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Miracle Sunday. Happy Monday, FutureParty people… and a very happy Monday to Hollywood writers, who last night reached a tentative agreement with the AMPTP on a new three-year contract that could get Hollywood’s gears moving again. The members of the Writers Guild of America still need to ratify the deal (a process that could potentially take up to 10 days), so it may be a beat until we can officially type “The End” on the 146-day writers strike.
In other news… Ticket resellers get taxed, Amazon Prime Video launches commercials, and Chipotle hires a burrito robot.
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ENTERTAINMENT
The IRS’ cruel summer // Illustration by Kate Walker
The IRS is coming after ticket resale profits
The Future. If you made a profit of $600 or more reselling tickets to see Taylor Swift in concert or Lionel Messi play for Miami, you’ll owe taxes on it next year. The new law will likely take many casual concertgoers who parted with their tickets by surprise… let alone anyone who has gotten in the habit of selling collectibles on eBay or freely sending money on Venmo.
Taylor tax
The IRS is coming for your StubHub profits.
Per the American Rescue Plan Act (the 2021 COVID relief package), anyone who’s made $600 or more on a resale platform will have to pay taxes on their profits.
Platforms like Ticketmaster, StubHub, eBay, Venmo, and Etsy will now have to collect your tax information and send a 1099-K form to sellers.
But sellers will be held responsible for tracking how much they sold tickets for.
With an unusually high volume of fan resales this year — StubHub says individual Eras tour resales accounted for double the proportion of resales they typically see, with tickets selling for an average of $1,095 — a lot of concertgoers will owe taxes this year. TickPick says it estimates it’ll send out 10x as many 1099-Ks than it has in previous years.
Previously, this rule only applied to those who made above $20,000 for 200 or more transactions, which pretty much only affected professional ticket brokers. The House Ways and Means Committee wants to revert to that old threshold, while a bipartisan bill in the Senate wants to compromise at a threshold of $10,000 and 50 transactions.
In other words, your 2024 tax bill may be as singular as TSwift’s Eras tour itself.
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ENTERTAINMENT
We interrupt this programming… // Illustration by Kate Walker
Amazon becomes Prime commercial space
The Future. Amazon announced Prime will get limited ads starting in early 2024 — “meaningfully fewer” than linear TV, stresses the company. The new ad tier is part of an industry-wide shift toward ad-supported services. But for Amazon, the model could be extra lucrative. Amazon’s ad business is not only one of the company’s fastest-growing sectors, but users may also be able to navigate right from an ad to a product listing — all within the Amazon ecosystem.
New normal
Amazon Prime Video is getting commercial breaks.
The ads will be default for Prime Video moving forward. If you want an ad-free experience, you’ll need to pay an extra $2.99 per month for your subscription.
Amazon says the ads are meant to help the streamer “keep investing in programming over the long term, including original series and live sports,” per THR (Amazon already has ads on Thursday Night Football).
While we can quibble on Amazon needing more money to invest in content (it has a $1.33 trillion market cap), the move is a microcosm for how important advertising has become to streaming (and how much pressure new CEO Andy Jassy is putting on Prime to justify costs).
In the quest to chase Netflix, Hollywood realized streaming isn’t as profitable as traditional TV or theatrical releases (hello, strikes). So, every streamer from Disney+ to Max is nudging users toward their cheaper, ad-supported tiers. The average revenue per user (ARPU) is simply higher when advertisers subsidize content.
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Social? AI can do that.
Creating social posts for your company is a lot of work! And guess who’s up for it? YouAi.
YouAi is a creator suite that’ll help you generate custom content. Need strategy help? You’ve got it. Blog posts? Yep, that too. Video scripts? YouAi can also hang.
And if you want to get technical about stuff, YouAi will optimize your creations and analyze the results to ensure your content works — because it should.
FOOD & DRINK
The Makeline // Courtesy of Hyphen
Chipotle hires a burrito bot
The Future. Chipotle is testing an automated kitchen-line system developed by startup Hyphen to help speed up the creation of burrito bowls — another experiment in the food industry to see how robotics and AI can make fast food more efficient. The system is slated to join Chipotle’s 3,250 locations sometime in the next 12 to 18 months, which may become key to the chain’s ambition to eventually expand to 7,000 restaurants… many of which may focus only on digital orders.
Algorithmic assembly line
Chipotle wants to be on the cutting edge of burrito technology.
The fast-casual chain is piloting The Makeline at its test lab in Newport Beach, CA, which can be used to make burrito bowls, grain bowls, and salads.
It dynamically adjusts each ingredient’s portion based on the bowl size and the number of toppings requested (but never reduces the amount of protein).
It can make up to 180 bowls per hour (six times more than a human) and dispense ingredients needed to be wrapped into a tortilla.
Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol says the intention isn’t to replace human workers but to take over digital orders — which now represent 38% of the company’s revenue. Employees will still be able to work on the line alongside The Makeline’s robotic arms.
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Do you feel like finding a payment processor for your small business is almost as challenging as starting the business itself?
There are so many options in the market that determining the best payment processor can feel overwhelming.
PayBlox felt small business owners deserved better. So, they created a platform that uses advanced algorithms and an extensive network of providers to match you with the best processing system for your biz.
Right now, PayBlox is also doing a small biz giveaway. 10 companies. $1,000 each. Enter to win by signing up for PayBlox using the code: FUTURE.
Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
Seth MacFarlane has topped his $1 million donation to the Entertainment Community Fund with another $5 million, kickstarting a new $10 million fund to support striking writers, actors, and other crew members affected by the work stoppage. Read more → thr
Spotify’s upcoming “lossless” audio plan (rumored to cost $20 per month) could possibly curate playlists based on “danceability.” Read more → engadget
Central Perk Coffeehouse, the iconic brew house from Friends, is getting its first official brick-and-mortar location… in Boston. Read more → hypebeast
Fashion & E-Commerce
Nike is stepping into the used-sneaker business as part of its “Nike Refurbished” initiative, with each pair discounted up to 50% from its original retail pricing. Read more → hypebeast
Reebok is launching a premium line of shoes, dubbed Reebok LTD, that focuses on “Italian craftsmanship” (we’re not sure of the connection either). Read more → highsnobiety
Lego’s new ad campaign, “Play is Your Superpower,” hopes to supercharge the time today’s kids spend playing — currently only an average of 2% (or seven hours) of their week. Read more → fastcompany
Tech, Web3, & AI
TikTok and Google have called a search engine armistice and are now partnering on search results within TikTok’s app — a move that could benefit both companies. Read more → insider
Meta’s Quest VR headsets aren’t selling, so the company is giving them away at conferences and winding down production. Read more → yahoo
AI is ramping up the programming of living organisms as if it were computer code — a field called “synthetic biology.” Read more → wsj
Creator Economy
TikTok is rolling out a tool for users to label their posts when they’re made with AI — a requirement on the app moving forward. Read more → theverge
X is sunsetting its close-friends-only Circles feature on October 31st. Read more → techcrunch
The new trend on TikTok is about highlighting how often dudes think about the Roman Empire (irony alert: the meme actually started on Instagram). Read more → forbes
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.