The Rest Is Entertainment - Will Elon Musk buy Disney?

Episode Date: February 13, 2024

Will the Magic Kingdom soon have a new owner in Elon Musk? What if anything is wrong Gregg Wallace's much maligned Saturday routine? These two questions answered, plus who will win the battle between Universal Music Group and TikTok? Richard and Marina getting into these topics on this edition of The Rest Is Entertainment. Twitter: @restisents Email: [e-mail] Producer: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Recommendations; Watch Richard: The Dog House (Channel 4) Live Maria: Macbeth (Donmar theatre) 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Commissions, fees, and expenses may apply. Read the funds or ETFs prospectus before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. before investing. Funds and ETFs are not guaranteed. Their values change and past performance may not be repeated. Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hi, Marina. How are you, Richard?

I'm all right. I've been in India and I got back last night. I might have to rely a little bit more on vibes today than insight. It's all vibes, Richard. Everything's vibes. It's all vibes-based. It's all vibes-based. Now, we've got three things to talk about today, two of which you would say are normally very important. Is Elon Musk going to buy Disney? Is that his long game?

Should TikTok be banned? That's a big deal. But we're also going to talk about Greg Wallace's life in the day. And knowing the two of us, I know which of those three will spend the longest. Oh, yeah. I've got a tight two days on Greg Wallace's life in the day. And knowing the two of us, I know which of those three will spend the longest. Oh, yeah. I've got a tight two days on Greg Wallace's one day. As have I. But probably we should start with Musk.

Like a teenage boy's bathroom routine. Let's start with Musk. Let's start with Musk. Elon Musk has attended a premiere of a film and I'm going to tell you in a minute what the premiere of the film was because it's quite special. He was there with Nelson Peltz, who is an investor in disney he doesn't own a huge amount of disney his investment fund is probably less than two percent but he's trying to make trouble for

disney for this is what you call an activist investor he wants seats on the board he wants to install his own people and he's been making trouble for some time now it's an activist investor is one of the few times you can use the word activist and know you're describing a wrong-un. Absolute wrong-un. Yeah, activist investor Nelson Peltz. Now, at a premiere, again, we're going to come to what it was for in a minute, Elon Musk attended with Nelson Peltz. And he's probably a slight surprise attendee at this thing. And they said to him, what are you doing here? And he said, you know, just looking around, seeing about companies to buy. So it's either Disney or the cinema. And people have said, could he buy Disney?

And I'm afraid I would have to say the answer to that question is no. Like all of these newspaper questions to which the answer is no. Could Elon Musk buy Disney? No, he couldn't. That's not going to stop us having that as our tagline on this episode. 100% going to be the tagline on this episode. Will Elon Musk buy Disney? In the great spirit, yeah.

Is this the face of Christ in a piece of toast? No. Okay, will Elon Musk buy Disney? The answer is no, he won't. First of all, it would cost him about five times what he paid for Twitter, now X. Not five times its value now, about 10 times its value now,

because he's halved the value of Twitter. So I think that would probably be one of the questions that the board would and the shareholders indeed would ask have you bought any companies recently if so how's it going how's it going and he would have to say well i mean i've had a little bit of trouble with this thing i bought you know last year or whenever it was as an absolute sidebar you know when everyone you know lots of people left uh twitter and they said no i'm not i refuse to make money for Elon Musk. You think, no, you're losing the money. That's why I stuck around. Every day I'm there, I'm costing him an absolute fortune.

Yes, yes, this I agree with. Okay, so he, now I'm going to tell you what the movie that they were attending was because Nelson Peltz has another job other than activist investor and general all around wrong. And he's the father-in-law of brooklyn beckham and the movie premiere in question was lola written directed by and starring nicola peltz brooklyn beckham's wife obviously putting herself into the tradition of the great

auteurs they're writing directing starring orson welles yes, this was the premiere of this film. The film is called Lola, in which Nicola plays a poor person just trying to make ends meet for her little brother, a stripper, obviously. Her little brother is a stripper. Yeah, no, the little brother isn't the stripper. Okay, she is the stripper. She is the stripper. And, yeah, she's... Anyway, there's obviously been some criticism

that she's on some kind of poverty safari. I don't think we really want to get into that. Anyway, the premiere was attended by not a huge number of celebrities, but one of them was Elon Musk. And something else that Elon Musk has been doing to royal Disney is that he has said, I'm going to back, because obviously various people have lost their jobs for things they post on Twitter, famous and non-famous.

X, we have to call it now. We don't have to. We don't have to actually. Let's just call it Twitter. Because also it's confusing every time someone says X. Formally known as, yeah, okay, fine. We're just calling it Twitter now and I'll have to write in if they're upset about it. Can you imagine if I don't imagine they would?

Please write in and we'll read your full letter out. Anyway, so Musk had said, I will bat lawsuits for people against their former employees if they've been sat for things they've said on the platform. He's actually making good on this. There was a person called Gina Carano. She was in The Mandalorian, which is obviously a Disney property. It's a Star Wars property, but that all comes under the umbrella of Disney. And she said a number of incredibly imbecilic and offensive things on Twitter, She said a number of incredibly imbecilic and offensive things on Twitter, one of which was being a Republican nowadays is like being Jewish in the Second World War.

No, Gina. No, it's not. Anyway, and Disney had enough of it and sacked her. And Musk has actually come good and he is funding her lawsuit. The legal documents are hilarious for this particular lawsuit because they contain, I'm going to quote one line from this. Carano was terminated from her role as swiftly as her character's peaceful home planet of Alderaan had been destroyed by the Death Star. Wow. That's in a legal document? Yes. That's amazing. Carano was choked as ruthlessly as Darth Vader choked Grand Moff Tarkin.

That's not in the legal document. Your Honor. But yeah, I mean, we've got to think of some more. But in some ways, all these lawsuits just seem like another sort of Musk version of shitposting, just like he's the world's most expensive sort of shitposter. He has the soul of a poster, which is why he wanted to buy the platform. And he does these things. He can't really make any particular trouble with these things. In terms of what Nelson Peltz can do, that has been treated slightly more seriously

because Disney have had problems over the last few years. If you look at what's happening, their parks and cruises, by the way, are performing brilliantly, but you need the sort of content funnel into the parks and cruises because you can't have a Disney cruise without good... We should have called this podcast the content funnel. The content funnel, yeah. It's like a foie gras thing.

We just get the content down whether or not you want it or not anyhow um disney have been having problems they got late into streaming they've sort of caught up and it is working better now but all of these big big brands that they own have all sort of faltered you know where they've got lucas filmed owned by matt lucas of course owned by matt lucas they've got got Marvel Pixar and they've got all the sort of Disney legacy catalogue and ideally hopefully new Disney creative projects that that can come out of that particular sort of silo in their business and all of those have faltered and they've had outright flops and disappointing things and things that seemed like absolute surefire bankers say

five years ago just haven't been although nobody by the way in the industry believes that nelson peltz is the answer to any of this he's also being backed by a guy called ike perlmutter who's the former like absolute kind of irascible genuinely he is a ronan a person who used to own marvel now we get sued but yeah i know sorry yeah but if we do get sued you know what's gonna happen i don't think they know what ronan means in america but listen elon musk will come and... Elon Musk will come and help us. Just say it's free speech, man.

That's free speech. And suddenly we'll be up in court funded by him. It'll probably be selective, his commitment to it. I think it's safe to say that Perlmutter and Nelson Peltz are very focused business people. Yeah, they're very focused business people. And there's a big meeting. I think it's April the 3rd that they're the big shareholder meeting that's going to happen and Disney had a quarterly earnings call last week where they actually look like now they've done enough to

head off not that they would necessarily ever endanger from this particular sort of sally by Nelson Peltz but it could have built it's their best quarter for a long long time for Disney and they've got some exciting sort of things coming up they're going to release some new by Nelson Peltz, but it could have built. It's their best quarter for a long, long time for Disney. And they've got some exciting sort of things coming up. They're going to release a new Moana movie. No way. Yes. Don't laugh about Moana.

I'm not. It's huge. It's so massive. When Netflix had the sort of Disney properties before there was Disney Plus and Netflix showed Disney properties on their platform, more people watched Moana than Avengers Endgame. Yeah, I bet. Moana and Encanto. Yeah, Encanto is huge.

Encanto is absolutely huge. And what else have they got coming out? They've got Mufasa, which is a Lion King thing. Again, people may not have talked about the last Lion King live action thing, but it grossed 1.6 billion or more, maybe 1.7. It's bigger than Barbie. You may not have found it. Maybe it didn't dominate the discourse in the same way.

But perhaps most interestingly, and something we'll end up looking at more, not today because we won't have time. Because we've got to talk about Greg Wallace. We've got to talk about Greg Wallace, which is a much more significant global thing. They're doing a joint venture, a standalone sort of sports streaming platform with warner discovery and fox so they've disney sports business by the way is espn so that potentially if it's able to launch and it doesn't get fouled up in sort of antitrust monopoly kind of stuff will be really interesting to see whether they can make that work yeah it's impossible to overestimate how big sports are in the us i mean they absolutely don't i mean we had the Super Bowl was this weekend, of course,

but the NFL and the sports are enormous business in America. That's a potential game changer. But Nelson Peltz, who I always, whenever I hear his name, I think of Nelson Muntz. Yes, from the Simpsons. That's not his fault, but I do. He, as you say, he's desperately trying to take control of the board at Disney. That earnings call that they had last week,

and as you say, he doesn't have a huge amount of Disney stock, but he's got enough. That earnings call made him half a billion dollars, just in that call, because the price went up. And yet he's still furious. He's still cross. He's still saying, same old story. You can't please a rich guy.

Same old story. You made half a billion pound in one day. It's like Bradley Walsh or something. But the answer to the question, is Elon Musk going to buy Disney? It feels like even for him, that's impossible. So he's going to talk a lot about buying Disney. And that narrative may come more and more into the fore. But we're saying now, Marina Hyde has given you the guarantee,

the rest is entertainment guarantee, the content funnel guarantee that Musk is not going to buy Disney. As a side note to the story about Gina Carano, who's suing for sort of damages, she also says if she wins the lawsuit, that they have to put her back in the show. I love that. I mean, can you imagine walking in on Monday morning

and the writer's going, yeah, we've got a couple of ideas for your character. Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, we'll be Fed couple of ideas for your character. Yeah, yeah, we've got it. Well, listen, we'll be FedExing the pages over this evening. But it's, yeah, it's an amazing soap opera, that, and I love that it brings in everyone from Elon Musk to Nelson Peltz to Trump to the Beckhams. I mean, it's a whole big sort of...

I slightly like that you can't, and no matter how rich you are in the world, there are just some social engagements that you really can't get out of.'s like she's got a movie premiere she's written she's directed and she's done okay okay i will be there yeah and the after party yeah i'll be there i'll be there yes what did i think of it um i thought it was really interesting still processing it i'm still processing it but uh i mean yeah listen she's done it again nelson she has done it again by the way on, on a side note to that.

Side note to the side note to the side note. Yeah, oh, yeah. In fact, I've gone all the way around the side, and now we're back where we started. The Beckhams were on an advert during the Super Bowl for Uber Eats, which is where Brooklyn Beckham's little pop-up came. Pop-up, which, of course, I dined at. I dined at home, but I ordered it in.

But that explains a few things. That explains a lot of things about how Brooklyn Beckham got his Uber Eats pop-up. Yeah, listen, that's show business, isn't it? That is show business. So yes, I think we've done a full meandering tour around that particular subject. But we'll come back to Disney and particularly that sports bundling thing, because it's quite interesting, even if it might sound boring at first outing. It's going to be crazy.

We'll probably come back to Elon Musk at some point as point as well i feel we will at some point i'll tell you what if the fortunes of his platform could not be completely restored if he can get donald trump back onto his platform in an election year that will make things very different for that particular business but we'll have to wait and see whether you can should we move on from Elon Musk to Greg Wallace? Greg Wallace. Now, Greg with two Gs. Wallace with two Ls. Yeah. Traditional. Not this weekend, but last weekend,

Greg did the equivalent of one of those Sunday Times Lifes in the day. It wasn't. It was my Saturday, and I think it was in the Telegraph Saturday magazine. And his day caused a certain amount of merriment among the wider social media community. And in fact, it seems to have caught fire. It seemed to be trending on all platforms for days and days.

Let's just take a look at what his day involved. Saturday routine, he was up at five checking the numbers for his health program. Before we go into this, because I don't want anyone to think this is going to be 20 minutes of mocking Greg Wallace. Because it's not. Because it's really not. I've got a number of reasons why I quite like Greg Wallace, which we'll get onto

as we go through his day, I think. I think getting up at five o'clock in the morning, that's okay if you want to get up at five in the morning, wouldn't do it myself. I get up at five every morning. No, you don't. Yes, I do. If not before, yes.

Is there a time before five? There is, I'm afraid. Before five is not my choice, but I've been quite busy this last year and so I have got up so your schedule very much like Greg Wallace very much like Greg Wallace

up at 5 I don't go to the gym which staff opened an hour earlier just for Greg just so he can have a swim in sauna I don't do that at 5

I don't think he does that at 5 actually I think he does that a bit later on about 7.30 or something isn't it yeah he says that the gym opens for him

and again listen don't knock it if they could do it for me I would have it and that's the thing everyone 7.30 or something, isn't it? Yeah, he says that the gym opens for him. And again, listen. Don't knock it. If they could do it for me, I would have it. Yeah, and that's the thing. Everyone, if they say, I mean, honestly, it would be easier for me if it was 7.30. And, you know, David Lloyd himself comes down and says, come on then, Craig. Let me roll out the red carpet.

At least he's going to the gym. We really got into the territory of Partridge when he divulged that he has breakfast at a harvester with his PA. Yeah, I mean that is unfortunately Partridge. But at the same time, listen, Greg says that the harvester's never let me down and I have to agree with him. He's going to have a PA, that's okay.

Elon Musk has got a PA. Greg's a busy guy and he likes to have a breakfast at a harvester. I think, listen, he's gone to the gym and then he's bought himself a fried breakfast at a harvester. Thus far, listen, he's gone to the gym, then he's bought himself a fried breakfast at Harvester. Thus far, I'm very comfortably on board with Greg Wallace's day. Yeah, I mean, he plays with his son for a bit, then he spends two hours locked in his study playing Total War Saga, Thrones of Britannia.

Again, I mean, can I just say something about this, which I think you're probably going to end up agreeing with, Richard, is that don't we want our celebrities to be like this? I can't tell you my least favourite thing ever to read in these celebrity life in the day things is when they say, then I'll have lunch or dinner, which will be steamed fish and vegetables. If any celebrity mentions steamed fish and vegetables,

I just want to shoot them. I mean, please don't think that your diet, your nutrition passes for conversation. It does if it's a harvester. Then it's a conversation topic. It does not if it's Dean Fisher. No celebrity should ever use those words again. All we want is the people who do these profiles to kind of be crazy and ridiculous.

Sometimes they do very funny ones. Tom Hollander did an absolutely hilarious one in the Sunday Times where he said things like, in the afternoon I might go for a walk along the canal or masturbate and it was everything was allowed orlando bloom did an absolutely classic one where he said i like to earn my breakfast so i'll just have some green powders that i mix with brain octane oil a collagen powder for my hair and nails and some protein but wait sorry did he have the word just in that uh in that yeah yeah he does and then my my other favourite thing that he did is that he said, like, constantly think about roles that I need to advance people.

Myself, women and minorities. The three big ones. Yeah. Again, I mean, this is what we want celebrities to say. Do you remember Mark Wahlberg's routine? Yeah, his was crazy. His was, he gets up at 2.30am, wakes up, then he has prayer time. I mean, what is he, a fishmonger?

Yeah, I mean, exactly. Then he has prayer time, then there was breakfast, then there was workout. He had so many workouts and there was tiny bits of family time that are scheduled into all of this. But what seems so odd to me is that, first of all, quite gutting, because this used to be the guy that was the inspiration for Entourage. Greg Wallace? Mark Wahlberg. Mark Wahlberg.

Okay, I'm with you. Sorry. I mean, I know you. Yeah, yeah. And then you thought, this is so depressing. I mean, is this what sort of modern acting of a certain type is? The bit where you're actually pretending to be someone is a tiny, tiny bit of the day. And mostly it's this insane workout schedule.

Also, you can star in like Daddy's Home 2 with Mel Gibson. And it seems very odd to me that so much of, in fact, male and female actors, the day is spent on this kind of extreme conditioning. Just fitness, right? I mean, it's just fitness. This is why when a new Bond film comes out, Daniel Craig's trainer would go on the interview circuit himself and explain how many inches he'd got off the thighs or onto the thighs or whatever was necessary. Marvel are incredibly strict on what they will allow people to say

about what they do in order to get to bulk up for these roles. But it is absolutely gruelling. The bit where you're actually acting is such a tiny part of your day, week, month, year. Almost all of it is this extreme conditioning. But it's something quite different that's changed from when you were Humphrey Bogart and you were an actor and you just needed to go down to the Coconut Grove

and have a few drinks and stay out till four in the morning and then go make us a blanket the next morning. This is a very different way of life now. Listen, to return to Greg Wallace just for a moment, I mean, he's very much our mark walberg and our humphrey bogart and our yeah he's like walberg meets bogart uh people are so sniffy about his day i'm with you about i just i just thought i found it quite interesting and for lots of reasons but it's lovely that some of our celebrities are michael sheen but not everyone

could be michael sheen Timothee Chalamet. There is room for Greg Wallaces in our culture, and also there's a massive audience for Greg Wallaces in our culture. You tell me who Saturday has got so much airplay ever, ever before. Yeah, exactly. It adds to the gaiety of the nation. And he's one of those people that people go, I don't understand the appeal.

You think, well, that's okay. You don't need to understand the appeal of anyone. But you put Greg Wallace on a TV show, and loads and loads and loads and loads of people watch it he's been on house of games greg i have to say i really really liked him and he's got such a great energy uh the biggest compliment you can ever pay to anyone is is all the crew loved him makeup loved him wardrobe loved him the runners loved him he was like absolutely charming to everybody which is which is the mark of um a celebrity it's amazing how many celebrities still given that most bad celebrities are psychopaths okay yeah and there's a few of them a psychopath must know that if you're horrible

to someone and make up people hear about it and yet they still do it yeah i find that very peculiar anyway perhaps no he's not a psychopath uh. So Greg was absolutely lovely to everybody. I was watching this week. Inside the Factory is one of my favourite shows of all time. Of all time. I love Inside the Factory. This week, Greg went inside a jelly bean factory. Oh, my God, it was amazing.

You know what? They had 87 million jelly beans in their sorting room. At that one time? Yeah, at that one time. On the premises? Yeah. Wow. Jelly beans are, listen, I digress, but jelly beans are their sorting room at that one time yeah at that one time on the premises yeah now wow jelly beans listen i digress but jelly beans are tiny right tiny little things do you know how long it takes from the glucose arriving to the to the final jelly bean leaving shock me 11 days shut up is one of the most complicated it was like building a jet engine

the way they were making uh a jelly bean and greg is there throughout he's moving it along it's an open university production and so there's lots of great educational stuff in there as well but he is somebody that audiences like and the audiences come to and there's a certain group of people commentators who we've talked before about mrs brown's boys that where the successful version of the thing they don't like is the thing they hate the most because there's loads of unsuccessful versions of greg wallace who doesn't don't exercise anybody on the factory floor discarded exactly seconds uh and you know but but greg brings an audience to what he does it brings

an enthusiasm um to what he does by the way they're replacing him on inside the factory with paddy McGuinness. Now, I would have liked that gig. I would have done Inside the Factory in a heartbeat. They show you how they make Wotsits and stuff. And the machines are crazy. So, anyway. If it doesn't work out with Paddy McGuinness,

I think you've just issued a come-and-get-me plea. Big time. Yeah. Really. Osman issues come-and-get-me plea to BBC. Now he's persona non grata at Channel 4. He has to go to the BBC. Also, I think there's a more serious thing about Greg Singh. He talks later on about his son, who's non-verbal autistic,

and everyone's having a going in for not being around his kids. And you know what? You look at his other postings, and it's clear he's sort of doing an edited version of his day day and he's tweeted before about his son and about his wife and all that stuff that's he's a guy living his life being honest about what he does and you think oh come on i mean really in this world full of what's going on we're going to have a go at greg who's a guy i would never get i i i will never try and get at people about how they've how they're dealing with their children never mind because it's right, to deal with your kids.

Because in the words of that character in Jeremy Goyer, it is an up at dawn pride swallowing siege that I will never fully tell you about. And I really, you don't get involved in how people are running their day with their children. And honestly, half the people, well, sometimes you read the comments on Mail Online, and I honestly just feel like this is just people saying, no, sorry, mummy can't come and play. She's having wine time and just slagging off a few celebrities for how they look, you know, five hours later.

I don't believe, no, I don't, I would never, as someone who writes about all these sorts of different things, I really try in general not to get involved in writing about how people deal with their children. I'm trying to think of the times I did mention it with a million caveats when Matt Hancock went on I'm a Celebrity because I thought the stories that came out about when he had left his wife and how it had all happened, I just thought, why would you then do this? And why would you then put your children, you know, it's Tuesday

and I personally wouldn't put my children through it. But I thought very hard about how I would write it and say it. Whenever writing anything about children, you don't know. You don't know anyone else's life or what their parenting is like at all. And as I say, quite a lot of people spent the day commenting on it instead of playing with their own children. That's true. So I will say about that piece, it's a Saturday Telegraph.

It's really worth a read. It is, and Greg will be the first to admit, it is funny. God is funny god i mean we did our own saturdays i'd be horrified yeah it's it's great and he is he's a spicy flavor greg but you know from my dealings with him he's a fundamentally very very nice man and sung for his supper this is crucial yeah exactly and also he's so good at mentioning all of his offshoots i I think he gets up at 5 a.m., checks the subscriber numbers to his health app, and he's literally, he's got his health app within the first three. Do you do that? Do you hit your promotional marks? I bet you're really great at that.

Of course I do. Every time. Yeah, my new book coming out in September, I just check, you know, I just check on the numbers on Amazon. Yeah. But, you know, he's got it down within three lines. And, you know, you give up reading an article at some point, but you don't give up reading after three lines.

Steam, fish and vegetables is the sign for me to get my backpack and leave. So, yeah, Greg Wallace, yeah, he took a lot of stick and he came out fighting and good for him. And I would really recommend the Inside the Factory one on jelly beans. It's fascinating. It really is. I'll catch it now. Honestly, the way they polish them, you would not believe it. Okay, I think it's time for us is I'll catch it now honestly the way they polish them you would not believe it

okay I think it's time for us to have a little break I hope we're advertising Greg Wallace's health app and jelly beans this episode is brought to you by Fidelity Investments Canada make investing simple

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And it felt a little like... Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Welcome back to the rest is entertainment. We're going to talk about TikTok. There's been three or four different things that we're going to basket Rest Is Entertainment. We're going to talk about TikTok. There's been three or four different things, so we're going to basket them all together. The first one is the Universal Music Group, which is the biggest music group in the world,

who are, I think, talking about taking their music off TikTok. Well, what they've said is they are going to remove all of their artists from the platform. Now, if you think about TikTok, obviously the majority of videos on TikTok are soundtracked by licensed music, and it comes about TikTok, obviously, it's the majority of videos on TikTok are soundtracked by licensed music. And it comes from the record companies and the record companies have allowed this to happen for a number of reasons. Chiefly because it is whether or not they like it, it is a very important way of promoting their artists.

And it's also a way of getting their artists discovered, discoverability people talk about. And there are certain people like obviously someone like Taylor Swift, a universal artist who doesn't necessarily need discoverability people talk about and there are certain people like obviously someone like Taylor Swift a universal artist then who doesn't necessarily need discoverability but then there are other people like I'm just thinking that guy Noah Kahn he's stick season that has that all took off our TikTok it wouldn't have happened without TikTok it's like anytime you see a book you haven't heard of in the top 10 of the UK book charts is always come from TikTok well they call it which funn enough, they've got signs now, which someone sent us a picture of,

in bookstores saying, TikTok made me buy it. Oh yeah, listen, I think maybe we'll do BookTok in more detail another time, because it's genuinely

fascinating, and incredibly positive as well. Yes. Listen, okay, back to Universal. So a couple of weeks ago,

Universal, they released an extremely aggressive statement, saying basically TikTok had tried to bully them. That they've been in a sort of negotiation for how much their artists get paid for the music that are used on those videos. And they've now pulled away from it completely. And they've said TikTok tried to bully us after a sort of 30-day grace period, which we're now right in the middle of it. Every single piece of not just their artists, but anything they have even partial control over partial publication anything all of it's going which is by some estimates 50 of music on the

platform that's how big universal are they have absolutely everybody they've got taylor well they don't have us that's ridiculous of course they don't have everybody they have they know what they don't have me they don't have you they've got taylor swift they've got drake they've got adele they've got harry stars they've got ari They've got Adele. They've got Harry Styles. They've got Ariana Grande. There's Olivia Rodrigo. Obviously, tons of legacy artists. The Beatles, Elton John. Heard of them.

Dylan, Coldplay, U2. I mean, they are by far the biggest fish. So what they do does matter. Obviously, if you're someone like Taylor Swift, as I said, you don't really mind about this. Yeah. Taylor Swift, as I said, you don't really mind about this. But even if you're as big as Ariana Grande, who's got new music coming out, are you thrilled that you can't promote it?

She's been very vocal about sort of artist rights, Ariana Grande, and people getting paid enough for streaming and things like that. So she's going to, I expect, suck it up. But it's the smaller artists who might think, well, hang on, how am I going to get myself heard? How can I become like Noah Khan and take off in these different ways? At the moment, everyone's sort of united and they haven't even pulled the music yet. But it's a really, really big move. Yeah, it's a fascinating one.

And it comes from TikTok being so insanely profitable. And, you know, part of the reason it's insanely profitable is you can use commercial music without paying for it so that's a huge deal and so at some point if you're running any sort of company you've got to say well okay i'm sort of helping you be insanely profitable so maybe i should have a piece of that money but tiktok did say oh it's such a shame for universal that they're turning down this you know incredible opportunity to sort of you know showcase their artists and that's absolutely like that thing on twitter when people always say, can someone make me a poster? And someone say, well, what are you paying?

Oh, no, but it's just to give you publicity. And people stopped believing that thing, I think, a while ago. And the idea that you can break new artists through TikTok, it's the same as books, actually, this BookTok thing. Five or six times a year, a huge book comes out because of TikTok. It's the same as books, actually, this book talk thing. Five or six times a year, a huge book comes out because of TikTok. But you cannot plan for which book that is in the same way you cannot plan for which of your artists it is. So, you know, if there's 1000 artists all going, but maybe maybe it could be me, it's only going to be two of them. And so I think that if a

platform is incredibly successful and making a huge amount of money, and part of that is on the back of other people's creativity, and it is, you know, TikTok's great because you do hear this music. You're not having to listen to sort of library music. I think at some point you've got to share the money out. But no one ever wants to share the money out, do they? Until they're absolutely forced to. And Universal are the only people who could force them into doing that, I suspect. Which music is basically dominated by the three companies, Universal, Warner and Sony.

It'll be interesting to see what the other two do because they're not allowed to negotiate all together with these companies. They have to negotiate separately. But in terms of precedent, Taylor Swift obviously removed all her music from Spotify when she felt back then, in 2014 I think it was, that she wasn't getting a fair deal and the artists in general weren't getting a fair deal off Spotify. And she didn't go back for years.

So I think the level of aggression in Universal's statement, which was quite, it's quite an unusual statement to read. It feels unlikely that unless they get some big concessions and also what they also are asking for is sort of more protections on AI.

But if they cave before the end of this for is sort of more protections on ai but if they if they cave before the end of this 30 days at a grace period it will i think it won't be them caving it will probably be tiktok otherwise i think you'll have to you'll see the music coming off i would have thought so because you know the spotify thing is interesting because actually spotify pay an awful lot of money for the rights to their music but they pay it to the record companies and the record companies they're sort of a filter down to which- And then they disperse it. Which goes to the artists, yeah.

And so the record companies are actually making an absolute killing out of Spotify. I mean, it's beautiful for them because they're not having to, you know, there's no record pressing plants. There's none of that kind of stuff. So, you know, Universal wants TikTok to be the same thing. Whether artists will ever see any of that money

is debatable. But yeah, for the record companies, for a few years, what was happening with music catalogues was bad for them. They held firm, got an extremely good deal, are making so much money. And you know, they'll do the same with TikTok. We have the question of whether that goes to the artists. And that's a harder one. But yeah, I would think that Universal have experience of leveraging the artists they own to get a good deal. You can bet that Taylor Swift, for example, Spotify won't have had to pay any extra money. I'm guessing.

Listen, I have no knowledge of the insider workings of this. But I imagine she just said to Universal, you've got to pay me an awful lot more of the money that you are getting from Spotify. And then everybody's happy because there's no precedent set. Taylor's getting the money she deserves from her music and Universal is still making all their cash. One of the slightly more interesting things about TikTok that various countries have banned it. So I just got back from India. It's completely banned in India. And if you talk to Indian people about it, they say, well, the thing is that, you know, the Chinese government can sleep on every single thing you're doing every single brush stroke of your phone

that's the narrative in India which is not the case there are ties between the Chinese government and the TikTok board in various ways but it's not what they're saying in India but in America the Republicans especially would like it to be banned and there were congressional hearings

with the head of TikTok asking about ties to the Chinese government, asking about privacy. And he gave very robust replies. But it feels like now it won't be banned because on Sunday evening, Joe Biden joined TikTok. His re-election campaign joined TikTok and he did a TikTok. Do you call it a TikTok?

Yes. Yeah, thanks. He did a TikTok from the Super Bowl. I would have thought he had some universal music on it but he didn't. I don't know why. So he has obviously accepted TikTok into the heart of American government. Nikki Haley, who's Trump's

main, if distant, rival for the Republican nomination, she wants it banned. A lot of the Republicans want it banned. It's not just Republicans. I have to say that a lot of the republicans want it banned uh but it's not just republicans i have to say that a lot of people are very skeptical of the safety of it and in terms of what sort of exposure it gives and what the data is used for um and i know many people who know a lot about tech who know or also people who know like a lot of commercial media people who just

won't have it on their phone yeah and they will access it in media people who just won't have it on their phone. And they will access it in other ways, but they won't have it on their phone. And it's not totally some sort of partisan issue. I do think that there is very justified concerns. Because the Chinese version of TikTok, which is Douyin, which was the original version of it, that is an immensely sanitized version of what people in america and people in the uk see on tiktok and if you're under 14 you're only allowed to watch the kids bits of it you're

only allowed to have an hour a day if you're a child there's a curfew between 10 p.m and 6 a.m it's very very very carefully policed in china so that you know they don't have a generation of children stuck to their phones but the second of course it's in america or france or the uk you do what you want you can put whatever you want on there and that's the trouble with democracy this is the trouble with democracy i've said it so many times we can't have proper social media control but it's a it's a but it's an interesting cultural force that if you're the chinese government you're thinking i'm not sure that tiktok is doing the west an awful lot of good. Yeah, no, there are theories that it's deliberately,

it's a sort of information weapon to make us stupid, which I think we can probably do all on our own. Oh, yeah, listen, we've got plenty that can make us stupid. We're long and strong and stupid. Don't you worry about that. But, yeah, it's an interesting one to keep an eye on. So Universal v TikTok is going to carry on. Politicians versus TikTok is going to carry on. Politicians vs TikTok is going to carry on.

But meanwhile, the rest is entertainment is also on TikTok. And you better leave it after that. Yes, we are on TikTok. We're carrying on as well. Yes, we welcome our video overlords.

Shall we wrap up with a couple of recommendations? Please do. We talked a lot about Channel 4 and their search for hits last week. There's a lovely show on Channel 4 which I wish more people would watch. It's called The Dog House. These dogs in the pound and you follow families who need a dog for various reasons.

And these dogs sort of approach them very gingerly and very gently and then everyone falls in love. And that's a really, really cute show. Very good. I saw the mighty David Tennant in Macbeth. Not a cute show, but a brilliant version of it. I don't know if you can get tickets. I think it's very, very difficult. But there were lots of people queuing and some of them were being given returns when I went.

And it is absolutely extraordinary. I loved it. At the Donmar, that is, in London. At the Donmar Warehouse in London. Any dogs in it? No, no dogs in it. Absolutely none. Okay, I'm sort of semi-interested.

As I said, it's not a cute show. I don't know if you know the show. Macbeth, no. Should we do a question and answer session on Thursday? we must do a question and answer session on thursday uh please be in touch with us at the rest is entertainment at gmail.com with any of your questions we have thousands now to get through but they are all brilliant so please please write in yeah ask us about what what what's our regular saturday like. And have we ever been to a harvester before? Yeah.

Spoiler, yes, I have. We'll see you on Thursday. Bye-bye.