Diet TBPN: October 27, 2025

Summary

TBPN: Diet TBPN – October 27, 2025

Hosts: John Coogan & Jordi Hays
Release Date: October 28, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode dives into the recent buzz in the technology and finance spheres, centering on the rapid growth of AI music platforms like Suno, the cultural and business implications of generative AI in music, and evolving trends among tech leaders. John and Jordi’s discussion, peppered with trademark irreverence, also touches on gaming news, the ongoing AI “bubble” debate, and the corporate fascination with generative AI for advertising. The episode closes with a look at job market trends, quirky tech community moments, and a tease for an upcoming interview with Microsoft’s CEO.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Suno’s Explosive Revenue and the Business of AI Music

Timestamp: 00:00 – 06:01

• Suno, an AI music generator app, reportedly quadrupled its ARR to $150 million, leading to speculation about its actual paying user base and revenue streams.
  • “Can someone explain where this revenue comes from? Who is paying? What’s actually going on?” – John [00:09]
• The hosts compare Suno’s scenario to Deepseek’s spending on GPT-4 tokens, framing the question of value: Are most revenues coming from casual users, enterprise contracts, or model scraping?
• The viral entertainment aspect: People experiment with genre-crossovers (e.g., turning DMX into a 1960s jazz song) and marvel at personalized music generation.
  • “It's just so undeniably magical to be able to generate a song. There is a massive amount of people that will just pay for that magic experience today.” – Jordi [02:16]
• The experience is likened to Garageband’s democratization of music tools, drastically lowering barriers to entry.

Legal & Cultural Questions

• There’s speculation about copyright and legal challenges regarding the appropriation and transformation of artists’ styles.
  • “I think there’ll definitely be a lawsuit.” – John [01:45]
• Hosts question long-term impacts: Is the real competition Spotify, music production software, or even gaming platforms?
• The value prop for artists: If AI-generated tracks create royalties for original artists, then there’s a case for symbiosis—but making “net new” music could cannibalize real creators’ income.

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2. Potential and Threats for Music and Streaming Platforms

Timestamp: 03:24 – 05:57

• Crunching the big question: Is AI music a threat to Spotify, Fruity Loops, or games like Fortnite?
• Interestingly, OpenAI is expected to enter the “music as meme” category—a product designed for entertainment over serious listening.
  • “OpenAI is working on an AI music product. I would expect that OpenAI eats the category of music as meme.” – Jordi [03:33]
• Traditional music streaming is protected by high quality standards and artist relationships, but AI could disrupt monetization models.
• Spotify’s pivot to podcasts is viewed as a response to music royalty pressures; AI music could further upend the economics.
  • “If I’m gonna and somebody’s generating AI gonna, I’m cool with that—if I’m getting paid like that’s a normal song.” – Jordi [05:50]

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3. Cultural Trends: Tech Bro Facelifts & Gaming

Timestamp: 06:01 – 07:16

• Aging tech executives are reportedly turning to cosmetic procedures to maintain a youthful image.
  • “Men in tech are increasingly spending thousands of dollars on procedures such as mini facelifts, neck lifts and eyelid lifts to beat the signs of aging.” – John [06:15]
• The “Console Wars” are declared over, with Halo coming to PlayStation—a notable shift in the platform strategy between Microsoft and Sony.
  • “Microsoft owns Xbox but is very much like console agnostic. And Sony is very much like all in on PS5 as like the core strategy.” – John [06:57]

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4. Is AI a Bubble? Parsing the Hype

Timestamp: 07:24 – 08:50

• The hosts break down the argument that AI is not a bubble by noting solid big tech fundamentals, low leverage, and the early innings of a supercycle (“think 1994 vs. 1999”).
• At the same time, they joke about the unpredictability of calling bubbles:
  • “If you’re trying to figure out if we’re in a bubble or not, I recommend going outside, picking a daisy… and then whatever you end up landing on, that’s what’s going to happen.” – Jordi [08:35]
• Reflections on dot-com era exits, with some entrepreneurs lucky to cash out before the crash.

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5. Generative AI in Advertising: Oreos and Beyond

Timestamp: 08:50 – 10:18

• Oreo’s parent company reportedly invested $40 million in a generative video AI model, claiming to cut ad production costs by up to 50%.
  • Hosts remain skeptical about ROI, suggesting much of the spend is about internal positioning:
  • “It’s hard not to see this holding like a huge waste of money that somebody high up said, like, I’m going to be the AI guy at Mondelez.” – Jordi [09:39]
• The “billboard as a strategy” is discussed as an example of pure marketing bravado.
• Satirical commentary on how brands will use generative AI posturing as innovation theater.

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6. Crypto, NFTs, and Community Memes

Timestamp: 10:18 – 11:00

• The show lampoons the rise of “friend.com” and the sometimes cringe attempts of corporate and Web3 branding.
  • “We’re not just using generative AI. We are generative AI. We are the future of food.” – John [09:56]
• Discussion of NFTs and the ongoing cultural relevance of CryptoPunks.

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7. Labor Market, Economic Signals & Posting on X

Timestamp: 11:00 – 12:18

• Noting the divergence between stock market performance and job openings, especially after the launch of ChatGPT and rising interest rates.
• Executives exploit AI narratives for layoff justifications, often masking over-hiring.
• Reference to Timothy Mellon’s $130 million bailout of US troops, highlighting the enduring power of old money, wrapped in a tongue-in-cheek tone.

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8. Community Frustrations & Upcoming Interview Tease

Timestamp: 12:00 – 12:31

• The hosts express fatigue with X (Twitter) engagement, referencing algorithm changes and influencer gripes.
  • “At this point, I’ve lost all motivation to post on X... I’m done with this place. Well done, Elon Musk.” – John [11:44]
• The episode ends with appreciation for their audience and a preview that Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, will join the next day.

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On AI music magic:
  “It’s just so undeniably magical to be able to generate a song. There is a massive amount of people that will just pay for that magic experience today.” — Jordi [02:16]

• On copyright risk:
  “I think there’ll definitely be a lawsuit.” — John [01:45]

• On tech leaders’ cosmetic trends:
  “Men in tech are increasingly spending thousands of dollars on procedures such as mini facelifts, neck lifts and eyelid lifts to beat the signs of aging.” — John [06:15]

• On the unpredictability of market bubbles:
  “If you’re trying to figure out if we’re in a bubble or not, I recommend going outside, picking a daisy... and then whatever you end up landing on, that’s what’s going to happen.” — Jordi [08:35]

• On AI advertising hype:
  “If you want to make money in the AI boom, go and get $40 million for a project like this. It’s genius.” — John [09:48]

• On X engagement and algorithm frustration:
  “At this point, I’ve lost all motivation to post on X. The new algorithm is so demoralizing.” — John [11:44]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [00:00] – Introduction; Suno AI Music Revenue
• [01:10] – The magic and controversy of AI-generated genre remixes
• [02:34] – Democratizing music creation, Garageband analogy
• [03:24] – AI music’s competition: Spotify, music production, or gaming?
• [05:46] – Spotify’s podcast pivot and AI’s monetization model
• [06:01] – Tech bro facelifts; cosmetic trends in Silicon Valley
• [06:53] – Halo coming to PlayStation; Console wars are ‘over’
• [07:24] – AI "bubble" debate; tech supercycle reflections
• [08:50] – Oreo’s $40 million AI ad gamble
• [09:56] – Generative AI marketing parody (friend.com, NFT culture)
• [10:48] – CryptoPunks and NFT communities
• [11:00] – Labor chart analysis and layoff narratives
• [11:44] – Frustration with X engagement; social algorithm changes
• [12:18] – Closing remarks and tease for Satya Nadella interview

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Final Thoughts

This eclectic episode of TBPN offers a candid, rapid-fire tour through the latest—sometimes bizarre—fronts in technology: from AI’s disruptive march through music and advertising, to the social mores of tech elites and community angst over online platforms. Their energetic banter strikes a balance of skepticism, wry humor, and cultural observation, making even the wildest industry headlines both digestible and entertaining.

Transcript

[A]

You're watching TVPN. Today's Monday, October 27, 2025. We are live from the TVPN Ultradome, the Temple of technology, the fortress of finance, the capital of capital. Over the weekend, there was some debate over Suno. Is anybody paying for AI music? What's. Who's paying for this thing? Music app Suno nearly quadruples annual recurring revenue to $150 million. Can someone explain where this revenue comes from? Who is paying? What's actually going on? What's driving the revenue? Because there's a whole bunch of different buckets of value that you can be extracting. If you're Suno the company, the worst possible scenario is that 100% of your revenue comes from someone who's just scraping your API, basically, and trying to distill your model. If we went back to what happened with Deepseek, Deepseek was paying for GPT4 tokens, but GPT4 obviously was generating money from all over the place and had people paying for knowledge retrieval and a whole bunch of different users use cases, coding, tokens, all sorts of stuff. And if you add up the number of Reviews on the iOS and Android app store, it's over a million.

[B]

Wow. People are realizing that they can go to their favorite artists.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

Like a rapper, let's say. Make this future song. Make the jazz version of this future song.

[A]

I saw DMX X Gon give it to you, but in 1960s jazz, it's almost just style transfer. It's really just filtering. It is. I mean, that's the beauty of the Studio Ghibli is that you don't have to come to it with something that's completely a blank canvas.

[B]

The good thing about that is that I don't think the jazz community is up in arms.

[A]

I think they might be.

[B]

Maybe. Maybe. It's new every time, it's brand new every night. It's very, very exciting.

[A]

I think there'll definitely be a lawsuit.

[B]

Well, so of course, individual artists might try to figure out, okay, are they training on my music? And then in that case, did they buy the music? Because we now have precedent that show if you purchase the songs, can you train on them in general, I think this kind of use case is probably good for the underlying artists. And it's just like marketing. It's fan engagement. They're just doing kind of like broad style transfer from a category of music onto this new artist.

[A]

Will this become a network?

[B]

It's just so undeniably magical to be able to generate a song. There is A massive amount of people that will just pay for that magic experience today. I don't believe that these songs are for listening to yet. I feel like they're for entertainment, but not passive listening.

[A]

Kind of like garageband esque.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You used to need to go and buy every instrument, and then all of a sudden it was like you could pull a piano off of a menu bar and just say, I want a piano right now. And what does that do? Well, that lowers the. That lowers the barrier to entry.

[B]

My question becomes, you know, if I've seen these, like, reels go viral on Instagram, going back to this, like, Future as jazz music.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Or coding crazy by future as in jazz.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

As somebody who grew up listening to Future.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I love Future, but I have no desire to, like, go find your heavy rotation and put it and listen to it on the drive home. The quality bar for music is actually like quite high to get people to actually start listening.

[A]

Totally.

[B]

Could you actually play the bongo drums while you talk?

[A]

Producer.

[B]

Okay, so I think this is like two.

[A]

Yeah. Is it a competitor to Spotify long term? Is it a competitor Fruity Loops long term or Ableton long term? Or is it a competitor to Fortnite long term?

[B]

OpenAI is working on an AI music product.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

I would expect that OpenAI eats the category of music as meme. OpenAI never, never met a war. It didn't. It wasn't interested in fighting.

[A]

Let me tell you about figma.com, think bigger, build faster. Figma helps design and development teams built great products together. You can get started for free.

[B]

Ghana F. You mean 1982 Soul Funk. 1982 version AI cover.

[A]

Okay, let's play this. I think we won't get demonetized because of this.

[B]

That's a beauty.

[A]

Oh, this is okay. This is gonna everyone's jammin.

[B]

Watch me jump right off the curb. If you just make it so that if. If I generate a song that's like an AI Gunna song that we just listened to. If every person, like, if you can figure out a revenue split, that basically takes care of the people that created that, the track that inspired it.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

In that case, it's extremely obvious because it's an existing Ghana song that's converted into. Into a new song.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

If you're just paying out effectively the same amount to the producer and the writers and all that stuff, that feels like an easy solution. Now the problem is if you're just generating entirely net new music, which is like, the prompt would be like, make me A funk song, then you're still eating into the potential earnings of real artists on the platform. And I don't know how you solve that. I mean, it's potentially a bull case for Spotify because they take. Can take out. Why did Spotify like lean so heavily into podcasts? One, because people wanted to listen to podcasts and two, because they didn't have the same dynamic where they're paying out at such a large amount of their revenue to artists on the platform. So they could go out and pay to acquire, you know, Joe Rogan or whatever it was originally for like a year or two years because you were acquiring users that would presumably listen to podcasts and you're not paying out the record label and the artists and all the underlying.

[A]

That is a good point. Yeah. But yeah, the monetization has to be wildly different between.

[B]

Yeah. So if I'm an artist, if I'm. If I'm gonna. And somebody's generating AI gonna. I'm cool with that.

[A]

If you're getting paid.

[B]

If I'm getting paid, like that's a normal song.

[A]

Fly. Tech bros are getting facelifts Now. Whoever this dude is is getting Dr. Ben Tale. He's a 60 year old who runs a solar and tech business. He had an advanced deep plane facelift and neck lift.

[B]

This looks like a good ad for facelifts if you ask me.

[A]

Yeah, you can't hire anyone over 30 men in tech are increasingly spending thousands of dollars on procedures such as mini facelifts, neck lifts and eyelid lifts to beat the signs of aging. The latest addition to the tech bro look is a brand new face. Tyler, maybe you should go 10 years younger. Maybe you should try and look like a five year old. The White House has posted that the console wars are over. They shared an image of Donald Trump donning Master Chief's battle armor with the plasma sword. I'm really not that sharp on Halo terminology, you know.

[B]

We're announcing the console wars are over. The Halo is coming to PlayStation.

[A]

That's exciting. Halo's coming to PlayStation. The two companies have just diverged so thoroughly in strategy. Microsoft owns Xbox but is very much like console agnostic. And Sony is very much like all in on PS5 as like the core strategy.

[B]

I wish I miss when Q4 meant that there was. All I was thinking about was a new cod. That was a simpler time.

[A]

Here's why AI isn't a bubble today. He's distilled data points and ideas from previous columns and coverage. If you prefer facts and evidence based reality over vibes and conflated narratives. Enjoy. Big tech valuations are reasonable, leverage is low. We're at the beginning of multiple AI super product cycles in the year ahead. We are in the early innings of a technology computing shift to AI, the largest in decades. Think 1994 versus 1999.

[B]

My personal timeline was that like the further you went in the 90s, the crazier it got. Like it was like heating up. And there was plenty of people that made insane amounts of money. Money, like prior to the bubble, Right?

[A]

Totally.

[B]

And a lot of them probably wish they held a bit longer, but no.

[A]

No, I think a lot of them are happy they got out when they did. I've talked to some folks who are like, they founded a company in 1994, they sold it in 1998, it does not exist anymore. It didn't exist in 2002 and. But they wound up with like $100 million liquid.

[B]

That's enough to retire. Yeah.

[A]

Let me tell you about linear. Linear is a purpose built tool for planning and building products. Need the system for modern software development, streamline issues, projects and product roadmaps. You can start building.

[B]

Yeah. If you're trying to figure out if we're in a bubble or not, I recommend going outside, picking a daisy and just picking the leaves, picking the petals off. It's a bubble. Like where we are right now, It's a bubble. It's not bubble. It's not. And then whatever you end up landing on, that's what's going to happen.

[A]

The owner of Oreo has trained their own video model for television advertising. They invested $40 million and they say it cuts production costs by 30 to 50%. I don't know how that's possible.

[B]

There's a huge amount of budget goes to coming up with good ideas and then the editing and making infinite variations of it, which I'm sure I will, can already do. Well, in some cases you pay people to come up with great ideas and execute the idea is like actually the highest margin part. Apparently the Oreos parent company only spent 100 million on digital, print and national TV advertising in the last year.

[A]

Wait, so they spent 100 million on advertising and then they spent four years on this?

[B]

It's hard not to see this holding like a huge waste of money that somebody, somebody high up said, like, I'm going to be the AI guy at Mondelez.

[A]

If you want to make money in the AI boom, go and get $40 million for a project like this. It's genius.

[B]

Like, you just made so much consulting moment. So the friend.com billboard strategy is potentially a new strategy. Just like buy so much advertising that people can't stop talking about it. We don't. We're not just using generative AI. We are generative AI. We are the future of food. It's the year 2025. You wake up and a progressive white billionaire with a blackface NFT profile picture is saying GM to you, saying wag me friend.

[A]

This is a crazy one. Why did he pick this one?

[B]

This is like the how do you do fellow kids meme.

[A]

It's such a crazy choice on a million different levels. Even the smoking, even the nft.

[B]

I think the crypto community loved it, to be honest.

[A]

Really?

[B]

I think. I think they're pretty fired up. If you're one of the 10,000 people that own cryptopunk. A punk. This is a punk.

[A]

How are the punks doing? Are they still hanging out, hanging around?

[B]

A lot of people have been focused on this chart overlying stock market performance over job openings and how it basically.

[A]

Diverges at the introduction of ChatGPT. Basically, that's where people.

[B]

Which is also the introduction of high rates.

[A]

Yes.

[B]

This is particularly trippy chart crime. The breakpoint was exactly when the COVID stimmy bubble pop and the Fed hiked in interest rates to the moon. CEOs are desperate for every possible AI narrative. And if they need to do layoffs because they got bloated during COVID they will say that we're getting efficiency out of AI. And that's a much better reason than like we over hired Timothy Mellon. A banking heir is said to be the anonymous donor who gave 130 million to the US government to help pay troops during the shutdown. Worth 14 billion. Personally guaranteed payroll for the armed services. And the only and most recent photo of him is from 1981. The train in the background. Yeah, you know, with the. With the hair, the stare. He just he one shotted photography. At this point, I've lost all motivation to post on X. The new algorithm is so demoralizing. I have 30,000 followers and I'm getting 500 views in an hour. I'm done with this place. Well done, Elon Musk. And everyone and their mother was dunking on him and saying, you just got paid $10,000 a week ago to post a picture of Steve Jobs.

[A]

Daughter, thank you to everyone who supports the show. Thank you. Love you to everyone in the chat. Thank you to everyone who's listened to the show. We will see you tomorrow live with Satya Nadella. The CEO of Microsoft.

[B]

Cannot wait. Cannot wait.

[A]

Have a great rest of your day.

[B]

See you then.

[A]

Goodbye.

[B]

Cheers, folks.