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Bey bucks // Illustration by Kate Walker
We hope you’re hangin’ in there, FutureParty people. Remember the trainwreck Willy Wonka experience in Glasgow that went viral? Well, it’s now being turned into a horror movie by Kaledonia Pictures… somehow proving, with the right amount of buzz, there’s a silver lining to any failure.
In other news… Song royalties are an asset class for retail investors, and TikTok pushes users to make their content longer.
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LATEST PODCAST EPISODE
March 7, 2024
Today we get into Tarte's annual influencer marketing drama, how Karat Financial is aiming to make payment around content creators more transparent, and New Balance's new representation.
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YT: The Wild Robot, X: Shogun, G: The Idea of You, R: Kirsten Dunst, TT: “Time of the Season”, S: “Deeper Well”
Sam Altman is fighting Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI by sharing some of his old emails, with one revealing Musk’s push to merge OpenAI with Tesla. Read More → insider
Soho House, almost two years after going public, is fending off short sellers amid a costly expansion and is even considering a sale to become private again. Read More → thr
Google announced an update to Search that will filter out 40% of “low-quality, unoriginal content” that’s mass-generated by AI — goodbye, obituary spam. Read More → wired
Amazon, which uses hundreds of millions of pounds of single-use plastic annually, is partnering with robotic-recycling startup Glacier to use AI to track the lifecycle of package waste. Read More → techcrunch
Warner Bros. Discovery is shutting down influential creator-brand-turned-fandom-and-gaming-label Rooster Teeth after a 21-year run. Read More → variety
62.6% of you voted No in yesterday’s poll: Do you play golf?
“Do not have the desire to learn how to play golf.”
“Not as much as I would like to but love it whenever I get out there.”
“I enjoy golf when I play good lol.”
.A WORD FROM OUR FRIENDS AT RITUAL.
Is your gut thrown off?
Daily disturbances like poor diets, stress, and travel can mess with your gut microbiome.
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.MUSIC.
JKBX turns music streams into investable assets
The Future. JKBX (pronounced “jukebox”) hopes to make song royalties a bonafide asset class for retail investors. If the platform takes off, don’t be surprised if there’s a grassroots movement to pump particular songs that mirrors the r/WallStreetBets-organized short squeeze of GameStop.
Song securities
After a whirlwind few years seeing song catalogs sell to investment firms, retail investors are about to get their chance to get in on the action.
JKBX, which was signed off by the SEC, allows investors to buy a fraction of the rights to songs like “Rumor Has It” by Adele, “Halo” by Beyoncé, and “Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift.
Any artist or rights holder can offer rights to their songs as securities on the platform based on their royalties, which gives holders “a quarterly distribution of fees paid to the rights holder,” per WSJ.
While you can’t sell off your investment yet (that’s coming later this year), JKBX is already in talks with brokerage firms to include songs as ETFs.
JKBX says that customers can expect a yield of about 3 to 4% of their investment. That’s below the 5% of a typical money-market fund, but JKBX is selling the possibility that if a song goes viral again — like Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” when it was featured in Stranger Things — those payouts will skyrocket.
Early access to the soundtracks of popular movies and shows are about to become the hottest commodity.
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Watch: Bloomberg breaks down the exhausting and expensive process it takes to win an Oscar.
Listen: Gersh agent Mark Hartogsohn chatted with The Act Two Podcast about what it means to be a modern literary representative as the lines between film, TV, and media have blurred.
Read: The Chief Marketing Officers at 20 blue-chip companies spoke with Fast Company about the meaning of “brand purpose” and how best to communicate it to consumers.
SOCIAL MEDIA
TikTok, expandin’ the clock // Illustration by Kate Walker
TikTok is paying for longer videos to go viral
The Future. TikTok is going full force to reward creators who regularly post videos over a minute long in a bid to make the platform more than a hub for short-form content. Considering the push by creators, Apple, and TikTok to also make horizontal videos a thing, TikTok could soon become more of a direct competitor to YouTube’s OG business.
Attention test
While YouTube is pushing users to make their content shorter, TikTok is trying to turn creators on to making it longer with the new Creator Rewards Program.
An update on the “Creativity Program,” the initiative pays for “high-quality original content” that’s over a minute long to creators over 18 who have at least 10,000 followers and at least 100,000 views over the past 30 days.
The rewards are graded on four criteria: originality, play duration, search value, and audience engagement.
Creators can expect 20x the cash of the OG Creator Fund, with some early participants saying they’ve made as much as $100,000 per month.
TikTok claims that revenue for creators who post longer videos has grown 250% over the past six months. That’s great for creators but may take some getting used to for average users — Wired found that 50% of users said videos over a minute were “stressful.”
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Do you have what it takes to be a VC?
— #Troy Osinoff 🕺 (#@yo)
5:54 PM • Mar 6, 2024
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Boye Akolade. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.