Apple Bets On Banking 🍏🏦

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👀 TLDR:

In this week’s What’s Appening, we are covering Apple’s big foray into financial services. Last month, Apple announced it was getting into the BNPL (buy now pay later) game with Pay Apple Later, but it is now giving bankers sleepless nights by announcing a savings account with an interest rate that pays 10 times the national average. We look at what this means for Apple, and parse out whether it seriously wants to disrupt the banking industry. Also this week, we report on a cool feature from Amazon Prime Video that will literally change how you hear movies and tv shows. We also salute the humble DVD, as Netflix signals an end to its mailing business. Our Stat of the Week covers Grimes, a music artist who is happy to share revenue with AI creators when they use her vocal stylings. And What’s dAppening has news of the first Bitcoin real estate marketplace to launch in the United States.

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Takes 🎬️

🍏🏦Apple – Savings Account Launch Shows Big Intentions for Financial Services

The relationship between Apple and Goldman Sachs goes back several years, with the pair combining to create Apple Card in 2019. But the dynamic duo have teamed up again – twice, in fact – in the last month. First, there was last month’s Apple Pay Later (the company’s version of buy now, pay later) announcement, which is notable for being the first instance of Apple (effectively) lending money to users via its vast (very vast) cash reserves. And then last week came Savings, Apple’s high-yield savings account. Of course, the figure that everyone is talking about is the 4.15% interest rate, which blows almost every physical bank out of the water. As Apple puts it, that’s more than ten times the national average. Goldman Sachs plays a role because it – being a licensed bank that is backed by federal deposit insurance – will hold the deposits. That’s important because it underlines the fact that Apple, despite what you may read, is not a bank, at least not yet. The main question asked in the financial media was if Apple was ready to disrupt traditional banking. The most frequent answer was “probably, but not just yet”. Consider that Apple makes more money from its services division alone than the combined profits of Citi and JP Morgan. So, yeah, big banks will be sitting a little nervously, wondering what the world’s biggest company is doing on their patch. JP Morgan has gone as far as sending out a warning to the rest of the banking sector, pointing out that the tech giants, such as Apple and Amazon, have a massive advantage, given they already hold all of our data (think of how that can be used in assessing credit scores) and have a ready-made customer base. But this is a long journey, and it goes all the way back to Apple Pay, and the assertion at the time that Apple wanted to replace the physical wallet. Some banking insiders are willing to put a date on it, however, suggesting that we will think of Apple in the same way as Citi and Wells Fargo within five to ten years. It’s a big step for Apple, but they are doing it slowly. From the reaction to that huge interest rate for Apple Savings, it looks like they are getting those steps right. #AppleBank Read more here.

🗣️🔇 Amazon – Dialogue Boost Feature Added to Prime Movies and TV Shows

Are you constantly adjusting the volume of your television set during a movie? Turning it down during the explosive action scenes, then up again so you can hear the actors’ dialogue? You aren’t alone. It’s a modern phenomenon caused by a variety of changes in Hollywood’s style of shooting movies, most notably the way many actors have opted for a more realistic softer manner of speaking dialogue compared to the ‘shouty’ style of the past. Regardless, Amazon Prime has a fix for that, launching Dialogue Boost, an AI-assisted tool that will boost the volume of the dialogue without also bursting your eardrums by raising the volume of the background noise at the same time. It’s smart, easy to use, and much-needed for those of us who have difficulty hearing dialogue, especially when we are munching on a big bag of chips. Anyway, hats off to Amazon Prime here, which is the first streamer to launch such a feature. Netflix, Disney, HBO – time to get on board, too, folks. #AmazonSound Read more here.

📀💌 Netflix – So Long to the DVD as Mailing Service Will Come to an End

Netflix announced that it would finally bring its DVD rental service to an end in September, rounding off 25 years of its journey to become one of the great disruptors of 21st-century entertainment. Of course, some of the kids of today probably aren’t aware that Netflix started as a DVD rental service, and we can gather that some of the older readers, including several of us at 3Advance HQ, probably didn’t know that side of the business was still going. But Netflix is still mailing out DVDs – it accounted for a not-inconsiderate $126 million of its revenue in 2022 – but will bring it to a close due to operational costs and profit squeezes. DVDs will likely only warrant a footnote in the fascinating history of Netflix, but even when founders Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph were mailing out those iconic envelopes in the late 90s in Scotts Valley, California, they were always looking for the next chance to disrupt their industry. They took those chances, again and again. #NetflixStopsMailing Read more here.

🧐 Stat of the Week: 50/50 Split

🤖🎹 AI - Grimes Says She is Happy to Split Royalties for AI-Generated Music

Grimes, the Canadian musician and artist (yeah, and also Elon Musk’s ex), has stated that she would be happy to equally split royalties with anyone who creates a track using an AI clone of her voice and music style. Now, the reason that this is important is that there has been a furor over another AI-created track, one that mimics the vocals and stylings of Drake and The Weekend, which went viral a couple of weeks ago. As such, we are all-of-a-sudden in an ethical and legal minefield. If someone uses AI to make a track in the style of a certain artist, who should profit? Grimes says she would be happy to split the bounty right down the middle with whoever had the nous to create such a track. Other artists, we suspect, won’t be as keen to let others get rich using their music as a template. Whatever happens, we smell a lot of court cases on the horizon. #GrimesSplit Read more here.

🕸️ What’s dAppening?

🏡💰 MyElisting – Launch of America’s First Bitcoin Real Estate Marketplace

MyElisting has launched the first Bitcoin-enabled real estate marketplace, initially concentrating on (Bitcoin-friendly) Texas ahead of a national roll-out. Now, the key here is that this is much more than a real estate firm that accepts Bitcoin. In fact, you can use cash if you want. However, what sets it apart is its partnership with Coinbase Commerce, which will allow buyers and sellers to use its ASAP program, potentially getting the sale through in a day. That’s over 50 times faster than the national average for selling a home. As with other web3 real estate initiatives, such as Propy NFT, this is about convenience and the security offered by the blockchain. We had a quick look at the MyElisting site, and we can confirm the Crypto Program is operational, with a bunch of properties for sale in Texas. It might seem novel now to see homes for sale denominated in BTC: Is it a taste of the future or a passing fad? If they can nail the convenience factor on the blockchain, it might be the former. #BitcoinHouses Read more here.

Meanwhile at 3Advance…

Our team at 3A loves a good weekend adventure - and everyone benefits from the pictures shared on our #random Slack channel on Monday mornings. Check out some snaps from Jason’s sun-filled weekend at home in Fort Lauderdale (paradise when it’s not flooding!), and Roshan’s trip to the incredible mountains of Nepal. Now, where to next?!

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