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- [00:01]
Marina Hyde
The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy.
- [00:04]
Richard Osman
Now we're going to be talking about an expression which I hadn't heard till seven seconds ago, which is someone getting their flowers. Can you tell me what that means?
- [00:11]
Marina Hyde
Well, it means like you've been around a long time, but people suddenly think, hang on a second, you're amazing and you should be recognised.
- [00:16]
Richard Osman
So you're finally getting your due, you're
- [00:19]
Marina Hyde
getting your flowers and you're being garlanded. Now, I would say someone like this is someone like Jean Smart who plays the lead in Hacks. She plays Deborah Vance. Okay. Jean Smart is extraordinary. She did a huge amount of TV and st stage work and there was a sense that she was sort of always brilliant. But then this one role came along, Deborah Vance. In Hacks, they literally just give her the Emmy every year now. She gets her flowers every year. She gets her Emmy every year. As we always talk about Octopus's customer service, your account's run by about 10 or 12 people. You've got a small team, they know who you are. Yes. And they are permitted to send flowers every week to a customer who might just be going through something, whatever it is, so they can recognize it's not an apology, it's just because someone was going through something and they. You get your flowers.
- [01:03]
Richard Osman
Another example of they seem to do business in a very interesting and customer focused way. Imagine if Jean Smart is an Octopus customer, might get her flowers twice.
- [01:11]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, every week.
- [01:14]
Christy
Hey, it's Christy from Lululemon and I'm here at the office checking out the Shake it out shorts. These have been my go tos and I kind of think of them as a middle ground between a true run short and a more playful, athletic, sporty short. They have all the performance you want for running, so a comfy liner, our lightweight Swift fabric, even a pocket for your keys. But what I really like, the flowy fit and layered hem. It gives it a little bit of volume, a little bit of fun. So they feel as good on a run as they do just at coffee afterwards. You can find the Shake it out shorts in store now or online@lululemon.com.
- [01:49]
Marina Hyde
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina
- [01:53]
Richard Osman
Hyde and me, Richard Osman. Hello, Marina.
- [01:56]
Marina Hyde
What are we talking about this week?
- [01:58]
Richard Osman
We are going to talk about this idea that there's some incredible statistics about how many people self def as a content creator these days and we thought it was worth exploring that and what it means.
- [02:11]
Marina Hyde
Yes, we're gonna be talking about Charli XCX's new album and how you follow up an enormous hit like Brat.
- [02:19]
Richard Osman
And we are also talking about the film website Letterbox, one of my absolute favorite websites in the entire world, which is unbelievably brilliant. But it's up for sale and everyone's worried it might no longer be quite as brilliant. We shall find out, I suppose.
- [02:33]
Marina Hyde
Okay, are we all going to be content creators? Because Luminate, who are the entertainment data experts? They have, they do a sort of six monthly report. They found an unbelievable statistic which is that 39% of Americans now identify as content creators. 39%, nearly 2 in 5 identify as active content creators across digital platforms. And I think it's interesting, the word creator in itself is, you know, when everyone sort of had to stop talking about global warming and started calling it climate change. It's the word itself is now professionalized. Instead of just being like a YouTuber or an influencer, which seemed like it was from fake work, it's now. But tens of millions of people now identify as paid creators. I think that's extraordinary because we will get to the difference between, you know, just identifying someone and actually making money as one. But that means that there is a sort of massive middle class in the creator economy, which I think Goldman Sachs, they projected that next year it will be worth $480 billion. The creative economy.
- [03:41]
Richard Osman
When we talk about creators, these are not just kids playing video games. These are dentists who come home at the end of the day and do dental tutorials. These are accountants who come home and talk you through spreadsheets. There is huge amounts of niche content out there which is monetizable, which is made by professionals. But I think that 39% of everyone being a content creator might be pushing it a bit. That self identifying thing is doing a lot of work. But this is incredible gig economy now of people taking their professional skills, finding a niche audience and then finding ways of monetizing the audience. It's a real thing.
- [04:17]
Marina Hyde
Yeah. Media content has become democratized incredibly fast. This has happened really, really quickly. But also the world of work is changing so rapidly that as I say, hundreds of millions of people ran globe will identify as content creators. And that original Goldman report found that sort of 4% of them made over $100,000 a year.
- [04:39]
Richard Osman
I mean that's still a lot, 4% of a lot of people.
- [04:41]
Marina Hyde
It's a lot of people. Right, but so there's a few different areas. So we should start with business before we get into the everyone of it. I was listening to something the other day with the, the CEO of Unilever who's called. Yeah, no, no, it's really interesting, right?
- [04:57]
Richard Osman
You know, you really do have a hinterland.
- [04:58]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, I, Yes, I do, but. Okay, so Unilever is one of the world's largest consumer product companies. They've got masses of brands. They've got about 150 brands and things like Dove and Vaseline and Hellmans and whatever it is.
- [05:11]
Richard Osman
They're one of those companies that owns all the other companies.
- [05:13]
Marina Hyde
Yeah. And 4 billion people sort of touch one of their products every day.
- [05:18]
Richard Osman
Wow.
- [05:18]
Marina Hyde
Effectively because they've got, they operate in 190 countries and it's kind of everything they've got.
- [05:23]
Richard Osman
I don't have a product called. Which is a uni lever.
- [05:25]
Marina Hyde
No, they don't.
- [05:26]
Richard Osman
Which is a lever that does everything. That's like a kind of one of those remote controls that controls everything. A lever that does everything. If I was a Unilever, that's what I'd be doing.
- [05:34]
Marina Hyde
They have 100,000 employees. But what's really interesting is that they've replace almost completely replacing ads with creators. They have scaled from having 10,000 paid creators, they have 300,000 paid creators.
- [05:48]
Richard Osman
Yeah. And this is, by the way, what we would also call influencers. This world where we say people who are sending you things. That world has changed utterly. We think of influencers of people with sort of, you know, over a million followers on various things, which is what they now call a macro influencer. And the world we're talking about is the world of micro influencers, which is somewhere between 10 and 100,000 followers. So you can have 10,000 followers and be making money. Because Unilever, they've worked out that having a lot of small influencers is actually a much better bang for their buck than having two or three massive influencers
- [06:25]
Marina Hyde
or just traditional broadcast advertising. He's presided over this complete shift away from it. He says he wants one in every zip code, every postcode around the whole world. And so instead of that kind of top down corporate messaging, it is all social first and creator disseminated. That's one big company. But it's really interesting to see that they are already on 300,000 paid influencers.
- [06:48]
Richard Osman
And also, by the way, not just one big company, but sort of a company that's always been at the forefront of advertising, always been at the forefront of branding and marketing. And where we go next and where they lead, an awful lot of other people will follow. So this is not going to get any smaller in the next few Years. This, this idea of micro influences, those
- [07:03]
Marina Hyde
are the small ones. But then equally in business you've got, and people talk about this all the time now. Founders can't just be, you know, you can't just invent your thing. Documenting it and posting about it is just a huge social activity is massive part of the job. And you're expected to sort of document your thinking publicly. It's not like an optional marketing strategy anymore. You have to build the product, then you have to run the company. But you have to be an always on creator.
- [07:32]
Richard Osman
You have to, you have to tell your story which.
- [07:33]
Marina Hyde
Because there's no search traffic anymore.
- [07:35]
Richard Osman
Yeah. And it's a, you know, familiar thing. We've all, you know that, that idea that, you know, the, the story behind a brand is very important and you know, the, the, the origins of a brand is important. But now it's so it's, it's sort of everything at the beginning as you say, when you're launching a product. If you go for an ipo, you can see now that the, you know, Elon Musk is the most obvious example. But it happens all the way down that the founders of a company or the chief executives of a company have to be able to tell their own story in their own space before you have an ipo. I mean you, you literally sort of can't do anything in any sphere now without going on camera and telling people.
- [08:10]
Marina Hyde
Without posting what it is.
- [08:11]
Richard Osman
Without posting. Yeah, I find it exhausting.
- [08:14]
Marina Hyde
Yeah. But then so moving down from that, there's a sort of middle. It's interesting that there are so many now journalists who are sort of just like have become a creator. And there's a woman who's study, who's studying all these people who were just moving away from kind of traditional legacy outlets. And she said there's not one creator that's losing sleep, wondering is the Washington Post or the New York Times taking my audience? Because that is not happening. But the reverse is so these big kind of legacy things, people are moving away and people are moving into these kind of individual spaces. So the next thing you have to think of is like is the creator economy, is it like a content industry or is it actually like an acquirable asset class? Clearly like Unilever thinks it's almost like an asset class. It's, you know, an asset class is something like shares or whatever or real estate or bonds or something that performs, shares similar characteristics and kind of performs in the same way in markets. So. But life has become lifestyle content. So all of These people, the supposedly private self, everybody posts all things like their pregnancy tests or their child's first steps or everything. It becomes public labor all the time. And it started with things like the mummy bloggers and then suddenly these people who were just doing something at home about. And then really interestingly you saw, oh my gosh, every. These people are now creators. They have these huge businesses, but it's now so far fast and it's everywhere. I mean, dating is completely enmeshed with it. But this idea of creator as a social identity, a lot of it is a form of, you know, people want to say they're a creator. Why do you think that is?
- [09:49]
Richard Osman
It's like people have always wanted to say they're an artist. Yeah, because it's, you know, there's. Because they are an artist at heart. That's the point. And you know, lots of people in their hearts are creative and they are creators. And this gives you the opportunity to self identify as that in the same way that very very rich men and children of very, very rich men have always self identified as film producers. But, you know, it's a thing you can say and do. I think, personally, I think it's very good to have any outlet for creativity. I also think that it's great that it's reducing obstacles to genuinely creative people to make a bit of money as well. But the idea that 39% of people self identify as content creators is plainly absurd. But that's, you know, I don't think it is. But 49% of people in Britain self identify as working class and we know that's not true as well. It's like you can't identify as what you want. Right. There's an awful lot of right wing bloggers who are self identifying as content creators who don't let anyone else self identify. And you go, but hold on, you're saying that you're a content creator but you know, you don't make any money, so you're self identifying.
- [10:53]
Marina Hyde
I want, yeah, but I think that money doesn't have to be involved for people to feel that. But creation is now default behavior. You feel like if you're not doing it, then you're not participating. And that's, that's been very. And obviously AI is going to further turbocharge that because it's much easier to create things. But there's that what felt like a newish category, what they call a prosumer. So you're not like just a producer, but you're also a consumer. That's now I think it's almost a cultural normal. It certainly is if 39% of people are saying it.
- [11:24]
Richard Osman
Well, there's two personality types and this ties into it, which is people who are always on transmit and people who are mainly on receive. And culturally we've turned into a group of people who are always on transmit. And that's. You sort of think, well, we need receivers as well for this economy. We can't, we can't all be transmitting all the time.
- [11:44]
Marina Hyde
But if you're a prosumer, then you're both. And that's what people are, because they're sort of, they produce stuff themselves, but they are also the consumption is part of the participation. So going back to that thing of like the most intimate moments of people's lives are posted, but actually people are just online all the time. And we. I've talked about this before, but you are basically, you work for the platforms. People spend five or six hours on these platforms. They work for the algorithm every day. Every day. That is, if you did five to six hours of anything else, you would be doing what we used to call a part time job. Okay. And they have other jobs. They have other jobs. But I actually increasingly think that their real role in the economy is the five to six hours they're spending online powering these vast and insane and insanely rich companies, often for free.
- [12:31]
Richard Osman
So micro influencing is interesting, I think, and the reason why it's really, really taken off, because you would say someone with 10,000 followers, is that really of any use to a brand? Now, the engagement is the absolute key and that's what all advertisers and all marketers look for. So if you've got, say, people over at 1 million followers, they get an engagement of about 1% by engagement. That could literally just be replying, or it can be. The most important engagement, of course, is buying is, you know, putting some money into the ecosystem. Micro influencers have about three times that. They have like 3.2% engagement, so they got far fewer people, but the people who are following them are far more engaged. And because it is a more personal thing, if you follow Cristiano Ronaldo, there's 600 million people following him. And so, you know, a lot of those are bots, a lot of those are not. There's lots of natural wastage there. If you've got a dentist who has 12,000 people following them, those people tend to be quite engaged. They're following for a reason. They've chosen to follow that person. They chose to follow for very niche Advice. If you're. I always say, if you're a dentist. I choose dentists because there are examples of these people making a million pounds a year become creative, who become creators. All day, every day. You've got new patients coming in and you're saying, oh, by the way, you're brushing slightly too hard, or this is the new way to brush it. And make sure. This is how I would floss, not that. And every time, every single patient is saying, oh, God, that's really interesting.
- [13:49]
Christy
That's.
- [13:50]
Richard Osman
And next time they come back in and go, I really started flossing differently because of what you said. Thank you. It doesn't take more than a couple of years of that to think. I mean, everyone I talk to really, really likes this advice that I give. Why don't I just. I'll sort of stick it on a video. I've got a couple of hours at the end of the day, I could do this.
- [14:07]
Marina Hyde
Get a ring light.
- [14:08]
Richard Osman
Yeah, I can get a ring light. And so you show people how to brush, how to floss. You show them stuff that is obvious to you because it's in your professional wheelhouse, but might be less obvious to them, and suddenly everyone's like. Everyone's like that, one individual person. So instead of talking to one patient at a time, you talk to 12,000 people. It doesn't take long for an oral B to go, oh, that's interesting. This person. Lots of people seem to really, really like what they do. We will put some money into them, by the way. Just huge multiples, less than you have to put into, you know, someone like Stacy Solomon or someone. Someone with huge followings. We'll put some money into them. We'll see what return we get on on our investment. And over the last few years, they have seen time and time and time again that they're getting really, really, really good return on their investment, that these people with smaller followers but more engaged followers are such a huge driver of the economy. And people who. People trust.
- [14:59]
Marina Hyde
But Unilever have 300,000 of these and they want to massively scale that.
- [15:04]
Richard Osman
What could we do?
- [15:06]
Marina Hyde
We do.
- [15:07]
Richard Osman
This is how we do this.
- [15:08]
Marina Hyde
I'm so sorry. You're involved in content creation right now.
- [15:11]
Richard Osman
Oh, no.
- [15:12]
Marina Hyde
I know you've tried to stay away from it.
- [15:13]
Richard Osman
I've fallen into my own snare.
- [15:15]
Marina Hyde
Yeah. But that is extraordinary that there are that many and they're just trying to really, really build that up.
- [15:19]
Richard Osman
What's more extraordinary is that it works. Yeah, that's the really, really interesting.
- [15:23]
Marina Hyde
It works so Much better than the absolutely multiple millions and billions that they have effectively plowed into top down corporate led advertising.
- [15:32]
Richard Osman
You see why the business of it works and you see why this is a viable job for an awful lot of people. If you're sitting there and you have a job that you're aware you can, you know, things that other people don't know and things that people might find useful in their daily life, you can just start doing that, you know, don't do the things that everyone else has done. If you want to become a beauty blogger, that's done. There's people who are amazing, that there's brilliant that unless you've got a new angle. But if you're a professional person who does something interesting that people don't know about, you can make money out of that. Brands will give you money and if people come back and you get engagement, they will give you more money and you will grow more people. You know, it's, that's a, that's an interesting job to do.
- [16:13]
Marina Hyde
But everybody now works for the algorithm.
- [16:15]
Richard Osman
That's the problem with it, I think that is to do this, you are relying on Instagram or TikTok or whatever platform you choose and that can be taken away from you almost immediately. So for example, if you're on TikTok, two ways of getting paid as a micro influencer, firstly, you get money directly from the client, from a Unilever or someone like that. They will pay you for a post or they may might put you on a retainer. Depends how that works. But secondly, the place where you can really make money is that you get a share of any marketplace money coming in. So TikTok has a very good shop front which people buy things through. You get a share of that and that suddenly you're like, but hold on, I used to go into the dental surgery every day. Now I'm getting money every time someone buys a particular type of toothbrush. Suddenly I'm on $250,000 a year and I can just sit at home. However, TikTok Tomorrow in the same way that, you know, Facebook have done with big publishers, TikTok tomorrow could change their terms of service. TikTok tomorrow could end your business. And that's a very precarious place to be.
- [17:22]
Marina Hyde
But all work is precarious. And that's what people think now.
- [17:24]
Richard Osman
I guess so.
- [17:25]
Marina Hyde
But people think more and more that all work is precarious.
- [17:27]
Richard Osman
Yeah.
- [17:28]
Marina Hyde
And that why would you not have a side hustle doing these things? And always.
- [17:32]
Richard Osman
Yeah, I suppose so. But if, if this is becoming such an enormous business. And the one thing we know about the Tiktoks and Instagrams and Facebooks of this world is the more money there is to be made, the more they try and rake of it. And that's probably coming out of your pocket. Is that, I would say is. Is. It's speaking to your point about that you're being completely reliant on the platforms and you are sort of working for the platforms as well.
- [17:58]
Marina Hyde
Everybody works in the content mines now. Everybody works down the content mines.
- [18:02]
Richard Osman
But it's a very, very interesting way of getting. Because the only way it really works is if you're good. The only way it really works is if you have authority and if people trust you and believe you and you promote things to them that work for them because then they return. So it has a meritocracy to it. I mean, as always, I always think the hilarious thing of, I bang on all the time about how, you know, the, there's fewer barriers to entry in the content, you know, these days and how when I started in TV everyone was middle class. And then you look at some of the big YouTubers and influencers, you go, oh, you all went to public school as well. There's some, there's something, you know, happens there. But I, but I do think it's a.39% of people saying they're content creators and a good number of people genuinely making a living out of it in a way that didn't used to happen. You talked about journalists as well. The other side of this coin.
- [18:53]
Marina Hyde
It's not just because it's become the kind of aspirational identity.
- [18:57]
Richard Osman
Yeah. But the idea now that bands and journalists and people on that side of things have their own patreons and can get paid individually by people again. It's having that niche audience but who really trust you and like you and believe in you. And if you're a content creator. I was in that, that podcast Finn vs. History, which is Fin Taylor and Horatio Gould. Someone was telling me the other day how much money they each make a year. And it's a huge amount of money entirely off their own back, entirely off people, you know, paying them directly, entirely off. Having a group of people who love what it is that you do and being paid directly. And that, by the way, is much less platform dependent than a lot of the influencing things. There are ways and means now of making money that they didn't used to be. And I just think that, you know, we can sort of talk about the platforms and we can talk about, oh, God, everyone was a creator. But there's just. There are so many people out there now who can make a living doing this, who wouldn't have been able to do it five years ago. Yeah, it's something about that is very powerful.
- [19:57]
Marina Hyde
It's got a huge middle class. That's what I'm saying. Like for all economies, if they have a successful and thriving middle class, then perhaps they're going somewhere.
- [20:05]
Richard Osman
Yeah, this is. This is definitely that. But, you know, it is very easy to sneer at the world of influencing. But it's not. We're all going to be there. No, I mean previous. I mean, previously, it's, you know, listen, I've written books where influencers have been the murder victims. You know, I've been.
- [20:21]
Marina Hyde
I've done murders. The first one, the next one is out in September.
- [20:25]
Richard Osman
It is. But I think there is this. Something has happened, something has changed and there are a new group of content creators who can get paid directly by people to speak directly to us.
- [20:36]
Marina Hyde
It's such a vast class of them.
- [20:37]
Richard Osman
But the idea of the nicheness of our culture being where the money is now, and the idea of journalists being able to write a Patreon for, you know, not a huge amount of people, but for that to make be a better living than writing a column for a national newspaper or something like that, you know, it's, It's. There's something good in that, isn't there? There's something, isn't there in. We're destroying the hierarchy of work. This idea that you go to work for 45 years at the same place and you have a boss and your boss has a boss and your boss's boss has a boss. You are now, if you are really good at what you do, you don't have to wait five years to be promoted. You don't have to go and sit in a meeting where people less talented than you are telling you what to do. You don't have to constantly be sort of overlooked because somebody went to, you know, the same school as the person you're working for wants to get the job. Instead, you can go home, you can turn your ring light on, you can tell people what it is that you do and how you do it. And if they think you're good, if you give value to them, then you have a completely different way of making a living. You have a completely different career. You don't have that 45 years and a carriage clock at the end of it. You have this hustle all the time. It's graphed all the time. But there are ways and means of getting paid just to be yourself with your own skills.
- [21:48]
Marina Hyde
I should say this section of the podcast is not sponsored by Big Ring Light. But you know, if you're interested, hit me up. Shall we go to some adverts and afterwards talk about Charli xcx?
- [21:59]
Richard Osman
We should do talking of macro influences.
- [22:07]
Marina Hyde
This episode is brought to you by Lloyd's Rewards. Now, a big mistake that people make is leaving the cinema as soon as the credits roll. Cause there might be a bonus scene right at the end.
- [22:16]
Richard Osman
Yeah, absolutely. One of the scenes.
- [22:17]
Marina Hyde
There might be one in the middle.
- [22:18]
Richard Osman
Yeah, you never know.
- [22:20]
Marina Hyde
In Marvel's ones there's be a mid credits scene and then there'll be an end credits scene.
- [22:24]
Richard Osman
I remember the first one. I really remember well too. I remember Ferris Bueller's Day off where he tells you to go home at the end. But also Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds where they would do bloopers. It just feels like a secret little glimpse.
- [22:36]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [22:36]
Richard Osman
Into a.
- [22:36]
Marina Hyde
And it doesn't quite have to be over.
- [22:38]
Richard Osman
Yeah, exactly. And it's just a lovely little added bonus. You've done everything. You've made your show right. You've given everyone everything. It's just a lovely little extra.
- [22:46]
Marina Hyde
Which is also the idea behind Lloyd's Rewards. Extra value appearing inside something you were already doing anyway. Your daily banking, from shopping to streaming. You can bank on Lloyds to help your money go further.
- [22:58]
Richard Osman
It's rewards like this that make 14 million people bank on Lloyds. Search Lloyds Rewards in your app. Eligibility criteria, terms and conditions apply. Retailer offers and cashback amounts may vary. UK residents 18 plus. Welcome back, everybody. Now, Charli xcx, one of the few people in show business to have a surname that's entirely made of Roman numerals. Amanja Vidic is my other favorite. Has a new album out. Marina.
- [23:30]
Marina Hyde
Yes, it's called Music Fashion Film. She says it's about process.
- [23:35]
Richard Osman
Okay.
- [23:36]
Marina Hyde
How did you find her, Richard?
- [23:37]
Richard Osman
I loved it. I think, you know I'm a big fan of Charli X. Yeah, it's what I always find interesting. So obviously Brat was so enormous.
- [23:43]
Marina Hyde
That was two summers ago.
- [23:44]
Richard Osman
Two summers ago. And this idea of how you follow up something that's absolutely enormous, I always find quite interesting. What she's done is sort of what Nirvana did after Nevermind when they bought out in Utro, which is a bit scrappier, a bit kind of. No, we're not going to do this stadium stuff anymore. We're going to show you who we really are. And she sort of pared it back a bit as a bit grungier, a bit dirtier, a bit more guitar. So she sort of said, I'm not going to try and compete with this uber pop brat. I'm actually going to show you a different side of myself, which I think is quite a smart way of following up something. Because you can't be bigger than Brat.
- [24:16]
Marina Hyde
No. And actually, it's really interesting. Brat was such a. I mean, obviously we talked about it at the time. For someone who'd been a sort of relatively niche artist, it became a complete phenomenon. And I mean, for me, I find it quite depressing that, like, anything that. Talking of our monoculture, anything that feels countercultural, that hits immediately becomes hoovered up and commodified instantly by the mainstream. I mean, some of the stuff that happened with Brat, you would not be wanting if you were a cool and edgy pop star. I mean, like, do you remember during the election, Kamala Harris changing her whole page to. It's like, this is so. I find so much of what happened with it so awful.
- [24:59]
Richard Osman
There's a certain thing about being too big because everyone climbs on everything, you know, you can't. You know, everyone is making. As we said, everyone's making content about everything. So everything. Everyone is making content about your thing because it's the thing that people are talking about. Yes, a lot.
- [25:12]
Marina Hyde
It's. It was really awful. And it was. It was so. It was like the total mainstreaming of something. You know, she's supposed to be a sort of, like, edgy, art school kind of club girl. And then. I don't know, I. I have to say, it's difficult. Nowadays we particularly demand reinventions and pivots. And by saying, how am I going to follow up? You know, by more of the same. People feel they have to kind of reinvent themselves and that everyone's got to be in a series of eras, if you will. And so, you know, I suppose she says, oh, I'm a contrarian. I'm. This is like some kind of interstitial album. And I'm just going to do. I found quite a lot of it quite phoned in, I have to say. But also what I like about. What I do like about it is the sense that after everybody piled onto Brat and just joined the bandwagon, perhaps it will serve as some kind of
- [26:05]
Richard Osman
fandom cull, which is what Nirvana did with Inutra.
- [26:08]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, I hate these fans. I want to get rid of these
- [26:10]
Richard Osman
New fans, which is very, very common. If you're Charli XCX and you're in the Moment, as you say, Bratz was so enormous. But you know, she sat and recorded that in the studio with her mates and when it first started going massive, she sort of starts counting the money and thinks, oh my God, this is insane. And then as you say, it goes super, super, massive. And suddenly you're public property in a way that you weren't before. And suddenly everyone is thinking, what is she going to do next? That's a lot of pressure. I think if you're Charli XCX, you think, I'm gonna do 20 albums in my career, you know, they're all gonna be individual ones. This is gonna be a good one, you know.
- [26:41]
Marina Hyde
Can we talk about her time since then and what she has actually done? Cause I think it's quite interesting. So you obviously have this absolute monster hit that just gets co opted by everybody. She did the moment, the A24 sort of mockumentary, which is weird. I was really looking forward to that and I found it. It was kind of less funny than it should have been and it was whatever, but sort of about a meta version. She is becoming very, very meta. Anyway, then she got a substack because, you know, she's an artist. She said, she talked a lot about film. She did the Wuthering Heights soundtrack. And then the first single from this new album, she's saying the dance floor's dead. You know, it's all about rock music instead, to a huge degree. It's so meta and it's supposed to be phoned in and like, does she get, you know. Of course she gets the joke. She gets the joke before you. In fact, you just wrote the joke. I didn't mean this. Yes, I mean this. No, I don't really mean this. It's difficult when any artist gets to. We talked about this a bit with Harry Styles to the point where. And he actually took a long time away. Where you get to the stage in your career where you can only sing about what it's like to be really famous.
- [27:41]
Richard Osman
Yeah.
- [27:43]
Marina Hyde
And I always think that can be quite a difficult spot.
- [27:46]
Richard Osman
I mean, I think, you know, I want to talk about some of the other people who followed up massive hits and who's done it well and who's done it badly. And I think she's done it pretty well. I think she seems to be in control of who she is. You know, there's interesting things, but I just think you can't judge on this Brat was so huge, and she's still Charlie XCX that she was five years ago. She's still like a woman who just wakes up in the morning, so, you know, she has to deal with all of that. And that's quite difficult. You look at some, like, the people who follow things up best. So Fleetwood Mac, when that first. When Fleetwood Mac itself came out and was, like, massive, like huge. And everyone's thinking, oh, my God, you're never gonna follow that. And there's no way you're following up Fleetwood Mac. And they followed that up with Rumors, which is, by some standards, one of the biggest albums of all time. They sort of just did the same thing. Yeah, but better.
- [28:33]
Marina Hyde
They didn't feel they had to pivot. But now we live in a period where everyone has to reinvent.
- [28:37]
Richard Osman
Yeah. So Nirvana did pivot, that's for sure. Radiohead is a perfect example. So the Bends, and more particularly, I think, Creep. It had been so insanely enormous. I'd say the Creep was brat enormous that you got these guys from Oxfordshire who'd sort of, you know, been in a band for a while, released this song that the world had just eaten up and like, oh, my God, what do we do next? Easiest thing in the world there would be to do the Benz Part two. Actually, they come back with, ok, Computer, which, if you look back, is sort of an insane masterpiece. They then followed that up, by the way, with Kid A, where they go, no, this is the band we were all along. Ok, Computer was us just letting you know we weren't just the Bends. And then they followed that up. That's an extraordinary way to do that. And they've got longevity and they've got that kind of life. You look in movies, you look at someone like Tarantino, who has to follow up Reservoir Dogs, which again, exploded like a bomb in culture. It was huge and a huge movie. And you think, oh, my God, how do you follow that up and forget True Romance? Because that wasn't really a. That wasn't his. He did direct directing. He comes up with Pulp Fiction, which has a lot of the stuff from Reservoir Dogs, but shows the sort of genius of his filmmaking. You know, plays about with timelines, you know, extraordinarily iconic, builds on everything that people had loved about Reservoir Dogs and comes back with that. So, you know, it is absolutely doable. You get someone like. So Donna Tartt with a secret history is probably the perfect example in books. So she comes out with a secret history. I mean, it's almost impossible to have a More iconic book than Secret History was absolutely enormous. Everywhere in the world. The pressure to follow that up from the publishers, from everyone, even back in those days of culture would have been enormous. I mean, crazily enormous. She waits 10 years, does the little Friend, which is a great book, then waits another 10 years for the Goldfinch, which is another great book. So you can do it. You can follow up these enormous things. You can do it. But there's a lot of pressure. Most people fail guns and look at Guns N Roses after Appetite for Destruction. They're in that use your illusion era.
- [30:25]
Marina Hyde
What about the November Rain video, which is iconic?
- [30:27]
Richard Osman
Listen, nobody loves November Rain more than me. Harper Lee.
- [30:31]
Marina Hyde
What about me? I like it more than you.
- [30:33]
Richard Osman
Oh, do you? How much do you like it out of 2000? No, I'm just asking.
- [30:39]
Marina Hyde
I'm not playing your game.
- [30:40]
Richard Osman
No, I'm just interested because you said you liked it more than me.
- [30:45]
Marina Hyde
I like it more than you.
- [30:46]
Richard Osman
Hopperly and J.D. sanaj are both interesting. They're both, you know, Catcher in the Rye and Kill a Mockingbird.
- [30:52]
Marina Hyde
Huge brat summers.
- [30:52]
Richard Osman
Huge brat summers. Those are the Brett Summers of their time. You know, Harper Lee never follows up to Kill a Mockingbird. She does the kind of prequel which she written before JD Saniger, does a few short stories, but really spends 45 years writing nothing at all. I mean, that's. That's an option you can take when you've had a. A massive impact. Terrence Malick after Badlands and Days of Heaven doesn't make a movie for 20 years. It's hard to do it. And I think, you know, Stone Roses, oh, my God, the perfect example after. I mean, the Stone. That was massive. The Stone Roses. And they think, are they going to follow this up? It's going to be amazing. And they did the Second Coming, which is absolutely fine, but it took them a long time, cost him a lot of money, and was kind of fine. I think it's good. Like Charlie.
- [31:33]
Marina Hyde
None of them had to live in a culture that we have to live in now, where you've got to be an always on pop star. I mean, just saying the things she's done since in the old days, she'd have gone away for. Could have gone away for three or four years and then come back. She's done the moment, she's done her substack, she's done the Wuthering Heights soundtrack. There's a whole lot you have to do because you can never be off. You've just got to constantly produce or you fall. You Know by the wayside.
- [31:57]
Richard Osman
That's why I like this album, because it's not her. She hasn't tried. She's just made a good album with her mates. And that's all. I think that's all that you can have real, real control of, quite apart from anything else you do in between times and who you are and how you promote yourself. When you're in the studio, that's all you can do is keep your head down. Write some songs you like, record some songs you like, put them out two years later, do that again. Two years later, do that again. And I do think there's something that's incredibly noble about that. If you want to take advantage of everything in our culture and the money that's in our culture, the best artists every couple of years. Look at Madonna now with the new album. They just go back in.
- [32:32]
Marina Hyde
The new album's brilliant.
- [32:33]
Richard Osman
They, you know, they go back in and they do it again. You know, they get their head down, they do good work and they put it out and people like it again. And that's when you get this kind of longevity. And it must be so hard in the culture that we have at the moment. It must be so hard. But that's why when I listened to the album, I thought, yeah, that's fine. I thought, you know what? That's exactly what it should be. It should be absolutely fine. It should just be an album. You go, oh, yeah, that's good. In a couple of years, she'll do something else. In a couple of years after that, she'll do something else.
- [32:59]
Christy
Yeah.
- [32:59]
Marina Hyde
Be good. If the politicians don't bandwagon on this one. I can't see. I mean, some. Some of the songs I can't really see.
- [33:05]
Richard Osman
I can't see Andy Burnham doing a Commodore Harris.
- [33:08]
Marina Hyde
No, I mean, piling onto. Yeah, that track that's like. Sounds like an edging video. If I may. If I may.
- [33:15]
Richard Osman
Or can I talk about another album that I absolutely love?
- [33:18]
Marina Hyde
You don't talk about edging videos.
- [33:20]
Richard Osman
Listen, you go ahead if you need to. I will stick with November Rain, which sounds like a edging video.
- [33:26]
Marina Hyde
Oh, God, no.
- [33:27]
Richard Osman
Not really. Neutral Milk Hotel. We did in the Airplane over the Sea, and that's an album that every indie kid in the whole world loves and was super massive. He has never recorded another record since. It's hard, man. It's hard. If you're a creator and stuff comes out, you can react in one or two ways. You can either go into your shell or you can go. I've sort of just got to get
- [33:46]
Marina Hyde
something out and then.
- [33:46]
Richard Osman
Yeah, yeah, someone. Can I give the last word to Joseph Heller, please? So Joseph Heller, her love. And after catch 22, an interviewer said to him, I don't think you've ever done anything as good as Catch 22. And Joseph Heller said, well, yeah, you're right, but who has? And you know, you're lucky to have. You're lucky to have these big. Nevermind. Stone Roses Bratz. You're lucky to have them. And if you're smart, you can carry on your career and keep. Keep doing good work and keep making good music. But my God, the pressure of it is insane.
- [34:16]
Marina Hyde
Right? Yeah. Or M. Night Shyamaland.
- [34:19]
Richard Osman
Oh, that's a great example. After Sixth Sense.
- [34:21]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, after Sixth Sense. But also everything after that becomes more and more. There's a really good. There's a really good book about when he's making this film, the lady in the Water, and there's a great book about it called the man who Heard Voices. It's incredibly pretentious.
- [34:34]
Richard Osman
Oh, really?
- [34:35]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, yeah. It's a journalist who's like giving full access to him for the making of this film that turns out to spoiler not be one to trouble the scorers.
- [34:42]
Richard Osman
That's a tough one to follow up because it's such. It's so brilliantly. It's got such a brilliant, unique twist to it a bit. Who I thought, think, thought. Okay, I need to just make sure I've got a brilliant twist for every single thing that I do now. And that's, you know, he. Perhaps he would have made more interesting films if there hadn't been quite as
- [35:00]
Marina Hyde
you're just chasing that first high. It's.
- [35:02]
Richard Osman
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's. Anyway, anyway, I recommend the album.
- [35:07]
Marina Hyde
Now, shall we talk about Letterboxd, which is the social media film discovery platform, which became huge in the pandemic. Lots of really bad things became huge in the pandemic. But this, this was one of the good ones via the app. And it's. It's really interesting. It's like, it's massive in with Gen Z and kind of younger millennials and it's a huge amount of people have discovered film culture this way. It's a discovery engine first, I guess. And it's pushed that generation in the direction of things like horror and world cinema and other sort of different genre things.
- [35:41]
Richard Osman
A Japanese movie just describe what it is. It's sort of a repository of any movie and just people review them and rate them and there's.
- [35:48]
Marina Hyde
And post about that.
- [35:49]
Richard Osman
Loads and loads of lists. There's loads and loads of posts. You can read any movie you like. You can do the deepest of deepest dives here. You can see everything ranked. You can see the top thrillers, you can see the top four.
- [35:58]
Marina Hyde
Everyone does their top four. Your letterboxd top four is. But that's become a sort of form of, you know, taste as an identity and a shorthand for yourself, a way of signaling status.
- [36:09]
Richard Osman
Yeah, and it sounds, you know, there's a million things that are a bit like this, but it's just curated very, very well. There's two New Zealand guys, Matthew Buchana and Carl von Rando, who originally came up with it. And there's just something about it. It has an aesthetic to it, an indie aesthetic to it that it is appealing to go and visit. When you look at the reviews of films, you're like, huh? Oh, this is really interesting.
- [36:31]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, it does. But it does connect to the thing we were saying in our first item today, which is that, like, watching and then posting about it have now just sort of become two sides of the same coin, you know?
- [36:41]
Richard Osman
Yes.
- [36:41]
Marina Hyde
You can't.
- [36:41]
Richard Osman
If you watch a film thing, I tell you, I tell you. Who's going to be interested in my view on this? Everyone.
- [36:46]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, everyone's a critic.
- [36:47]
Richard Osman
But the nice thing about letterboxd actually is the top reviewers are actually rather interesting. And if you look through the top 500 films on Letterboxd, for example, you can tell it's very global because, you know, there's a lot of Japanese movies on there. There's a lot. It's not all the usual suspects. In fact, I don't think usual suspects is in the top hundred. There is stuff that you will discover there. However much of a cynias you might be, there is stuff there to discover. I absolutely love it as a website. I love. Because, I mean, I listen, I love a list, of course I do. But I love discovering new things. They have an amazing thing. They do this sort of video rental thing and you have to pay like 15 quid to. To, you know, it's like buying a video in the old days where they have films that just sort of played in festivals and never got a proper release. And you can, you can, you know, watch these movies. You can, you can. You can put them on tv. And so it's. It's probably. It's the real deal, you know, it really. It's. It has bona fides. It is interesting. It's intriguing whether it remains that way. We're about to find out because it is up for sale, which is not always the best thing that can happen to someone.
- [37:50]
Marina Hyde
It's up for sale. It's valued I think at about 250 million. And so we'll talk about why it is a desirable asset. There are lots of people who might be in for it. Sony, Paramount, Versant, which is the Comcast sort of thing.
- [38:06]
Richard Osman
That audience Netflix, you can sort of
- [38:09]
Marina Hyde
see it a 24 which we'll get to.
- [38:11]
Christy
Yeah.
- [38:12]
Marina Hyde
So if you think Comcast owns that, Versant owns Rotten Tomatoes and Fandango, the kind of ticketing and pre booking or
- [38:20]
Richard Osman
whatever which have a similar vibe. Rotten Tomatoes has a similar vibe. This feels a bit more of a deeper dive but it does a similar thing.
- [38:28]
Marina Hyde
What's appealing to it is you have for any of those companies who would want to integrate it into their corporate structure is that it's. You get direct access to film enthusiasts obviously you can influence discovery and you can get kind of first party kind of taste data on things. It's very, very useful for marketing quite obviously and mainly it's really cheap. Like explain look at the entertainment M and A prizes that might be around. There's not that much that costs 250 million and that is. But you do also have to be incredibly careful and now people know it's for sale within the community because of a hyper engaged community.
- [39:07]
Richard Osman
Everyone's worried.
- [39:08]
Marina Hyde
They're very, very worried. There are these kind of like fan move sense to kind of try and buy it themselves. I The idea that A24 may wish to buy it that I that would probably be the least offensive thing to
- [39:21]
Richard Osman
lots of these because if you, if you're on the site at the moment one of the interesting things about it is and you realize how rare it is in our culture Wikipedia and this to where it's kind of under monetized anything oh my God, thank God that something is under monetized. I'm not constantly being driven towards something I'm not constantly being sold to. There's you know, bits of advertising and you know there's a Patreon tier for power users of which I am not one. But you. But you are not. You don't feel you are constantly being fed by the algorithm and you're not being constantly monetized by it. It still feels like an indie site. It feels like something you've stumbled upon that is a community and those things are rarer and rarer and usually they're quite niche. There's plenty of them but they're Niche. When you get something this size and you're still going, oh my God, it still seems to be run by the users. But as you say, when, as soon as, you know, venture capitalists look at something that's under capitalized, they, they, they like to capitalize.
- [40:18]
Marina Hyde
Well, if you look up, it's possible. This is why I think perhaps a 24 would be the best fit for it. I don't know, because that is obviously a 24. It didn't even exist 15 years ago. And it's like modern art house again, a young company. It deliberately cultivates fandoms and merchandise and socials and what it's made for. Internet culture. It thrives. By the way, their movies completely thrive on something like Letterbox because they are all suited to Internet culture and they all understand it.
- [40:46]
Richard Osman
I think A24 themselves say that the Brutalist was such a hit largely through Letterboxd. It was like one of the incredible sort of things that powered the success of that movie.
- [40:56]
Marina Hyde
Yes. And people want to discover that other directors and their whole stable of auteurs and all of that. You can see that with. It's amazing to some degree that A24 has been able to keep that kind of edginess and keep that. And a lot of people call it a cult and say their fans are like cult like they carry, they pay to carry around the merchandise, but you have to take a hat off completely. I should say full disclosure, I have things in development with them, so. But on the TV side. But it would make sense for them to buy something like that. I mean, it would make sense, by the way, for all of these people to buy an asset that is of this price and you can see how it could help. But many of these people could completely ruin it.
- [41:35]
Richard Osman
Yeah, there is, there is a sort of a public benefit corporation called Intrinsic Entertainment Collaborative who are trying to raise money to buy it themselves. And I mean, you know, because it has such an engaged community who'd all be happy to, you know, chip in. But yeah, you. I don't want to fast forward three years and be on Letterbox and just go, oh, this is not as good as it used to be.
- [41:57]
Marina Hyde
They've destroyed it.
- [41:58]
Richard Osman
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:59]
Marina Hyde
Because at the moment they own a such a dedicated audience and yes, it would be interesting to see how it plays out. I think perhaps. I don't think that Intrinsic will get
- [42:09]
Richard Osman
it, but no, I don't think they will either because there's people with deeper pockets who could do things with it that would fit into other businesses far More so if you don't use letterboxd and it's letterboxd without the letter E at the end. If you're interested in files really, really worth having a look at, I guarantee you'll find something that you find interesting very, very quickly in it. It's an example of just something that works for all of its members, I think, and that's very rare. Plus we get Goal Hanger to buy it.
- [42:35]
Marina Hyde
Yeah, just.
- [42:36]
Richard Osman
Then we can hang out with them.
- [42:37]
Marina Hyde
Yes.
- [42:38]
Richard Osman
Yeah, that'd be fun. Any recommendations this week?
- [42:40]
Marina Hyde
Well, it sort of fits into what we've been talking about, but I read a very interesting book called Rate this Book by Benji Wilson which is about how five star ratings took over the world. Touches on much of which we've spoken about today. And it's really, really interesting how this one thing has come to dominate almost everything and you think you understand how much of it there is in art world, but you don't even. You haven't scratched the surface. So that's an interesting one. It's called Rate this Book by Benji Wilson.
- [43:07]
Richard Osman
Oh, that's very cool. I want to add to my previous recommendation of Widow's Bay, which is on Apple, because I'd seen the first few episodes that have dropped and now I've seen the whole thing is all dropped. So genuinely it's brilliant. But I do need to say it does get really scary. So it remains funny, but it's like really scary as well.
- [43:25]
Marina Hyde
People have got so many good shows at the moment.
- [43:27]
Richard Osman
Yeah. But just if you started watching it and it was too scary for you, I apologize. And if you're gonna stop watching it now, it's brilliant. And Matthew Reese's performance is insanely good. But it is really scary as well. So what I recommend also is there's a new series of my favorite show on BBC1, which is fake or Fortune where Fiona Bruce and Philip mould take people who think they might have masterpieces and they go through all the verification processes and it's just. It talks about art history, there's lots of science in it, lots of human stories. And the first this week is about a woman in Liverpool who believes she has a Faberge flower. And this, it's such a great story as well. The thing I love about that is go. Oh no. Oh. Oh no.
- [44:07]
Christy
Oh.
- [44:08]
Richard Osman
It's just they, they tell it brilliantly. They tell human stories with it as well. It's just, it's one of the shows that just keeps on giving. So Fake or Fortune?
- [44:16]
Marina Hyde
We will be back on Thursday with a Q and A.
- [44:19]
Richard Osman
We will.
- [44:19]
Marina Hyde
And you will be bringing us for our members, a very special episode of the World Cup.
- [44:26]
Richard Osman
Yeah, it's the. A couple of movie quotes. So the greatest movie quotes of all time.
- [44:31]
Marina Hyde
I'm dying for that one.
- [44:32]
Richard Osman
Yeah, it's really good and it's really good. And that's a good idea, trying to work out what works as a movie quote, what doesn't work. And yeah, it's. It's Myself, Better Holland, Ivo, Graham. And we will let you know which movie quote the British public thinks is the greatest of all time. And we are also just in the midst of recording our history of James Bond as well, which will be out for members soon, which we're really having fun.
- [44:54]
Marina Hyde
I'm really enjoying it. I've said a number of inappropriate things in the first recording. Bill.
- [44:57]
Richard Osman
Oh, my God. You said something so inappropriate, I think because you explained afterwards why it wasn't inappropriate, but at the time it sounded it. So listen out for that when that comes out. See you on Thursday.
- [45:09]
Marina Hyde
See you on Thursday.