Down Round

The ticket industry is one of the most confusing online industries in 2023, a rentseeking behemoth which doesn’t seem to offer much for fans or artists alike. Thanks to the suggestion of a few listeners who seem to have missed out on Taylor Swift tickets last week, we’re diving in. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . It’s been a hot minute since we’ve checked in on the world of AI, and things have been chugging along at rapid pace in the buzziest sector of tech. This week, we dive into the current AI landscape, including the world of open-source AI. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let’s face it: LinkedIn is one of the most annoying websites ever to exist. Terrible emails, armies of recruiters, and some of the worst posts you’ve ever seen. And yet it’s also one of the most successful social media platforms, a genuine moneymaker for Microsoft, and now completely integral to modern white collar life. In this episode, we talk through LinkedIn and the horrible posters who popula...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . Reddit, one of the internet’s last largely functional online communities, is undergoing something of a political revolution. Thanks to the company’s plans to implement charge for API access — potentially affecting everything from third-party apps to moderation bots — subreddits large and small have gone dark, with...

It’s been a couple of weeks since Apple announced the Vision Pro, the ‘spatial computing’ headset it believes is the future of going on the computer, getting online, and posting up a storm. Now the dust has settled, it’s time for the boys to go in. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit downround.substack.com/subscribe...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . Despite the fact the entertainment world at large is — for better or worse — piling in to the streaming model, sport has proven much more difficult. A headache-inducing labyrinth of rights deals, blackouts and other thorny problems have kept sport broadcasting from fully leaning into streaming. But that is changin...

James is in the US this week, so we're digging an episode from the deep and forgotten archives. Swimply is, to put it simply, Airbnb but for pools. As in, you can go to a strangers house and swim in their pool for a small fee. It has tried to launch in Australia three times now, so obviously it deserved our attention. Comedian Becky Lucas joined us to discuss. This is a public episode. If you’d li...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . At every major juncture of internet development since 1994, you’re guaranteed to find one company making baffling decisions: Yahoo. From one of the biggest stocks of the dotcom boom to the laughingstock of the mobile era, Yahoo has managed to stumble ungracefully through internet history in a way we simply had to...

Esports was one of the weirdest hype cycles of the last tech boom. A surge of venture capital and investment led to a frothy market which somehow convinced people that ‘watching Apex Legends’ was not only the next frontier in video gaming, but also in sports and entertainment generally. This unstoppable hype train culminated in FaZe Clan, an esports influencer house, listing on the public markets...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . Netflix was once the golden child of the tech industry, with its streaming model held up as the future of content consumption. Now that every rightsholder has a streaming platform, and the end of the tech boom has led to drastic cuts in content budgets and the return of advertising, where does that leave Netflix?...

This week, GPU maker Nvidia was briefly valued at $1 trillion , which is pretty wild for a company founded to cater to the whims of one of God’s most pathetic creatures: PC gamers. The surge in value is largely thanks to Nvidia’s critical position in the emerging AI economy. It turns out the company’s graphics cards technology, originally intended to support high-performance gaming, are actually v...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . Apple’s developer conference is in a couple of weeks, and all signs suggest it is about to announce an insanely expensive AR/VR headset, which it hopes will be their next computing platform and maybe a smartphone successor somewhere down the line. In this ep we talk about headsets generally, the companies trying t...

Despite the fact the social web seems inexorably on the march towards TikTok-style video feeds, there’s still a happy home on the web for big-brained lovers of text. Twitter, despite never being the biggest social network, has outsized influence. Now that Elon Musk is slowly transforming it into a big toilet, other challengers are poking their head above the parapets. In this episode we’re talking...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . It’s been a hot minute since we’ve taken a look at what Meta is up to. It’s a good time, because they’re currently making a hasty AI pivot like everyone else. Will it work? What happened to the metaverse? Will zoomers ever use Facebook? So many questions, so few answers. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy inf...

The worlds of fitness and tech have been converging for years thanks to innovations in wearables, apps and subscriptions. If you’re the kind of person who enjoys quantifying every minute biological detail of your workout, or developing a parasocial relationship with a chirpy American cycling instructor… your time is now. In this ep, we survey everything from the Apple Watch and Fitbit to Peloton a...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . Over the past few weeks , BuzzFeed News shuttered its doors and Vice made deep cuts to its news product. They followed the collapse of other digital news brands like Gawker, which fell apart for a second time. All these platforms were highly representative of the digital media era of the 2010s, which has come to w...

In March, we tackled the AI doom prophets who argue that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence will kill everyone on its journey to sentience. That was cool. But obviously people have more pressing concerns — like, “are these new AI systems going to take my job?” Today, we’re digging into the discourse on AI and automation, and whether you personally are headed straight for the breadline. (Spo...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . Last year, Microsoft announced it would buy video game publisher Activision Blizzard for almost $70 billion, making it the biggest tech deal literally ever. Last month, the UK competition regulator blocked the sale on antitrust grounds, arguing it would hurt competition in the nascent cloud gaming sector. In this...

Anyone who spent any time online over the past few years will be intimately familiar with the constellation of cool ways to get rich online. Youtube grindset hustlers have been promising us for years that dropshipping and affiliate marketing are your ticket to financial freedom. In this ep, we dive into this weird world. And hell, maybe you’ll learn how to become a billionaire along the way. This...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . It's been a little while since we opened the dusty Down Round mailbag and answered some listener questions. Today we're answering a range of inquiries we got via Twitter and Substack, on everything from Linktree and Twitter to online booze subscription services and AI Drake. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy...

One of the most underrated battles currently emerging in the tech world is the fight over who will control your in-car experience. Apple and Google have already made serious headway into controlling car entertainment systems, but now they want more. Now, some car companies are openly wondering whether they should ditch the big dogs altogether and go the Tesla route of owning the whole experience....

Instagram was undeniably the most influential social network of the 2010s, and certaibnly one of the most important generators of 2010s culture. But it’s looking a bit worse for wea these days. This week we dive into Insta, where it’s been, and where it’s going. Editor’s note: we apologise for conflating Marilyn Manson and Slipknot. Thank you for subscribing. Leave a comment or share this episode...

Discord has gone from being an ultra low latency voice platform for League of Legends heads into one of the major social platforms of 2023. We talk about its rise through the pandemic, its challenge to both Slack and traditional social media, and we give Raph ample space to evangelise Microsoft Teams, his favourite piece of software on Earth. This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this...

This is a free preview of a premium episode. To hear more, join Down Round Premium . In the second part of this week’s topic, we talk about the current state of the microchip industry. Thanks to the insane complexity of making them, chip supply chains are incredibly fragile, and it’s dominated by a tiny handful of companies. This is highly unfortunate, because we need microchips to do things like...

Microchips. They’re extremely tiny and very cool. (You can quote us on that.) This week, we’re doing a two-parter on the modern world’s most important technology. In the first part, we chat through the development of the microchip and how we got where we are today. In the second half, we’ll go into the incredible weird, fragile state of the industry today. This is a public episode. If you’d like t...