Tech Brew Ride Home - Mon. 07/13 – SiriusXM Makes the Biggest Podcast Acquisition Yet

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

SiriusXM looks like it is stepping up to be the big competitor to Spotify in the podcasting space by lining up Podcasting’s biggest ever acquisition. More worrying signs if you’re a regular user of TikTok. Again, everyone wants a piece of Reliance Jio and a piece of the Indian market. And why Apple is warning people about covering the camera on your laptop. Sponsors: TinyCapital.com BuyRaycon.com/tech Links: SiriusXM Is Buying Stitcher in Deal Worth Up to $325 Million (Variety) Amazon says it will not ban TikTok from employee phones (The Verge) For TikTok, an Amazon Ban That Wasn’t, a Wells Fargo Ban That Was (The Information) DNC and RNC warn campaigns about using TikTok (CNN Politics) Google to invest $10 billion in India (TechCrunch) Autonomous drone startup Skydio rises $100 million and launches the X2 commercial drone (TechCrunch) The real reason Apple is warning users about MacBook camera covers (ZDNet) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On April 4th, 2023, around 2 in the morning, a man was found stabbed multiple times on a sidewalk in downtown San Francisco. Hey, who did this to you? What happened next turned the story into a political firestorm. Reports have identified the victim as Bob Lee, the founder of Cash App. From Bloomberg Podcasts, this is Foundering, the Killing of Bob Lee, beginning April 16. Welcome to the Tech Meme right home for Monday, July 13th, 2020. I'm Brian McCullough today. Sirius XM looks like it's stepping up to be the big competitor to Spotify in the podcasting space

by lighting up podcasting's biggest ever acquisition. More worrying signs if you're a regular user of TikTok. And again, everyone wants a piece of Reliance Geo and a piece of the Indian market along with it. And why Apple is warning people about covering the camera on your laptop. Here's what you missed today in the world of 10. Once again, podcasting has made the big headlines today. SiriusXM has announced that it will be acquiring the EW. Scripts Podcast Network and producer unit Stitcher for $325 million.

Scripps says Stitcher had $72.5 million in revenue in 2019, growing at about a 52% per year annual clip. Note that this is the biggest single acquisition in podcast history, Spotify, has spent more money over the last months overall, but this single acquisition is bigger than when Spotify bought either Anchor or Gimlet. Variety has some of the industry history for you, quote, Scripps bought Stitcher for $4.5 million in 2016 and combined it with mid-roll media, which it bought for $55 million the year prior. According to EW Scripts, the $325 million price tag represents a return of more than 100% on its investment in podcasting over the last five.

years. The deal will build on SiriusXM's $3 billion acquisition last year of Pandora, the music and podcast streaming company. According to SiriusXM, with the addition of the Stitcher and Midroll Networks to its existing assets, the company will reach over 150 million monthly listeners across multiple platforms. The Stitcher division includes three business lines, the Midroll advertising rep firm, owned and operated podcast networks including the Comedy Focused Earwolf, and the Stitcher Podcasts listening platform. Stitcher's podcasts include Freakonomics Radio. How Did This Get Made? Super Soul Sunday from the Oprah Winfrey Network, Office Ladies, Conan O'Brien needs a friend, literally with Rob Lowe, Gavarberton, Reads, Comedy Bang Bang, and WTF with Mark Marin, end quote. Yes, for reference, some of the favorite

podcasts of mine that I've mentioned to you over the years are all on mid-roll, aka Earwolf. I'm thinking of shows like the aforementioned comedy bang bang, but also hello from the magic tavern. And my current favorite, bananas for bonanza. As Ashley Carmen tweeted, quote, this is big news because one, obviously money, but two, Sirius is setting itself up to compete heavily against other well-funded companies, Spotify, Apple, and IHeart. We haven't heard their strategy yet, but Sirius has 33.7 million subscribers.

what percentage already listened to podcasts, end quote. Yes, as Google and Apple seemingly are happy to stay on the sidelines in most meaningful ways, things could be shaping up to be a two 800-pound gorilla fight in this space between Sirius and Spotify. The news broke late last week, if only briefly, that Amazon had reportedly asked its employees in an internal memo to delete TikTok from any devices employees were using that might also be used to access Amazon's internal email. The reported memo cited security risks posed by TikTok. When this news leaked out, the internet had a brief collective freak out because people are really starting to worry that their TikTok might be taken away from them in the near future. But then, a few hours later, word came

down that Amazon would not ask employees to remove TikTok from their phones for now, at least. quoting the verge. As first reported by the New York Times on Friday, Amazon asked employees to remove TikTok from their mobile devices citing security risks. An Amazon spokesperson told the verge on Friday that the email was, quote, sent an error, quoting the spokesperson. This morning's email to some of our employees was sent an error. The Amazon spokesperson said there is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok, end quote. Still though, pretty interesting and mysterious, you'd have to say. Over the weekend, And Giant Bank Wells Fargo did indeed tell employees to remove TikTok from corporate-owned devices. Again, due to privacy and security concerns, quoting the information.

We have identified a small number of Wells Fargo employees with corporate-owned devices who had installed the TikTok application on their device. A Wells Fargo spokesperson told the information in a statement, due to concerns about TikTok's privacy and security controls and practices, and because corporate-owned devices should be used for company business only, we have directed those employees to remove the app from their devices, end quote. And now this morning, it turns out that both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee have asked their respective campaign staffs to refrain from using TikTok on their devices, quoting CNN. The DNC had suggested to campaigns in a memo in December not to use

TikTok citing concerns about the apps, quote, Chinese ties and potentially sending data back to the Chinese government, end quote. The memo also referenced a Russian app named Face App, a photo app that became a viral hit online last summer. Quote, campaign staff should refrain from using foreign developed apps such as face app and TikTok. If your staff has already downloaded and used either app, they should delete the app and suspend their accounts. If you are using TikTok for campaign work, we recommend using a separate phone and account,

the memo read. CNN also obtained the December memo. It was first reported in January by the Wall Street Journal. In response to both the DNC and RNC's guidance, a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. Quote, we are fully committed to protecting our users' privacy and security under the leadership of our American CEO, along with our chief information security officer and head of safety, TikTok's growing U.S. team works diligently to develop a best-in-class security infrastructure and uphold our community guidelines which prohibit misleading and inauthent content and accounts.

We welcome a dialogue with anyone who has questions about TikTok so we can ease concerns they might have, end quote. But quoting politician James Grant on Twitter, just how recklessly dense do you have to be installing an agent of the Chinese Communist Party on your phone? Dense enough that in today's tribally divisive political environment, both parties think what you're doing is dumb, and they're not wrong, end quote. And echoing that, as Jane mentioned Wong tweeted, maybe TikTok is created to bring politicians from the two sides together, end quote. Qualcomm Ventures says it will invest $97 million in Reliance Geo platforms to acquire a 0.15% stake in that company. You heard me right. A less than one-seventh of one percent stake. I know y'all might be getting tired of me doing these Reliance Geo stories.

So-and-so investing again for a percentage in Reliance Geo. It just keeps going on and on. And there's seemingly nothing new. every time I do one of these other than the new name investing. But I think it's important to keep noting these events because I can't remember the last time all of the biggest pools of money in the world all saw so obvious an opportunity all at the same time that they couldn't help but wet their beak. Like the fomo of this story, if you're a giant pool of capital, is clearly overwhelming them. If you're a giant pool of capital, you want a piece of reliance, any piece you can get, even a 0.15% piece. And since Reliance Geo is a play on India, this other news is clearly related. Google has unveiled the Google for India Digitization Fund, through which it will invest around

$10 billion in India over the next five to seven years, quoting TechCrunch. India is a key overseas market for Google, where a range of its products and services, including search, YouTube, and Android have made inroads with much of the entire online population. The nation of 1.3 billion people has emerged as perhaps the last great untapped growth market for American and Chinese tech giants. More than 500 million people in India are online today and over 450 million smartphones are in active usage in the country. There's still more work to do in order to make the internet affordable and useful for a billion Indians, from improving voice input and computing for all of India's languages to inspiring and supporting a whole new

generation of entrepreneurs, said India-born Google CEO Sundar Pachai. Google, though, like every other American tech giant, makes only a fraction of its revenue from the world's largest internet market. But that does not appear to be a hindrance for any American or Chinese tech giants in India that are currently searching for the next hundreds of millions of users in developing markets, end quote. Autonomous drone startup Skydeo has raised $100 million in a Series C round of funding. And seemingly to celebrate that, Skydeo also announced the new X2 commercial. drone coming later this year with 360-degree super zoom cameras as well as thermal imaging sensors, quoting TechCrunch. Bounded in 2014, Skydio has raised $170 million total and launched two consumer-focused drones to date, both of which employ artificial intelligence technology to give them autonomous

navigation capabilities. This means their drones can actively track objects and people while simultaneously avoiding potential collisions with objects including trees, power lines, and other obstacles. The end result is video that looks like it was recorded by a professional film crew in a helicopter, but available to the general consumer market in a sub-thousand-dollar price point. The first Skydio drone, the R1, was launched in 2018 and retailed for $2,400. Its intelligence and tracking capabilities were impressive and were later improved via software updates and the second generation hardware, which launched last year and is currently available for order. Skydeo's new X2 drone platform is designed for enterprise use and will ship in Q4 of this year,

according to the company. It included an onboard 360-degree super zoom camera, a FLIR 320 by 256 resolution thermal imaging camera, a battery life of 35 minutes of flying time and a maximum range of 6.2 miles. There's also a Skydio Enterprise controller for the drone, which has a touchscreen, screen, hardware controls, and a protective hood to block glare. The move from consumer to enterprise makes a lot of sense for Skydeo. The same collision avoidance features and easy piloting that the company has received praise for in the consumer world are very applicable in enterprise use. The company says that its close proximity avoidance tech, which allows for very tight

tolerances in flight, make it a great candidate for doing things like remote infrastructure and equipment inspection, where having a person do those would be dangerous or impossible. X2 can also capture 180-degree images directly above itself, which makes it uniquely capable of inspecting bridge spans and other overhead construction from a different perspective than is offered by many rotor drones like this one. And the infrared coverage means it can operate day and night and provide heat maps of targets, end quote. Finally today, you might have heard some chatter about this over the weekend, but Apple is warning MacBook owners not to close their MacBooks, their MacBook's Air or MacBooks Pro, while there is a cover on over the camera.

Actually, this is specifically what Apple said. If you close your Mac notebook with a camera cover installed, you might damage your display because the clearance between the display and keyboard is designed to very tight tolerances. Covering the built-in camera might also interfere with the ambient light sensor and prevent features like automatic brightness and true tone from working. As an alternative to a camera cover, use the camera indicator light to determine if your camera is active and decide which apps can use your camera in system preferences, end quote. But according to ZDNet, here's what's really going on, quoting Adrian Kinsley Hughes in ZDNet.

I spoke to an Apple repair technician who, on condition of anonymity, gave ZDNet a rundown of the problem. Quote, what we've been told is that since people have started to work and study from home more, the use of camera covers has gone up dramatically, the repair tech. told me. It makes sense. People are using video more and it can feel intrusive. So being able to slide a cover across the camera offers some privacy, even mid-meeting, where people might not want to disconnect. But consequently, the number of screen breakages are up. And it's a pretty distinctive screen break, leaving a glowing white line down the middle of the display so we know why it's happened, even if people are evasive about how the damage happened, end quote. Another reason is, again,

tighter tolerances. Quote, that new 16-inch MacBook Pro has the thinnest bezel I've seen, the veteran tech said, and they've been doing this job for a number of years and has handled pretty much everything Apple has made during that time. Quote, it's almost non-existent, and anything that gets in between the screen and the body can break the display in a heartbeat. They do. They just go pop and the damage is done. Only the other day I saw a display that had been cracked when someone had closed a coin on it. Left a nice print of the coin on the display. The owner told me, it just happened on its own. Hmm, okay, end quote. Should be noted. Apple is specifically not telling you never to cover your camera. Just be mindful that if you do cover your camera,

remove the cover when you close it. Apple's support documentation includes information for people who use camera covers, stating that the camera cover must not be thicker than an average piece of printer paper, which is around 0.1 millimeters. And you wouldn't want to use anything that would leave adhesive residue over the actual lens itself. So a Post-it note as an ad hoc camera cover is maybe okay as long as you're strategic about where you put the sticky bit. And also you just remember to be on the safe side and take the post-it note off when closing the lid. Also, again, Apple wants you to know it designed that camera indicator for a reason. If you don't see the green light, Apple swears up and down that there's no way.

the camera could actually really be on. Well, thank you, high of mind. Yeah, it turns out that I had remapped paste to paste and match style on the laptop. I probably did that early on in the podcast, but then subsequently now for about a year, I've used pop clip to manage my clipboard. So mapping inside system preferences was no longer necessary.

Popclip, by the way, is a very, very useful clipboard manager. Check it out. Would recommend. And, you know, hive mind, once again, you came through to solve a mystery. Thank you. Talk to you tomorrow.