The Bill Simmons Podcast - Smart-Guy Friday: Nathan Hubbard on Zombie Bands, Ticket Trends, and Twitter Comebacks (Ep. 240)

Episode Date: July 21, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons brings on former Ticketmaster CEO and House Eats 3 judge Nathan Hubbard to discuss the booming business of nostalgia-rock concerts (5:00), James Dolan's desire to improve acoustics in arenas (18:00), the best bets for future Super Bowl performances (27:00), Taylor Swift's chance to perform at the 2018 Super Bowl (32:00), Dave Matthews Band and the emphasis on touring (37:00), the real reason season tickets exist (46:00), the impact of adding more arenas in Los Angeles (56:00), and how Twitter owns the moment (1:07:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor, the easiest way to shop for the best tickets thanks to their revolutionary grading system. Buy and sell tickets in two taps on your phone, everything fully guaranteed right now. My listeners get $10 off baseball tickets the first time they use SeatGeek. Just use promo code B-S-M-L-B. Download the SeatGeek app today or go right to SeatGeek.com We are also brought to you by

the Ringer Podcast Network, which doesn't just include this one. We have House of Carbs for food, Larry Wilmore, Cousin Sal for gambling, Ringer NFL, NBA, MLB shows, The Masked Man, The Watch, Achievement Oriented. Tate, what else did I forget? C-A-M-L-B?

Yeah. We have more than that. I can't even remember. House of Carbs. Iate, what else did I forget? CMOV? Yeah. We have more than that. I can't even remember. Housecar? I mean, geez. Oh, Game of Thrones Binge Mode. Binge Mode's back. They just did season seven, episode one.

And speaking of Game of Thrones, Talk to Thrones, our Twitter show, Sunday night. Nathan Hubbard, you used to work for Twitter. I did. Once upon a time. Our Twitter show, right after Game of Thrones ends on HBO, go twitter.com you can follow our postgame show that starts immediately after Game of Thrones at ringer or use the hashtag talk the thrones Chris Ryan Andy Greenwald Malia Rubin Jason Concepcion banging out Game of Thrones knowledge do you watch Game of Thrones Nathan I do but you're like level

one like me. I am. You just watch it, but you don't know what's going on. Exactly. I'm more excited about House of Carbs in this moment. Yeah. I'm coming for House of Carbs. Nathan was our backup choice for House of Carbs.

If House's contract didn't come through, Nathan was going to take it over. It's been a very food competitive relationship. Coming up, Nathan Hubbard. But first, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, Pearl Jam. Bring it. All right. My friend Nathan Hubbard is here. I think you've been on the podcast before, right? Yes, we have.

A couple years ago. We potted long and hard about ticketing. On Grantland. We did. Yeah. You were working for Live Nation at the time. I was. Since then you went to Twitter.

I was CEO of Ticketmaster. We had a good one. Yeah. This is weird because we We had a good one. Yeah. I want to, this is weird because we're actually pretty good friends and we've had all these conversations already

but we have to figure out how to do it on the podcast like we've never had them. We'll do our best. Let's start, I want to start with music and you wrote a column for The Ringer

a little while back about old cello and nostalgia rock, which has now become 50% of the highest grossing concerts that we have. Dodger Stadium last week had Fleetwood Mac without Christine McVie. With no Christine McVie. They had The Eagles with no Glenn Frey because he tragically passed away. With Deacon Frey.

They had Journey with no Steve Perry. With no Steve Perry. He's in a cave somewhere so this was like not even juby brothers with michael mcdonald like was michael mcdonald there no he's at home like nobody call me for the gig like he's not there so it was basically all of our favorite bands from the 70s but without crucial crucial people. But they're not bands. They are ideas of bands. Right, name only bands, but yet sold out, right? Dodger Stadium, hard to get tickets.

And the thing is, like this is happening elsewhere too, right? A huge seller this summer, Grateful Dead featuring otherwise douchebag John Mayer, absolutely filleting Jerry Garcia's parts on guitar. John Mayer has put the entire Grateful Dead fan base on his back and like moved that band and its community and everything that it's about into this generation. So it's happening.

I'm pro John Mayer. I don't care. I don't care if it's unpopular. I go very far back with John. I think he's talented. I think he's funny. I think he made some interview mistakes that spooked him. I think he had some celebrity relationships

she shouldn't have had. And now he's kind of coming out of the ashes. My band made an album literally right after he finished Room for Squares. Yeah. And so we got to hear the tapes of his AOL chat sex with North Carolina co-eds. Yeah.

Back in the day before he figured out. Not to do that anymore. Not to do that anymore. Yeah, see, he made a lot of mistakes early on. And now I think that he is, I think he's one of the best guitar players we have. And I think he's like ironically best when he's not playing his own music.

Yeah. If you go watch his Jay-Z, his performance with Jay-Z post 9-11, Jay-Z's 9-11 tribute concert, he absolutely slays it and he's slaying it with the dead too but the point is these are zombie bands yeah and like for me the question is like why is this happening it is not natural for people to just come out and blatantly accept this like nothing happened right like i i like you are a parent you did you ever go to the wiggles like the like four

ambiguous awesomely ambiguously gay australian guys who like wear different color shirts and they sing kids songs i took my kids to the wiggles yeah like it turned out jeff had gotten sick and left one of the guys jeff got sick and left the band jeff wiggle jeff wiggle and like so they replaced him with greg and i take the kids to see them live and within five minutes my kids are looking at me like where the fuck is jeff right so that's the natural human reaction right no that's the natural human reaction to wheeling out a band with a non-original member but now all these old white people are gathering in fields to see like tribute bands, basically. Right.

And I don't understand it. You and I have argued about U2, like U2, Pastor Again, U2, one of my favorite bands ever. But I went to see them at Staples maybe 10 years ago. Yes. And I'm like, I'm out. I'm out. This makes me sad. I saw U2 at their complete apex at the boston garden in saint

patrick's day 1991 and now i'm here at staples and this is like going to see larry bird and magic johnson playing in the big three i can't do it the beauty of periscope and facebook live is that on any given night you can watch these bands at any different point around the world so like a great bedtime thing for me during the week is I go in and search up my favorite bands that's on tour and watch them play the U2 stuff. I saw them live, but this tour, they were absolutely killing it. And we should not talk about this. We're going to fight the whole time. Here's what I'm going to say. I think people want to hear fighting. Well, let's get criticized for, I agree too much with my guests. So let's, let's go at it.

Look, they're still killing it. They are still killing it. They are not songwriters. Are they killing it as an actual great band or as the band they used to be? It's amazing. Like Billy Joel kills it at MSG, but he's not as good as he was 40 years ago. Not in the slightest. So why is this phenomenon happening, right?

It's because there are a bunch of old people with tons of money who are not cool anymore who need to feel cool in some it's like plastic surgery for their egos they've got to like relive the past so what's cool about hanging out with a bunch of old people who aren't cool that's when you look around you're like oh my god i'm these people i think that they just the music itself allows them to live in some fantasy that says they still are back in those places right the question that i have is why are these old musicians doing this right like why for cash like they well there's no other reason

because right because up until 2000 if you were a giant rock star you could go sit in your castle and just hang out and collect the collect them checks right and well the rolling stones didn't do that and well but they could have potentially yeah the difference is that now you know back then they made 90 of their money from albums and 10 from the road and today it's completely flipped thanks to napster right and ticket prices have gone up and so they got these castles but they can't pay the mortgage because they're not making albums that matter anymore so they got to get out on the road and they got to play and what you would think that would lead to is a bunch of old guys just mailing it in but to bring it full circle i think these tribute bands where you know glenn fry's son is playing or you know uh eddie's son wolfgang's playing bass in van halen or john

mayor with the dead whatever it is it's injecting a little bit of life and something new into the band so that they actually bring it every night. Look, I would have thought that the classic probably wasn't going to be great because it is a bunch of zombie bands. But the report coming out of Dodger Stadium was there was great energy. You know, Vince Gill was there. Bob Seger was there. And it mattered vince gill yeah vince gill's like everybody's these things are turning into like the grammy all-star jam at this point right which which is always awful which well is fine but uh but that that is

i i can't get i i don't have any other explanation for why at the high end of the old people, people are still coming out and standing in these fields and participating other than they need something to hold on to. They're living longer. They're spryer. They just want to be cool. I would, yeah, I'd throw two more things in there. Disposable income.

Yeah, they're super rich. And it's a fun place to go smoke some pot with 60,000 other people. So that's a great point. Look, the only, the live business is killing it, right? Because you've got these massive acts that are old and people are spending a bunch of money on that. And then at the low end, meaning like the younger end, millennials who are otherwise just staring

at their phones all day, having experiences with these screens, like they need to connect with people, right? There's some visceral chemical thing that happens when people come together in crowds. And so it's true that they're favoring experiences over things and so at that end you've got the business absolutely you know absolutely blowing up and so the question is like what can get in the way and there's two things the first is somebody walks in and sets off a bomb yeah and the other is

jeff sessions and what i mean by that is like if you're Jeff Sessions right now, if I put on my evil Jeff Sessions hat and I go, hmm, let me think about- It's just kind of Jeff Sessions hat. Right, if I put on my Jeff Sessions hat. And I want to reignite the war on drugs. And I also want to go at a bunch of Democratic voters. And I want to go at a bunch of democratic campaign

contributors like I believe you know artists are now drugs at concerts like go get like you could just you know bring in a bus 10 buses and just start trucking people out of there at the same time you go after the artists who

are probably the largest single source of contribution to like democratic politics so but here's another interesting wrinkle to this don't do it jeff don't do it jeff fire him fire him trump so it's made me reevaluate the whole meaning of what a concert experience is because i used to think it was to go see music that you could only hear on an album you're making a face i'm listening but i think in the last 10 years it became so easy to see your bands your favorite people your favorite singers whatever because of youtube and these different channels that run the concerts a little bit of mystique is gone right like when you when i was in college and a band came to the worcester centrum you're still making a face or boston garden this is my one chance to see them in a way that wasn't

just listening to yes the cassette you could have gone an entire life and three album cycles and never having seen a visual representation of the artist? I have no connection to the band other than the times I listen to them in my dorm room. I'm with you. And now with, uh, it's just, you can go,

let's say you're a YouTube fan. You love YouTube. You can go on YouTube and there's, I mean, YouTube and there's 5,000 YouTube, YouTube concerts. It's not the same as being there. Right.

But that's what I mean. So what's still bringing people there is the experience of experiencing the band with other people. But then I also think the mobile part of it where it's like, in the old days, it's like maybe you took a photo of I'm at this concert. Your arms are around three of your buddies and the band's behind you. Now it's like, not only am I at that concert, here's me holding up my iPhone and here's their performance of blank. Yes. And that's become its own self sustaining thing

I was at Twitter when we were getting ready to launch Periscope and we bought it and we were getting ready to launch it and it was so obvious you left out the part where you destroyed the poor people who took off at South By for two weeks and then Twitter just annihilated them what were they called?

Meerkat poor Meerkat the rise they called? Meerkat. Poor Meerkat. Yeah. The Rise and Fall of Meerkat is a great two-week documentary. It's like Friendster or MySpace. If you don't build a motor on your business, that's your problem.

So you saw it coming, and what was so, the obvious application for this was live, right? And you could tell that as soon as it went, as soon as you went live, there going to be the people who said no you can't you can't let these things into concerts you can't broadcast it yeah this is going to ruin it's bad for the band and i sent like a bunch of tweets just being like artists ignore the old dudes in your camp who tell you that this is going to be the best advertisement for your show ever and it is and

i think that stuff has contributed driven more people it is getting people there because there just is something there's some chemical uh uh reaction in our bodies when we are close to other human beings and so many of our experiences today are staring at that phone like refreshing our twitter feed with 9-11 psd over and over again and we have to get out just like from our Twitter feed with 9-11 PSD over and over again. And we have to get out just like from our survival instincts, get us out to mingle with other people. And so listen, it's a good time to be in life. Speaking of the phone, it's more fun to go to a concert now because let's face it, concerts have some boring stretches.

And now you have your phone as your buddy. You'd be like, ah, I hate this song. I'm going to look at my emails. Or I'm going to try to take the perfect picture or whatever and you can kill four set four minutes well and there was that weird like awkward teen phase of the business where like wireless networks couldn't hold a crowd in a stadium like the your phone just couldn't function you mean like like a week ago right but but stadiums are holding wi-fi but we're there in a better place now where content that gets created

can actually come out of a venue. It's not like the lid isn't on it. So in real time, you can go in and see what's happening. And I think it's just like they're walking advertisements for the events. Do you know what the first great concert YouTube moment was?

It's one we've dissected endlessly. Wait, tell me. No. Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Bucksey buckingham silver spring whatever concert that was yeah where she's just she's just she's just screaming at him yeah she was mad about she was mad about the fact that it got cut off rumors yeah she dumped he dumped her he got married he's happy yeah and she just turns it on him. And that became this viral YouTube moment that actually put the band in a different light. It was a really fascinating moment for them.

I love that moment. Her voice still was hanging on. What about that look on her face? That one close up? Yeah. It's the all time scariest. You broke my heart and I'll never forgive you look that anyone's ever actually had captured on video on stage in front of 20 000 people somebody needs to create a meme with that face juxtaposed to the like sweetness of that uh blame it on my wild heart backstage youtube oh my god where she is

just like angelic greatest moment in cocaine history probably probably she i'm guessing i think there might be others but we'll go with that yeah yeah i would anybody who's listening to this just pause the podcast go on youtube and google stevie nicks wild heart she's backstage with like her hair hair lady or makeup her hair lady has just messed with her and she is listening to a demo they're playing in the background they're playing a stevie nicks song which stevie nicks who's so amped up just decides to start she just can't get enough of it she can't she's performing her own song with this random hair person and it's it's one of the most arousing moments of the early 80s it's the sexiest thing on film yeah i mean stevie nicks it's hard to hard

to believe after all these years but it was the goddess of the late 70s. Then you watch that Iovine documentary and he dated her. Yeah. For a year. Somehow I don't think there's backstage footage of Britney doing that or... No. That was the end of the real authentic...

Anyway, I love that clip. 40 years since Rumors. The most successful, non-greatest hits album of all time. And that's why Fleetwood Mac on stage. That's how they get to keep going on stage. Exactly. But it's not Fleetwood Mac.

I'm sorry, but Christy McVie wrote Songbird. That is, I will bring the dragons to fight you if you tell me that's not a top 10 love song of all time. It is an unbelievable song. She is a sneaky. She may not be the heart of that band but she is a very important organ we it's almost like having the 96 bulls reunion and they're like dennis rodman can't be here but instead we got uh stacy king's gonna be here instead look at a macro level that classic is basically evidence that irving azoff can get anybody to do anything and because he's got a

bunch of bands that otherwise probably wouldn't be together. Somehow he convinced Henley to go do this. And, you know, it's like, it's like Henley always said, like Irving Azoff might be the devil, but he's, he's our devil. And Irving's just smarter than everybody else and understands how to create, you know, that environment where fans come. How are arenas and stadiums making the concert experiences better? Like the Forum in LA is probably the single best artist-friendly acoustic place you can see a concert. But are the stadiums getting better? The stadiums are not getting better. And arguably, they're getting worse without pointing fingers.

I mean, I think that for all the ball busting you do of Dolan, he and Irving are taking a look at markets where you have these big cavernous arenas that aren't made for artists. And, you know, Jim Dolan cares a lot about sound and the artist experience. And so they're not just in L.A. now, you know, but they're trying to build these buildings that are sanctuaries for artists and for music. I'm pro James Dolan as a music guy. Not his music, but just... The Forum, I think, was really smart and awesome and a great idea. He gets credit for that.

If he owned the Knicks as well as he knew music, he would be a great NBA owner. I understand. He and Irving had the vision for that, and they're going to roll it out to other places. I think that's just the issue. The good news for a stadium goer is that they're spending a ton of money now on the set. I mean, talking about you two,

I mean, there should be some Grammy equivalent for set design on a stage because it's not really just a music show anymore. It's a visual experience. They've been doing that for 20 years. That's been their all-time specialty.

Every time they get in a room and they say, what are we going to do? And they get with Arthur Fogel, who's probably the greatest promoter of this generation, and they figure it out. Quick break to talk about Quicken Loans. Our friends at Rocket Mortgage buy Quicken Loans. They understand that home plays a big role in your life and family.

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get a more real mortgage approval in minutes adjust the rate and length of your loan in real time to make sure you're getting the right solution for you that's rocket mortgage by quick and loans apply simply understand fully mortgage mortgage confidently. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash Bill Simmons. That's my name. Equal housing lender, licensed in all 50 states. NMLSConsumeraccess.org, number 3030. Who are your season ticket bands? My season ticket bands?

Yeah. What is that? So like if you get season tickets for an NBA team, you get to go to all the games. Who are the bands out there for you that it's like they're touring, just sign me up, here's my credit card. How many are there? God, I mean Prince was number one on my list.

He's dead. He can't count anymore. It sounds like U2's on your list. U2's on my list. I mean Coldplay's on my on your list you two's on my list i mean cole plays on my list jay-z is on my list jay-z when was last time he toured he's coming out right now with he's coming out this fall in a bunch of arenas with the 444 tour so that sounds like an i might get divorced soon i need some extra cash tour that's what they should call it the jay-z i might get divorced soon i need more cash tour i think he what they should call it. The Jay-Z, I might get divorced soon. I need more cash tour.

I think he maybe has already gotten some of the cash for that, and he's going to go out and fulfill it. But, hey, hit it while it's hot. And he is as hot as it comes right now. No younger bands? I mean, right now, who is absolutely... You're lukewarm on hip-hop and concert. I mean, look, I just don't know who is the young band

who's absolutely filleting it right now kanye for sure if he ever does it again kanye is more likely to have a fashion show his new his new jackets that he designed but but if it happened fucking album yeah i i would i would go go see Radiohead pretty much anywhere in any place. Okay. And I just don't know that I sign up for... Because here's the problem. There aren't that many bands right now... What about Deacon Fry's new solo album?

...that are doing a different show every night. Yeah. And that's what's sort of getting lost along the way is it's kind of now becoming karaoke and less about a night in night out like you don't see pearl jam absolutely if they if they tore it again absolutely i just didn't want us to list off a bunch of 90s bands that you and i both if we were answering honestly would would say yeah pearl jam i would go see every single show there's no bands anymore you were the one that emailed me the thing what was it last week about hip- hop has officially become more popular than rock?

Yeah. Which I would have guessed had already happened. Yeah. But I think rock, even look back at the last, I wouldn't call it glory years, but that last stretch starting with basically the Strokes, Killers, Kings of Leon, like that last kind of vestige. Yeah. There's no bands like even like that anymore. And it's not like those bands were like amazingly successful. No, I mean, I think what started to happen in,

even in the nineties, and by the way, I do want to add one artist to your list of people who, if they died in the nineties would have been bigger than they are today. And that's Adam Duritz, but in Canada. So you're talking about the pod. I did Chris,ris ryan and greenwald on the watch yes i said dave matthews band who we're going to talk about later okay uh rem and billy corgan if they had all died at a specific apex during their career they'd be much bigger now than they were it's the old chuck closterman theory so who did you add to that kind of gross i think adam duritz that band after the second album yes

and he's dating like jennifer aniston and courtney cut like he's just he's got a murder's row of hollywood actresses he had a great run one of his problems other than that uh he dated too many hot women i think people resented him for it was their concerts he would never sing the songs like they turned himself into a yeah like he was a spoken word poet or something. Yeah, he was like, I'm going to change the, and people couldn't sing along with it. They would get mad.

Yes. The Counting Crows fans would leave the concerts upset. If he just went out and didn't, and actually if he'd mailed it in, it would have been better. Yeah. Just be a karaoke machine.

Anyway, if he died early, I think he would be much bigger than he is today. That's a good one um super bowl halftime shows so i got this email from somebody that uh do we know who's going to do it this year this is from dave david stefan he he ran back my a 2010 mailbag that i did where i guessed the next 10 super bowl halftime shows 2011 beyonce and jay-z 2012 springsteen and john cougar mellon camp cougar's nowhere to be 2013 ayla brown the daughter of our new president former cosmo model scott brown i barely even remember that joke 2014 youtube pearl jam 15 britney spears woods i think the joke was that she married tiger

woods there you go 16 this held up very well 16 snoop dog jay-z and kanye west parentheses just released from jail 2017 timberlake and ayla brown 18 john maron taylor swift woods 2018 cold play and 2020 the dave matth Matthews Band with special guest Carrie Underwood Woods. So he points out some of these were dead on and some of these were completely, totally wrong. All right. Now look forward, Super Bowl halftimes, next 10 years. Let's bang out 2021 to 2030 you figure adele's in one cold play no cold play has run their their time there because they they did it you know

so people don't like english people well but remember beyonce stole the show with the formation so beyonce's back she's she's next decade at least once. Taylor Swift is going to play the Super Bowl. Swift. Alright, we got three. I gotta believe that Justin Timberlake, if he can squeeze out one more album, is going to do it. Okay. Kanye?

I think Kanye West should play the Super Bowl. Kanye comeback? There's five? I think a Korean pop... No. Some YouTube star, I think a Korean pop. No. Some YouTube star, Logan Paul, 2026. You know, we're missing like a Dierks Bentley or a Kenny Chesney or like a giant middle America country. Eric Church. Eric Church. This tape from Carolina.

Like straight up, you know, Chris Stapleton comes in and does one song and fillets it. There's going to be that moment. 2028 the rolling stones right with all their kids not actually the rolling stone but isn't it amazing though that these big ass the idea like the rock band's basically gone is my point yes it's like even you could talk about any any band that came in in the 2000s is not big enough to play the super bowl, except for maybe Coldplay. So the last big one to do it will have been The Who. Right. The Killers, I don't think, are big enough.

No way. Their 20-year anniversary of whatever that album was. Look, I would have told you that. I didn't think Bruno Mars could really carry the show. Bruno Mars is somebody for next decade. And he's done it. He's now appeared twice. Our dude Shawn Mendes might be in the mix.

I love Shawn Mendes. We have so much Shawn Mendes stock. I went in big. I bought Shawn Mendes and Netflix. I'm one for two. Stay away from Snapchat. That's the trifecta of death. No, Netflix went up.

I know. I still think you'll average out down if you go with those three. But I'm waiting for the Mendes burnout. I love the kid. Oh, no. I think he's going to be one of the few who makes it but listen you either be you either go the way of of bieber or you go the way of taylor and let's see what happens bieber's a candidate for next year bieber bieber could absolutely play it you think taylor swift and adele and beyonce

are the three most important people in music right now, correct? I do. I don't really understand what DJ Khaled is doing or why he's able to assemble these hit songs with lots of artists on them. And I almost wonder if it's not going to be a single artist-based Super Bowl show going forward, that they're just going to be these like Grammy celebrity jams. Or like three or four celebs. Yeah. Like Des Fasitas. Like these are the songs that are being created where people are featured on other people's.

And so I, it almost feels like we're going to move to just the celebrity all-star cast in a way from putting the pressure on a single artist to carry the whole venue. They already sort of transitioning us in that way. The Coldplay Beyonce thing was a good example of that like nobody's going solo at this point let's talk about the how three female artists are ruling the world right now well they are I mean that the scary thing for me with Adele is just that something's not right

she's not built for touring yeah it seems like her voice burns out every time she's not built for touring. Yeah. It seems like her voice burns out every time. She's not. And, and, you know, I wrote a piece in 2015 on her when she sort of broke those sales records. Yeah. And at that moment in time, you know, she was, she was the biggest artist in the world. And I think today you're right. I think it's Beyonce. Rightly so. I think she's the queen.

And you just know like taylor swift is the the training montage is doing the rocky training montage right now somewhere in the woods in nashville building up writing a record and and she's going to come in and bring uh bring sort of her next punch and so between the three of them you know for me it is that you think she's in russia yeah she's doing sit-ups with giant with yeah that's why she's leaving her apartment in a box because she's jacked now do we believe that story i tate do you believe that story i saw a photo it looked legit it seemed like a pretty big box like if you were gonna bring out taylor swift in a box you'd pick that box more than that though i wouldn't put it past her to be smart enough to start a conversation about

her leaving her apartment in a box well if she was gonna do that then she would have had over the years a lot of kind of dubious maybe possibly fake celebrity relationships oh wait oh wait she's had like eight i have to change the subject on this we have jam on jam session one of our podcasts with amanda dobbins and juliet libman on channel 33 they are the number one taylor possibly fake relationship watchers and they break down when she dated tom hiddleston is that his name yeah they broke that down like it was a superuder from well let me talk about Taylor, the businesswoman. You love Taylor Swift.

I do. I mean, look, she is, to me, probably the most, look, she is emblematic of what an artist today has to be, as is Beyonce, and I think Adele to a little bit of a lesser extent. But those are two artists who are also entrepreneurs. They understand their brand,

and they are managing their brand out front. By the way, Madonna was amazing at this. Madonna almost created it. Madonna was amazing at this. Sean Carter manages the Jay-Z brand very, very well, right? But more than that, they are starting to take action to shape how the industry works.

And whether it was Taylor's Taylor's Apple encounter where she sort of stood up on behalf of artists, whether it is, you know, Beyonce's political statement. I think that these are these are the most powerful artists in the world and they have a purpose and they have a cause, and I'm super anxious to see how they move the industry forward. I think Kendrick's music and the words and the things he's singing about, I don't think it has the scope of those three, but I would put him in the conversation i just in terms of where the country's going and the things that um people are upset about and worried about yeah i think he has the best chance to write because that's another thing you and i have talked about is you know you look at the 70s and watergate and vietnam war and all the stuff and the music that came out from like 68 to 75 that kind of captured all the stuff people worried about. Where is the music now?

The best thing that can come out of this political environment, I think, is just an explosion in creativity, and I'm with you. But that's coming from hip-hop, I think, not rock this time. I agree completely, and it's not coming from DJ Khaled. No.

Or Pitbull. Yeah, but we were talking about the most powerful artists. I think that's different than the most important. I think Beyonce, by the way, transcends both. Yeah, but we were talking about the most powerful artists. I think that's different than the most important. I think Beyonce, by the way, transcends both. Yeah. And I'm with you on Kendrick. But that's why I'm excited for the next couple of years, because Trump was elected a few months ago.

So it's just now we're going to start to see the cascading effect of this on the sort of young artist who's out there who's writing that album today. And it could be Chance. It could be Tyler. It could be somebody you don't know. All these younger dudes. Who knows? Yeah.

Probably not Migos. Probably not. Probably not. But yeah, that's the most interesting. Music is now coming out of that generation. 100%. And it's weird that rock is just... Is it possible that we've just run out of ways to do rock songs? Yes.

I mean, that's the point. Because you pointed that out to me four years ago and I got really concerned that almost every riff has been created at this point. Every version of guitar bass, drums. One, four, five chord structures are done. Fender and electric guitars are not selling anywhere near as much as they were. Those are on the decline.

Like that genre is over. And that's okay. Like jazz was here. It was great. You know, we had flappers and great dancing. And then we moved on. Like nobody's writing symphonies really anymore. Do you think Yacht Rock can come back at least?

I hope so. Michael McDonald is sitting at home waiting for the call. He's ready. We drove to a different part of the Los Angeles area to do the Jimmy Butler podcast. Me, Tate and Tommy. Yeah. Tate and Tommy are in their twenties.

And I had, I was cranking the Yacht Rock on the way back. I think they were confused and, and, and scared. I bought my first house in LA from Christopher Cross. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, I, I basically bought it because it was Christopher

Cross's house. Christopher Cross had a great run. Until the advent of film and video intersected with music, Christopher Cross was great. I get so mad at Yacht Rock when they don't play actual Yacht Rock songs, but they play 70s love songs. Like, Brad is not yacht rock. No. So I'm going to actually program yacht rock for a day. I've been talking to them about it. Christopher Cross's problem was that he looked like Grimace from McDonald's.

And when he's on stage, you just couldn't have a fantasy about Christopher Cross. He didn't look great. So that was it. You managed the Dave Matthews Band way back when. I was the chief of staff to the manager of the Dave Matthews Band. You were the chief of staff. His name was Corin Capshaw, who was a brilliant manager. But yes.

That's how you got into the music business. Yeah. Well, I was an artist and touring performer and made five albums with the producer of the Dave Matthews Band. We were managed by the Dave Matthews Band guys. So that's how I got in through that through other organization so dave matthews it's been 22 years like he really the big the big apex year for him was i think 95 when people were making mixtapes and putting crash on them for whoever they're trying to have sex with and it was like i want to have sex with you here's a mixtape that ends with Crash. That's how we did it.

That's how we rolled back in 95 before the Tinder era. Well, look, just alluding to the podcast you did with Ryan, REM was the first great college band, but in the 90s, Dave Matthews' band was the college band. They played every frat in the Southeast, and all the backwards white hats dudes. They were the 90s college band to super famous success story.

But the manager of the Dave Matthews band is the key there because he was a student of the Grateful Dead. And he saw what that band, remember back then, again, 90% of your money coming from albums, 10% from touring. So artists would go out once every three or four years on a tour cycle.

Touring was not something you did in perpetuity or every year, except for one band, and that was the Grateful Dead. And so Corin Capshaw, who was the manager of Dave Matthews Band, saw that, saw that you could build a community that would just keep coming out if you played a show that was different every night and that's what dave matthews band became so so again in 92 people are going around and touring once every four day matthews band would go out every single summer in the 90s the band that sold the most tickets more than you two more than any other band was dave matthews band wow because jim tried to do a modified version of that too, right?

They were out there a lot. They would mix the shows up every night and stuff like that, but not to the level of that Dave Matthews Band. They did, but then the Dave Matthews Band took it a step further because they saw the business that was the Grateful Dead and how they built a business around touring while every other band was building a business around albums. The Dave Matthews Band sold millions and millions and millions of dollars a year in merchandise to their fans.

They had it all in this giant e-commerce operation in Charlottesville, Virginia. And remember, this is in the 90s, just as sort of online commerce is getting going. Yeah. And they were smart enough to basically build the Amazon Web Services for the music industry, which is to say that every other band in the 90s and 2000s that had signed Prince guitars and Madonna like frame posters and lithium stuff. And they use their infrastructure to help all other bands build up this direct to fan e-commerce connection and make a bunch of money all outside of the scope of the record label.

Yeah. And that sort of, again, artist as entrepreneur spirit is sort of really is what drove where the modern music business is today, where it's all based around your tour. And at this point, you know, is there an album anymore? I don't know. It looks to me like Drake's dropping tracks every now and then. And so it doesn't matter if you have. It's so weird for people like us. Right.

The concept of just albums not really being a thing. It's massively disorienting but that band really was the pioneer in showing how to build a business that was 365 days a year that never goes off cycle yeah and that creates an income stream for the artist now the interesting thing about dave matthews because your your argument is if he died he would have been a hero because yes remember two things was a big record and and Under the Table and Dreaming was a big record. You might make the argument, and Iovine did this just recently as he talked about artists, that the Dave Matthews band didn't take enough time to write.

Yeah. Because I think from there, there hasn't been that iconic song i mean even that was a good lesson from the ivy and doc yes go put yourself in some weird mansion for four months and just write music away pearl jam lock yourself in the studio north of san francisco and just make you saw the u2 doc right yeah in the late 80s that's the most underrated music doc well it is they almost broke up and they went to germany and they did and i think once you get on that Yeah, the U2 doc, right? Yes. From the late 80s. That's the most underrated music doc. Well, it is. They almost broke up, and they went to Germany. And they took the break, and they did.

And I think once you get on that treadmill, and today's artists in particular, they've got huge infrastructures. They've got hundreds of people who work for them and rely on them. That was the saddest part when Jerry Garcia died, is the Grateful Dead actually had to think about laying off people, which was totally antithetical to the spirit of harmony and community.

Anyway, they build up these big businesses, and you get on the treadmill, and suddenly you're working for 200. It's almost like the athlete and their entourage. They're making money for so many people in their life, they don't get that break. And so it's so important creatively to see people take breaks. And maybe, I don't know, maybe that's why, you know, in the hip hop world where those artists today at least aren't going out as much. Yeah.

They're not spending as much time on the road. Maybe that affords a little bit more of a creative license. We left out social as one of the reasons why concerts are still thriving the ability of bands to or singers or whoever to connect with their fans on twitter to push tour dates to push merchandise on facebook on instagram on twitter snapchat whatever they're using it's a game changer over half of the of the of the top hundred most followed people on twitter are musicians. Is that true? Yep. And so there it is. That's the answer, right? It is now...

And soccer players and NBA players. Historically, these artists have been disconnected from their fan base. The label was in the way. The physical record store was in the way. You had all these middlemen between the artists and the fan, which to your point is why when we were kids, we didn't even see the faces of these artists

until we got on tour. But today they have these direct to consumer distribution channels. And so when we talk about the power and importance of artists like Taylor, artists like Beyonce, artists like Adele, who can at this point pretty much call their own shots. They do not need a record company.

They probably don't need a tour promoter. They got enough money. Chance doesn't have a record company. They can go't need a tour promoter. They got enough money. Chance doesn't have a record company. They can go raise money from anywhere they want. They have distribution channels both through their own properties, through social and so forth. They can be

entrepreneurs. The question is just who's going to help them get there and the ones who are going to succeed are those artists who double as entrepreneurs and that's Taylor, that's Beyonce, that's obviously Jay-Z at this point and others.

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Postage. A digital scale. No long-term commitments. Never go to the post office again all right uh stadium safety yeah you wrote about this for the ringer i think we should keep talking about it uh since we since you wrote that piece yeah we had the incident in paris yep um manchester manchester things we have not had yeah we have not had the massive either football stadium or soccer stadium. During a game thing, we have this Ram Stadium that's going up or it's right next to the airport.

It feels like this should be more of a concern, not to mention the part where you've always talked about a digital footprint for tickets, being able to track who gets the tickets. You've been writing about this for two years. It doesn't seem like we're any closer yet. What's going on there? Well, look, in practice, just intuitively, if we need to know everything about 100 people getting on an airplane,

it seems like we ought to know something about 100,000 people coming into a stadium i would it's common sense and you know the lunatic in manchester blew himself up and he killed 22 people he's trying to get inside and kill 2200 so i will tell you that behind the scenes both at the league level and certainly in the live event business this is concern you, this is one of the top concerns that there is. And security has begun to be beefed up. And I talked to a big concert promoter the other day who said, we always just assume security is as people come up and then they get in and then we take everything down.

And we never thought about the end of the show. So insurance rates are going up so insurance rates are going up costs rates are going up but at the core in terms of keeping people away from the venue you can increase the perimeter yeah but at some point you got to let people in and so for me that comes down to how do we get to know these people in a way that we don't today. Because for your big Cavs Warriors game, for a big Beyonce concert, they probably know less than 10% of the people who walk through the gate.

Because tickets are pieces of paper. They get transferred around, handed around to friends. They get resold in the secondary market at those big events. And so suddenly, you know, the craziness of a world in which they've sold all their product online, all these people walk into their physical space, into their house, basically. And they only know one out of every 10 people walking through feels unsustainable. And so I think that's the kind of innovation that you will see in the business going forward.

It's got to be driven by these big artists. But on top of that you have all right here's 300 for a ticket to sit here somebody buys that they resell it for 500 that's it that person buys it they resell it for 800 but then the person who sold it for 300 initially they don't get a cut of any of the subsequent stuff so it seemed like at least sports teams and leagues would be the easiest way to do this first because they could all combine and control it in a certain way. But basically, they get a cut every time it gets resold. Isn't that part of where this is headed?

I think so. And I'll say that one of the things that's probably standing in the way on the sports side is the season ticket. And that is because you know look we live in a world in which content is being unbundled and music is being unbundled and people are able to get things on demand and so now 50 of the buying in the secondary market happens in the last 48 hours. And so you can see it when you go on a place like SeatGeek.

That's right. And so what ends up happening. You can get tickets to a Dodger game three hours before the game and sit wherever you want. And so what ends up. Are we going to do the MeUndies piece now? No. Okay, we'll stay with that. So, but I agree. And so, but what happens with the season ticket is that the person who buys that inventory

is not the person who walks through the gate. With the season ticket. With the season ticket. I would say, I mean, it used to be in the old days you would go to 70, 75% of the games. I think now people go to 10 of the 40 for NBA. So I was a Clipper season ticket holder last season. How many did you go to?

We went to less than 20, which means I was selling more than 20 on the secondary market. I shared with Tolan I probably went to six regular season games and then a bunch of the playoff games and i lost thousands of dollars as a clipper season ticket holder because there's so much inventory on the secondary market but and then also people people wisened up and realized that they just wait to the last day and jump on wherever and get your ticket and so you sit back and you go well why would you be a season ticket holder? And the answer is, as a fan, it probably doesn't make sense. So the question is, who is buying all these? Well, there is a reason why. Well, there are two reasons why.

I know there's one. The old reasons were I'm locking down an awesome seat to these games. Otherwise, I have to go on the street and try to scalp tickets. And now I know where my seat is. But then also playoffs. If this team gets good, I have a playoff seat. I don't have to pay 17 times as much to scalp tickets. And now I know where my seat is, but then also playoffs. If this team gets good, that's right. I have a playoff seat.

I don't have to pay 17 times as much to do it. So if you're a Warriors fan, I get it today, but, or if you're a Lakers fan with LeBron coming in a year and Paul George and Lonzo and, but even there, you can buy the games that you want to go to,

but not in the first 10 rows. It would get tougher if the team was good, I think. Maybe. The Clippers weren't bad. And I had trouble recovering my costs. People don't like the Clippers, though. They don't like the team. Maybe.

Look, here's the thing. I think there's a very limited list of teams, though. Here's the thing. The reason the season ticket exists is not for the fan, especially in those situations. NFL only has eight home games. Oh, yeah. Explain this, because I don't think people realize this. Which part? not for the fan especially in in those situations you know nfl only has eight home games oh yeah explain this because i don't think people realize this which it's a down payment for the team that

they get to basically take your money seven months before the season starts and they get a giant chunk of it and they just get to put it in a bank account well right and and even more interesting now i don't know if you saw this yesterday but the warriors came out and said in their new arena in San Francisco they're going to charge a what is the equivalent of like a personal seat license so you're going to pay an upfront sum to them which gives you the right to buy season tickets for the next 30 years and then what the wrinkle that they added was they said, and in 30 years, we will give you the money back for that personal seat license. So they basically are going to their fans and taking a 30-year interest-free loan. Which they're putting toward the arena.

Which they're going to put toward the arena. I'm not 100% against that. I'm not 100% against it either. They've put some real restrictions on how it can be transferred and so forth. Look, Rick Welts is one of the most forward-thinking execs in sports. And that organization, obviously is great. So I know they're, they're, they're getting creative about that. But the dirty little secret in season tickets for the most part is that the majority of many sports team season ticket holders are brokers. And they do that for two

reasons. One is they're afraid that by the end of the season, the team's gonna suck, and nobody's gonna come, and they're gonna be sitting on loads of unsold seats. Or be mediocre. Now it's like either, if you're mediocre, you suck, nobody wants to go unless you have some awesome young player. And then they might not wanna go. So it's basically an insurance policy for the teams.

And the brokers are partners with the teams in this. And the teams are willingly doing that to basically offload risk. Now, you've got to ask yourself, why do the teams need to do this? The range of outcomes of an NBA season exist within the 30 NBA teams. So the league itself should probably be able to build an insurance policy that the Warriors fund the Pelicans or whatever. So that's the first reason that those teams will do that. The second, and why the season ticket exists, because it's really a vehicle for them to offload risk. Well, and then get the money early.

Right. Get that money early and sit on it and make the float and know where they are. But the second is a vestige of the ticketing business. And without getting too technical, like a team will sign an exclusive agreement with their ticketing partner where whenever they sell a ticket, they sell it through. That's not a season ticket. They sell an individual game ticket through the ticketing company's website. So I had that with my LA Kings tickets. I can only sell them or i had to go through this really shitty website and try it it was one of the reasons i gave up the tickets i didn't like the website it was really hard to

get rid of them but as you know today fans are coming directly to the secondary market they're coming to seek they're coming to nba tickets or ticketmasters secondary sites they're coming to stubhub but the teams aren't actually technically allowed to sell tickets there directly. But that's where fans are. So the hack that they do is they sell these season tickets to brokers who in turn turn around and sell them as individuals on the secondary market where fans exist. And that's all because of these exclusivity provisions that don't really make any sense anymore. And by the way, the last part, to tie it back to the music piece, is that season tickets don't have service fees. So what ends up happening as a music fan is you pay these exorbitant service fees that really subsidize sports fans yeah in a venue right

because the ticket income has got to make their money some way so music fans are almost being assessed a tax today so that sports fans can go without those fees one other thing with season tickets which i've written about a bunch of times and i think you have too it's just more fun to stay home now than it was 20 years ago. The TVs are better, especially if you're an NBA fan. You're thinking about like, all right, I'm gonna go to a Clipper game. I live in Santa Monica.

I have to leave my house. What am I gonna do about dinner? I'll leave my house at five o'clock. I'll be in traffic for an hour. I go there. I'll try to get a quick dinner. I go to the game. The NBA games are always last past 10, 15.

I'm driving home. This is like a seven-hour commitment versus I'll just stay home and watch 12 games at once on my 70-inch TV. The rest of our life is moving to on-demand. You get what you want when you want it, particularly in our entertainment options. That's why your Netflix stock is going crazy, right?

Because you get it on-demand. That's why your sponsor Spotify is so great, right? Because you get it on demand. That's why your sponsor Spotify is so great because you get your music on demand. You also want to get your live events on demand and that's what the secondary market provides. Now, the teams know this and they're really working around using the season ticket more today

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Simplysafebs.com for 10% off your order. So we were talking about this new Clippers Arena that bomber wants to build that. I wrote about a little in my piece about how, why the Clippers should move to Seattle. And of course they did all the opposite. They doubled down on Blake Griffin.

They paid Gallinari and they're still going to move this thing. How many, how many arenas can one city have? I mean, there's almost not enough music acts to go around. I don't see any scenario where if he builds an NBA arena, artists are going to not play in the forum, which they love, and then play in this NBA arena. What else is in the arena other than the Clippers?

I don't get it. Let me tell you what's great about it. Okay. I like you spun it around. He does not give a fuck. Because he's just super rich. Because this is a passion project for him. And he wants to make the experience great.

I mean, he's doing fucking mascot trampoline dunks at halftime. Like, he does not care. So, he should create the greatest only for basketball arena that anyone's ever created. Full of technology, experience he cares about. Yeah. And do it. Get USC to play there? I think from a rational business perspective, hey, maybe there's ways to make it work.

I don't put anything past him and his team to figure it out. But what's cool about the prospect there is that he would build something that isn't about stuffing as much money to his bottom line as possible, but about building the best experience for the team, for himself as a fan, and for the other fans who are with him. I'm all in on it. With the NBA teams,

I don't think the death of season tickets, if it's a death or whether it's a an alteration of how it used to work because the nba they make so much money from the streaming and all the stuff like the nba's couldn't be in better shape i think for the nhl it's a real issue i think the nhl was a very attendance heavy league and it still is but you're asking these people to pay for 41 hockey games a year. And I was one of them for six years and regular season hockey for the most part blows. And you had the season tickets because you want to keep them for the playoffs, but financially it's just smarter not to get the

season tickets and then just to cherry pick the playoff tickets. But some of this is from a time when these owners weren't multi-billionaires and they needed the money. I don't think it matters anymore. Your point is just, people either show up or they don't. Whether the vehicle that they do that through is a season ticket or not is kind of irrelevant. They needed the season ticket back in the day when these owners desperately needed the money. But now you've got Mr. Kroenke, one of the wealthiest guys, you know, in the world, who's building the stadium in Los Angeles. Like he, he is smart. You know, he's gonna, he, he doesn't need the

money. Right. So, so NFL season tickets. Yeah. That's not, it helps that these owners are, you know, the values of their franchises have increased five X in the last couple of years so that it takes the pressure off the need to get all that money up front because what's a couple million dollars when you've got a franchise that's worth a billion bucks? Hockey matters though, though. It does. But even there, the franchise. I would say baseball matters probably not as much because their TV deals are so unbelievable. So much. Yeah. Yeah. And hockey, I think, look, if you're a hockey owner and you own the venue, I mean, how many home games have you got, right? You still have 320-ish nights a year

that you've got to fill up that arena. And that's what you're focused on if you're a hockey owner because that's where you're going to make your money. It's an issue. Two football teams? The one in Carson? Are we going? Yes, we're going.

Are we going to a Carsonon a weird carson football game totally going again this is the same this is like the balmer stadium because it's too small there's not really a whole lot of suites the fans are on top of each other i've seen some soccer games there yeah they were awesome yeah and like this could be the next thing like who wants to sit up in the nosebleeds of an 80 000000 seat stadium versus the energy of a rock? It's like seeing you two in a club. I'm all in.

I never understood why more people didn't replicate the Fenway Park model. Because if you look at Fenway Park, I think there's like 36,000 seats and 10,000 of them are just flat out awful. Maybe more than that. Maybe 11,000 of them are, are just flat out awful. Maybe more than that. Maybe 11,000. Just once you're past, once you're in a right field and you go around that corner in the deep, deep right field and the bleachers, like there's just so many bad seats in Fenway, but, but it's hard to get in. And it's, it's almost like trying to get into the hot restaurant.

And I've never understood why a football team didn't just build like the 45 000 seat nfl arena and just gear it toward like the lower seats and just get rid of the upper deck they would say it's because well we want our fans to come but i don't think the fans care as much anymore i don't think they would feel left out i'm with you we get to maybe three years now depending on depending on the timing of the stadium here in la of this experiment which is what would football look like in a different scenario? In a 28,000. The Patriots stadium was like that before they built the new one.

And everyone likes the old one more. Even those metal benches, it was horrible. It was basically a round circle. And it was the center of hell. But there was great energy at those home games. And the energy is not the same, I don't think, at the new stadium. And you saw it at the Redskins stadium too.

I mean, you had RFK and then you went to that giant mausoleum. My dad gave up the season tickets this year because he just cannot get out to the Ralph John Maryland. 40 years. Yeah. Just too much. I'm fascinated by this soccer stadium they're building in downtown LA right next to Staples.

I think that idea makes a lot of sense. What is it, like 25,000? Yeah, I think, yes, exactly. And just an awesome idea. Like there's train service down there and now with the way the train has gone, you can get, even from the west side, you can come in, you can come in from the Hollywood Hills,

wherever, any other part of LA, you can kind of get there. But also like it's 15 to 20 to 25 minutes away from a lot of people in the heart of LA, you can kind of get there. But also, like, it's 15 to 20 to 25 minutes away from a lot of people in the heart of LA, Hollywood, people like that. Low number of seats. I just think it's going to work. And I would love to see them also put a baseball minor league team there, too.

So, me too. Here's what we're going to find out. We're going to find out if we've reached peak saturation of stadiums. US could bomb or build a stadium. Then you're going to have a football stadium on the west side of la where the rams and dodgers play you're going to have a big soccer stadium in carson where the galaxy play you're going to have balmer stadium on the west or arena on the west side you're going to

have the forum on the west side the rose bowl the coliseum dodger stadium hollywood bowl the new soccer stadium we're talking about we almost got 10 places where a giant artist could play. But this is all part of what's happening with Los Angeles. This is why all the chefs are moving out here. This is the fastest growing city in America, which is crazy because it was already the second biggest city. But now all we need is for the Snapchat stock lockup to expire in like a month. And then you're going to have all these rich techies fleeing to other parts of LA and starting their business.

Yeah. It's going to be great. When's that happening? It looks like about August 15th. You worked at Twitter for a long time. I did. What, two years? Three.

Three. You're in charge of commerce and a whole bunch of other stuff. Media for a little while. My heart beats for Twitter. I love it. We just did this Twitter show with them that I thought was really interesting. I like the way Twitter's thinking about stuff. And our show that we did, this Game of Thrones post-game show, I swear this isn't a promotional thing.

I'm more interested in the science behind it. The ability to watch Game of Thrones, go to Twitter where everybody's reacting to everything anyway. There's this post-game show on demand that's well done. This seems like the model going forward for

not just Twitter, but I think Facebook and a bunch of different mediums. This kind of on-demand, quickie, well-done, whatever, people reacting to stuff. And I'm starting to wonder, you and I were talking about Twitter. I was like, Twitter, they screwed up.

They screwed up their lead. They blew it. They had all these chances to innovate and they didn't. Now it actually feels like they're innovating. And meanwhile, whenever anything happens, people go to Twitter to find out what happened. It feels like they're coming back a little bit here. I know you're biased, but what do you think? Well, I'm super biased.

I don't know that Twitter ever went away, first of all. No, they never went away. Here's the thing. To know why I think Twitter has been what it can be for now, I would look at what is happening between Instagram and Snapchat. Basically, Facebook is the giant death star. And usually if you're a business in- What does that make Amazon?

In the social space. Yeah. When they turn their death ray on you, it's really freaking hard to compete because they've just got, that's the definition of a network effect. Like it has power, it is emote. They can, they've got better data than anybody.

So what you're seeing right now happen between instagram and snapchat is the power of facebook and the smart people at instagram are just copying copying copying but guess what zuck tried to do that with twitter and it failed yeah so twitter still owns real time like for all of the of the you know what's been written about and and the sort of accusations that twitter shot itself in the foot a lot, Twitter still owns real time. It hasn't, right? And you have now the President of the United States

using it as a platform to basically communicate to the rest of the world. For me- That's not a good thing. Well, look, here's the thing. For me, what's interesting about Twitter is that, and why they moved into this video strategy, is that it turns out that you don't have to be a subscriber to Twitter to see what Donald Trump writes about on Twitter. You can see it on CNN. You can see it on any other place.

That was the platform strategy that Twitter intentionally pursued and that helped it grow to hundreds of millions of people. But I think it probably was also the strategy that capped it because at some point there's people who don't have 9-11 PTSD like PTSD like like you and I do and don't have to know what's happening right in this moment. They can go on their other sources of news and see stuff that's happening. So the idea behind video was now we're going to put something that's exclusive and on Twitter where the conversation happens that then people want to come and be a part of. So that's been the challenge for them for 10 years, right? Is people are having conversations here. How do we keep them here and nudge them into other parts of our website?

But we're keeping them on the website. How do I expand the energy around that conversation and take it into video? Because what was happening is the conversations were starting on Twitter and then moving off Twitter. I think Woj is a great example, the Adrian Wojnarowski on ESPN. His Twitter feed, which he doesn't monetize, it's basically branding only for him and now for ESPN because they paid him.

But he breaks a story there, but then that launches reactions all over the internet. It just starts there, that's it. Right. So you look at something like that, it's like, well, how would that work if he's breaking that story, but then he's also keeping people there?

And I don't know how you solve that. Yeah. My point was just that once you took the expectation away from Twitter that it needed to be Facebook and that it could just be what it is, which is the place where the moment happens. Yeah. and done a great job, you know, I think in thinking about, okay, how do we make, expand on that moment and make it not just about the conversation, but also video that's happening live. And so I'm glad you guys are doing it. And I think the teams that are behind building that product

have done a really great job. I think it's good for Twitter that they shifted their thinking. It never made sense, 2010, 11, 12, where they were just like this is it if it ain't if it ain't broke don't fix it you know and yeah they were so afraid to tinker with it whereas you look at somebody like facebook and yeah facebook didn't make every lights out move but they made a lot of really smart moves and they always seem to be pushing and trying and and trying to be a year ahead instead of a year behind yeah same thing with espn espn was a was two three four five years behind on stuff and now it's coming back to bite them well facebook made the big bets you know

instagram was going to do a deal with twitter yeah and Zuck locked him in the room and got the deal done with Instagram. And then, you know, when Zuckerberg looked around and said, geez, messaging is taking off. I have got to be in messaging. He bought WhatsApp for, you know, at the time, you know, 19 plus billion dollars. And so he has been willing to take those massive bets to build sort of a constellation of apps around the big strong network that is facebook um so then the star wars 12 is going to be zuckerberg versus

bezos for the future of mankind they'll have owned everything at that point bezos's guns are so huge right now that he will destroy zuck in a in a in a in a mano a mano fight. Zuck is going around eating barbecue in the Midwest right now, going to every state. Like he's just eating and eating. My guess is he's going to come back, weigh in 400 pounds. And Bezos is just turning into this like superhuman. What happens when one of them locks,

locks the NBA in a room in like 2026, like a couple of years before the rights are up and just like, come here, we'll give you all our data. The same thing that's going to happen to the NFL sooner than that. We'll sell tickets for you. Yeah, the NFL's up in 2021, I think. So they lock it down in a room, and they just say, here's all the things we can do for you. We'll sell stuff.

We'll have data on everybody who loves your league, and we'll put you here, and we'll go overseas. Yeah. What happens is that they're going to win that business and if they want it they might not want we're going to start thinking about these companies as is very very different from from what they are today and the only question there is is are they getting too big does twitter get bought everybody's been wondering about this for years and years and years. I'm still too close to it. It's still too close to my heart for me to speculate too far on that. But what I know is that Jack is the best steward for that business.

He loves it. He gave a ton of his stock back to the company to give it to employees when he took over as CEO, which was just a straight up act of love and caring for the company. And Jack will guide it to the right outcome, whether that's standalone or whether there's an opportunity to land the plane somewhere else. I'm quite sure of that. Do you feel like there's much more optimism internally with Twitter than there was three years ago when people were like, fuck, what do we do? No, because people never said, fuck, what do we do? The amazing thing about working at Twitter is that you are at the center of something

happening in the world every single week. Every single week, whether it was what happened in Ferguson, whether it was the NBA finals, there is something that's happened. And then now in this moment, in the Trump era, I mean, it's just electric to be the center, the platform that is driving conversation that shapes the world. And so that's always been the mission

for why people work at Twitter. Yeah, there are ups and downs. And a company like Uber right now is feeling what we did at Twitter, which is that the tech press is all around them. And by the way, for good reason. And they're getting, you know, they're getting feces thrown at them left and right. And they're going to cocktail parties and people are going, oh, I'm sorry, what's going on? Oh, it must be so tough, right? But Dick Costolo always would say this as CEO of Twitter, he'd say, you know, it's never as bad on? Oh, it must be so tough, right? Yeah. But Dick Costolo always would say this as CEO of Twitter. He'd say, you know, it's never as bad on the inside as it looks like from the outside,

and it's never as good on the inside as it looks like from the outside. And so I think that the natural attrition that you saw at Twitter was because people in the Valley work for two years, and they move on. They're sort of mercenaries. There is definitely a sort of rejuvenated energy there because of what's happening. But I think it would be unfair to say that there hasn't always been that purpose mission driven reason to be at Twitter. I think it's a better product than it was. It's even just better to use, like being able to quote somebody's tweet and then have 140 character tweet on top of the tweet instead of the way the old way we used to do it or you would have to

edit the person's tweet that you were adding something to in front little things like that have been really good i think like their ability to play video better and all kinds of stuff and that's been jack's approach since he took he took over his view was twitter is great it already is great and if we do things to make it incrementally better um and iteratively better um the sum of the parts is is going to make an impact trolls and abuse and all that stuff they've they've been cracking down on they can still do better but at least it's heading in a good direction they're they're great people they're working hard on that it is i think the single biggest threat to the platform and uh and also the biggest threat to any potential buyer i would say i think that's probably the ability to monitor

abuse i think that's probably right twitter is here's what twitter is twitter is the sent a centralized database it's the largest database of real-time human conversation on Earth. It is the pulse of humanity. The Library of Congress literally documents and archives every tweet that gets sent. And what comes with that is the most wonderful parts of humanity and some of the worst. And the great thing about Twitter is that it gives every single user a voice. And occasionally the awful thing about Twitter is it gives every single user a voice. Like when we post this podcast and Big Ball's 69 and it's like, fuck Nathan, that guy

sucks. Thanks, Fart Sandwich. Fart Sandwich 3. Couldn't get in. Couldn't get in early enough to get just Fart Sandwich. Alright, we're done. Thanks. Yeah, I think we hit everything, right? We did. Alright. Thanks. Yeah, I think we hit everything, right? We did.

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post office again. Don't forget to check out th ringer.com only a couple weeks left with the old website the new website's coming and it looks nice i'm very excited i have a big website boner for our new website um don't forget about uh talk the thrones sunday night right after game of thrones on hbo on twitter go to at ringer go to hashtag talk the thrones you'll find us and uh and since tate's here tate did a new gm street with mike lombardi that's on the ringer. Go to hashtag talk to thrones. You'll find us. And, uh, and since Tate's here, Tate did a new GM street with Mike Lombardi. That's on the ringer NFL show. Congratulations, Tate.

Tita. Yeah. Tate, Tate's hosting multiple podcasts for us. Um, thank you, Nathan. We got to get him a house too.

I know we got him a house. Rocket mortgage is going to help him. Uh, thanks Nathan. Good hang. This was fun. We didn't, we didn't talk about what our daughters,

what, whether Instagram has defeated Snapchat with 12 and 13-year-old girls. That's next time. What's your 30-second answer? My 30-second answer is my daughter's getting massively hit on by boys on Instagram and I just want it all to stop.

But not Snapchat? Everywhere. Is she on Instagram more or Snapchat? Both. Make it stop. Instagram, at least, I feel like we can monitor better. They start these stealth Instagram accounts that we don't know about, though. That's a new thing that happens.

Yes. I'm following all this crap. Here's the truth. You give your children access to this so they can make small mistakes that aren't bad now and learn the rules of the road and understand that every venue they walk into is going to have a camera and you have to do your best and let them learn the language and then trust them to go speak the language in an intelligent way. How many times have you had the conversation with your daughter not to take a picture of a part of her body or a full body

shot and mail it to a boy? She has learned that through mistakes of other people in the network. So she, she has seen her friends screw up, get in trouble in school, get in trouble with other parents, which is why we let her on early to, to, to again, see other people screw up, make a little tiny mistake here and there so that when it really counts, they know what to do. I just bring it up all the time. We'll be at dinner. The waitress comes over. What do you have? I'll be like, I don't want my daughter to mail any pictures of her body to anybody else in her class. Burger. That sounds like a surefire way for her to rebel.

You don't want her. That sounds like a mail-in subscription to daddy issues. Your daughter turns 13 in two weeks? Two weeks. Mine is turning 12 and a half soon we are both just screwed we can talk about that another time thanks for listening to the BS Podcast

enjoy the weekend I don't have feelings within. On the wayside, I'm a person never wanted. I don't have feelings within.