This week: a lot of #AppleNews, platforms and piracy. Sandra Peter (Sydney Business Insights) and Kai Riemer (Digital Disruption Research Group) meet once a week to put their own spin on news that is impacting the future of business in The Future, This Week.

The stories this week

00:45 – Apple announces new services: news, video, game and Apple Card

14:56 – The future of content providers and news outlets signing up with Apple News Plus

25:37 – Video piracy streaming on the rise, watch out Apple

The real choice you make when you subscribe to Apple services

Our previous discussion of #BreakUpBigTech and more #BreakUpBigTech

Apple Card will make credit card fraud a lot more difficult

We previously discussed subscription services in Australia and China

If you get the Apple Card you may never leave the iPhone


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Our theme music was composed and played by Linsey Pollak.

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Disclaimer: We'd like to advise that the following program may contain real news, occasional philosophy and ideas that may offend some listeners.

Intro: This is The Future, This Week. On Sydney Business Insights. I'm Sandra Peter, and I'm Kai Riemer. Every week we get together and look at the news of the week. We discuss technology, the future of business, the weird and the wonderful, and things that change the world. Okay, let's start. Let's start!

Sandra: Today on The Future, This Week: a lot of #AppleNews, platforms and piracy. I'm Sandra Peter, I'm the Director of Sydney Business Insights.

Kai: I'm Kai Riemer, professor at the Business School and leader of the Digital Disruption Research Group.

Sandra: So Kai, what happened in the future this week?

Kai: Apple happened. Apple had its big announcement event in the Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino, at its new campus. And they announced no gadgets, just services. So a whole bunch of new content-based services, and a credit card.

Sandra: So as we sat down to pick the stories for this week, it seemed there was an overwhelming number of stories about Apple.

Kai: And they talked about these services from a number of different angles, so we thought okay, this calls for another special.

Sandra: So for the past two weeks we've been looking at breaking up a big tech, and this seemed like an opportunity to take a really close look at one of the companies that are at the heart of this debate and that is Apple. And it seemed like a really good idea because the stories really have very different approaches as to what was important about these announcements that were made. What was it really that this is foreshadowing and most of the stories really had a future angle to them, what does this mean for the future of consumer experience? What does this mean for the future of platforms? What does this mean for the future of big tech? So we thought we'd pick three stories, looking at different aspects to try to unpack a little bit, what does all this tell us about the growth of platforms?

Kai: So the first story comes from the Sydney Morning Herald, so we pick a local one.

Sandra: And it's actually written by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Kai: Yeah, it's not just republishing something from The Washington Post or The New York Times, which happens ever so often. Which is all part of the discussion around News, one of the Big Apple announcements. But this one actually focuses first of all on the announcements around building a TV platform and launching original TV content. It's titled "Apple's not building a Netflix-killer. It's got something bigger in mind". And the article really focuses on Apple's quest to grow its platform. So, the author makes the argument that while the announcement which features Oprah Winfrey on stage was about Apple's quest into original TV series content, and the fact that they are putting 1 billion US dollars towards this venture. But the article makes the point that this is still dwarfed by the 15 billion dollars that Netflix is spending on original content in the same period, and goes on to claim that TV content is just one of the puzzle pieces that Apple is using to really build a platform that keeps customers engaged, and that keeps customers within the Apple ecosystem.

Sandra: Let's not forget that Apple enjoys 1.4 billion device users, who would all immediately have access to this platform. And the move into content, is not an unsignificant one. So, projects include work as you have mentioned by Oprah Winfrey, but also Steven Spielberg and so on. So we've seen a little bit of healthy competition in the content arena goes a long way.

Kai: And so Apple made an announcement obviously about video content with Apple TV Plus, it made an announcement around news content with Apple News Plus and also foreshadows a gaming platform, which will be fleshed out more in the coming months called Apple Arcade, which will have games streaming and positioned obviously against Google's recent announcement with Google Stadia, which also will stream video games to devices.

Sandra: So what does this tell us about the future of platforms. Because, let's remember this is one of the only times that Apple has gone on to make a huge announcement without actually announcing any new devices. So there were no new phones, no new tablets, no new watches, no new laptops, no new smart speakers. So it was really just all about services.

Kai: In fact, when it comes to Apple TV, Apple is not actually focusing on the little black box Apple TV device, it seems like Apple TV is actually becoming software. Where Apple is now allowing companies such as Samsung and Sony to integrate the Apple TV app into their platform. So it's really all about content, and making that content available via devices.

Sandra: So for Apple to grow, and let's remember that Tim Cook in the letter to share…

Kai: You mean Tim Apple?

Sandra: Yes, Tim Apple, in his letter to shareholders talked about really difficult market condition and slowing of growth. So if you want to grow, new products is one way, but the other way to grow a platform is really to capitalise on the devices that you have. And that means extending what you offer your customer base, and trying to keep customers locked in to your platform, through offering more and more content.

Kai: Here there's the lock-in, and we're going to talk about customer lock-in in a moment. But the growing part is also significant, because the decision to actually make available the Apple content in other ecosystems comes on the back of the quest to grow the platform, because if customers like the content and they use it in this app, they're all the more likely to then switch to the Apple ecosystem, because the way you get the most out of this content, the way you get the most out of the services, is by actually consuming them on Apple devices. So that explains why they are now extending their reach onto other platforms. It's not to give Apple customers a way out of the platform, but actually to entice other customers into the Apple ecosystem, and then build a whole lot of integrated services that keep them there.

Sandra: And grow the ways in which these customers can spend money on the platform. 10 dollars a month for 1.4 billion device users, you only need 10 percent of those to generate significant revenue. Now, there are a number of ways that any platform can lock-in customers. And whilst traditionally this lock-in was done via contracts, you signed up with a phone service provider and you had to pay a contract for the next two years, or you signed up with a cable company and you were locked in for at least a year from the moment you started your contract. Companies like Apple now do this lock-in quite differently.

Kai: So the contractual version of creating lock-in is really the blunt version, and none of the platforms actually do this, or have to do this. So this is your cable company, so in Australia for example, pay TV - Foxtel where you have to sign up for at least 12 months, and if you quit early you are left with a big penalty. That's not actually what these platforms do. But there's other ways to lock-in customers, and it's usually done via the creation of what we call switching cost.

Sandra: So the first one of those, and one that we've all experienced is that of the utility that you get from being on one of these platforms. There's not only the convenience of having access to say all of your music in one place, to having access to a news feed, to having access to your favourite TV shows, but there's also the utility you gain, in the case of Apple, from the privacy that the platform provides, from the security that the platform provides.

Kai: The fact that they curate who gets on to the Apple Store so that you don't get any malware for example. In the case of the iTunes Store and the TV experience, Apple puts a lot of emphasis, not uncontroversially, on the family-friendly nature of the content, which leaves out certain favourite shows that might come with foul language or nudity, or other things that are not palatable to US audiences. And you can discuss that, but at least you have certainty around what you actually buy.

Sandra: Then you also get locked in through the sunk costs on these platforms. So for those people who let's say have signed up for Apple Music, now all their music is in one place, should they choose to go to another platform the switching costs might not be so big, but the sunk costs are quite large, you've got all your favourites there, you've got all the music that you've paid for which you can't actually take with you.

Kai: Yeah, and while in the case of streaming, that might get less important, a lot of content is still being paid for. In case of TV shows, for example, all these shows that we might have paid 40-50 dollars per season, are basically locked into that ecosystem. So, were someone to leave and go to the, say Google or Amazon ecosystem, they would leave behind those investments.

Sandra: As you would leave behind your preferences, and your favourites, and the way you interact with that platform, and also what that platform knows about you.

Kai: That is best explained say, with Amazon, where if you have a shopping history Amazon can use that to derive really useful recommendations for other products, and you can't transfer that to another platform. The same with say, Spotify or Apple music, that make recommendations that provide you with updates and news about your favourite artists. All of these things are specific to your user profile on these platforms, which you would leave behind.

Sandra: But one of the biggest moves in this whole announcement was a thing that went slightly under the radar, which was the Apple credit card.

Kai: Yeah, and there were a couple of articles that we found, chiefly one in CNET which made the point that the Apple Card is really a move to lock customers into the ecosystem. So Apple Card is a really interesting concept, the Apple Card lives in the Apple Pay app, lives on your iPhone basically. It comes with some really interesting new security features that will make credit card fraud a whole lot more difficult, as another article and TechCrunch pointed out. But, you cannot use the Apple Card without an iPhone. So, those Apple users who will take to the Apple Card start using it, where they can actually have, really nice spend features on the iPhone, get used to using this. And create a credit history using the iPhone. You can't just leave the iPhone platform and still keep using the card, because the two really go together.

Sandra: But this move to the Apple Card actually signals something much bigger on behalf of Apple. And that is a huge departure, I think, from the previous strategy that Apple had with respect to how they grow, and how they play in the big platform system. So up until now, other than in the App Store, Apple didn't really compete downstream in any of the businesses that they were in. So for instance, Apple Pay was the front for a variety of credit cards. They said they will not make a move in that space or they were a front for MasterCard, for Visa, for American Express, for whoever else you banked with and had Apple Pay integrated. If you think about the AppStore, there were lots of games in the App Store, but Apple wasn't competing directly in the game space. With newspapers and magazines, Apple, through the App Store provided a marketplace for the various newspapers and magazines to provide content and access customers, but it wasn't a direct player in that space. And then with streaming services, you had the Apple TV channels that allowed you to access these streaming services, allowed you to access Netflix. But again, Apple wasn't a direct player in that arena. Here's where, to me, the significant strategy move comes in, because with Apple TV Plus, they are a direct competitor in that arena. They will go up against companies like Netflix and compete for subscriptions.

Kai: And even more so with the Apple Card. And if we look back at our discussion around #BreakUpBigTech, and Elizabeth Warren's argument around unbundling big platforms because they start competing with the players that they have let on to their platforms, then the card really is an interesting move that comes at a curious time. Because if you look at what Apple has done, is they created Apple Pay. They gave customers a really convenient way of paying, by tapping their phone or their Apple Watch. They enticed banks into signing up and making available their credit cards in that platform, getting a whole lot of these banks signed up, and they're still launching Apple Pay in new jurisdictions: Austria, Greece, and a few other countries are getting Apple Pay in the coming weeks. But now they are launching their own card, that will be in direct competition with these other credit cards.

Sandra: Which also benefits from a couple of years of data, and of understanding customer behaviour and customer wants and needs on the platform.

Kai: And it comes with extra features not only a consolidated spend app that will be useful for people to keep track of their financial transactions, but also with security features that no other card can provide, because the Apple Card integrates so neatly with the iPhone platform.

Sandra: Which means biometric security, basically, for the card.

Kai: Absolutely. And all of a sudden you have a competitor to the very banks that made the Apple Pay service viable.

Sandra: And the same kind of competitive move we see here, with the upcoming Apple Arcade. And to me, even with things like Apple News Plus. Because if you've got an App Store where you've got a Wired magazine app, and Apple News Plus you will probably not be signing on to both, where both will give you access to the same content.

Kai: Yeah, although to me this is a little bit more complicated than that, because if I'm Wired or any of these news platforms, and I have my own app in the App Store, first of all Apple will already take a cut from that subscription, sure. If I can get the Wired content through the Apple news plus, I might not have to sign up with Wired itself. But on the other hand, within that app, Apple actually is not competing, right. So they are not creating their own news content. So while they create their own TV content, and they might go into direct competition with Netflix or other original content providers, they're not a news outlet. So they're purely curating news, and they are actually featuring quite prominently the brands of the original content providers in Apple News Plus.

Sandra: And this is actually a much more nuanced conversation, so it's probably time to move to our second story that we picked for today which comes from Tech Crunch, and it's titled "The danger of 'I already pay for Apple News+'". Which really goes into some detail analysing what this move means for the future, not of the platform itself, but of the news companies that are sharing content on that platform allow sharing content through Apple News Plus.

Kai: So first of all let's call this article for what it is. It is a rant by a TechCrunch author who is concerned for the future of content providers, news outlets who are signing up with. what he calls 'the devil'. The Apple News Plus platform.

Sandra: So I feel you are somehow on Apple's side on this one.

Kai: Um, I kind of am, or at least I think some of the points that the author makes, and we're going to go through them, just don't hold up if you look at them against the bigger picture.

Sandra: So let's go through this article, 'cause you know, I have an Apple phone just like you, and you know, I'm not necessarily a happy camper on this one.

Kai: All right. So first of all the also is concerned that basically publishers are selling their soul. That they lose their relationship with the reader because their content will no longer be on their website that they control, or on the app that they control, but now be curated by Apple and presented alongside the offerings of their competitors. And the author makes the argument that the content providers lose out on opportunities to sell advertisements and provide extra opportunities for commerce. But to me, right, from the customer's perspective, it actually leads to an experience where I can now focus on the magazine articles or the news, and I don't have all this shit around, you know, trying to sell me concert tickets. So it actually leads to a much cleaner news experience. So my point is the experience from the customer point of view will be a much better one, in most instances.

Sandra: Really. I might agree with you in part, yes it might be a much cleaner customer experience, but as far as content producers go. But this conversation is about the suppliers, not the customers, and for the suppliers, yes they have to agree with the article that the first thing they will lose is that relationship to the customer. All the data will now flow to Apple, and Apple's interest is not in promoting a particular newspaper or particular types of content, but in keeping people on the platform. So in that respect this is a move that brings it closer to Facebook, if anything.

Kai: Yeah. But if you look at Facebook, Facebook completely defrauded the content publishers out of their identity. They just take a news item, and put it alongside any old fake news item, and just create a nondescript content stream. At least Apple, and Apple News Plus gives a lot of exposure to the brands. And on the relationship issue, in my view, yes they might lose the relationship with what, like 50,000/100,000 customers that they might get on their own app, but they might actually gain exposure to 500 million readers in the Apple News Plus app so it's a real platform move, it's about scale.

Sandra: Or they might lose all of those customers. So think about the noise that this platform creates, and think about what content it gets put next to, right. Apple has always been a very visual company which rewards pretty images, which rewards graphical content at the expense of, let's say, longform text that you would get from the Atlantic, or that you would get from the New York Times or The Washington Post.

Kai: Yeah, but...

Sandra: Which indeed, are not part of Apple News Plus.

Kai: Well, the article makes the argument that this is not built for news and I might agree because...

Sandra: Ah, why call it Apple News, then?

Kai: Well it's not built for day-to-day ephemeral news, but I would disagree with the point that this isn't built for long-form content. I think it's precisely built for the kind of things that people sit down and then read. And also, having that competition on this platform, if this thing takes off and they get a lot of subscribers, maybe that competition is actually healthy in the sense that people invest in interesting content that people then want to read, and that is therefore featured by Apple.

Sandra: So here I might disagree as a content supplier. So, on the one hand I'm losing my relationship to the customer and I'm losing the relationship in terms of the entirety of the content that I provide, and now it's broken down by article or by a news item. I'm also losing the ability to provide my customers with an integrated experience. So, what Facebook has done and what now Apple news is increasingly doing, is training the customer that their news experience is something that is curated on a story by story basis rather than in a more holistic manner in the way that, let’s say, a company like The New York Times would present its content. So, many articles on the New York Times are part of either a series or a set of articles that tackle a topic, they are meant to be understood in a certain context and alongside other pieces of content that either make similar points or that try to explain the same story from different angles. So, being part of that ecosystem is actually a curated editorial experience. And what the New York Times has done increasingly, is not to favour the algorithms that search for certain stories rather rely on editorial decisions. Whilst you used to be able to access the most viewed stories or the most emailed stories quite easily. It is now the editor’s choices that are presented to you, and where is the news experience is actually something that you're led through, rather than something that is adapting to your preferences.

Kai: Well that's a nice romantic story about the good old days of news. Look, I concede that point partly, as someone who still listens to albums in music, and yes, you can bemoan the fact that iTunes has led to the disintegration of the idea of albums, and people buy songs instead of albums. You still can buy albums on iTunes or subscribe to albums on Apple Music, which I also do. So who is to say that you cannot have entire magazine content, that you can click through, in the Apple News app. And also, my second point. Who gets to actually do this? It's only a few big brands, a few news outlets such as the New York Times, which hasn't signed up with Apple News Plus, maybe Wired Magazine but there's really only a handful of those who can actually draw subscriber numbers, and engage in this game. For everyone else, it's as much noise out on the Internet as we might have now competition and noise in that platform. At least from the customer point of view, I can subscribe to, and find all that content in one place. I don't have to go to 17 different Web sites, because who signs up with more than one or two of those big news outlets anyway? So the exposure that these brands that these content providers might get is so much big on Apple News Plus.

Sandra: And this is why I would say that this is exactly the problem. Comparing news items to things like the music industry and albums, because let's remember music is entertainment, and that is also the view that Apple takes on news. News is entertainment, and that is the big risk. Apple doesn't care about news per se, it cares about providing an entertaining experience to the customer.

Kai: Oh oh oh oh oh! Let's take the bigger picture on this, right. We're faced with a world where we have a news crisis. We actually have a fake news problem. Most people get, and we're not saying, like you know, people who really care about the news. Most people get very conveniently all their junk news from Facebook. Now if those people could, in a very convenient way, get their news from a place that is actually curated, where good news outlets - something that we've propagated on the podcast for a number of weeks now, that we have to go back to good sources - where those sources are bundled in one place and for a small fee you could actually get a stream of actual news, rather than just the junk that you get on Facebook. Wouldn't that be a good honourable, and also obviously monetised goal, for not only Apple, but also those brands providing the content.

Sandra: So here I think you might be contradicting yourself a bit. Because weren't you earlier making the very point that it's uncanny the way in which Apple is able to impose its own tastes, and its own choices on the consumer with things like not having foul language in movies and so on. Now that is, let's say, a questionable thing to do in the case of movies. What if Apple now imposes its will on what sort of news is acceptable. Remember, there will be an Apple algorithm that will decide what ends up on the first page of the news items that you see.

Kai: Well, that's a fair point but what is the alternative. The alternative is that I get presented everything, it is up to me and the individual user to discern what is good news and what not. I don't like the idea that someone curates the news, but at least someone is doing it. On Facebook, and we've seen the research which we featured on the podcast by Professor Alan Dennis. People are really not very good at deciding what is fake and what is real. Having a curator that you have to trust is not an ideal situation, but it might be a step forward in the fight against fake news. And I know that this is not the main argument here, because obviously there is an economic argument around creating a subscription service at scale, but at least it might sign up a whole bunch of customers into a world where you get, yes maybe a slightly skewed view of the news, but at least one that isn't completely infested with fake news.

Sandra: To me it's not just about the fake news, it's also about important news. and as much as it might weed out fake news, it will decide what is important for us to know, what goes so to speak, on the front page. And having this one company decide what goes on the front page for 1.4 billion people. That's a scary thought.

Kai: And let's not forget that we're having a heated debate about hypotheticals, because the service hasn't launched in Australia, neither of us have seen it so far so.

Sandra: We've seen screenshots of it.

Kai: Well we've seen screenshots, and we're imagining what it will look like. So it'll be interesting to see where we're going with this next move in the news game. But we want to go to one more interesting angle in this whole discussion, and that is the argument about competition between these platforms, the creation of original content in TV streaming, and where that leaves us in regards to piracy.

Sandra: And our last article comes from Wired Magazine, and it goes to extend the conversation around Apple's forthcoming on-demand video service. Which will have to face, as did Netflix and everybody else, piracy. So this last article is titled "To compete with Netflix, online piracy is upping its game". So as we discussed Apple is moving into the streaming video industry and we'll just have to face the same thing that Netflix has been facing for as long as it's been around and that is the risk of piracy.

Kai: So let's take a look at the article. First of all, it starts out by outlining that there's been 190 billion visits to illegal piracy websites in 2018, and there's actually a company called Muso who keeps track of that, I'm not sure how they do this, but let's assume they can. There's only a fraction of this coming from Western countries, less than 6 billion of those 190 billion is from the UK, 17.4 billion from the US, but is still significant numbers. And what we're talking about here is piracy in video, downloads, and increasingly streaming. Because the argument that the article makes is that the good old torrent is very much in decline, and the piracy websites have become really convenient websites that, in features, are up to the same standards as your typical subscription services, but that they come with the added benefit that you find everything in the one place.

Sandra: Yes, convenience. And I hear this from friends who use these websites, ah, websites....

Kai: Friends we shall not name.

Sandra: Friends who shall remain nameless. Websites such as BEEP.

Kai: Also BEEP.

Sandra: And also BEEP.

Kai: And, obviously BEEEP.

Sandra: Let's not forget BEEP.

Kai: And finally, BEEEEEEP.

Sandra: Not that we know the names of any of these websites or have ever visited them, maybe just to do research for this particular news analysis. But convenience is the thing, it actually provides one access point for content from all of the big streaming services, whether that's Netflix or HBO, Disney content, Marvel content, whatever the latest movie or the latest TV series, or indeed the latest game. You can find them on these platforms that aggregate actually streams from a number of other different websites. So what they curate is basically links to places you can stream pirated movies from. And again, we're not encouraging anyone to engage in this, but we do recognise the fact that it is really convenient to have all of these in one place. So quite often, we hear, people access these, not because they can't afford subscription services, indeed some of the people who access them have subscriptions to Netflix for instance, but might on the watch Game of Thrones which is HBO and they don't have that subscription, so they will access it on a pirated website.

Kai: So it is worthwhile pointing out that pirated music today does no longer play any role whatsoever. This is exclusively a phenomenon that happens in the movie and TV streaming industry because it is worth looking back what happened in the early days of digitisation in the music industry, and remember Napster as a peer-to-peer service that popularised the piracy of, at the time, MP3 files. And then later on, in the wake of the Napster shut down, a lot of different download services that sprung up. To the extent that the music industry really was in a crisis. And in a somewhat similar situation as the video industry is now, a lot of labels created their own download platforms, their own sales platforms for MP3s. But it was a real mess. In order to download a particular song from an artist, you had to actually know which label they're with. This situation got resolved with the launch of the iTunes store at the time, and an integrated music catalogue, something that we have gotten so used to with Apple Music and Spotify, you just subscribed to any such service and you basically have access to all the music there is. The situation in the video and TV entertainment industry is so much different.

Sandra: It is extremely fragmented, and actually we have a podcast episode which will include in the shownotes, where we discuss just what that fragmentation looks like, both from a Western perspective, but we've also looked at China and that episode to see what this fragmentation looks like in other markets, and with other streaming services. But right now the only place where you can get the iTunes experience is actually on a pirated website, which not only has all of these shows, but also provides you a really slick well-designed experience that is very similar to one that a company like Netflix might offer.

Kai: Because let's remember, the situation is that in order to get access to the latest hip TV shows, you might have to sign up with, not just a handful, but in some cases up to 10 different subscription platforms, and the situation in the US, Europe or Australia is slightly different. But even in Australia, you've got of course Netflix, you've got Stan, you've got Apple now, you've got Amazon Prime, you have different streaming platforms and apps of the various channels that we have here, such as the ABC with iView, but also channel 7, 10. You have Foxtel on top of that as the Pay TV, they have their own online app service. So it's a real mess, and you have to basically know which streaming service a particular show is with, or you might want to watch a movie on the weekend and the first thing that you need to find out is what streaming service can I find that movie with.

Sandra: And this is the problem that the pirate websites solve, and on top of that these websites also offer the added convenience of having no algorithms that try to drive your experience through the website. So you will watch only the things that you actually want to watch, you will search for shows and you will watch those exact shows. There is no recommendations of more things to watch or advertisements. And there is no incentive from the pirated websites to actually drive a certain type of experience or optimise for certain time spent on the platform, because once you start watching this shows you're actually directed outside of the aggregator platforms to other websites, where you actually stream the movie.

Kai: And so these piracy websites have grown into a real competition. Which are also very hard to outlaw, because new ones are springing up all the time.

Sandra: But they're also not under any threat any time soon. If anything they are probably going to strengthen their position, given the increased competition and the fragmentation in the online content subscription space.

Kai: So for those of you who wonder when will we see the same consolidation as happened in the music industry back then, I think we're actually very much past that point where anyone could bring about this consolidation, because we're in a situation now where we have large tech players who all produce their original content, precisely to intensify the competition between platforms. Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Disney. They're all propagating their own exclusive content, therefore aggravating the kind of industry dynamic that plays straight into the hands of those piracy platforms.

Sandra: And speaking of, the new season of Game of Thrones is coming soon.

Kai: On a piracy website near you.

Sandra: On HBO.

Kai: It's not on Netflix?

Megan: Foxtel!

Kai: Foxtel, see this is all part of the problem. You have no idea where these things are at, even though they're so important to people.

Sandra: And that's all we have time for today.

Kai: See you soon.

Sandra: On the Future.

Kai: Next week.

Sandra: This week?

Kai: Yes, but next week.

Sandra: On The Future, This Week. Next week. Thanks for listening.

Kai: Thanks for listening.

Outro: This was The Future, This Week made possible by the Sydney Business Insights Team and members of the Digital Disruption Research Group. And every week, right here with us, our sound editor Megan Wedge who makes us sound good, and keeps us honest. Our theme music is composed and played live on a set of garden hoses by Linsey Pollak. You can subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow us online on Flipboard, Twitter or sbi.sydney.edu.au. If you have any news that you want us to discuss. Please send them to sbi@sydney.edu.au.

Kai: Can we say the names on the podcast? No.

Sandra: No.

Kai: No, we'll beep them.

Sandra: Beep.

Kai: Beep.

Sandra: And also.

Kai: Beep. Also...

Sandra: Let's not forget.

Kai: Beep. And finally, beep.

Sandra: Beep.

Kai: It's almost Easter. Here's an egg. Beep.

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