Hello! Picking things up where we left off… the now is a once in a generation opportunity. And that’s coming from someone who despises hyperbole. The window to strike shortens with each passing day. It’s time to build toward a future you believe in, do it for yourself, and your next of kin.
Where do you think the industry, the world, is going to be in five to ten years…
Ten years ago, A24 hadn’t yet released its first film, and Netflix hadn’t yet dropped House of Cards for all to binge. Ethereum hadn’t been founded. Fortnite battle royales were just barely in development. Disney was still kicking the tires on LucasFilm. Multichannel networks on YouTube were all the rage. Social media was considered cool and innovative. And I was still in university.
A lot can change in a decade, and this one is going to be nothing short of monumental. This is where it all comes together. A global, accessible, tech + media convergence.
As my new friend Joe aptly put it in the Telegram group*, distribution is now digital but production is still analogue. The cost of failure is too high (for now..), even when we have the best, cheapest and simplest, filmmaker and developer tools at our fingertips. The only thing standing in the way is the industry itself, which purposefully keeps itself imprisoned in a glass box.
But really, it’s just a glass ceiling, that’s meant to be shattered. Democratization.
The broader issues are what we’ve let transpire over the last decade or two. The streaming and social era was a rug pull, a heist. It has totally morphed and warped our behaviors -- our viewing and spending habits. Our relationships with people and art. We’re moving beyond the information age, and need to take back control. The audience is more unconsciously sophisticated than ever before.
The people are the problem, and the solution. Tune in, turn on, drop out. Rally cry.
We must make stories that stand for something, that have something to say. Sublimity. Give the people something to talk about, a new concept to research, or culture to experience. If you have nothing valuable to add, don’t say anything. Create staying power, through stories of substance. With spectacle.
And never preach from the pulpit.
To that end, the chat group* is now home to about a dozen ~multidimensional~ thinkers sounding off on similar topics. I generally tease newsletter subjects before writing about them here. Message me if you want to join -- I will prob cap it at ~25 people before it gets too unwieldy. It’s just a fun experiment; nothing to lose. Gotta say, it’s rewarding having healthy conversations that spoke off this thing. I’ll likely be swimming around there in the weeks to come.
Once the newsletter comes to its natural end with issue 250, future “issues” will be more thoughtful. A mix between educational essay and op-ed, and generally in service of something larger. We must equip the next generation with information and the tools to be lethal. New norms. Stay tuned.
Where do you think you might be in the world in five to ten years?
Make an impact, bet on yourself.
That’s all for now. Thanks for reading. Auteurship awaits. See ya next week. 8 left.
Tech
Murf, synthetic speech for content, raised $1.5m TC
Immortal Game, web3 chess play to earn, raised $15.5m TC
Nvidia’s AI model 2D – 3D assets (nuts) Engadget
Niantic’s VPS for the browser NL
Chiru, makers of Azuki NFT, raised $30m (pls explain) Block
Random Games, community owned games, raised $7.5m BW
Mojo, bet on athletes, raised another $25m TC
Slime, kids learn science, raised $5.8m (into it) AW
Hume, music avatar things raised $11m Forbes
Augment, personalized AI, raised $3.5m TC
Theorycraft, game dev behind Loki, raised $50m VB
Lobus, art mgmt on chain, raised $6m Med
Neil Stephenson’s Lamina1 whitepaper PDF
WalMart uses AR tech to try on clothes Input
Lynk building space-based texting, sat to phone TC
SpinLaunch, centrifugal force to launch sats, raised &0m TC
OpenAI’s Whisper speech recog OAI
Tile rolls out QR lost n found stickers TC
TrovaTrap, group travel experience mgmt. booker, raised $15m TC
Boddle Learning, educational games, raised $3m BizJ
MeWe building a chain-based social platform, 20m users Axios
LinkedIn conducting social experiments (I nuked mine) NYT
CA sues Amzn over third party contracting Polit
Media
TodayTix acq Secret Cinema for $100m (prob less, ppl round up) Dead
LiveNation selling Club Passes for venues Hype
YouTube to cut in Shorts creators to ad rev Var
Rihanna Super Bowl halftime Var
Spotify video podcast tools to pirate movies Fastco
Amazon’s live audio app launches creator fund THR
Google taking on Dolby w open media formats Prot
Paramount deal w Epix upsetting talent Bberg
Imax buys Ssimwave video tech $21m THR
Spotify launches audiobooks, 300k strong THR
Shutterstock/Getty removing AI photos Vice
A look at YouTub’es Create Music Group and royalties Bboard
YouTube pays $6b to music industry in last 12 mos YTblog
Shadowy news sites pushing biased politics (all of them?) NGT
Sony Music and TikTok disputes MBW
Toy cos trying to be cool on social (if you try, you wont be) Axios
Colleges embracing NFTs of college athletes BI
Halsey and Live Nation partner more on around-venue activations Fastco
Brands creating original songs on TikTok (viral sounds are real) MDive
Nflx estimates ad-supported tier will have 40m subs by next year WSJ
Entertainment
J Dilla doc in the works from Questlove (yess!) THR
Apple two season order of Vince Gilligan’s next show Var
HBO orders Scanners from Cronenber / Demange (go Sarah!) THR
Nflx reducing rates on comedy specials WSJ
A24 acq Instinct, preps one-night only screening room release Var
Jim Cameron rejects notes from Fox execs (love this) Var
Nflx acq Team Downey doc Sr THR
Chloe Zhao first look tv Searchlight Var
Illumination new label with Mike Moon call Moonlight Dead
Neon Super LTD acq Sanctuary, dominatrix thriller Var
HBO Max orders Way Down with Sarah Paulson to lead Var
Open Road takes US rights to Kandahar for 8 figs Dead
HBO Max orders roller skating comedy from Waithe, Pharrell Var
Picturestart options Iron Widow for YA franchise Var
Daluyong (Filipino) and Momo (Singapore) pact (v bullish on SEA-set stories) Dead
Wattpad and Spotify SEA podcasts deal Var
Collaborative
White paper on human motion tracking for simulated avatars and AR PDF
Hovercats multi-player and own-able crossword games (go Eli!) CNET
Last of Us teaser trailer YT
Goldman report on music streaming GS
Wild Bunch’s co-founder on film strat Dead
Lessons from a password cracker Markup
Copyright for diffusion of AI art and comics ArsT
AI critics might end up serving AI (I fear) EHss
The explosion of personal brands post-creator economy Reboot
Inarritu’s Bardo trailer YT
New Zelda trailer (when tv show?) Polygon
NASA’s DART worked (too sick) CNN
Video Game M&A watchlist RW
Candle Media hiring assistant to Brent and Kendall (trying to place a mole, please send over your best candidates) Linkedin
UCLA study says the teens don’t care about aspirational content (they don’t know Euphoria is actually aspirational) Dead
Hellraiser trailer YT
Replika and AI intimacy Every
Crystal Castles song using a ’95 TTS program Tiktok
Sequoia VCs with GPT3 on generative AI for creative class (hmm) SCap
Fragmentation of A&R marketing and scenes Midia
Russia surveillance state NYT
Dimon calls crypto ponzis (most are honestly) Bberg
Li Jin on selling tokens then creating (no.) Every
NFL trying to make VR happen (still?) Bberg
Bjork ancestress music vid YT
AI creations as magic tricks NotBoring
Decision to Leave trailer YT
Tropic first clip Dead
Capitalism with Capitalism Boring
Co-parenting with Armie Hammer Cut
A look at interactive audio Med
Fun Zoom OBS pitch to direct Final Destination (we have one of these for a show I’m doing) THR
AI and the Death of VFX CorridorCrew
GIFs are cringe (boomerangs are back tho) Guard
Reynolds teams up with Creatively to help launch careers with tiny grants Fastco
Listen: Ethan Hawke on Smartless pod Apple
Read: Vitalik on DAOs not being corps VB
Watch: Human movement and experience through AI Generation