Together with
This is just a test. Happy Friday, Future Party people. In the spirit of trying new things here at TFP, we’re doing something a little different with the newsletter this week. But don’t worry; it’s not a forever thing… maybe. As always, we’d love your feedback, so let us know what you think of the “new look” below. Hopefully, our test goes better than SpaceX’s recent Starship launch.
In other news… A tennis star raises venture funds, the Super Mario Bros. theme song is a work of genius, and Stephen Marche authors a novel with AI.
Top Trends
Youtube → The Boogeyman
Twitter → Ghosted
Google → Frank Ocean
Reddit → Alec Baldwin
TikTok → “Lucky Girl” - Carlina
Spotify → “What It Takes” - Lee Pardini, Dawes
Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe
FRONT PAGE
Naomi’s media moment // Illustration by Kate Walker
Naomi Osaka’s media company spins from SpringHill
TheFuture. Hana Kuma, the media company founded by Naomi Osaka and Stuart Duguid with the help of LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Co., is spinning off from SpringHill to become an independent entity. If Hana Kuma becomes a successful company in its own right, SpringHill may gain a reputation as the Y Combinator of athlete-driven media.
Leaving the mountaintopHana Kuma is striking out on its own.
The company has raised $5 million from SpringHill, Epic Games, Fenway Sports Group, investment firm Disruptive, and Japanese conglomerate Kinoshita Group.
Hana Kuma will be spun off from SpringHill, which incubated the company, allowing it to grow and expand into new markets, including anime and manga (personal favorites of Osaka, who is Japanese).
Carter says that Hana Kuma spinning off is a “seminal moment in the history of the company” as part of SpringHill’s mission is for businesses incubated there to become SpringHills in their own right — a multi-arm studio and media agency with divisions all across the content landscape.
Having scored a $725 million valuation in 2021 when it was still an upstart, SpringHill plans to launch more companies in partnership with athletes with a “global mindset.”
The Super Marios Bros. theme song was programmed to be an earworm
TheFuture. The original Super Mario Bros. theme song is a work of both music and programming genius (we’re sure you’re whistling it right now). Yet, its creator, Koji Kondo, is relatively unknown. Considering its enduring success since 1985 and the outsized success that The Super Mario Bros. Movie is currently enjoying, Kondo may soon become a household name… and further evidence that great composers are an indispensable part of a game’s longevity.
Composer & coderKoji Kondo may be the godfather of video game music.
He’s the mind behind the classic Mario theme, titled “Ground Theme,” which is a classic despite being just 88 seconds long and having only 24 seconds of original material.
What’s amazing is that Kondo had to figure out how to make something that fits the game design and was catchy on a system that could only play up to three notes at once.
The sound produced on the original Nintendo console was also very robotic, so Kondo had to manipulate both the music and the code to create the iconic tune.
Speaking to WSJ, Dr. Andrew Schartmann, a New England Conservatory of Music professor and author of the 2015 book “Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. Soundtrack,” notes that the song is almost a miracle. That’s because Kondo “knew people would be playing these games for hours on end,” Dr. Schartmann said, “and he needed to do as much as possible to not drive people nuts.”
No wonder “Ground Theme” was just accepted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.
TOGETHER WITH ARTSCAPY
Artscapy makes investing & collecting art easy
Recently named a ‘Top 30 Most Innovative Startup in the UK’ by Tech Nation, Artscapy is quickly becoming recognized as the leading art collection platform.
If you’re already a serious collector, you know that art has beaten inflation in the past 12 months, increasing in value by 29%, according to Art Basel and UBS. And if you’ve been in the game a while, you may also be aware of the archaic and opaque business practices involved in art collecting. Artscapy’s digital platform is revolutionizing all of that with a comprehensive suite of services and cutting-edge technology.
Opening an Artscapy art account means you can experience:
Dedicated art advisory and brokerage service
Automated collection tracking and valuation service
Bespoke all-risk art insurance
And more…
Collect art with confidence. TFP readers can get three months free of a Plus Membership with code FUTURE23.
Author Stephen Marche builds a co-writer with AI
The Future. Author and journalist Stephen Marche “wrote” the novel Death of an Author using three AI systems. The AI co-writer, named Aidan Marchine (also an AI-generation), may test the limits of what constitutes “creation” and actual “writing” in the eyes of the literary industry, the law, and, ultimately, the reading public.
A Marche & Marchine novelThe upcoming book Death of an Author by Stephen Marche (The Hunger of the Wolf, How Shakespeare Changed Everything) came about in a truly novel way.
Marche started by putting an outline of the story, some prompts, and various notes into ChatGPT.
He then used Sudowrite to make sentences longer or shorter to build a rhythm, make the tone more conversational, and make the writing sound more like Ernest Hemingway.
He then used Cohere to make certain lines pop — a process of describing something like coffee and asking the AI to generate similes.
The resulting novel — a murder mystery about an AI-using author that is killed — will be released next month as an audiobook and e-book by audio production company Pushkin Industries. The publisher used AI for nearly every aspect of putting the book together, including cover art and blurbs.
The one thing they didn’t use AI for, though, was the audiobook narration. They hired human Edoardo Ballerini to handle those duties.
Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
BuzzFeed shutters its award-winning news division and lays off 180 employees, citing its inability to turn a profit and refocusing its new efforts on HuffPost. Read more → variety
After slowly rolling out internationally, Netflix announced that its password-sharing crackdown will hit Netflix users in Q2. Read more → thr
LA cinephiles rejoice: the city’s arthouse scene will get a big boost this year with the reopenings of the Egyptian, Vista, and Vidiots after each underwent renovations. Read more → variety
Fashion & E-Commerce
Jerry Lorenzo’s Fear of God fashion label showed off its Fall/Winter 2023 line with a runway show at the iconic Hollywood Bowl. Read more → hypebeast
New web-enabled “2D barcodes” (similar to QR codes) will make it easier for companies to track products and for consumers to unlock online deals and loyalty programs. Read more → axios
Pharrell’s Icecream fashion brand is collabing with Web3 company Doodles (where Pharrell is Chief Brand Officer) on a capsule collection that will launch at his Something in the Water music festival (synergy!). Read more → variety
Tech, Web 3, & AI
Moderna is partnering with IBM to bring generative AI and quantum computing to the development of mRNA vaccines. Read more → fastcompany
Apple is rumored to finally make it possible to sideload apps — the ability to download apps outside of the App Store — with its iOS 17 update. Read more → techcrunch
An upcoming AI-enabled device called Companion bills itself as a dogsitter/trainer/best friend for your dog. Read more → axios
Creator Economy
After months of teasing, Twitter started removing legacy blue checks… but Elon is still paying for some top users who refused to subscribe to Twitter Blue. Read more → deadline
Instagram is done with Linktree having all the fun and will finally allow users to list more than one link in their bios. Read more → tubefilter
Spotify is beefing up its video-podcast library thanks to a deal with Jellysmack that’ll see creators such as MrBeast and Bailey Sarian repurpose YouTube content for the streamer. Read more → thr
Future Forecast
The world’s best food for the world’s best pets.
A circle of compassion for former gang members.
The substack that’s making Tuesdays 10x more interesting.
Bad taste, anti-design, cringe, and Comic Sans.
Saying “holy shot-lists” after trying Adobe Firefly.
Investing in our planet. It’s almost Earth Day, fam!
Like what you see? Subscribe Now or Partner With Us
Today's email was brought to you by David Vendrell.Editing by Nick Comney. Publishing by Sara Kitnick.