft just launched a premium version of Teams that integrated ChatGPT-based tools for summarizing notes, organizing personal tasks, and translating texts. It will also reportedly integrate ChatGPT (and ChatGPT-like AI) with Word, Outlook, and Bing.
Google released demos of a new generative AI project that can create music from users’ text prompts last month.
Meta will allegedly employ AI to generate and populate its virtual worlds once the company solidifies its users’ interest in the metaverse.
Amazon hasn’t jumped on the generative AI bandwagon yet. But software developers at the company reportedly used ChatGPT as a coding aid, which prompted lawyers to crack down on employees over fears that Amazon secrets could leak through the AI, per Insider.
Apple is notoriously secretive, so if it has a generative AI product in the works, the company likely won’t announce it until it’s ready to launch.
Is it here for a good time or a long time?There’s no doubt that the applications of generative AI are cutting-edge and vast. But will people lose their appetite once a new brand of tech emerges? Or will they indulge in generative AI for years to come?
Either way, Big Tech will cash in.
MUSIC
Music icons pass the baton to the new generation // Illustration by Kate Walker
The Grammys came full circle this year
The Future. Iconoclastic artists who were shut out of music’s biggest night in the past took the stage at Sunday’s award show, proving time doesn’t just heal all wounds — it also allows change to occur at a foundational level. If the Grammys wants to stay relevant and properly honor the music of the moment, it might embrace newness and nonconformity rather than turn a deaf ear to it.
That was thenThe artists who rebelled against their elders in the past became the elders of the present at the 2023 Grammys, according to the NYT.
Several hip-hop artists (including Salt-N-Pepa and DJ Jazzy Jeff), who boycotted the 1989 show because their category wasn’t being televised despite launching that year, appeared at this year’s event.
Madonna, who became a superstar in the 1980s, has never won any of the major categories. Still, she remains an enthusiastic participant in the show.
Jay-Z, who boycotted the Grammys in 1999 but has attended in the years since (mainly to support his wife Beyoncé), closed out this year’s ceremony with a DJ Khaled-orchestrated number.
This is nowIconoclasts became the establishment this year, per the NYT.
Bad Bunny, the Puerto Rican rapper-singer whose album Un Verano Sin Ti was 2022’s most streamed LP, opened the Grammys. Un Verano Sin Ti was also the first Spanish-language album nominated for album of the year.
Sam Smith and Kim Petras became the first nonbinary and transgender artists, respectively, to top the charts when their track “Unholy” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in October 2022. Their collaboration also won the best pop duo/group performance this year.
Beyoncé is in a class of her ownWhile Queen B didn’t perform at this year’s event and hadn’t for some time (a choice that feels deliberate, according to the NYT), she became the most awarded artist in Grammys history this year — and still held on to her rebel cred.
As the Grammys become more open-minded, there might be less of a need to rebel, though. Will what was once considered “mainstream” eventually become “iconoclastic” (and vice versa)? The circle never ends...
TOGETHER WITH REMI
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MUSIC
What's going on with concert tickets? // Unsplash
How can concert tickets become more accessible?
The Future. As fans prepare for Beyoncé’s Renaissance World Tour, they’re bracing for the likelihood that they won’t be able to secure tickets. If the music industry hopes to restore balance and end ticketing chaos, it might have to adjust its model so that different groups of people can come together at a fair and equal price point.
The artist’s way… or the highway?Insider outlines a few solutions to the ticketing problem from producer Jack Antonoff, who shared his thoughts with Variety on the Grammys red carpet this past Sunday.
Artists should be able to opt out of dynamic pricing, which increases the cost of tickets as demand for them mounts. They should be able to sell tickets at a price they believe in and is fair to their fan base.
Because artists often spend their own cash to design, produce, and bring merchandise to their shows, they shouldn’t have to give a cut of their profits to the venue, which taxes that merchandise.
The K-shaped music economy“The second everything fluctuates is the second it goes K-shaped and turns into a weird free market,” according to Antonoff.
In other words… as the wealthier get better access to life’s luxuries (in this case, concert tickets), the poorer could experience the opposite. Ugh.
Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
The Super Bowl has sold out of commercial inventory
Fox closed its final advertising deal at the end of January — more than four months after it announced 95% of ad time for the Big Game had sold. The lag was mainly due to chaos in the crypto category prompted by the implosion of FTX. One crypto company was forced to sell two 30-second ad units back to Fox, which caused another company to drop its negotiations for two units at the eleventh hour. But one category that’ll stand out with a large volume of commercial time is alcohol. We guess beer will be advertisers’ number one draft pick this year.
Read More → adage
Crypto is looking less and less like a Ponzi scheme
According to the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), crypto will likely recover from 2022’s turbulence. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has already increased by 38% this year. Meanwhile, according to Reuters, eleven countries have rolled out nationally minted tokens, with roughly 95% of the world's GDP exploring plans to issue central bank tokens. The US, EU, and China are already experimenting with or considering national digital currencies (CBDCs). But the BIS doubts CBDCs will allow global finance to achieve “full interconnectedness,” as the new currencies will probably only be compatible between politically aligned countries. We’re on our way...
Read More → insider
AMC will determine ticket prices based on seat location
Like concerts, sports games, and Broadway shows, consumers can now pay more or less for movie tickets depending on where they want to sit in the theater. The initiative by AMC, called Sightline, offers three sections for fans. Standard Sightline will adhere to the traditional ticket cost, while Value Sightline seats, positioned at the front of the theater, will be cheaper. The cost of Preferred Sightline seats, which are in the middle of the theater and slightly more expensive than Standard seats, will be waived to Stubs A-List members to encourage membership in its loyalty program. Sightline at AMC kicks off this Friday at select theaters in New York, Chicago, and Kansas City and will be expanded to all domestic AMC locations by the end of the year. Thoughts, Future Party people?
Read More → deadline
Lucasfilm de-ages Ford with old footage of his young face
Harrison Ford recently told Stephen Colbert on The Late Show that his de-aged face in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is actually his real face. Lucasfilm used AI to comb through all the studio’s footage of the actor, including film that wasn’t printed. Directed by James Mangold, the fifth Indiana Jones installment takes place in 1969 and opens in 1944, hence the need to de-age Ford. The actor told Empire that seeing himself de-aged was “a little spooky, but this is the first time I’ve seen it where I believe it [...] It doesn’t make me want to be young, though. I’m glad to have earned my age.” Right on.
Read More → variety
Is Bard Google’s response to ChatGPT?
Within the coming weeks, Google will debut a chatbot named Bard, designed to put the “breadth of the world’s knowledge” behind a conversational interface, according to CEO Sundar Pichai. Bard uses a smaller version of an AI model called LaMDA (based on similar technology to ChatGPT), which will make the chatbot accessible to more users and help the company refine the quality and accuracy of Bard’s responses. Haters will say the advent of ChatGPT has led Google to defend the ubiquity of its search engine for the first time in years.
Read More → wired
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Today's email was brought to you by Kait Cunniff.Editing by Nick Comney. Publishing by Sara Kitnick.