Most people dont realize how overstimulated they are until they finally step away from the noise. As an executive at a hospitality brand that helps guests reconnect with nature, I see it all the time: Guests arrive tense and distracted, constantly checking their phones. But after just a day or two offline in nature, something shifts. You can see it in their posture, their breath, their pace.
They didnt realize how much they needed to disconnect until they did.
Its not just about screens, though screen time is a big part of it. Its the entire rhythm of modern lifealways on, always reacting. Thats why more people are rethinking what luxury really means. Luxury used to be defined by what you had: the highest thread count, the most high-end amenities, the most exclusive experience. Today, its increasingly becoming defined by what you dont have: no packed schedules, no overflowing inbox, no constant stream of pings and notifications.
A RETURN TO NATURE
What people are seeking now is balance. Stillness. Simplicity. Families are carving out screen-free time together, in part because theyre worried about what nonstop digital input is doing to their kids. Professionals are looking for ways to reset and get grounded. Even a couple of nights in nature can help regulate your sleep, lower stress, and remind you how good it feels to actually be present.
Spending time outdoors plays a unique role in that reset. Its not just about quietits a different kind of sensory input: fewer alerts, more birdsong. Less stimulation, more space to think.
Whether guests are staying steps from a national park or unwinding after a guided hike with a local naturalist, Ive seen how nature-centered experiences can create the kind of mental clarity that more traditional hotel settings rarely offer. And theres science to support it: Studies consistently show that exposure to green space reduces stress and anxiety. Surrounded by trees, sleeping under the stars, peoples nervous systems respond in ways that simply cant be replicated by a hotel gym or meditation app.
THE POWER OF A TECH-FREE WEEKEND
A tech-free weekend in the woods used to be considered a rare indulgence or even an impossibility for professionals who couldnt imagine fully disconnecting. Now, its something more and more people are actively prioritizing. Restoration has shifted from a fringe benefit of leisure time to the primary goal. And thats reshaping not only how we design experiences, but also what we consider valuable in the first place.
Ive had conversations with guests who arrive tightly wound from work, skeptical about unpluggingbut after even one night under the stars, they describe a kind of clarity they say they havent felt in years. They tell me its the first time in months theyve felt rested or truly present.
And this change isnt just something Ive noticed anecdotallyits backed by data. A recent trend report from Expedia found that travelers are increasingly seeking out destinations that allow them to relax and disconnect.. The Global Wellness Institute projects that wellness tourism will more than double by 2027, becoming a $1.4 trillion industry. Booking.com even named disconnection travel one of the defining trends for 2025.
Its not hard to see why. Americans now spend more than seven hours a day in front of screens, and parents are more concerned than ever about their kids tech use. Even short breaks can make a difference: Stanford researchers have found that just 90 minutes in nature can significantly reduce stress-related brain activity.
This isnt a fringe movementits a fundamental change in how people want to spend their time, their money, and their attention.
Whether its a weekend outdoors, a wellness-focused retreat, or just space to be fully present, people are investing in experiences that offer real restoration instead of just another weekend escape. As this continues, it will redefine how businesses think about design, hospitality, and what it really means to serve people well.
FINAL THOUGHTS
For those of us in hospitality, this shift is already showing up in how we design experiences. Its not about piling on more amenitiesits about removing friction. People dont want to spend hours planning or shopping for outdoor gear just to get a moment of peace. They want simplicity, accessibility, and spaces that make it easy to disconnect. Thats why hospitality brands that make nature more accessible are gaining traction.
This shift in mindset is evident in other industries, too. Workplaces are rethinking their environments to give people more mental space. Wellness brands are emphasizing recovery, not hustle. Even tech companies are experimenting with features that encourage people to log off.
The throughline is clear: Weve reached a collective breaking point with burnout. The hospitality brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that create spacefor balance, for clarity, for quiet reflection in nature. In a world that encourages us to be always on, choosing to unplug may be the biggest luxury of all.
Bryan Terzi is the chief commercial officer of AutoCamp Hospitality Group.
Why are some jobs better than others?
Well, it largely depends on peoples preferences. In other words, one persons dream job may be another persons nightmare.
And yet, there are also clearly some universal or at least generalizable parameters that make most people accept the idea that some jobs are objectively better than othersor at least seen by most as generally preferable.
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Pay and purpose
For example, jobs that pay well, offer stability, and provide opportunities for growth are almost universally considered better. A tenured professorship, a senior engineering role at a reputable company, or a stable medical position all combine financial security with long-term prospects and prestige. In contrast, poorly paid, insecure, or dead-end roles (like gig work with no benefits or exploitative manual labor with long brutal shifts and an alienating experience) are widely viewed as worse, even if a few individuals might value their flexibility or simplicity.
Then theres autonomy. Jobs that grant people a degree of control over how and when they work (e.g., creative professionals, entrepreneurs, and researchers) tend to score higher on satisfaction than those defined by micromanagement or rigid supervision. Autonomy is a proxy for trust and respect, and it correlates strongly with both engagement and mental health. Few people dream of jobs where every move is monitored, and most aspire to roles where they can think, decide, and act freely.
Unsurprisingly, purpose matters, too. Occupations that contribute to something meaningful (whether saving lives, advancing knowledge, or building something lasting) are viewed as more fulfilling than those that feel transactional or pointless. A teacher inspiring students, a scientist developing a vaccine, or an architect designing a community space are all examples of work that confers a sense of legacy. By contrast, even lucrative jobs can feel hollow when they lack purpose or moral value. This may explain the low correlation between pay and job satisfaction, which highlights the fact that we tend to overestimate the importance of compensation when making career choices. In that sense, the best jobs arent just about rewards, but about how they make people feel about themselves and their place in the world.
What the science says
A good way to acknowledge these nuances, and yet still predict whether a person is likely to access better jobs, is to examine why some individuals have more choices than others. That is, in any job or labor market, available job or career opportunities may have different degrees of appeal or attractiveness; but from a job seekers perspective, the more employable you are, the more likely to are to find and maintain a desirable jobwhether we look at subjective or objective dimensions of desirability. With this in mind, here are some critical learnings about the science of employability that explain why certain people are better able to access in-demand jobs:
(1) Their personalityResearch has consistently shown that employability is largely a function of personality. Traits such as conscientiousness, emotional stability, curiosity, and sociability predict not only who gets hired, but also who thrives once employed. Personality shapes reputation (the way others see us) and reputation determines whether we are trusted, promoted, and retained. For instance, people who are reliable, calm under pressure, and open to learning tend to be more employable than those who are erratic, avoid feedback, or difficult to work with. Moreover, personality also predicts job satisfaction: even in objectively good jobs, neurotic or disagreeable people are less likely to feel content, whereas optimistic and adaptable individuals find meaning in a wider range of roles, and are resilient if not satisfied even with jobs that make most people miserable. In short, who you are determines both the jobs you can get and how you feel about them once you do.
(2) Their social classWhile most advanced economies like to think of themselves as meritocracies, the data on social mobility suggest otherwise. In the United States, only about half of children born to parents in the bottom income quintile will ever move up the ladder, and just 7% will reach the top quintile. In the U.K., the class pay gap between working-class and professional backgrounds persists even among graduates. Privilege still buys access to education, networks, internships, and employers willing to take a chance. Sociologists call this social capital; in plain terms, it means your parents contacts and credentials still matter more than your own potential. The world may be trending toward meritocracy, but it hasnt quite arrived there yet.
(3) Where you are bornLocation remains one of the most powerful predictors of career outcomes. The Where-to-Be-Born Index ranks countries by the opportunities they afford their citizens, and being born in Switzerland, Denmark, or Singapore gives you exponentially better odds of landing a good job than being born in Haiti, South Sudan, or Bhutan. Access to education, infrastructure, technology, and basic security all shape employability. The same talent, if born in a country with weak institutions or unstable governance, is far less likely to achieve its potential. In that sense, geography is more likely than talent to mean destiny, at least until global mobility or remote work meaningfully narrow the gap.
(4) Their values, interests, and preferencesEven within similar contexts, people differ in what they want from work. Psychologists like Shalom Schwartz and Robert Hogan have shwn that our motivational values (e.g., achievement, power, altruism, security, stimulation, and so forth) determine what fit looks like for us. Someone who values adventure and creativity will flourish in startups or design roles, while a person who craves structure and predictability may prefer government or finance. Misalignment between values and job environment (say, a highly independent person in a bureaucratic culture) leads to burnout or disengagement. The better your job matches your values, the more likely you are to perceive it as a good one.
Adapt, evolve, and improve
In the end, better jobs are not just better paid or better designed; theyre better matched to the people who hold them. Some of this is luck: being born in the right family, in the right country, with the right temperament, will simply afford you a higher range and choice of matches, so you are bound to find more options. But much of it also depends on deliberate self-awareness, namely understanding what kind of environments bring out the best in you, and aligning your career moves accordingly.
From a societal perspective, the goal should be to expand access to good jobs by improving education, reducing inequality, and helping people develop the skills and traits that make them employable. That means focusing less on pedigree and more on potential, less on connections and more on competence.
Ultimately, the world of work will never be perfectly fair, but it can be fairer. And while none of us can control where we start, we can control how we grow. The most employable people are not just those who fit the system, but those who learn to adapt, evolve, and turn whatever job they have into something better.
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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! Im Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
Glenn Fogel joined dot-com darling Priceline in early 2000, a year after the name your price travel sites blockbuster initial public offering (IPO). “I joined one week before the Nasdaq peaked, Fogel recalls. Within a year of his arrival, the stock had cratered to $6 a share. By March 2002, the Nasdaq, a proxy for the burgeoning e-commerce and tech infrastructure companies that went public, plunged 77% from its March 2020 highs. Quips Fogel: At the time, my mother was wondering whether I still had a job.
Today, Fogel is CEO and president of Booking Holdingsparent of Priceline, KAYAK, Booking.com, OpenTable, and other brands. His experience navigating the dotcom bubble (more on that in a moment) affords a compelling perch from which to observe the current generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) boom. He sees parallels in the gold-rush mentality of both booms: Theres lots of investments, lots of new companies, he says. Many of them will not make it. Many investors will lose money. Corporate investment in AI reached $252.3 billion, and private investment in gen AI reached $33.9 billion in 2024, according to data compiled by the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered artificial intelligence.
The key difference between the dotcom bubble and now? I would say in terms of the possibility for human society, I think the possible transformations from gen AI are so much greater than what was possible from the [startups of] the nineties, he says.
Fogel points to breakthroughs like Googles AlphaFold model, which decoded protein folding and could accelerate drug discovery. Every area really of our society can be greatly improved by using gen AI, he says. Thats the thing thats so exciting.
Happy travelers
In travel, the stakes may not be as high, but the impact on daily life could be profound. Maybe were not going to save a lot of lives the way that the healthcare industry is going to be able to do, but maybe well make the experience much happier, he says.
Indeed, the company is already deploying AI to reduce customer-service wait times, using gen AI chatbots that can solve problems instantly. When a human agent does handle a call, the bots generate conversation summaries and next stepswork that previously consumed significant amounts of agent time.
Embracing emerging technology has been key to Booking Holdingss longevity. When predecessor company Priceline Group bought Booking.com in 2005, it acquired Bookings prowess in leveraging Googles paid search and platforms that enabled the business to rapidly test messaging to optimize conversion rates. The company subsequently bought travel search engine KAYAK in 2013 and restaurant reservation platform OpenTable in 2014. Priceline Group changed its name to Booking Holdings in 2018.
The long view
Travel itself is currently experiencing a boom. Despite economic uncertainty, U.S. consumers, especially those at the high-end of the market, are prioritizing travel, with airlines and hotels indicating strong demand for premium products. Indeed, at the end of October, Booking Holdings reported better-than-expected third-quarter earnings and said it continues to see steady travel demand trends in the current quarter.
Having led Booking Holdings through the dotcom boom and bustas well as the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to a near complete shutdown of travelFogel acknowledges that nothing goes up forever.
I dont know when those bad times are going to come, but theyre going to come sometimes, he says. Still, he takes the long view: I do know, in the long run, travel is always going to increase. It is human nature . . . people wanting to travel.
This time it’s different?
Do you agree that the societal benefits of gen AI companies and technologies dwarf the contributions of the dotcoms? If so, what breakthroughs excite you most? Send your examples to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id love to share your scenarios in a future newsletter.
Read more: bubble theories
Why the AI-fueled stock market isnt a bubble waiting to pop
There isnt an AI bubble. There are three
Are we in an AI bubble?
When Elon Musk launched Grokipedia, his AI-generated encyclopedia intended to rival Wikipedia, it was not just another experiment in artificial intelligence. It was a case study in everything that can go wrong when technological power, ideological bias, and unaccountable automation converge in the same hands.
Grokipedia copies vast sections of Wikipedia almost verbatim, while rewriting and reinterpreting others to reflect Musks personal worldview. It could genuinely be conceived as the antithesis of everything that makes Wikipedia good, useful, and human. Grokipedias edits aggressively editorialize topics ranging from climate change, to immigration, to (of course) the billionaires own companies and bio.
The result is less an encyclopedia than an algorithmic mirror of one mans ideology. A digital monument to self-confidence so unbounded that it might make a Bond villain blush.
From collaboration to colonization
Wikipedia remains one of humanitys most extraordinary collective achievements: a global, volunteer-driven repository of knowledge, constantly refined through debate and consensus. Its imperfections are human, visible, and correctable. You can see who edited what, when, and why.
Grokipedia is its antithesis. It replaces deliberation with automation, transparency with opacity, and pluralism with personality. Its editors are algorithms trained under Musks direction, generating rewritten entries that emphasize his favorite narratives and downplay those he disputes. It is a masterclass in how not to make an encyclopedia, a warning against confusing speed with wisdom.
In Grokipedia, Musk has done what AI enables too easily: colonize collective knowledge. He has taken a shared human effort, open, transparent, and collaborative, and automated it into something centralized, curated, and unaccountable. And he has done so doing the absolute minimum that the Wikipedia copyleft license requires, in extremely small print, in a place where nobody can see it.
The black box meets the bullhorn
This is not Musks first experiment with truth engineering. His social network, X, routinely modifies visibility and prioritization algorithms to favor narratives that align with his worldview. Now Grokipedia extends that project into the realm of structured knowledge. It uses the language of authority, such as entries, citations, and summaries, to give bias the texture of objectivity.
This is precisely the danger I warned about in an earlier Fast Company article: the black-box problem. When AI systems are opaque and centralized, we can no longer tell whether an output reflects evidence or intention. With Grokipedia, Musk has fused the two: a black box with a bullhorn.
It is not that the platform is wrong on every fact. It is that we cannot know which facts have been filtered, reweighted, or rewritten, or according to what criteria. Or worse, we can have the intuition that the whole thing starts with a set of commands that completely editorialize everything. The line between knowledge and narrative dissolves.
The ideological automation problem
The Grokipedia project exposes a deeper issue with the current trajectory of AI: the industrialization of ideology.
Most people worry about AI misinformation as an emergent property: something that happens accidentally when models hallucinate or remix unreliable data. Grokipedia reminds us that misinformation can also be intentional. It can be programmed, curated, and systematized by design.
Grokipedia is positioned as a factual, bias-free alternative to Wikipedia. That framing is itself a rhetorical sleight of hand: to present personal bias as neutrality, and neutrality as bias. It is the oldest trick in propaganda, only now automated at planetary scale.
This is the dark side of generative AIs efficiency. The same tools that can summarize scientific papers or translate ancient texts can also rewrite history, adjust emphasis, and polish ideology into something that sounds balanced. The danger is not that Grokipedia lies, but that it lies fluently.
Musk, the Bond villain of knowledge
Theres a reason Musks projects evoke comparisons to fiction: the persona he has cultivated, the disruptor, the visionary, the self-styled truth-teller, has now evolved into something closer to Bond villain megalomania.
In the films, the villain always seeks to control the worlds energy, communication, or information. Musk now dabbles in all three. He builds rockets, satellites, social networks, and AI models. Each new venture expands his control over a layer of global infrastructure. Grokipedia is just the latest addition: the narrative layer.
If you control the story, yo control how people interpret reality.
What AI should never be
Grokipedia is a perfect negative example of what AI should never become: a machine for amplifying one persons convictions under the pretense of collective truth.
It is tempting to dismiss the project as eccentric or unserious. But that would be a mistake. Grokipedia crystallizes a pattern already spreading across the AI landscape: many emerging AI systems, whether from OpenAI, Meta, or Anthropic, are proprietary, opaque, and centrally managed. The difference is that Musk has made his biases explicit, while others keep theirs hidden behind corporate PR.
By appropriating a public commons like Wikipedia, Grokipedia shows what happens when AI governance and ethics are absent: intellectual resources built for everyone can be recolonized by anyone powerful enough to scrape, repackage, and automate them.
The Wikipedia contrast
Wikipedias success comes from something AI still lacks: accountability through transparency. Anyone can view the edit history of a page, argue about it, and restore balance through consensus. It is messy, but it is democratic.
AI systems, by contrast, are autocratic. They encode choices made by their creators, yet present their answers as universal truth. Grokipedia takes this opacity to its logical conclusion: a single, unchallengeable version of knowledge generated by an unaccountable machine.
Its a sobering reminder that the problem with AI is not that its too creative or too powerful, but that its too easy to use power without oversight.
Lessons for the AI era
Grokipedia should force a reckoning within the AI community and beyond. The lesson is not that AI must be banned from knowledge production, but that it must be governed like knowledge, not like software.
That means:
Transparency about data sources and editorial processes.
Pluralismallowing multiple voices and perspectives rather than central control.
Accountability, where outputs can be audited, disputed, and corrected.
And above all, humility: the recognition that no single person, however brilliant, has the right to define what counts as truth.
AI has the potential to amplify human understanding. But when it becomes a tool of ideological projection, it erodes the very idea of knowledge.
The moral of the story
In the end, Grokipedia will not replace Wikipedia: it will stand as a cautionary artifact of the early AI age, the moment when one individual mistook computational capacity for moral authority.
Elon Musk has built many remarkable things. But with Grokipedia, he has crossed into the realm of dystopian parody: the digital embodiment of the Bond villain who, having conquered space and social media, now seeks to rewrite the encyclopedia itself.
The true danger of AI is not the black box. Its the person who owns the box and decides what the rest of us are allowed to read inside it.
Below, Gene Ludwig shares five key insights from his new book, The Mismeasurement of America: How Outdated Government Statistics Mask the Economic Struggle of Everyday Americans.
Gene is the former Comptroller of the Currency and founder of the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), a nonprofit dedicated to uncovering the truths that official statistics too often obscure. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Politico, The Financial Times, and TIME.
Whats the big idea?
Americans keep hearing that the economy is strong. Unemployment is low. Wages are rising. Growth is steady. But for millions of families, those headlines feel like a cruel joke. The cost of rent, groceries, and healthcare keep climbing while steady, well-paid work remains out of reach. The disconnect isnt just perceptionits baked into the way we measure economic success.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Gene himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. We are at an economic tipping point
Throughout history, when governments fail to fully appreciate the realities faced by their people, it leads to crisis. The United States may be on the brink of such economic and societal unrest. The unrest that led to the French Revolution and the economic imbalances preceding the Great Depression are both cases in point.
In the late eighteenth century, the oppressive economic situation facing the French people went unacknowledged by the royal family for decades. The French ruling class considered the truth about the nations fiscal crisis to be nefariousa threat to their power. Marie Antoinette, when told the peasants had no bread, replied, Let them eat cake! Whether or not the remark is literal or legend, it captures the ruling classs indifference. Soon after, the Revolution erupted, bringing turmoil and suffering to French citizens of every rank and station.
The same narrative arc applied a century and a half later when the Great Depression loomed. In both instances, economic data that could have set off alarm bells was availablemore accurate figures that would have revealed the risks emergingand this perspective might have prompted action that could have softened the blow, if not avoided the crises altogether. But the data was either confusing, confounded with other contrary data, or affirmatively hidden. The effects were catastrophic.
2. A quarter of Americans are functionally unemployed
The unemployment statistics our government releases monthly are misleading. If someone is looking for full-time employment but finds nothing except a single hour of work in a week, they are considered employed in the eyes of the government. For purposes of official government statistics, this one-hour employee is in the same category as someone secure in a full-time job.
This logic extends to wages. Someone who works full- or part-time for a salary that falls below the poverty line (around $25,000 a year for a three-person household) is classified the same way as someone earning $1 million every month.
The United States may be on the brink of such economic and societal unrest.
LISEPs research team and I consider anyone in the previous two situations to be functionally unemployed. The governments most recent unemployment rate is 4.3 percent, but our research finds that 24.7 percent of American workers are functionally unemployed.
3. Pay statistics ignore part-time and unemployed job seekers
The government reports on median wages every quarter. The idea behind their metric is simple and straightforward: If you line up all full-time employees in order of their weekly earnings, the person directly in the middle earns the median wage.
But this statistic only considers the wages of people who are currently employed full-time, overlooking millions of part-time workers and unemployed job seekers. So, the moment a low-wage factory worker receives a pink slip, her salary is deleted from the sample altogether. The moment a farm workers seasonal employment ends, his salary is similarly deleted.
What this means is the official earnings measure shows an overstated wage that doesnt reflect the reality for many low- and middle-income Americans. It can even appear to improve during economic downturns because low-wage workers are disproportionately affected by layoffs. When the economy went into near freefall during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, government-reported median earnings rose seven percent. During that same period, the percentage of functionally unemployed Americans rose from 25.7 percent to 32.8 percent.
4. Yes, your groceries are more expensive
When people talk about inflation, theyre usually referring to changes in the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. The CPI tracks the prices of some 80,000 goods and services, from apples to apartments, baby formula to boats, and much more. The idea is that it gives us a single figure to measure the changing cost of a basket of all consumer products.
CPI obscures the true cost of living for working-class Americans.
This basket is so wide-ranging that it doesnt reflect how ordinary consumers experience cost-of-living changes, as most Americans are not buying 80,000 things. If the costs of second homes tripled while everything else in the basket stayed flat, the average American household wouldnt feel a thingthe price hike would get averaged in, but it wouldnt impact their life.
But the opposite is true. Over the past two decades, the price of jewelry has risen by about 39 percent, while essential goods like bread are up by 112 percent and ground beef by 155 percent. When these items are measured alongside each other in the CPI, the relative stability of luxury items masks the inflation faced by Americans of more modest means. From 2001 to 2023, the CPI points to a 72 percent rise in living costs, yet our analysis of essential expenseshousing, food, transportation, healthcare, and other basicsshows those costs climbed 97 percent. CPI obscures the true cost of living for working-class Americans.
5. We need better statistics
The headline statistics we currently employ to understand Americas economy are profoundly misleading and, unfortunately, drive policy. The CPI is pivotal in determining Social Security Benefits, as well as who qualifies for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Head Start, and Pell Grants. At least twelve states and Washington, D.C., used the CPI to determine minimum wage.
Our failure to produce statistics that accurately reflect the nations economic reality makes it much harder to shape highly effective policy responsesand harder to identify the tipping point of economic and social unrest. Simply put, when you aim at the wrong target, you miss.
Human naturefavors expeditious, rosy analysis rather than the rigor required to glean accuracy.
Flaws in widely accepted economic statistics impede important decision-making. In many cases, those who accept economic misrepresentations do so for benign reasons: The data is too difficult to collect with sufficient regularity or precision, or the samples arent sufficiently comprehensive. Human nature favors expeditious, rosy analysis rather than the rigor required to glean accuracy, particularly when accurate numbers may be gloomy.
At LISEP, weve developed alternatives to these imperfect statistics. Our True Rate of Unemployment metric includes the functionally unemployed, and our True Weekly Earnings measure includes the entire workforce. Our True Living Cost index narrows the basket of indexed consumer goods to those truly essential to the average American, while our Minimal Quality of Life index measures what it costs to not just get by but to actually have an opportunity to climb the economic ladder. Finally, our Shared Economic Prosperity measure tracks how the countrys economic growth translates into opportunity for all.
For decades, policymakers and leaders have judged success or failure by distorted standards, and ordinary Americans have paid the price. Unless we change the headline statistics to reflect the reality Americans actually feel, we will keep steering down the wrong paths.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
With more than 100,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, nearly 900,000 square feet of floor space, a site that spans more than 120 acres, and a total price tag estimated to be more than $1 billion, it’s not hyperbole to call the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt, the most significant museum project in recent decades. It’s the kind of blockbuster building that would have even the starriest of starchitects salivating at the chance to lay claim to what’s likely become one of Egypt’s most visited tourist attractions.
So, in hindsight, it’s a bit unexpected that the architecture firm that won the museum’s international design competition way back in 2002 was a little-known office from Ireland with no completed projects to its name and only three people on staff.
[Photo: Iwan Baan]
Dublin-based Heneghan Peng Architects was virtually unknown when its concept was chosen, unanimously, out of more than 1,500 submissions as the winning design. “We hadn’t built any buildings,” says Róisín Heneghan, the firm’s cofounder. “We had one project just starting on site when we won the competition.”
A lot has changed since then. The museum had an initial target opening date set for 2007, but several delays caused by the global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, and the COVID pandemic kept stretching the timeline. Heneghan Peng Architects’ design is now fully built and, as of November 1, open to the public.
[Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum]
Thousands of years of history
The Grand Egyptian Museum’s design is a sprawling spread of airplane hangar-sized concourses, sculpted landscapes, conservation workshops, and a network of underground storage facilities. The museum building itself is a cavernous space with 12 main galleries and direct views of the pyramids of Giza.
A vast entrance hall sits under a tall sawtooth roof that doubles as an open-air pavilion, shading a ticketing area accented by a 30-foot-tall statue of Ramses II that’s more than 3,000 years old. On the facade, throughout the landscape, and even within the building’s structure, pyramid shapes abound.
[Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum]
Central to the design, according to Heneghan, is not so much the main building but the placement of the museum itself. “People were saying to us, ugh, you Westerners, you all are so fascinated by the desert, but Egypt is about the Nile,” she says. That led the architects to think first about how the museum should fit into that dichotomy.
With a site selected near the famous pyramids in Giza, just on the fringe of Cairo’s urban footprint, it was clear that the museum would sit in the middle space between the desert and the Nile valley, a space that has been carved away by millennia of river flow. “There’s a 50-meter difference in level between one side of the site and the other, because that’s where the desert and the Nile met,” Heneghan says. “When you’re coming out of the city, you see the pyramids on the plateau. So what we decided was that the museum should never go above the plateau level, but that it should exist between the plateau and the Nile Valley.”
[Photo: Georges & Samuel Mohsen/The GS Studio/Heneghan Peng Architects
Despite grand ceilings capable of holding towering statues, the building sits low to the ground, with a fair amount of its bulk sunk into the landscape. The design of the Grand Egyptian Museum utilizes large walkways and views within the museum to give visitors a zoomed-out experience of the sprawling history represented in the galleries.
[Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum]
The first part of the museum visitors see after they enter is a long staircase bordered by thousands of artifacts, sarcophagi, and statuary that tracks the entire 4,000 year span of Egypt’s pharaonic history. It’s a walking crash course for the mostly international visitors to the museum before reaching the top where more discrete sections of Egypt’s ancient history are explored in more depth. Its main galleries cover themes like kings and queens, religious belief systems, and ancient Egyptian society, and the museum features an extensive collection of artifacts from the tomb of King Tutankhamun. The museum’s layout allows each of these galleries to stand on its own, but with visual connections to the others in order to tie them into a broader arc of history.
[Photo: Georges & Samuel Mohsen/The GS Studio/Heneghan Peng Architects
“The galleries are themed, but at the same time from different points you can see across, so you can make connections across the whole timescale,” Heneghan says. “That helped organize it. If we had tried to make it human-scaled, I think we would have found it more difficult.”
[Photo: courtesy Grand Egyptian Museum]
A engineering feat
The architects also had to grapple with the realities of designing such a massive structure in the desert heat of Egypt. Partly out of consideration for the operational costs of running such a space, they designed the galleries to pull in daylight from lateral angles that’s dappled through metal shading structures and overhangs. This approach also works with the collections on display. “It’s quite a lot of stone,” Heneghan says. “And stone works well with natural daylight.”
To handle the sheer weight of the statues on display, the building has incredibly thick concrete floors, which also serve to regulate the building’s climate, absorbing the cool night temperatures and slowly releasing it during the heat of the day. “What we were trying to do is make a really heavy structure, like a church,” Heneghan says.
[Photo: Georges & Samuel Mohsen/The GS Studio/Heneghan Peng Architects
Though Heneghan Peng Architects are the design architects of the Grand Egyptian Museum, they had plenty of help bringing the concept to fruition. Even at the competition stage, once they were named one of several finalists, they called in extra assistance from the engineering firms Arup and Buro Happold. Cairo-based Raafat Miller Consulting is credited alongside Heneghan Peng Architects as the project’s architect. Given the many delays that have hampered the project, Heneghan says her firm has essentially had very little to do with the design since it was largely finalized around 2009. “Once it went into construction, we weren’t really involved,” she says.
The project has evolved since then, with new structural, technological, and material changes that have necessarily altered the overall design. Heneghan says the facade of the building is a departure from a more reserved approach in the initial design, but she accepts that some tweaks were inevitable. “You know, 16 years is a really long time,” she says.
But there are also parts of the final museum that were among the architect’s initial thinking about what this museum could be, way back in 2002. Heneghan seems gratified that certain major elements like the grand staircase leading up to the main galleries and the direct views of the pyramids made it through after all these years. “Some things are very much what was envisaged,” she says.
Have you ever been to the Gamerhood? Part game show, part reality series, it recently wrapped its fourth season in August. Over five weekly episodes on Twitch and YouTube, the show pitted gaming creators like Kai Cenat, Ludwig, Mark Phillips, and Berleezy, against each other in a combination of gaming and IRL challenges. The third season from last summer attracted more than 23 million views.
In September, the show went mainstream when season four landed on Prime Video. Even before that, just on YouTube and Twitch, season four was getting about 20 million views for each episode. Not too shabby for a show created by a brand. Thats right, Gamerhood is fully owned by State Farm, and it’s a key part of the brands marketing strategy.
State Farms head of marketing Alyson Griffin says that despite the unpredictability of creators and reality TV, the reward is worth any perceived brand risk.
We believe in them, she says. We don’t script them. They say the things they want to say, they can do the things they want to do. And we’re in the risk business! Nobody does that in insurance, right? We’re excited about extending the reach of that for an even bigger audience.
Some brands make funny ads. Some brands invest in entertainment IP. Some brands go deep into major sports sponsorships. State Farm utilizes all of these and Jake of courseto firmly embed the brand in culture. It’s a flywheel of culturally relevant content across many different audiences, which has helped the company boost its net worth to $145.2 billion in 2024, up from $134.8 billion in 2023.
There’s a sea of sameness in insurance or financial services in general, says Griffin. We are meticulous about creating conditions over time, with a longer view, that allow us to capture lightning-in-a-bottle moments when they make themselves available.
Heres how State Farm does it.
In this premium piece, youll learn:
Where Gamerhood fits into State Farms growing brand entertainment strategy
State Farm’s head of marketing on the secret sauce that makes a boring company break through
The balance stake State Farm strikes between mainstream advertising, celebrities, sports sponsorships, and original IP
Why embracing risk with creators is so important to brands in 2025
State Farm Gamerhood Season 4 hosts and contestants (from left): Alex “Goldenboy” Mendez, Jake from State Farm, JasonTheWeen, Ludwig, CouRage, Cinna, Mark Phillips, Berleezy, Sydeon, LuluLuvely, Barbara Dunkelman. [Photo: State Farm]
Nobody cares, now what?
In Spike Lees newest Apple TV film Highest 2 Lowest, the characters David (Denzel Washington) and his chauffeur Paul (Jeffrey Wright) are in the car. Paul pulls out a gun to deal with their situation. What is that? David asks, as Paul cocks it. Insurance, says Paul. Thats Jake from State Farm.
This is what marketers call cultural relevance. When Paul says the line, its a joke everyone gets. It even made it to the trailer. Theres no brand partnership or product deal, just an acknowledgement of the place in pop culture that State Farm has carved out over many, many years including Super Bowl ads, major sponsorships, and celebrity ad campaigns across the NBA, NFL, and Major League Baseball.
This isnt the first time State Farm has been involved with Apples entertainment. While this one was unexpected, its hilarious take on the hit show Severance was very much part of the plan. Griffin says the goal of the brands full court press on pop culture is relevance.
First of all, nobody cares about insurance, she says. Nobody’s thinking about it unless something happens and they need it. They also aren’t going to statefarm.com to just casually see what their insurance carrier has to say on a random Tuesday. It’s not happening. Nobody cares. You have to break through.
This is why we get Megan Trainor trying to be an NFL trainer for Patrick Mahomes, Jason Bateman rivaling Batman, and Arnold Schwarzenegger turning the tagline into Like a good neighbaaaaaa! for the Super Bowl. Its also how we get Travis Scott teaming with Jake from State Farm to create custom varsity jackets at Coachella. That mix of names alone illustrates the various ways the brand is aiming at a variety of audiences.
When you break through and you’re relevant, you get earned media, talk value, and social engagement, says Griffin. I have to use the right talnt to break through, so when you see the ad, it’s actually better, more creative, and more interesting.
But its the less high-profile names that have Griffin most excited right now, and the strategy around it she says is a key to the future.
Creators are key
State Farms budget for Gamerhood wasnt a big departure from what they were already spending to advertise in gaming. Griffin says it was just a matter of shifting spend from other investments that were essentially getting them a static logo on a game screen. I just thought I could get more engagement with it than just a passive logo, she says. The secret is investing in, and trusting, creators to do what they do best. Griffin says it can be nerve-wracking for any marketer to cede control of their brand, but so far, it has been worth it.
Griffin says that the key to a successful partnership with creators is to be prepared to give up some control. Brand leaders must do their due diligence and vet any potential partner, but then they must let them cook.
If you know you have the right person, because you vetted them to your brand needs, let them be them,” says Griffin. “Let them create because then it looks and is authentic.
Cenat is one of the most popular creators and streamers on the planet. He ran a month-long Twitch stream in September that peaked at more than one million concurrent viewers and 82.5 million hours watched. Hes also one of the stars of the newest season of Gamerhood. But State Farms work with Cenat goes beyond the stream. Cenat also starred in the brands Super Bowl turned March Madness spot with Jason Bateman.
Griffin says that Cenats help in explaining the situation of delaying the Super Bowl ad, due to sensitivity about the severity of the Los Angeles wildfires, came from trust built over time. He worked with the brand to get on Jimmy Fallon to explain why State Farm delayed the ad spot’s rollout. That was not what we intended to do with that spot, that’s not what he signed up for, says Griffin. He signed up to be in the Super Bowl, and he could have been mad about it. Instead, he helped us think strategically about how to make that transition and make it work.
Measuring success
Looking at all the various ways State Farm is getting its brand out into the world and into culture, it can be tough to decipher how it defines success with its advertising and marketing investments.
Griffin says that State Farms marketing is split across three areas: current demand, future demand, and retention. Current demand is work aimed at people who are actually in the market for insurance. Every dollar that the current demand team spends is measured against a bound policy, so you better be effective and efficient, she says. These are deals and promos that really show people why State Farm is a good choice for them right now.
The bigger swings in brand building are more closely tied to the other two buckets. Future demand is about starting to build a relationship with people outside of their specific insurance needs, so when they do shift over to the current demand category, they have State Farm in mind. Not $1 that we spend in future demand is measured against the bound insurance policy, says Griffin. It is about paving the way, firing synapses, dopamine, serotonin, attention, reach, engagement, talk, value, PR, and earned media.
Retention is a mix of the first two, making sure the brand work makes them feel good about the company, while still offering them deals and upgrades to keep their business.
For Gamerhood, the measurement for success is more specific. Just before the third seasons launch in August 2024, gamer Ludwig posted a TikTok clip of himself, dancing with fellow gamers Berleezy, Mark Phillips, and Kyedae. There was no State Farm or Gamerhood branding, and among the more than 2,000 comments, fans were trying to figure out why their favorite gamers were together like this. Among them was, This gotta be State Farm Gamerhood.
@ludwig slay #jojosiwa Karma – JoJo Siwa
For Griffin, that was the proof she needed. I knew it right then, she says. Unaided with no identifying marks, the target market is anticipating why those people are together and what they’re doing. And I was like, Well, we just, we won IP right there.
On May 19, 2023, a photograph appeared on what was then still called Twitter showing smoke billowing from the Pentagon after an apparent explosion. The image quickly went viral. Within minutes, the S&P 500 dropped sharply, wiping out billions of dollars in market value. Then the truth emerged: the image was a fake, generated by AI.
The markets recovered as quickly as they had tumbled, but the event marked an important turning point: this was the first time that the stock market had been directly affected by a deepfake. It is highly unlikely to be the last. Once a fringe curiosity, the deepfake economy has grown to become a $7.5 billion market, with some predictions projecting that it will hit $38.5 billion by 2032.
Deepfakes are now everywhere, and the stock market is not the only part of the economy that is vulnerable to their impact. Those responsible for the creation of deepfakes are also targeting individual businesses, sometimes with the goal of extracting money and sometimes simply to cause damage. In a Deloitte poll published in 2024, one in four executives reported that their companies had been hit by deepfake incidents that targeted financial and accounting data. Lawmakers are beginning to take notice of this growing threat. On October 13, 2025, Californias Governor Gavin Newsom signed the California AI Transparency Act into law. When it was first introduced in 2024, the Act required large frontier providerscompanies like OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, Google, and Xto implement tools that made it easier for users to identify AI-generated content. This requirement has now been extended to large online platformswhich essentially means social media platformsand to producers of devices that capture content.
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Such legislation is important, necessary, and long overdue. But it is very far from being enough. The potential business impact of deepfakes extends far beyond what any single piece of legislation can address. If business leaders are to address these impacts, they must be alert to the danger, understand it, and take steps to limit the risks to their organizations.
How deepfakes threaten business
Here are three important and interrelated ways in which deepfakes can damage businesses:
1. Direct Attacks
The primary vector for direct attacks is targeted impersonations that are designed to extract money or information. Attacks like this can cause even sophisticated operators to lose millions of dollars. For instance, U.K. engineering giant Arup lost HK$200 million (about $25 million) last year after scammers used AI-generated clones of senior executives to order money transfers. The Hong Kong police, who described the theft as one of the worlds largest deepfake scams, confirmed that fake voices and images were used in videoconferencing software to deceive an employee into making 15 transfers to multiple bank accounts outside the business.
A few months later, WPP, the worlds largest advertising company, faced a similar threat when fraudsters cloned the voice and likeness of CEO Mark Read and tried to solicit money and sensitive information from colleagues. The attempt failed, but the company confirmed that a convincing deepfake of its leader was used in the scam.
The ability to create digital stand-ins that can speak and act in a convincing way is still in its infancy, yet the capabilities available to fraudsters are already extremely powerful. Soon, it will be impossible in most cases for humans to tell that they are interacting with a deepfake solely on the basis of audible or visual cues.
2. Rising Costs of Verification
Even organizations that are never directly targeted still end up paying for the fallout. Every deepfake that circulateswhether its a fake CEO, a fabricated news event, or a counterfeit adraises the collective cost of doing business. The result is a growing burden of verification that every company must now shoulder simply to prove that its communications are real and its actions authentic.
Firms are already tightening internal security protocols in response to these threats. Gartner suggests that by 2026 around 30% of enterprises that rely on facial recognition security tools will look for alternative solutions as these forms of protection are rendered unreliable by AI-generated deepfakes. Replacing these tools with less vulnerable alternatives will require considerable investment.
Each additional verification layerwatermarks, biometric tools for detecting that an individual is a live human being, chain-of-custody logs, forensic reviewadds costs, slows down decision-making, and complicates workflows. And these costs will only continue to mount as deepfake tools become more sophisticated.
3. The Trust Tax
In addition to the direct costs that accrue from countering deepfake security threats, the simple possibility that someone may use this technology erodes trust across all relationships that are grounded in digital media. And given that virtually all business relationships now rely on some form of digital communication, this means that deepfakes have the potential to erode trust across virtually all commercial relationships.
To give just one example, phone and video calls are some of the most basic and most frequent tools used in modern business communications. But if you cannot be sure that the person on the screen or on the other end of the phone is who they claim to be, then how can you trust anything they say? And if you are constantly operating in a realm of uncertainty about the trustworthiness of your communication channels, how can you work productively?
If we begin to mistrust something as basic as our daily modes of communication, the result will eventually be a broad, ambient skepticism that seeps into every relationship, both within and beyond our wrkplaces. This kind of doubt undermines operational efficiency, adds layers of complexity to dealmaking, and increases friction in any task that involves remote communication. This is the trust taxthe cost of doing business in a world where anything might be fake.
Four steps that companies need to take
Here are four steps all business leaders should be taking to respond to the threat of deepfakes:
1. Verify what mattersUse cryptographic signatures for official statements, watermark executive videos, and communication channels, and use provenance tags for sensitive content. Dont try to secure everythingfocus your verification efforts where falsehoods would hurt the most.
2. Build a source of truth hubCreate a public verification page listing your official channels, press contacts, and authentication methodsstakeholders should know exactly where to go to confirm whats real. If your organization relies on external information sources for rapid decision-making, ensure that these are only accessed through similarly authenticated hubs.
3. Train for the deepfake ageRun deepfake-awareness drills and build verification literacy into onboarding, media training, and client communication.
4. Treat detection tools as essential infrastructureInvest in tools that can flag manipulated media in real time and then integrate these solutions into key workflowsfinance approvals, HR interviews, investor communications. In the age of deepfakes, verification is a core operating capability.
From threat to opportunity
Social media echo chambers, conspiracy theories, and alternative facts have been fracturing our shared sense of reality for over a decade. The rise of AI-generated content will make this unraveling of common reference points exponentially worse. An earlier generation of internet users used to say, Pics or it didnt happen. Well, now we can have all the pics we like, but how are we to tell if what they show happened at all?
Business leaders cannot solve the fragmentation of perceived reality or the fracturing of communities. They cannot single-handedly restore trust in institutions or reverse the cultural forces driving this crisis. But they can anchor their own organizations behavior and communications in verifiable truth, and they can build systems that increase trust.
Leaders who swim against the stream in this way will not only help protect their organizations from the dangers of deepfakes. When seeing is no longer believing, these businesses will also become the beacons that people rely on to navigate through an increasingly uncertain world.
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The Customs and Border Protection agency aims to establish a framework for the strategic use of artificial intelligence and outline rules for ensuring safe and secure use of the tech, according to an internal document viewed by Fast Company.
The directive, obtained through a public records request, spells out CBPs internal procedures for sensitive deployments of the technology. Agency officials are banned from using AI for unlawful surveillance, according to the document, which also says that AI cannot be used as a sole basis for a law enforcement action, or to target or discriminate against individuals.
The document includes myriad procedures for introducing all sorts of artificial intelligence tools, and indicates that CBP has a detailed approach to deploying AI. Yet those rules also include several workarounds, raising concerns that the technology could still be misused, particularly amid the militarization of the border and an increasingly violent deportation regime, sources tell Fast Company. And then theres the matter of whether and how the directive is actually enforced.
According to the directive, the agency is required to use AI in a responsible manner and maintain a rigorous review and approval process. The document spells out various procedures, including steps for sanctioning use of the technology and the agencys approach to inventorying a list of its AI applications. It also discusses special approvals needed for deploying high-risk AI and how the agency internally handles reports that officials are using the tech for a prohibited application. The document has a warning for CBP staff that work with generative AI, too.
All CBP personnel using AI in the performance of their official duties should review and verify any AI-generated content before it is shared, implemented, or acted upon, the directive states. CBP personnel are accountable for the outputs of their work and are responsible for using these tools judiciously, ensuring that accuracy, appropriateness, and context are always considered.
CBP, which is housed under the Department of Homeland Security, is already exploring or using AI for a range of activities, including screening travelers, translating conversations, assisting with drone navigation, and detecting potential radioactive materials crossing the border. The agency is also interested in or using it to locate items of interest in video feeds, generate testable synthetic trade data, run automated surveillance towers, and mine the internet for potential threats. AI is even integrated into the CBPs internal fitness app, according to a long list of use cases published online.
The directive, which is titled U.S. Customs and Border Protection Artificial Intelligence and Reporting and assembled by the agencys AI and operations and governance office, sheds light on how CBP says its monitoring the use of these tools, both within its own ranks and among its contractors. Fast Company reached out to CBP for comment but did not hear back by publication time.
The full directive appears fairly reasonable, a former DHS IT official tells Fast Company, and seems like a straightforward implementation of White House guidance. It looks like civil servants doing their job and following policy, while clarifying roles in the context of their own organizations reporting structure, they say.
An ex-Biden administration official who worked on AI policy says the White Houses Office of Science and Technology Policy pressured parts of DHS, including CBP, to better organize its approach to AI. The directive, they say, shows that CBP, under the Trump administration, seems to be advancing on that front.But the ex-official still has a host of concerns, including what they call a flick of the wrist waiver process for getting around the minimum procedures for high-risk AI applications. The document states that using high-risk AI, without following these procedures, requires written approval from DHSs chief information officer, the agencys top tech official.
The directive also lacks a protocol for explaining what should count as high-impact AI, creating another obvious loophole for skirting procedures, the person argues. That responsibility is left to another group called the AI inventory team and is supposed to factor in guidance from the White House, according to the directive.
The former official also believes applications of AI should be deemed more sensitive when they’re closer to the border, particularly in places where CBP officers might have an expanded authoritya concern raised under the Biden administration, the person says.
These procedures are an empty process, and only a half promise at that. These rules give us lots of red tape and record keep requirements, but no substantive protections against biased, error prone, and destructive AI, Albert Fox Cahn, the founder of S.T.O.P. and a fellow at Cambridge University, argues. In a space where AI errors can literally be a matter of life and death, where machine learning mistakes can mean being locked in a cage or threatened with deportation to a country you’ve never seen, it’s shameful that CBP would enable wholesale deployment of such tech.
The directive comes as DHS expands its internal use of artificial intelligence. In recent years, the agency began several pilots with generative AI, including ChatGPT. The department also developed its own chatbot, called DHSChat. Upon taking office, the Trump administrations DHS banned the use of commercial AI tools like ChatGPT, and directed employees to only use internal tools, FedScoop reported earlier this year.
Notably, this directive, signed by CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott, was published just a day before DHS released a new AI strategy for the department and a plan for complying with Trump administration guidance for boosting the use of the technology for all sorts of applications through government. CBP has been using artificial intelligence for more than a decade, but the directive notes that its use of natural language processing technology, along with other new AI methodologies, have grown.
Across the streaming world, companies have been focused on adding features that make their top-tier subscriptions more valuable to the users who consume their content. Anime streamer Crunchyroll recently added access to a library of digital manga for top-paying customers. Spotifysomewhat belatedlyhas begun offering high-quality audio for its Premium subscribers.
SoundCloud is taking a different approach. It operates a standard streaming platform, with 100 million licensed tracks. But SoundCloud also has an enviable base of creatorsmusicians, DJs, podcasters, and morewho have uploaded 300 million tracks on the service to reach fans and make money from their streams.
Now, its rolling out a revamped subscription that overdelivers for these artists, giving them more opportunities to get their music in front of fans who might eventually buy an album or piece of artist merchandise as streaming remains a foot in the door to real earnings.
SoundClouds new offering enables subscribers to both of its tiersArtist and Artist Proto distribute the music they have on SoundCloud to other streaming services, with SoundCloud passing 100% of those earnings on to artists. With this update, SoundCloud will no longer take a 20% cut of royalties it pays for streams, passing 100% to artists.
SoundCloud also now allows artists to receive direct support from fans. With the new features, the price of its Artist and Artist Pro subscriptions$39 and $99 a year, respectivelyare unchanged. Its a move that acknowledges that even if streaming isnt where artists earn the lions share of their money, they still need to reach as many people as possibleand SoundCloud doing that helps save them money.
If you’re an artist who’s got to get your music distributed and you’re on the social platforms trying to build up a following and you’re paying for a whole host of things in the value chain, those subscriptions start to really add up, says Eliah Seton, CEO of SoundCloud. What were trying to do is be this all-in-one bundle that gets you a lot of value and you can start to put away some of those other subscriptions.
Seton knows the music industrybefore joining SoundCloud in 2021, he spent more than a decade at Warner Music Group, including a stint leading its distribution and label services arm ADA. He understands the importance of getting artists in front of as many fans as possible. Thats why hes betting that making distribution widely accessible for the first time will strengthen SoundClouds ability to not just attract new artists, but keep them on the platform as their stars rise by connecting them with the platforms highly engaged listeners.
Historically weve been able to distribute for artists, but that was oriented more toward a bespoke, white-glove, traditional artist services relationship, Seton says. This is a much more scalable solution for at-scale artists, and making it a feature of our paid subscription is a key element of the value proposition.
SoundClouds two-sided Marketplace
In the streaming world, Soundcloudfounded in 2007has long been an anomaly. Its one of the onlyif not the onlystreaming platforms that truly has a two-sided marketplace, says Tatiana Cirisiano, VP of music strategy at entertainment data and insights firm MIDia.
Seton sees making distribution a standard part of SoundClouds artist subscriptions as a way to add value for those users.
The services $39 a year Artist tier now includes the ability to distribute and monetize two tracks a month, while its $99 a year Artist Pro subscription allows artists to distribute unlimited tracks to other streaming services.
The move reflects a larger industry shift: Record labels are losing their monopoly on distribution as artist-focused platforms offer alternative ways to reach listeners.
Cirisano points to TikToks SoundOn distribution service, which puts artists songs on streaming platforms and helps promote them in the video app. SoundClouds effort, she says, is the latest indication that distribution for the music industry has become this table stakes feature for platforms serving artists.
Seton sees SoundClouds new distribution tools as critical for keeping artists on his platform. SoundCloud doesnt have any problem attracting up-and-coming artistsSeton says 40,000 users upload their first track to SoundCloud every week. But when they reach a certain level and want to reach more listeners, they often opt to spend their money with pure-play distribution companies. Now they can use SoundCloud to monetize their music as they grow.
New ways to connect with fans
SoundCloud also added the ability for fans to directly support an artistpaying them up to $1,000via their the artists SoundCloud profile. The platform takes zero commission on these payments. Cirsiano sees it as a small but potentially meaningful option, similar to what Patreon has long offered creators and artists.
I wouldnt call it a game-changer in how artists are monetizing because I think theres a lot of cultural hurdles to adoption, Cirisano says. It differs strongly by fanbase and artist. Its all about how people perceive it and what it means to them to send money directly to an artist.
The fan support feature comes on the heels of other SoundCloud tools for fan engagement. Since 2023, SoundClouds AI-powered First Fans helps deliver new music to users likely to enjoy. This year, it has added services for its artist users, including a partnership with vinyl presser ElasticStage to offer on-demand record pressing. It also introduced a merch store that allows artists to keep 100% of their sales. The on-demand vinyl feature, launched in July, currently has a waiting list of artists who want to use the service.
Cirisano says these efforts could change the perception that SoundCloud is largely for early-stage artists who will move to other services once they break through. (Billie Eilish famously uploaded her early recordings and connected with fans via SoundCloud.) These opportunities allow artists to grow with the platform, she says.
As the broader music industry focuses on monetizing superfanshighly engaged listeners who are happy to shell out for vinyl and merchSeton says SoundCloud has those in droves. He notes that 50% of SoundCloud listeners are listening to new music, looking for their next favorite artist, as opposed to 15% on other music streaming platforms.
The future is going to be defined by the monetization of the relationship between artists and fans, he says. Rather than going outside the ecosystem to pay a different subscription where you don’t ultimately control access to your audience, we can scratch that itch for you as part of our own subscription.
