Who Cares About Thin Phones?

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34:57All right, welcome back. We got one real phone and one not yet real phone to talk about. Which one should we do first? The real one. I agree. I think we should do the real one first. The real phone is we got first hands-on impressions with the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. I saw you wouldn't go to reach for it. I have here the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which by comparison is a mega thick phone at 8.2 millimeters. Jeez. It's crazy. So we got to see it. We got confirmed specs. We got confirmed dimensions for the first time when we saw it. And I still, like, even looking at it right in front of me before they let me pick it up, I was like, it's thin, but it's not that much thinner.

35:40And then I said the dimensions, they said 5.8 millimeters thick. And I was like, okay, yeah, it's thinner, but whatever. And then you hold it and you're like, oh, whoa, this is really, really thin. Really? Yeah, it's weird. Even on video of my own hands holding it, it doesn't look that much thinner, but it is very noticeably thinner to hold. So that's what Edge is. The Edge is a phone that lives somewhere between the S25 and S25 Plus. and the S25 Ultra. It's$1099 US. It's more expensive. It's more expensive than the Plus. It's less expensive than the theoretically brand new Ultra. And it's just thinner.

36:18It has the camera from the Ultra, the primary camera from the Ultra. That's weird. It has a 12 megapixel ultra wide. It has no telephoto. Okay. And it has a 3 ,900 milliamp hour battery. Titanium rails. Yeah, it's just a thin, thin phone. So question. Yeah. It's not silicon carbon? It's not. Yeah. Let's play the sound. Which, what? I don't know, like a sad one. Just do one. Any sounds? No, like a sad one, like a trombone. Bad. No, don't do that. That worked pretty well. That's good. That was good. Yeah, it's not silicon carbon. And people asked about this, and we got a no from Samsung. And I kind of wonder if it was how much bigger the battery could have been.

36:58Because the obvious comment is, hey, Samsung, we all just want a phone with better battery at the same thickness and all of your new phones don't have silicon carbon if you did do this ultra thin phone if you did silicon carbon it could have had the same battery life and that would have been fine but they didn't so that was a little bit of a head scratcher really weird maybe the next version maybe some i don't i don't know when they plan on moving to that i think it is a scale question um if you ever look at the numbers and how how much volume these silicon and carbon battery phones are. The Samsung would be by far the biggest, so maybe they can't quite secure quality batteries at that scale yet.

37:39I have so many things that I want you to test during the review. Cause like, I want to know, does it get hotter when you're charging it? Cause there's less thickness. Yeah. So I said, so I, I would say watch the, watch the impressions video if you haven't already seen it. We'll link it in the show notes. My main questions, I mean, obviously there's less room in the phone, which means, okay, less battery, probably less room for thermal. I mean, not probably, obviously less room for thermal solutions. So is it going to get warm? It charges at 25 watts, which is the same as the S25 Plus. But the S25 Plus had a 4 ,900 milliamp hour battery, and this is 3 ,900.

38:14Yeah. And it is, yeah, it's just, it's so thin. Silicon Carbon is the perfect opportunity for this. Yeah. Seems like a big mess. Sounds like their easy upgrade for next year. Yeah. I wonder about scale. I'll be thinking ahead, man. So that is the Edge. I'm curious to review the phone it's going to come out I know for a fact the battery will be worse than all the rest of the S25 lineup because it's the same chip the same screen it's the same everything else it's just a smaller battery so how much worse is TBD and then the other question is who is this for and will they actually be okay with this phone and that part is tricky I think there's a theoretical person out there that does want the camera from the ultra the main camera and does want to upgrade from the base s25s but doesn't want a thick large phone with a stylus that they don't have to carry around it's not even thick i don't know who this person is or how many of this person exists but is it could be a good fit i just think if you weren't sacrificing arguably one of the most important things in the phone yeah if they were able to fit the same capacity it would make sense because it would be like i'm paying the extra money for the extra flashiness of it being thinner but i'm not really sacrificing much but now you're sacrificing a lot and you have to pay more money for a feature that nobody asked for i think this is the big question is going to be does apple have the same angle and do they secure silicon carbon at their scale that's a great question because apple is going to ship a lot of iPhones like they usually do probably more than Samsung will ship this S25 Edge.

40:00Are they going to have silicon carbon in that or are they also not going to have silicon carbon? I don't think so. They never say anything about their battery size. They're consistently the smallest battery sizes. They seem to not care. They have software efficiency. That's what makes it a hard sell for me because if you're Apple I feel like the magic of that is you have to be able to go we did this amazing magical Apple thing where we have a thinner phone that has the same battery. Which you could do a silicon carbon and not say silicon carbon yeah you could just go we had this magic i still don't think they do it and i think you're probably right we should bet because i think they do it i if i have to go pure logic on samsung couldn't i know they would want to right it makes too much sense samsung couldn't makes me think that apple also can't here's my other reasoning why this has a 3900 milliamp hour battery the iphone 16 has a 3200 milliamp hour battery so if you can fit a 3900 milliamp into this small one you can also fit a 32 million wire i don't think they're going to want to make the battery that much bigger so so they can already fit what they had or is that no there's a regular 16 this is a tall phone though right like the the air the air edge sorry the edge is big the edge is the same size as the s25 plus plus yeah Yeah, it's still 32 between 39.

41:18Like, what is the iPhone 16? So I think you're right about battery size, but iPhones have always had relatively small battery capacities compared to Android phones because they're so optimized that they don't have to have that raw capability. 16 is 3500, sorry. So I think it will be smaller, but I still think relative to the larger iPhones, it's going to be a smaller battery. And it has to be because of how thin it is. And I think that's going to make the battery life worse. And I think they have to either justify that or fix it. So it will probably be a 2700 milliamp hour battery in the iPhone Air.

41:58Then what do they do? Well, if we want to talk about the iPhone Air, one thing they're already getting rid of, according to this case manufacturer leak, they're getting rid of one of the cameras on the iPhone Air. Yeah. So there is more room in there already. Back to one camera. One camera and a pixel visor. Okay. This is the also thing. The thing that I'm trying to figure out is where will they position it in the lineup? Because Samsung just put the edge right in the middle of their lineup. Apple has used the word Air before to mean the bottom of the lineup. Yeah. And I think they might do that considering what we've seen from these leaks, which is one camera.

42:35It feels like it's the bottom of the lineup. Wait, isn't Air for the iPad in between the regular iPad? and the Pro. So with the iPad, it's the base iPad, then the iPad Air, then the iPad Pro. So it's like, it's not the Pro, but it's the shape of a Pro, right? That's what they usually do. Like it's fancier and it's flashier, but it isn't as powerful as the Pro model. But with the MacBooks, at the bottom is the Air, and then there's the MacBook Pro above that. So the Air is the bottom and it's the thinnest and lightest, and that's what Air meant. And then you have Pro above it as you need more power.

43:09And so the baseline that most people buy is the Air. So which one of those do they do? With me, when I see single camera, I think baseline. I think, I mean, the SE has, or the 16E is the only one with one camera right now. So if the Air is gonna have one camera and then the base has two cameras and the Pro has three cameras, to me, that hierarchy makes sense. It makes sense, but if you think about it as less of how many cameras it has and how many cameras did it take away, Samsung took away a camera, but put it above a phone that has three cameras, which is weird. Yeah. Yeah. Which is strange.

43:44It's funny that you went to how many cameras does it have? One feels like the bottom. And I first thought of how many cameras did they take away and where can it go? I guess Samsung is less clear about like Pro has the most cameras because, well, the Ultra has an extra, extra telephoto. And then the S25s have a single telephoto. And this Edge has no telephoto. I have a take. Okay. Okay. So I think that Apple is way more fashion forward and like, do you have the new thing forward, right? Like the Samsung people who, the people who buy Samsung phones are either people who just need a phone and just go to the carrier store and just buy the Android thing because they know Samsung, the brand, or they're like the power users who want to buy the ultra.

44:27And they know that the ultra is consistently one of the best Android phones of the year and they want the most powerful thing. and so the the error for them is like there's not really that big of a group of samsung users who are like i want to show off to people that i've got the thinnest newest thing whereas apple consistently tries to slightly tweak the look of something just to make sure people know you have the new one totally like with the the ultra 2 watch it's just black yeah exactly right that's how you know and so i think the air for apple they they can charge more for because people are going to be more willing to pay for something that is clearly newer than samsung users are who just want something that is better and don't care as much about it being newer what i'll fight back on that is is according to this other they show this case manufacturer autofly also showed the iphone 17 pro which is a totally different back as well so it kind of feels like the entire lineup is going to be newer for sure for showing so then all no matter what you buy i think that's thing i think that's the take because if the iphone 17 air the only things that we know about it is it has less battery and less cameras how do you charge more for it so i think because all of the new iphone 17s have this new visor aesthetic then that's their aesthetic thing to be like oh you have the new one and then it'll be single camera thin one is the base dual camera is the mid and then three cameras is the can you believe that they just released the e and now they're going to do this and then they're going to have the fold next year how many iphones are we going to freaking have hearing that but like samsung has 17 million phones like we never complain but it's like oh the iphone is usually only three phones but now when they have five it's like a it's a lot i feel like arguably part of the reason that a lot of people who don't want to think about their purchase by iPhones is because it's like the lineup is you don't have to use a single brain cell to decide what phone you want.

46:26That's true. Yeah. You just go and it's like, here's how much I want to spend. Exactly. And then, okay, they've got a phone at your price. Although with Samsung, it's like, do you want to spend$99? Do you want to spend$119? Do you want to spend$149? Do you want to spend$229? Because they have a phone at every single price. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Where with Apple, you walk in and you're like, all right, we've got 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1000, 11, 12, and 13. So pick one. Right. So they're going to have like Like a folding one that's even higher. And maybe the Air slots in somewhere too. I feel like, I think that they are going to say it's gonna have the same battery life.

46:57And because they are going to do that, I think it is going to be more expensive than the regular iPhone, but less than the Pro. So you're going Silicon Carbon. Yeah. Okay. That's my guess. All right. Oh, I just wanted to say I'm constantly confused as the person editing these videos trying to figure out the hierarchy of what phone is which is a total nightmare. Yeah. And if you skip a year, you don't pay attention. Suddenly there's something new. Yeah. Yeah. Air has more than one meaning in Apple land already, which is why it's not like a guaranteed sure thing where they're going to put this one.

47:30Yeah. Do you know the we're not allowed to make basketball references on the podcast anymore? Why? I thought we were only everyone likes that. Yeah. Yeah. Everyone sure loves when we make basketball. There's a lot of comments. But to reference another sport that no one said we're not allowed to talk about yet. Colin Chapman. the founder of Lotus. What's Lotus? A car company that competes in F1. Oh, no, they don't. They don't anymore. Lotus? Yeah. When did they stop? I don't know. That's Gemini. Fake fan. That's the guy who said the wrong thing to start. No, no, no, no, no. Anyway, he has this quote talking about the Lotus F1 cars of the 60s, where he says, he talks about his design philosophy and he says, simplify and add lightness.

48:22It's never take stuff away to make the car lighter. It's always add lightness. And I feel like that is the Apple philosophy with what they put air on. Like we're gonna add more and it's gonna be less. The Renault Sport Formula One team, which later became Alpine. Yeah, it said the Lotus stopped in 2015. They got sold to Renault. It was purchased by Renault, and then Renault is Alpine. A fake fan. I'm the real F1 fan here, everybody. Taking the chicane back to Chicago. Oh, my God. What is that? What is chicane? An attempted F1 segway. Is that a racer? I got it. I understood it. Chicane is actually the most winning F1 driver in history.

49:08His name is Chicane. Chicane? What? Yeah. And he's just stellar. Yeah. 68 championships. He's going to believe this. You have to stop messing with me. There's no way that I can tell whether or not this is real or not. He's going to believe this. 68 championships. We're just kidding. We've been talking about basketball the whole time. Yeah. Chiquette is a basketball player. I literally would have believed that if you had not. Back to the iPhones. Kevin Durant, baby. Kevin Durant. Yeah. I agree with David that I think this will be a middle of the lineup. I don't think this is cheapest. and I also think it will have the same battery life but not be silicon carbide but that's because the battery life's just all day battery life stop asking questions it's all day the day might be December 25th and it only is the day till 5 o 'clock but it's an all day battery life what if it is worse battery life but they just still say all day that is so real we all know that's what's gonna happen right I would just be insulted if I was an Apple customer and they were like Like, yeah, here's our much, much thinner phone that has much less battery.

50:12But it's the same all day battery. If it is worse, though, what older iPhone are they going to like? You know how like with the 16 either, like the iPhone 12, like are they going to be like compared to the iPhone 7? Compared to Ellis's iPhone 12 mini. Speaking of like 2000 milliamp hour 12 mini. Speaking of old iPhones, I was trying and failing to switch back to Android this weekend. because iMessage is just the worst thing ever and trying to deregister it. Yeah, it's a great service that is horrible in every other way. I was trying to deregister it and get RCS working. And anyway, Apple has a manual, like deregister your account from iMessage page on their website where you can put in your phone number and it theoretically puts it through the servers even though it didn't do it for me.

51:01I don't trust that. The phone they show on that is an iPhone 5. Really? they've intentionally not updated that page since the iphone 5 because they're like yeah we'll give you the resource but you know we don't want you to use it yeah we don't want you to feel like we're prioritizing this yeah so yeah that's why i have two phones because i just i need to ask you about that later but anyway that's a whole nother thing i'm surprised that page doesn't have the like are you sure you want to go away from this it's scary out there not control what happens on android and then it texts like all of your contacts automatically like david's a loser um okay well we're gonna take a hard left turn just like you would through the chicane just like you would if you were left and a right on a run while you were wearing a whoop a whoop did you guys follow this at all this week i did it's pretty funny it's really if you on right now search on google um whoop 5.0 you get three uh three links all one day apart that goes uh whoop wants everyone to give a whoop about their new band then it goes whoop angers users over free upgrade promises whoop backpedals on a paid upgrade whoops so whoops whoops sorry let's just define what a whoop is for people that might not know uh it's a smart watch for people who don't want the watch yeah which smart bracelet it is a smart bracelet which you know i say fitness band and it's it's specific i i don't wear one so correct me if i'm wrong but it's specifically focused on recovery right right like that's what sort of sets it apart that's sort of it's like headlining features or recovery score basically like the body battery that's a no that's that's a garment body batteries garments i take it my idea though i think whoop i'm sure they didn't started but they were very focused on recovery and training like to start and i think a lot of ones caught up which i'll talk about later but yes that's their whole thing everyone thinks whoop kind of has like the best performance metrics yes right but yeah it's a there's no time there's no anything on the actual device um it's a bracelet but i like seeing the time it kind of looks like a slap bracelet it does look like a slap bracelet uh andrew do you want to break down the drama Sure, I'll go.

53:25Well, let's start it off with what they released, which is the Whoop 5.0. Actually, they released the Whoop 5.0 and the Whoop MG, which stands for medical grade. These new devices, what? Milligram. They offer new bands. There's leather options, which are not backwards compatible with old devices. And one of the big things they release is new tiers of subscription. So Whoop is famously, because the device itself is pretty simple, So much of it comes in the software and the algorithm that they're playing with all the different metrics. And it's super expensive. You usually are buying like one or two year subscriptions to it, paying in advance to get discounts on that.

54:05And you upgrade as you go with the subscriptions and they're not cheap. But notably, you don't need you never needed to buy a new Whoop if you had the subscription. So if you had a Whoop 1, Whoop 2, whatever, when the new one would come out, you were supposed to get the band for free because the subscription is so expensive. yeah the band the little uh the actual not just the band the actual tracker to that like connects sorry i meant the yeah yeah um and so there's different tiers now so there's depending on the tier and depending on which device you have since there's two different ones they all do different things they're either 199 a year 239 a year or 359 a year and they include different yeah tracking or whatever you want to say um i'm sure if you're really into this you like all the different ones but uh yeah i don't really care about anything other than the the lowest tier yeah um and then so like what david said or actually real quick i wanted to say something because i think it's very funny when you look at these memberships there's a little link that says additional medical information below which basically just brings you to four different asterisks about how all these different things are not actual for medical use which we all agree on But then calling something the medical grade version and then immediately saying this is not for medical use felt weird.

55:22Just don't call it the medical grade version. Anyways. We're using the same components as they use at the hospital, but it hasn't actually been certified. And like the stuff we're giving you doesn't necessarily mean we're giving you all the correct information. Right. Actual doctors. This is not financial advice. Yeah. Basically. Basically. It's literally that. Pretty much that. But the backlash comes from when they announced this, they showed that you could extend your membership for 12 months and receive the new hardware, or you can pay a one-time upgrade fee, which was either$49 for the 5.0 or$79 for the new hardware.

55:57The issue is right before they announced this, and up to within, I think, two months of when, The Verge posted this screenshot from their website as late as, it was like March 28th, so not that long ago. and on their website it says just like other memberships whoop is committed to releasing new and regular updates constantly without requiring the purchase of a new device all updates are available within the app additionally instead of purchasing new hardware every time an updated model is produced whoop members receive the next generation for free after having been a member for six months or more yeah this was saying you need to renew for 12 months so totally different yeah so they removed this verbiage that said that you got new hardware for free as long as you were a member for 12 months six months or more like a couple of months before the new one came out which required an upgrade is what they're saying which required either you had to buying 12 more months or a one-time fee of buying the actual device the reason this is like really important is because a lot of people the way they sell the whoop membership is you can buy within you can buy a year or you can buy two years you may even be able to buy three years but they they make each month cheaper you get a discount by doing that yeah so being there are a lot of people who are six months into their whoop membership and still have a year and a half left who don't want to add 12 more months on top of that or pay 50 bucks it's just straight up not what they were promised right um so you know whoop posts this to reddit their whoop reddit to get a bunch of feedback and immediately just get annihilated by the comments because of course, yeah, it's the internet.

57:38It lives forever. People immediately found where it promised and everyone in the comments was like, I'm canceling. This is literally the exact opposite thing of why I purchased Whooped. I was gonna get free upgrades on devices. I only ever had to care about my subscription. Now you're charging me 50 or$80. The number one rule of the internet is never charge for something that was previously free. yeah yeah this was this like semi reminds me of like the rivian like oh you guys all made your pre-order and now we're charging more for it and then had to backtrack on it i'm glad we're at the point where the internet's big enough where we can uh make companies give us what they actually promised well a lot of people were canceling i'm sure this is a community that's like you know the apple watch if apple did something like this it probably wouldn't it would cause a backlash but not as big because like there's a lot of people are just not connected to the news whatsoever but this is like a specialty fitness tracker and i'm most of the people who own these things are probably like on the subreddit like talking about this thing all the time yeah so so yeah a lot more power they fixed it they went back to um if you have 12 months remaining on your membership uh or if you extend another 12 months you'll get the device for free so they did go back and they did fix it um yeah yeah other than that it's a new whoop device i still have no idea why anyone would want one i think most smart watches give all of the things that they don't want smart watches okay i will agree there if you don't if you want to wear like a regular watch and still want all the tracking but then this is great i just don't think it's not a regular watch though that's the thing yeah what do you mean like it's a band yeah so you wear like a real watch like your casio on your left hand and then the band on your right on your right hand then you get all of the uh your or your bicep or somewhere you put it on your bicep yeah i mean you can wear it there's attachments to wear it on your chest strap or to wearing a bicep or whatever underwear that you can put what i don't know about that they do i they do i'm just saying i'm not saying there's underwear where it has a little thing and it like i didn't know that clips into there that's funny but yeah that i guess the point of it the point of a whoop that i've seen is is people who want to do the fitness tracking the sleep tracking don't want a big bulky smartwatch just want the band and that's it i think my issue is i think a lot of the people early on were like their metrics blow everyone else out of the water and i think a lot of people still think that but i don't know how much i believe it anymore with so many other smartwatch manufacturers really diving into health metrics and i can tell you right now their step tracker is doo-doo water is it really it's beta it's in water it might be out of beta by now but i did a thousand steps thing with the loop it was like 10 off oh it was really really far off.

1:00:18Oh my gosh. You can watch that short if you want. I took a thousand steps in every type of wearable. I remember that. And it is kind of insane how bad a lot of these things are at actually tracking accurately. Yes. Yeah. I think the whoop was so bad. We didn't even put it in the video. I think if anyone wants like to know, watch our Dr. Mike interview. If you want a little more about how much you should take into account what these trackers are. It's mostly for fun and entertainment and sometimes a good motivation and look at trends versus looking at right it's all trend data like you're not you shouldn't be looking at the exact just like how calories are definitely not accurate like the fda allows you to be like 20 off when you list calorie counts on things as long as you're the same 20 off every time vaguely and that way you can track your trend instead of the count of the calories yeah which is yeah that's what apple does with temperature yeah right so yeah that's what pixel does with the thermometer on the phone for some freaking reason case anyone was wondering uh spoiler alert a thousand steps with every wearable the iphone measured 1033 steps the pixel phone measured 1021 steps are you talking about watches no i'm doing all the wearables but uh you can wear a pedometer it counted 1074 steps i wore a pixel watch it counted 1012 i wore an apple watch it counted 991 i wore a galaxy ring that counted 1006 and the whoop counted over 1200 steps oh my gosh so we went probably wow another w for the pixel watch yeah yeah another dog and the the samsung ring yeah yeah i'm surprised about that the more you know the more you know all right we'll take a quick break which means trivia Yeah.

1:02:02Scooby dooby doo, where are you? Yeah, not to toot my own horn, but you guys notice that it's been like months since the lights broke. Why would you say that out loud? Because I'm proud of myself, man. Well, when they don't work for the answers later. Can I? For the what? Oh, my gosh. Anyway. so earlier in the episode we talked about a phone case company leaking a new iphone which is not the first time we've seen it but guys if you ask me we're living in a boring timeline you know okay like yeah someone got the specs and accidentally remember back in the old day remember when apple employees were leaving iphones at bars at redwood city yeah yeah brother what iphone did that guy leave in a bar oh i almost just said it out loud do you remember when was it the iphone 10 that slipped out of tim cook's pocket on stage yeah that was awesome yeah did that really you don't remember that no yeah it slipped out of his his pocket while he was getting giving an interview on stage and we all saw a conference or something yeah iphone 10 i you remember i am very proud to have seen an iphone 5 in the wild before it was released are you allowed to say how yes because This is so long ago.

1:03:18I, in high school, took the subway to school every day. And I was getting on the subway. Yeah. They have subways in LA? Get out. Leave right now. Literally. Yeah, I just remember seeing a guy with a tall, skinny, metal iPhone on the subway and just thinking, that's definitely an iPhone. Like, it has the home. Like, that is unmistakably an iPhone. But I have never seen that before in my life. And he's just using it. Yeah, just using it. But like, yeah, I'd like David said, you know, the subway is not a particularly used thing in Los Angeles. Yeah, there are many other good sandwich options there.

1:03:54This is this is the video real quick. At the start of this video, it is already halfway out of his pocket. It's like it was the double camera. Like you could tell it was a totally different phone at that point. It's being birthed. And it just it just slides out. It goes on. I totally forgot about this. And then he like picks it up kind of nonchalantly. Wow. I forgot that that happened. I'm surprised Tim Cook didn't pull out the men in black flash thing. Just hit the whole audience with it right there. The secret Apple police breaks through the windows. It falls onto the chair that he's sitting on.

1:04:26And it falls so that it's face up. And I think he realizes, well, if it's face up, people won't be able to see the camera bump. And that's the number one thing I'm worried about. So he doesn't put it back in his pocket. He just leaves it there. He leaves it there. I just I'm surprised they would let Tim Cook go on stage with an unreleased product especially in his pocket especially like just had just give it to your assistant backstage while you're out there. I just I'm surprised they let him do that. I wonder if this was like a turning point for Mr. Cook because watching this video this is pre sneaker Tim Cook.

1:04:57He's wearing what looks like Oxfords in this and I wonder if if this was the moment where he was like nah I can't. He had his glow up. I got it. Interesting. All right, well, we'll think about that answer, about the, you know, iPhone that was in a bar that one time. The question that we did ask. Answers will be at the end like usual. We'll be right back.

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1:06:58Last story I wanted to talk about real quick is Spotify AI DJ. I've been a longtime user, and I'm curious to hear you guys' thoughts on Spotify AI DJ, but it just got a new feature. Oh, not a fan. Not a fan. What? That's not a fan. Not a fan. And I want to hear why. But it just added a feature that lets you talk to it and actually request things. So as of this moment, before this feature got added, you open the DJ, and it just does its thing. it decides what the vibes are it starts with a bank of five songs or whatever and it just moves from beat to beat and narrates in between and it does its thing and then sometimes it hits sometimes it doesn't you just skip skip skip if you don't like it yeah but if you want to specifically request a specific type of song or a certain song like you would with an actual dj that's now a feature and i think that's fire i just did about a 15 hour road trip that was a whole bunch of cities in a row and i listened to a lot of songs thanks to the spotify ai dj wow no regrets what's up david is that your impression now we're gonna take it back to 1997 your parents were arguing the other room you didn't know what to do you started crying it does here's mariah carey history it does know what you because it has your entire listening history as well so it'll be like this is what you were listening to in 2010 which i really like because subtle flex i was the 53rd uh person in the united states to use spotify oh so you got a lot of listening history yeah wow yeah so yeah yeah when you said you could request a song my first thought was that's what the search bar is for but i wanted to test it this morning and i listened to the dj the whole car ride in and i think i've changed my mind on it oh my goodness i think i like x now it's great no no i think i like x the dj not x the website dj yes xavier xavier i want to make that very clear but i think i'm pro spotify dj even though i don't have the request button yet yeah but the search it played some bangers it went from only bleachers to the um demon slayer theme song pretty quickly and i was like oh and then it did hire by creed back to back to back so i was like you just know me yeah xavier was like how do i get him how do i get i know just the thing yeah ls why don't you like the spotify dj i am so glad you asked marquez because it's not about mr xavier himself can i take a guess sure sorry to interrupt yeah the crossfading between songs is like i hate that i do hate it's too much it's too early well it's too early it is not good and it's there's this sort of like extra rub it in factor of like i'm one of those people that really appreciates like the skill of djing and i don't mean just like scratching and doing all that just like a dj's ability to pick good music in an age where there's so much music and then creatively blend all that music together i just think is a really great thing so you say that but have you tried the age yeah all the time it it does some interesting things and it's not like i've it's not like every single recommendation is bad but compared to what could be i think it's pretty trite mostly what the dj seems to do for me is that it just plays music that i listened to like a couple of years ago yeah that's nice because it gets me out of my current loop but it doesn't really introduce new music to me and then when it does introduce music to me it's usually music i absolutely hate well i think it the two things i found it does is it's either basically just like here's your most played playlist from x amount of years ago yeah or it was doing uh like here's an artist you like but a song from them you don't listen to and i thought that was interesting like that's a good way to bring some music in but again that's very user database yeah and i don't i agree with ellis i don't necessarily know if they all mesh together i think this request thing though I'm hoping can be like play me I just all I've thought of was the Android thing the other day of like make me a playlist for a 10 minute one mile run which is just two songs but anyways but like play me music that's like more low key or maybe something that's more upbeat for pump up because I'm going to play an ultimate frisbee game I'm hoping it can bring that better I just want to say also like I do think this works on YouTube because for two reasons One, we're still in the Wild West of YouTube, right?

1:11:30There's no for sure way that you know how to classify a YouTube video and assign traits to a YouTube video. And the things we get out of YouTube videos are very different than music. With music, we have like 300 years of academic data on how we can describe music and classify music and assign traits to music. And a strong curator can use that 300 years of data to make really insightful and moving and cool recommendations. And so I think the idea of just throwing all of that away for retention maxing is like, what's the point? I will say, so something that Spotify has created over time is basically these smaller artists that will now tour with each other because they know that when you listen to a certain artist on Spotify, it will recommend you another artist that is like similar in the user data metric of like, oh, people who liked this artist also liked this artist.

1:12:28The problem with it is that it's a circle. It's a flat circle of like six artists. So in 2017, I was like listening to Cake. And then I got recommended Lawrence. And then I got recommended like a couple other artists. But they only recommend each other. It goes in a circle where they only recommend each other. It never peaks out of that like contained bubble. And this has worked for Spotify because then they introduced these features where it's like artists near me and it can recommend shows that are playing. I'm sure that they're getting a kickback from that, right? And so it created this kind of micro market where they can tour artists together that maybe wouldn't have enough of an audience on their own, but because people that like that artist like other artists, they have more incentive to go to these shows.

1:13:14That's a kind of cool thing, but it doesn't peek out of the bubble. So now it's like the artists that I'm listening to are the same artists that I discovered in 2017 off of that one-off thing that Spotify helped me with. but I want to keep learning about more music. And then it also creates an issue in like the economy of it all, right? Because on YouTube, when a user clicks on a video, in theory, there is money waiting in escrow that a corporation has put forward into the AdSense auction that is going to go to that creator, right? The Spotify platform, where there is a bulk of money that is then divided amongst all the streams, there's there's only so much pie each artist only so many shares of the pie each artist can get and when there's no data to explain why something was recommended to you there is nothing to stop payola yeah right there's literally no way we could stop it which is why espresso was the song of the summer we're not gonna we're not gonna get into conspiracy theories listen to the today explained episode on it but also or it's like it's anyway i think it creates all these issues I think it's not it becomes not about music and just about retention maxing.

1:14:26And so, yeah, Spotify, Spotify, DJ Xavier, I'm sure you're a lovely guy, but the robot incarnate of you, I really am not a fan of. It's funny because everything you said there about retention maxing, Spotify is like, hell yeah, perfect. Yeah, like working. Thanks for the greatest compliment, Ellis. Yeah. I mean, it's also why they're making the AI generated playlists and songs and stuff so they don't have to pay out anybody. but yeah i think i think there's like levels to how much you can randomize like music discovery is ideal you're saying like it's a flat circle so there's no way out of the circle yeah there's also no way into the circle like if if you listen to other stuff you're not going to get recommended into that yeah but i do think in general people want to be recommended some extra music outside of their current bubble for sure and if you just literally i'm feeling lucky all of music you're you're gonna get random crap that you don't care about.

1:15:15So the whole idea is how does Spotify find just the right mix of things that are just a little bit outside your bubble that it can bring you into and start to expand your horizons. And Pure Shuffle wouldn't do it, but I think the AI DJ is a little bit better than just my own music. Well, and I also imagine that like all of those metrics that Ellis was talking about earlier, like music can be defined as a gradient, right? Cause you could have all of these characteristics of different bands and different songs. And if you've got a band and song that's very close in most characteristics but have one or two different, you could slowly transition a user to an artist they've never heard of before that has very similar style and characteristics.

1:15:56That's what I would love. So on my ridiculously long road trip, I had several instances of, oh, my God, I think I've run out of all of the music because I've just listened to all of music. It's been 12 hours and what am I still doing here? I think I've heard every song. and so if I go in and I think I randomly just went in just give me greatest hits by Michael Jackson so I typed in Michael Jackson and went to his artist page and started with the first one and just let it go and once you get past the top 10 then it starts shuffling in others other artists that are other Michael Jackson songs or other hits from related artists to Michael Jackson and it starts moving and that's not the AIDJ but that's the same type of behavior I'm looking for which is take my music library shuffle that a bit but also once in a while poke out of the bubble a little bit and give me some new stuff.

1:16:41So I plan on asking the AI DJ for all kinds of random genres and beats for next time I'm driving. I think AI DJ is just, it's like their new smart playlist at this point. Calling it a DJ like makes it a little more personal and feel more like AI, but I really just feel like they fixed their playlist because I've never loved their playlist because it's either so short that like you said, it starts bringing in other stuff or it's so long that I feel like I'll listen to the same songs and never get to the half of the other songs that are in my playlist. Well, people have different opinions on this and it can be good or bad, but I created something many moons ago that is much better than this.

1:17:17You can just go to bangersonly.net and you'll get all the best music. That's all you need to do. Good plug. Still hosting. We're still streaming 24-7. Can I say my qualm with Spotify DJ? He gets stuck in loops where if you only exclusively listen to Spotify DJ, he'll just keep giving you the same exact playlist over and over. Oh, yeah, true. I hate that. And he needs to figure it out because I asked him for my Bratz Summer playlist and he'd played me the Bratz Dolls movie. So that's all I want to say. It's the most Siri thing ever. So work on it a little bit. Was that a request you did or a DJ request?

1:17:53Yep. Oh, really? I said Bratz Summer and he said, Bratz Dolls, you want it. So. I guess that's a tough. Did you listen? Hmm? Did you listen to the song? To the Bratz Dolls? Yeah. Bratz movie. Unfortunately, I did. You did? Soundtrack. It was kind of good. I'm not going to lie. I mean, six seconds. That sounds like a win. It sounds kind of like an old DJ where you have a crappy cell phone connection. You wait it on hold for 10 minutes. Ask them for the request. They didn't hear you correctly and played something completely different. Could happen. I think this is a perfect place. For trivia. To put the train back on the rails with some trivia.

1:18:29Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam, Adam. Alan. Adam. Alan. So, guys, question number one. The Google logo has always had six characters, except for one time between October of 98 and May of 99. Google's logo had seven characters during that period. What was the seventh character? Look at those working lights. Look at them. Look at them go. Look at them. Don't you dare. Hot goblin strikes again. Oh, yeah. He's the hot goblin. Also, this is the marker that doesn't work. At all? Oh, do you want... It works... Barely. We'll throw that one out. Is it legible? Kind of. All right. Do you want to use this one? Yeah, it's okay.

1:19:18All right. All right, boys. Flip those boards around and read. I... No, we all said something different. Marquez, why don't you go first? We all said different things. I said an extra O. Oh, thank God. That was going to be my guess. I said a period. I said an exclamation point. That is correct for that brief period. Google was what they said. No, the brief period, which is what an exclamation point is. Google having an extra O does sound kind of familiar. No, no, because when, well, I feel like. At the bottom of the page, there's all of the O. It has a bunch of extra O's, and the O's are just links to the other pages.

1:19:57We live in a time right now where no one's made it that far down the Google search. Yeah, it's been a while since we're at the bottom of the page, huh? actually do they still do it they do okay on that point actually no they just infinite scroll now okay all right guys question number two take down their website boring iphones like the 17 air get leaked via case websites but which iphone was accidentally left in a bar in redwood city california in which tim cook called the reporter and was like we are going to sue the hell out of you. Sorry, not Tim Cook. Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. What's the difference?

1:20:38I'm sorry. If you put Google with 42 O's in the URL, it doesn't bring you to Google. It brings you to a WordPress page that says something new is coming. Are they saving it for the Pixel 42?

1:20:53Alright, guys. Who would like to go first? Me. Andrew. six there we go twas the iPhone 4 it was indeed the iPhone 4 that was one point for David and one point for Marquez alright guys the scores for trivia right now are getting pretty crazy I think we might need to extrav this pretty soon because Andrew what's like the opposite of pole position um what is pole position okay oh no starting from the pits you're gonna f so don't worry um it means i'm out of lies to tell i've told too many dnf stands for did not finish it's a it's a race yeah also i'm starting from the pits for sure there you go yeah andrew started the pits also just see a chicane is not a basketball player it's a it's like an s turn in a racetrack chicane o 'neill yeah exactly that's where they get the name from i can't stop lying shack foo um so andrew you are starting in the pits with 12 points yeah um pretty you know pretty competitive 12 is a good number because marquez is only one point ahead of you with 13 i'm just kidding he has 23 points he has 11 points ahead of you.

1:22:11And David is in first place with 28 points. Sheesh. 28 points. So we're definitely going to need to do some ginormous point offerings in trivia extravaganza. Which I'm still accepting ideas for how we want to do it. Give me an opportunity, Ellis. I still haven't won any of them. Really? You've never won a season of trivia? No. Mark has won twice and Andrew won once. Well, you know, mathematically we'll make it possible for anyone. yeah yes uh google lost once because i got negative we'll just have like we'll just have it a hundred point section about the x-pan and uh sounds a little rigged if you ask me but thanks for watching and listening this week we appreciate well my google lit up that was random uh we appreciate you all for subscribing and also if you have suggestions for what we should do with the trivia extravaganza feel free to leave it in a comment next week is io week it is and many more things, of course.

1:23:09Feel free to request your Spotify AI DJ plays more Waveform in between your hype tracks. It just starts a Waveform episode. That is the hype track. That is maybe the hype track. And then it plays the weird song that Ellis made to play every three songs. And then loops all three of those things. It would be great. And then someone gets in your car. And you have to drive them somewhere. See you next week. Peace. Goodbye. Waveform is produced by Adam Alina, Ellis Rovin, and Mariah Zink. where you don't want to be part of it. I didn't do anything. She did everything. You said some words. And we're partnered with the Fox Media Podcast Network and her interaction with her music was created by Mariah Zink.

1:23:43Just kidding. Vein Still. Dang, she's a music producer. Have you ever seen Vein Still and Mariah Zink in the same room? Oh, shoot. Bingo.

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