Bi-Weekly-ish Newsletter #74 w/ BritBox's Anti-AI Stand 🎬🤖, Sopranos' Sparkling Side Hustle 🥤🏛, IP Wars Rage On ⚖️💰, Sync's $20B Potential 🎵📊 and Moving On 🏙️🐀
Dear reader,
Back with another edition where I'm bouncing between excitement and existential dread, which seems to be my default setting these days. This time, we're diving into BritBox's refreshing anti-AI craftsmanship flex, Sopranos stars hawking fancy water, tech bros making a land grab for intellectual property, the untapped billions in sync licensing and my impending departure from Amsterdam's once-punk paradise.
Whether you're here for the media insights, tech observations, musical musings, or just to watch me process my mixed feelings about our AI-dominated future, there's something for everyone in this slightly chaotic, definitely opinionated tour through what's caught my attention lately.
Enjoy and thanks for reading.
Marcel
1. BritBox's Anti-AI Flex
When Human Craft Becomes The Ultimate Rebellion
Two weeks ago, I attended an event in Hamburg where I had a lightbulb moment while speaking with industry peers about how AI is transforming the advertising and content industry. I met a Creative Director from a major agency who shared that his team has been reduced from 12 to 6 people since they began using Midjourney. The following Monday, he texted me to say that he tried the new OpenAI image generator and now believes he can handle the entire job on his own.
As Cannes approaches in June (yes, I've already booked my overpriced Airbnb), this is sure to be a major topic of conversation possibly marking the industry's last dance to mediocre music on the volcano as we know it. However, there's a silver lining: in a world poised to be flooded with AI-generated slob, genuine human craftsmanship is becoming the ultimate status symbol. Just as punk emerged as a reaction to hippie culture and grunge responded to hair metal, a counter-movement is already taking shape. BritBox's new "See It Differently" campaign is a perfect example of this trend.
Their film showcases the uniqueness of British entertainment through a continuous 14-hour shot. This sequence is filmed at one frame per second and follows an actor who shapeshifts through various genres and characters and highlights the craftsmanship and human effort required to create quality content (kinda like this newsletter) without relying on AI shortcuts.
Check out the commercial below. It's refreshingly human....
2. Sopranos Stars' Sparkling Side Hustle
When Wise Guys Become Nice Guys
A couple of things I miss in life: Johan Cruyff being alive, Prince being alive and The Sopranos. Even "The Many Saints of Newark" I enjoyed and consequently I also very much enjoyed this non-Sopranos-yet-100%-Sopranos Sanpellegrino campaign starring Michael Imperioli (Christopher Moltisanti) and Steve Schirripa (Bobby "fat fuck" Bacala) called "The Nice Guys."
In a remote container yard, the duo finds a mysterious note: "With love, Italy," it reads. A dubious Schirripa asks Imperioli, "You think this is some kind of message?" But despite their gangster characters' shady pasts, there's nothing sinister about this message, which comes from Nestlé (or on second thought this might be sinister after all) sparkling water Sanpellegrino. The duo embarks on a mission to bring the brand's newest Italian creation across the U.S. of A.
This whole thing reminds me of that episode with Christopher Moltisanti and Paulie Walnuts getting lost in the wintery woods of New Jersey looking for a Russian commando of sorts. A somewhat comedic episode in a series otherwise known for its existential dread and sudden violence.
These guys should have an official spinoff, but until then, I'll settle for watching them hawk sparkling water. Check out the video below.
This is an ad...
While the Sopranos crew is busy promoting sparkling water, we're conducting a different kind of operation at Ringo. Our initiative helps producers at agencies, production companies and brands avoid "whacking" their budgets and deadlines on getting sync-licensing pricing.
Our algorithmic pricing tool determines Expected Sync Value (xSV), providing you with instant pricing indications for your music licensing projects without endless email ping-pong.
The best part? We're now live! Head over to www.thisisringo.com and try it for free. Consider this an offer you actually can refuse... but seriously why would you want to?
3. IP Wars: When Tech Bros Want Your Creative Work For Free
Torn by Excitement and Anger
Jack Dorsey, Twitter co-founder and, in an ironic twist of fate, owner of streaming platform TIDAL, last week declared we should "Delete all IP law" on X. Elon Musk was quick to chime in with an "I agree." This isn't just another hot take from the broligarchy, it's yet another calculated push of the Overton window, a power move to normalize a world where generative AI can be trained on almost anything and everything at all times without consent or paying a cent in search of the "everything bot".
The current AI gold rush operates on an increasingly blurry concept of "fair use" not as a legal term, but as an ideology: "If it's online, it's ours." However, what counts as "everything" isn't actually everything. It's songs, illustrations, voices, essays, and people's likeness that become raw material. It's not (at least yet) proprietary drug research, or the IP portfolios of Moderna, Lockheed Martin or Pfizer. Why? Because those systems have big enough claws that don't send you a friendly takedown notice if you cross them but lawyers, lobbyists or worse.
When Sam Altman dismissively told a TED audience last week "clap all you want" after they applauded protecting human IP, he revealed the uncomfortable truth: this isn't about what's legal it's about what's defenseless. Try using a Beyoncé song in a commercial without clearance and everyone agrees you'll rightfully get sued by Sony. But train a model on 10,000 Beyoncé songs to generate "new" music in her style? That's just a "legal gray area" a term that mysteriously applies when some institutions benefit under the guise of progress in a global AI race where legal and human objections are mere hiccups.
I don't believe the shift to AI-generated everything erases value, but I am afraid it re-routes it towards the capital-rich platforms and its governing individuals. The "delete IP" crowd? They don't actually want to delete IP. They want to own the only enforceable IP left standing in the end, the models themselves. It seems there's a strange parallel here to political systems; sure, a dictatorship is technically more "efficient" than a democracy, but that doesn't make it better. Similarly, unfettered AI training might be more "efficient" for progress, but who gets to define what progress means?
I'm torn, part of me is obsessively captivated by the sheer magnitude of this technological leap. The AI bells and whistles are shimmering and calling. We are witnessing something that will fundamentally change everything and yes will enhance life in magnitudes. Perhaps this tension, caring deeply about what and who gets left behind while simultaneously being mesmerized by what lies ahead, is the most honest perspective I can share here.
4. Sync Licensing's Broken Promise
When $8 Billion Is Just The Beginning
Media C-Suite, one of the leading platforms for investor analysis, asked me a few questions about sync from an investor and market perspective. The article is out now and it's pretty exciting to see the investment world waking up to the size of this opportunity and to have a chance to say something on behalf of Ringo and our vision for a future where music licensing is as easy and scalable as buying media space.
According to the piece (and partly me), sync licensing generated nearly $8 billion in 2023 about 17% of all music publishing revenues. But here's the kicker: that number could add another $20 billion if brands allocated the estimated standard 2% of their advertising budgets to music. Instead, we have a fragmented, manual system that makes licensing so painful that many just skip it altogether and go piracy. As I explained in the article, "When Heineken wanted to use a David Bowie track for an ad campaign in 2017, it took 57 days and over 650 hours of back-and-forth negotiations with over 50 parties just to finalize the deal. That same manual system is still in place today."
Fix the friction and unlock the market. In this case: a $20B annual one. Also, love how they picture us we look like heroic dorks with those gazes in the distance. Which... checks out. The full article is worth a read for anyone interested in the future of music monetization: »»https://mediacsuite.com/the-rising-value-of-syncing-music/
5. Moving On From the Rat Kingdom
When Gentrification Completes the Circle
So I decided to move house. Don't know the details yet but I've concluded that my time in my current home is up and that the circle of gentrification has come well... full circle. It's my time to get out and make room for a new generation of inhabitants taking over the neighborhood.
I made this decision a few weeks ago and immediately started with the mourning process of the chapter that is closing while simultaneously feeling excited about the chapter that is opening up and the new possibilities it will bring (not unlike my feelings regarding all things AI). It's all very existential. I've lived in Staatsliedenbuurt since 2015, when the neighborhood was already nice, albeit an actual grenade went off the day I moved in, part of the last gasp of the Moroccan mafia that reigned here in the early 2000s.
Going back even further, Staatsliedenbuurt in the early 1980s was essentially a free state where squatters, punks and other residents largely ignored authority. The mayor at the time, Van Thijn, was even forcibly expelled from the neighborhood in late 1984. There's a pretty awesome documentary called "Waar de ratten koning zijn" (Where Rats Are King) about this turbulent period. Obviously, this has special meaning to me, but anyone who's a fan of Ed van Elsken's more celebrated work and views of 70's and 80's Amsterdam should probably enjoy this too.
Watch "Waar de ratten koning zijn" below.
This is it.
At least for this edition.
I'm visiting Hamburg next week, so if you're around as well drop me a line for a coffee of sorts.
A la prochaine!