The Best One Yet
BONUS 🍿 “The Entertainment Pod” — Our Best Entertainment stories from 2024
Tue, 24 Dec 2024
(Tom Cruise jumped on a chair when he heard this episode):#1. Netflix just gave itself the biggest Christmas gift of all… NFL football on Christmas Day. (5/17/2024)#2. Sabrina Carpenter dropped 7 versions of the same song… because the music industry took a strategy from the ice cream industry. (7/22/2024)#3. The fastest-growing genre in books is “Romantasy”... Romantic Fantasies are driving book sales with pixie dust. (7/15/2024)Share this episode with your buddy in LA… or DM it to Oprah.We’ll be back on Monday, January 6th, with our regular TBOY podcasts. But look out for more bonus pods from us dropping over the holidays.And if you crave more business storytelling from us? Check out our weekly deepdive show: “The Best Idea Yet”: The untold origin stories of the products you’re obsessed with. From the McDonald’s Happy Meal to Birkenstock’s sandal to Nintendo’s Super Mario Brothers to Sriracha. New 45-minute episodes drop weekly. Subscribe to The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinks to listen.—-----------------------------------------------------Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts FOR MORE NICK & JACK: Newsletter: https://tboypod.com/newsletter Connect with Nick: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/ Connect with Jack: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/ SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ Subscribe to our new (2nd) show… The Best Idea Yet: Wondery.fm/TheBestIdeaYetLinksEpisodes drop weekly. It’s The Best Idea Yet.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What are the top entertainment stories of the year?
This is Nick. This is Jack. And today's entertainment pod is the best one yet. The top three entertainment stories you need to know today. Besties, this is episode two of our holiday bonus week. I guess you could say it's the sequel of our holiday bonus week, Jack. I like what you did there because this episode is the best of entertainment. All of it.
Our best stories of the year on media, music, and film. So yetis, send this episode to your buddy who lives in lovely Los Angeles. Better yet, send it to your buddy who's always quoting Maximus Decimus Meridius. Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? You will be entertained by our three stories. Jack, what are three stories for today's bonus pod?
For our first story, we're going back to May 17th, when Netflix just gave themselves the biggest Christmas gift of all, NFL football on Christmas Day. But Netflix isn't ready to buy football rights. Netflix is renting them. For our second story, we're going to July 22nd. Why did Taylor Swift drop 34 different versions of the same album?
And Jack, why did Sabrina Carpenter drop seven different versions of the same song? Because both were inspired by the ice cream industry. Music was inspired by ice cream. And our third and final story. We're going to July 15th when we covered the fastest growing genre in books. This is wild. Romantasy. Romantasy. Romantic fantasies are driving book sales with Pixie Dust. Steamy hot Pixie Dust.
I knew you would make things weird. I was ready with that octave. But yet he's before we had that wonderful mix of stories. You're going to want to lick that book.
I don't.
I'm sorry. You never say lick on this podcast. Great mix of stories. The most fascinating entertainment trend of this year. It wasn't licking. It was kissing. It was kissing. Actually, it was a lack. of kissing. Because get this, Hollywood is in a kissing recession. It turns out on-screen kissing in movies has fallen 40% since the year 2000. We're talking about a smooch scarcity.
A snogging shortage. And we did a whole story on that this year. Not enough kissing. We actually covered a wild range of pop business stories from La La Land over to Broadway. Rotten Tomatoes gave our coverage two thumbs up. We're very proud of it. For example, Deadpool and Wolverine had the best box office sales ever for an R-rated movie.
While Wicked was so popular, it caused a shortage of the color green. True story. No surprise though, the whole summer was filled with sequels. Moana 3 Part 2, the prequel to the sequel. Dune III, before the Dune. We even studied romcomonomics because there were big profits in romcom movies. Hey, McConaughey, there's a new chin in town. Yes. His name's Glenn Powell.
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Chapter 2: How did Netflix secure NFL games for Christmas Day?
Yeti, CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, each of those TV companies is the proud owner of the NFL. Because each of those legacy TV networks... pay over $2 billion a year to get one NFL game per week. It's like they're homeowners. You know, like NBC's got like a 10-year mortgage to buy 10 years of NFL rights. It's like NBC owns the NFL. But Netflix isn't paying $2 billion a year or even $1 billion a year.
Netflix is paying a reported $300 million for three years of Christmas Day football. So instead of buying 10 years of football, Netflix is renting just one day, Christmas, for the next three years. If Netflix's rental goes well, maybe it'll buy. Maybe it'll upgrade to buying a piece of the NFL like the other networks have. But for right now, Netflix is just renting.
And Netflix will get 30 million households enjoying that rental on Christmas Day. With this Netflix NFL deal, it shows the power of renting. Yetis, let's go back to July 22nd, 2024. Because you're not a true fan unless you've bought all three albums, both vinyls, plus Taylor's version. The music industry came up with a really interesting new strategy. Jack, let's jump into it.
Taylor Swift, Sabrina Carpenter, and all the cool music artists today have a new growth hack to scale their songs. And the strategy is inspired by ice cream. This entire music story was inspired by a pint of ice cream. But Jack, before we kick off this story, can we hit the record books? What kind of numbers are we seeing out there in music land, baby? Taylor Swift just set another record.
Longest streak at the top of the Billboard album charts. ding, ding, ding. Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poet's Department is number one for 13 straight weeks. That's a whole bunch of fortnights, Jack. It's still number one, and no album has been number one in America, I think globally actually, for so long. Besties, after three months, two and a half million album equivalents have been sold.
Jack, can you sprinkle on more context to that number, please? That's a lot of albums sold. In fact, it is more albums sold than the next nine best-selling albums of this year. Combined. Combined. In fact, 2% of the entire music industry sales right now are Taylor Swift songs. Nick, it's like if Shohei Ohtani hit 500 home runs this year, more than the next nine guys combined. You know what I mean?
What we're saying is that the prophecy is GDP. But then Nick and I noticed a strange part of this story. This is where things get odd, Yetis, because Taylor Swift published one album, The Tortured Poets Department, but we see 34 different versions of that album. Because on drop day, fans could choose from four different versions of the same album.
The only difference was one different bonus track at the end. And then Taylor Swift dropped 10 physical albums as records, CDs, or cassettes, each with a different voice memo delivered by Taylor herself. And then finally, the Anthology album had a whopping 31 tracks on this thing. I guess that one had more bonus tracks. Jack, I feel like we're living in the Matrix here.
How can there be 31 different versions of the same thing? Neo, what's going on, man? I actually feel like we're living in the summer of 2020. All these variants. COVID got us used to different variants, while Taylor Swift just whipped up a whole bunch of different variants of the same underlying album.
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Chapter 3: Why did Taylor Swift release 34 versions of her album?
According to the Dairy Foods Association, the majority of ice cream flavors have either a vanilla base or a chocolate base. But there's variance. If you add Oreo to vanilla, you have cookies and cream. And if you add cookie to vanilla, it's suddenly cookie dough. Ice cream brands have introduced multiple variants of the flavor To drive sales. To give us variety.
Because you're more likely to buy a second scoop if there are different flavor options out there. And now music is doing the same thing. Creating multiple flavors from the same core creation. It's the same strategy. Honestly, kind of surprised it took music so long. Like, Ben and Jerry figured this out like 50 years ago, man.
And those variations have turned Spotify into like your own scoop shop of music options. Because different flavors of the same track are all we're seeing from the top artists. It's keeping the number ones at number one longer. The newest music growth hack was inspired by ice cream.
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Yetis, let's go back to July 15th, 2024.
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Chapter 4: What is the fastest-growing book genre in 2024?
Just five publishers control 80% of all book sales. Like Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin Books. Those publishers, they control almost the entire book industry, 80%. But one publishing house owns the Romantasy category. That's true. And that one publishing house has jumped on the romantic-y dragon and it is surging. It's called Bloomsbury, a British publisher that is publicly traded.
Their stock is up 50% this year because that Court of Thorns and Roses book may be on my bedside table. Those elves are hot and this company's stock is feeling even hotter. But we're not going to stop there, are we, Circe? So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies in the publishing industry and the finance industry? The book industry is structured just like venture capital.
Yeti's wild stat, Jack and I discovered, according to a court filing, 90% of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies. In fact... Half of books sell fewer than 12 copies, which means that just 10% of books are profitable and 90% probably lose money. Those 10% hold up the entire industry. They must make the profits to keep the whole industry going. Now, here's the interesting thing, besties.
That sounds surprising, but there's actually a precedent here, isn't there, Jack? That precedent is venture capital. It's the same concept in the venture capital industry. If you're a VC, you know that only 10% of the companies you invest in will succeed. The other 90% will fail. But when those 10% succeed, they carry the whole venture capital firm.
In VC, you're hoping that you're investing in an Uber. In book publishing, you're hoping you're investing in a Moby Dick. And that is why Andreessen Horowitz looks a lot like Simon & Schuster. Because the publishing and venture capital industries share the same approach when it comes to risk and reward.
They bet on a bunch of good options, but they depend on 10% to hit it big. Yetis, those are the three best entertainment stories of 2024.
But now, it's time for something even more entertaining. It is time for the best fact yet on entertainment. Trivia. Guess what industry is bigger than the film, television, and music industries combined? Hint. Jack, can we get a hint on this one? It's another sector within media. Ooh, I like this. And it's not Tamagotchi, is it? What is it, man? Video games.
Video games, bigger than film, TV, and music combined. With three billion active video gamers, it's the hidden giant of entertainment. Yeah, and it's not hidden in your parents' basement, Jack, is it? No, because the average video gamer is actually 32 years old, probably older than you think.
And each successive generation is playing more video games and consuming less traditional media than the last generation. So Hollywood gets the red carpet. Yeah. Gaming gets the green carpet. If you know what I mean. And you get an Oscar for that analogy, Jack. Yetis, you look fantastic for today's bonus pod.
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Chapter 6: How is the music industry using strategies from ice cream?
Their stock is up 50% this year because that Court of Thorns and Roses book may be on my bedside table. Those elves are hot and this company's stock is feeling even hotter. But we're not going to stop there, are we, Circe? So, Jack, what's the takeaway for all our buddies in the publishing industry and the finance industry? The book industry is structured just like venture capital.
Yeti's wild stat, Jack and I discovered, according to a court filing, 90% of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies. In fact... Half of books sell fewer than 12 copies, which means that just 10% of books are profitable and 90% probably lose money. Those 10% hold up the entire industry. They must make the profits to keep the whole industry going. Now, here's the interesting thing, besties.
That sounds surprising, but there's actually a precedent here, isn't there, Jack? That precedent is venture capital. It's the same concept in the venture capital industry. If you're a VC, you know that only 10% of the companies you invest in will succeed. The other 90% will fail. But when those 10% succeed, they carry the whole venture capital firm.
In VC, you're hoping that you're investing in an Uber. In book publishing, you're hoping you're investing in a Moby Dick. And that is why Andreessen Horowitz looks a lot like Simon & Schuster. Because the publishing and venture capital industries share the same approach when it comes to risk and reward.
They bet on a bunch of good options, but they depend on 10% to hit it big. Yetis, those are the three best entertainment stories of 2024.
But now, it's time for something even more entertaining. It is time for the best fact yet on entertainment. Trivia. Guess what industry is bigger than the film, television, and music industries combined? Hint. Jack, can we get a hint on this one? It's another sector within media. Ooh, I like this. And it's not Tamagotchi, is it? What is it, man? Video games.
Video games, bigger than film, TV, and music combined. With three billion active video gamers, it's the hidden giant of entertainment. Yeah, and it's not hidden in your parents' basement, Jack, is it? No, because the average video gamer is actually 32 years old, probably older than you think.
And each successive generation is playing more video games and consuming less traditional media than the last generation. So Hollywood gets the red carpet. Yeah. Gaming gets the green carpet. If you know what I mean. And you get an Oscar for that analogy, Jack. Yetis, you look fantastic for today's bonus pod.
Jack, I know we still got the makeup on from today's recording, but who do you think they should send this to for today? I think they should send it to their buddy who saw Gladiator 2 and thinks it had gratuitous violence. Because that's what I think about it. Or send it to your buddy who saw Wicked and wants to be popular. Oh, that's good. Euler, if you know, you know.
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