The Best One Yet - 👩‍🎤 “Gaga goes public” — Universal Music’s IPO. Sorare’s soccer NFT. Volkswagen+.

Episode Date: September 22, 2021

Universal Music popped on its IPO because your Insta stories are powering music. Sorare just landed the biggest deal in NFT history because it turned Lionel Messi into a game. And Volkswagen is Netflixing cars… we’re calling it VW+.$ETH $UMG $VWAGYGot a SnackFact? Tweet it @RobinhoodSnacks @JackKramer @NickOfNewYorkWant a shoutout on the pod? Fill out this form:https://forms.gle/KhUAo31xmkSdeynD9Got a SnackFact for the pod? We got a form for that too:https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe64VKtvMNDPGSncHDRF07W34cPMDO3N8Y4DpmNP_kweC58tw/viewformLearn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Nick. This is Jack. And this is Snacks Daily. It is Wednesday, September 22nd. Today's pod is the best one yet. It's a TB.O.I. But Jack, are you really not going to say anything here? What?

About what? It's my two-thirds birthday, Jack. We're two-thirds of the way to January 22nd. I do celebrate every week. Okay. Anniversary birthday of Wilder. Well, two-thirds you can round up. In the meantime, though, this is a TBOI.

First story? Universal Music is a record label that popped 42% sent after IPOing yesterday. Lady Gaga and Lord, they don't want your playlist. They want your Insta stories. For our second story, a French startup called So Rare just made the biggest deal in NFT history by far focusing on sock. If you think NFTs are ridiculous, this is going to make you think they're a little less ridiculous, right, Jack? Right? Yeah, there we go. For our third and final story, Volkswagen just acquired a huge car rental company called Europe. Jack, do we have ourselves a Goldilocks situation? We do. Yeah, we do. Not buying. You're not renting. You're not leasing. Are you

subscribing? You're subscribing to a VW. Beetle. Sit down, stand back up again. But before you hit those three great stories. Did not see this mix coming. This is a great mix. If you're a Penn State Nittany Lion over in State College, Pennsylvania, Happy Valley. You're probably familiar with the Whiteout. The Whiteout. Everyone in the football stadium wears White. A lot of White. So much white in that stadium, you blind the other team's vision. Very strategic. I mean, how can it not work, Jack? But there is a new white that has taken the crown from Penn State as the ultimate whiteout. Snackers, we just found the whitest paint ever, real thing.

A Purdue University professor of mechanical engineering and his students have concocted the whitest paint ever. This makes bone white look as dreary as like a soiled linen. A dove just flew into this white. That's how white. What do they even name this? This is like extreme eggshell. Actually, they didn't name the white. So we're calling it Purdue White, but I feel like this is a huge missed branding opportunity.

If Benjamin Moore saw this, he would cry. He would tear up. Now, the whitest of whites is officially in the 2022 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records. Great. Now I can see everything that's ever touched these walls. Fantastic. Well, the professor and these students, they're not vain. They weren't trying to just get into the Guinness book. The gold snackers of this whitest of white pants was actually energy conservation. That's right. You know how black absorbs light and white reflects it?

This is so white. It reflects 98% of all sunlight. Why don't you continue with the physics lesson 201 over here, Jack? Now, this is useful because places are getting hotter due to climate change. And they could paint their homes, what we're calling Purdue white, to keep the homes cooler. Snackers, you don't need an air conditioner. You just coat this freakishly white bleach paint all over your house. That's what you do.

All right. So to recap, Purdue is saving the world. potentially with a new shade of very white white. Penn State, cough, cough, your move. Let's hit our three stars. You're tuned in the snacks daily. It's snacks about to hear ain't food. It's air candy.

They don't reflect the views of the robberhood family. It's all informational just so. We're not recommending any securities. It's not a research report or investment advice. Not an offer or sale of a security. Snacks is digestible. Business news for you. Robberhood Financial, LLC, member Fenra.

S-I-P-C. For our first story, Universal Music's IPO is complete. The stock jumped 42% yesterday. Not because of streaming music. No, no. Because of social music. Okay, love this early Snack Fack, Jack. One out of three songs that the people these days are listening to,

it's owned by Universal Music. That's right. Universal Music is the world's largest record label controlling 32% of all recorded music. Number two, we got our buddies over at Sony Music. With 20%. And number three, we got our buddies over at Warner Music. With 16%.

Now, here's what Jack and I find funny about Universal. Universal Music, it basically acts like a venture capital firm, but of music. That's right. They invest in early stage musicians and then own and distribute their music and pressure local DJs to play that music on the radio to make the song popular. Just like VCs, but they're not in Palo Alto. They're like in Nashville. Universal music isn't just universal music.

They're also deaf jam, capital records, classics, Motown records, institutions, Virgin records, Afterman. And just like a VC, Universal Music, kind of has an investment portfolio of talent. The talent roster is so deep, I don't know how we selected these sample artists. It sounds like actually we're beginning

an award ceremony here, Jack. You want to kick it off? I actually recently saw Rocket Man, the movie. So Elton John, Kanye's in there. Billy Eilish. Taylor Swift. Lady Gaga, what was that movie she was in? The one where Bradley Cooperner

should have been married. Yeah. These are all on the Universal Music roster. This is also definitely a Christmas album from like 2006. We are the world. We are the people. We are the ones who can make a better place. If you're not holding hands, no one's going to buy it.

Now, Universal music doesn't just act like a venture capitalist. They also have been acting like an art collector recently. Yeah. Universal got a little extra cash. They just dropped $300 million to buy all of Bob Dylan's music. Very nice. That's right. The estate of Bob Dylan. Dylan, probably his descendants, just collected a $300 million check from Universal for the rights

to all the music he ever made. So, Jack, if you're streaming blown in the wind, what's happening to our buddy Bobby Dylan's family? A couple of cents are blowing into Universal's bank account, actually. Now, Snackers, you probably heard about the music industry's fall and rebound over the last two decades. It's a story. Music revenues peaked in 2001 when you had a six-disc changer in your parents' SUV. But then came 15 years of rampant online piracy. One second, I'm just arguing with my sister about who gets the burned brandy CD. You had two hours a day to use the family's one computer, which had one internet connection that you could only use when nobody was on the phone. And Jack, you were on Napster or Limewire or Kazah with like the capital Z in the

middle. That's what you were doing. And you were getting all the music you wanted for free because this was an where online music piracy was rampant. And Jack, everyone had heard like, you know the horror story, right? Like, oh, my buddy's friend, his cousin, his nephew, downloaded a Blink 182 album, and then the FBI showed up at his door. That happened to a girl I went to middle school. It happened to my friend's cousin's best friend's sister, check. Okay, so revenue for the music industry fell by about 40% over those 15 years.

It was really bad. But revenues started rebounding right around 2016. Because in 2016 Snackers, that's really. when we get the streamers coming in board. Yes, all those $10 a month subscriptions to Apple Music, to Spotify, Pandora, XM Radio, those make up 64% of all the music industry's revenues today. So you may have heard that streaming saved the record labels,

but you may not have heard our takeaway. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Universal Music? They showed that social media can be the music industry's friend. Snackers, Instagram. and TikTok posts, they include music. Instagram and TikTok pay for that music. Let's say you're working out at the gym looking really good and there's a mirror right there and you happen to have your phone on.

Spodding you, you're spotting me, everyone's spotting each other. You may post an Instagram story of yourself at the gym and tag I of the Tiger by Survivor. Guess what? Facebook pays the music label that owns Survivor's music because you use their music on social media. Well, guess what? Snackers, Universal was the first bagel label to start doing those licensing deals with Facebook back in 2017. And that was just the beginning. Today, most of the popular apps we use, they're packed with licensed, legal, recorded music.

Jack, if Peloton's playlist includes explosive, Universal gets paid. Because Universal owns the rights to Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's music. Jack, party in the USA trending on TikTok? Universal gets paid. Because Universal owns the rights to Miley Cyrus's music. Alexa, Fortnite. They're all better with legal music and they all now have legal licensing music deals. Licensing deals like those deals, Nick just described.

They make up just 10% of the global music revenue, but that 10% is growing fast. Because Universal just showed that social media can be music's best friend. For our second story, so rare, just made the biggest deal ever in NFT history thanks to soccer. Okay, if you don't get NFTs, non-fut. fungible tokens. So rare may be the first thing you ever got about NFTs. Well, first of all, we should like sprinkle a little context on here, Jack. NFT, the acronym of 2021. Yeah, NFT stands for confusing digital collectible thing. Yeah, verbatim. Actually, it's non-fungible token, but you can use either. They're interchangeable. Let me use it in a sentence. Dogecoin millionaire pays

millions of dollars for digital version of physical thing. This brings us to France's so A startup that just raised $680 million, a ton of money from SoftBank, giving it a $4.3 billion valuation. Okay, first of all, we have to like keep track of everything you just said because there were so many big numbers in there. It got such a huge valuation in such a nascent technology because the business model is the most practical use of an NFT we've seen so far. Yeah, exactly.

Jack and I jumped in Snacks style. We're looking at this. We're like, so rare has turned NFTs from a collectible object into an engaging activity and that's why they raise so much money. So rare is digital trading cards of soccer players, but it's so much more than that. It's really a fantasy soccer platform. Yeah, because they pulled off something pretty impressive here. So Ware got exclusive deals with 180 major football clubs from like Liverpool to Madrid. And they make revenue by issuing digital NFT trading cards of the soccer players. It is just like your dad's typical cardboard trading cards of baseball back in

the day, but they're like Harry Potter-a-five. Right. Well, the players don't move in and out of the card like Harry Potter. Right. Yeah. But they are digital only because these are NFTs. It's kind of like the Dumbledore paintings is what we're picturing. And since it's an NFT, each card is unique. Yes.

There's an identifying number recorded on Ethereum so that you can prove you are the only one who owns this card. Right. Because Ethereum, you got to like reposition your mind. It's not just a currency. It's a ledger. It's keeping track of things. Sometimes that's money. Sometimes that's NFT cards of line on message.

So So Rare makes money. by selling newly minted Lino-Messy NFTs, for example. There you go. But then, Snackers, you can make money by trading that brand-new Lino-Messy NFT to your buddy who maybe wants it more. And if Lianol-Messie gets even better at soccer, not sure that's possible, maybe you can make a nice little gain by selling that NFT for a higher price than you bought it. Well, So Rare has seen $150 million worth of trades on its platform since January, a lot of trades.

So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at So Rare? So rare turns NFTs from something you hold on to to something you can socialize with. This is the magic of So Rare Snackers. Instead of just trading cards like a collectible, you can also play the cards like an activity. Remember we mentioned fantasy soccer. You could be the only buddy in your buddy group's fantasy league that can use Lionel Messi because you're the only one who bought that Leonel Messi NFT trading card.

One second, Jack, we just hit our bonus. We said buddy 12 times in one story. Okay, so fantasy soccer, you manage a squad. If Lino-Messie gets a goal, you beat your buddy Timmy. And it's fun beating Timmy in fantasy soccer. And guess what? You win games. So rare grants you points.

Then you can use those points to buy more NFT cards from So Rare. The whole cycle repeats itself. Okay. This sounds pretty interesting. And that's why So Rare has 600,000 users playing fantasy soccer using their fantasy NFTs. Yeah. Now they're trying to come to the.

United States to hit up the NFL because they're not just collectibles and they're not just fantasy. So where is sports entertainment? By turning NFTs into something social, that could expand the appeal of NFTs. From super speculative like sub-crypto investment to something more mainstream. For our third and final story, did not see this one coming. Volkswagen just splurge to buy a rental car company called Europe Car. Classy. Looks good on you. The future of cars is Netflix.

Flexi, you can own a car, rent a car, or subscribe to a car. Okay, Jack, a couple weeks ago when we landed in Sicily at that like small Sicilian airport, the first thing we were greeted with, it was a Europe car, a classy little Europe car. That's right, Snackers, a dingy old rental car business. Volkswagen is paying $2 billion to own a majority of Europe car. Right, which is going to include all of Europe cars frog-sized fiats too. Now, Europe car, Nick knows it. They compete for your attention with 12 other dingy rental car brands at the baggage claim at your local airport.

Enterprise, we know you'll pick us up, but like, how did you get our address and why are you here? Okay. Interesting, though, Volkswagen CEO, Herbert Dees, he said this about their Europe car acquisition. He said, we didn't buy a car rental company. Yeah, you did. But he thinks that Europe cars fleet is key to Volkswagen. car subscription future. And that is what Jack and I find fascinating about Volkswagen these days.

This is actually the second bit of news just this month from Volkswagen. Volkswagen is also launching a Volkswagen subscription. Interesting. Which we're calling VW Plus. And they should too. And this isn't like some Taco Bell style marketing gimmick to launch a subscription biz. No, they're serious about this. They want one fifth of Volkswagen's global revenues coming from car subscriptions by

2030, not that far away. What Jack and I are saying here is that Volkswagen is completely changing its business model from selling cars to, as they call it, software-driven mobility company. It's actually pronounced they are software-driven mobility company. It's only available in Europe right now. But VW Plus is $600 a month and it gets you a car that includes everything but the electricity. Okay, this is why this is so Netflix, these Snackers. Picture this. We're talking the VW, ID3, the ID4, their electric car, and their electric SUV. Right. VW Plus makes it easy to try out electric cars for the first time for a commitment as short

as just three months. Okay. So this isn't like a three-year lease life commitment to a vehicle. We're talking to three months for you to use the car. And they want this to feel as Netflix-y as possible. Create a username and password. Any of your credit card information, you get a car for $600 a month. We noticed you enjoyed watching the ID3.

You think you'd love the ID4. Who's driving the ID3? Is it you, your mom, or your cousin? Signing for the family plan. Snackers, we're talking insurance, registration, maintenance, et cetera. All that annoying car monthly stuff you got to pay. That's included in this $600 a month, Volkswagen Plus.

It's as Netflix as possible. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Vokes? Omni Channel is something that saved Walmart in retail. Omni Channel could save Volkswagen in cars. Snackers, Walmart survived. the Amazon threat by offering shopping online, in store, and in curbside, all of them. Omnicham, your choice, online, offline, or a combination of the two. And despite like a huge disruption of retail, Walmart stock is now at a record high.

Volkswagen faces similar disruption. You got car share, electric cars, autonomous ride hailing that's only in Scottsdale right now. There we go. But it's combination wide suit. Well, we think VW is set in the stage to offer it all. we're talking an Omni Channel car offering just like Walmart did. You can buy a Volkswagen, rent a Volkswagen, lease a Volkswagen, or subscribe to a Volkswagen like Netflix. Or a combination, all for 600 bucks a month. So buying Europe cars, 2,400 rental car locations and 350,000 tiny frog-sized fiatts,

that will help Volkswagen shuffle their cars around to you so they can accomplish that. The only risk facing Volkswagen. And it's a big risk. Volkswagen does chassis. It doesn't do tech. Yeah, and this requires a lot of tech. Jack, can you whip up the takeaways for all of our buddies over there? That's 19.

When you post those workout picks of you sweating, Mark Zuckerberg has to pay universal music. Universal music. They showed that social media is the music industry's friend. Our second story, so rare, is part NFT platform, part fantasy soccer. And that could broaden the appeal of NFTs in a big way. Volkswagen is acquiring Europe car. Not for the rental cars, not for the,

fiat's just for the subscriptions. Now, time for our snack fact of the day. This one tweeted in by Jenna Dominguez from lovely New Jersey. This year has set a bunch of records for billionaires going to space. Right. Mo, money. Mo. Houston, we have problems. Not like what you did that. But the first Hispanic person to go to space is Dr. Ellen Ochoa, director at NASA, who went up into orbit in 1993. And her background, nothing like any other rocket scientist out there. Her paternal grandparents immigrated to the United States from Mexico. And her dad actually worked at Sears while her mother stayed home to raise five kids who had just come to the United States. And then that proud mother and father, their daughter became Dr. Ellen Ochoa, who became the first Hispanic

astronaut to go into orbit. Now that's a Hispanic Heritage Month gem, but it's also an American dream like classic. Snackers, happy Hispanic heritage month. Send us your snack facts using the link in the episode description. It's right there. You get a shout out on the pod. Nick and I'll see you tomorrow. Can't we. If you know, you know. And before we go, happy birthday to everyone celebrating a two-thirds or three-quarters birthday today. Always round up. I like that a lot. And happy birthday to Ian Mikener in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Full birthday. And Ananya Singh, who just turned 25 in the Big Apple of New York City. And Josiah in Upper Marlboro, Maryland. Congrats.

Happy birthday to Hector Miguel Pekone in Rome, Georgia. And Dawson, happy first birthday down in Holden, Massachusetts. Anybody else celebrating something today, make it a T-Bowell. Celebrate the wins. This is Jack, Island stock of Volkswagen and Amazon. Yeah. Nick owned stock of Apple and Ethereum. Keep going.

His is actually called Ethel. And we both own stock of Spotify and Peloton. Robin Hood Snacks, newsletters, and podcasts reflect the opinions of only the authors who are associated persons of Robin Hood Financial LLC and do not reflect the views of Robin Hood Markets or any of its subsidiaries or affiliates. They are meant for informational purposes only and are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, cryptocurrency, or investment strategy in any account. This is not an offer or sale of a security, not a research report, and is not

intended to serve as the basis for any investment decision. Any third-party information provided therein does not reflect the views of Robinood Markets Inc. Robintov Financial LLC or any of their subsidiaries or affiliates. All investments involve risk, including loss of principle and past performance, does not guarantee future results. Robin Hood Financial LLC, member FINRA SIPC.