On today's show: sleep gadgets, AI DJs, and sneaky TVs. Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her experiences with the Eight Sleep mattress pad, the Oura Ring 4, and other sleep gadgets. Can you really measure your way to a better night of sleep? After that, Allison Johnson gives us her take on Spotify's AI DJ, and we wonder exactly how an AI tool is supposed to help us find and listen to music. Finally, Nilay Patel comes on to answer a question from the Vergecast Hotline about the Samsung Frame TVs — and how to figure out whether you need a TV at all.
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TechTranscript
00:00:00Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of quantified REM cycles.
00:00:04I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am playing Batman Arkham Shadow on the Quest 3.
00:00:11I tend to always have one game that I like to play on the Quest,
00:00:16usually for just like 15 or 20 minutes at a time in between meetings or at night,
00:00:20just to kind of move around.
00:00:22I like this better than, you know, sitting on the couch playing video games,
00:00:25even though, frankly, I do a lot of that too.
00:00:27This at least kind of gets the blood going in a way that I really like.
00:00:31For a long time, it was super hot VR.
00:00:32Then it was super natural when I was feeling like exercise-y.
00:00:36Then there was a tennis simulator that I got strangely into,
00:00:39but I kept hitting the ceiling trying to do serves, so that didn't last.
00:00:43And now I'm playing Arkham Shadow.
00:00:45I have loved all of the Arkham games over the years.
00:00:48They're like the perfect mix for me of lots to do, but pretty straightforward,
00:00:53and they don't require me to just wander aimlessly for hours.
00:00:56Very much my kind of game.
00:00:58By the way, there's a decent chance you've heard ads for this game on this podcast.
00:01:02I've gotten some complaints from people who were like,
00:01:04too many meta ads in a row, and I can only assume they're for Arkham Shadow.
00:01:09So, trust me, this is not one of those ads.
00:01:12I'm happy to tell you all of the things I hate about both this game and the Quest in general.
00:01:17But this game's pretty great. I'm having a nice time.
00:01:19Anyway, that is not what we're here to talk about today.
00:01:21We are here to do two things on the show.
00:01:24First, we're going to talk to VSong about kind of a year of experiments in quantified sleep that she's been doing.
00:01:31She's tried some gadgets. She's tried some more expensive gadgets.
00:01:34She's tried some really expensive gadgets,
00:01:37and we're going to talk about whether any of them are actually worth it and have made her sleep better.
00:01:42Then we're going to talk to Allison Johnson about the AI DJ on Spotify
00:01:47and what it means to have a computer decide what is good and what you should listen to.
00:01:52She wrote a really great piece about it. I have some thoughts.
00:01:54I actually disagree with her in some ways, so we're going to get into it.
00:01:57We also have a question from the hotline to do lots of fun stuff coming up on this episode.
00:02:01But first, we'll get to that.
00:02:04But I have to go beat up some bad guys on the streets of Gotham.
00:02:07This is The Verge Cast. We'll be right back.
00:02:12Support for The Verge Cast comes from Polestar.
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00:02:48Welcome back.
00:02:49So, we talk a lot on this show about the idea of tracking yourself
00:02:54and using wearables to get data about your biometrics and the whole idea of the quantified self,
00:03:00which, to be honest, is a phrase that I really hate.
00:03:03But it just means tracking something in order to be able to do it better.
00:03:07The thing we don't talk about as much with that, I think, is sleep.
00:03:12We talk a lot about exercise, we talk some about food and things like that, and all that stuff is good.
00:03:17But I think if you wanted to make everyone's lives better immediately,
00:03:21getting everybody better sleep would be the way.
00:03:24So Vsong on our team has been testing a bunch of sleep-related gadgets.
00:03:29She's actually been doing this for a long time, both as part of testing lots of wearables,
00:03:34but also just because, like the rest of us, she'd like to get more sleep.
00:03:39So I figured now would be a super fun time to have her on the show and talk through all of this.
00:03:43She's tried some cheap stuff, she's tried some absurdly expensive stuff,
00:03:48and we're going to see if any of it is actually worth the money and actually helps you sleep.
00:03:52Vsong, hello.
00:03:53Hello.
00:03:55Okay, so a few weeks ago, you were here on the show,
00:03:57and I said something about how I think sleep tracking is stupid.
00:04:02I don't think I said those exact words, but I said something like those exact words.
00:04:05And I would say a surprising number of people have had feelings at me about that feeling
00:04:11and have told me that I'm wrong.
00:04:13And it turns out that you, without even telling me at that moment when you could have told me,
00:04:18have been doing all kinds of interesting sleep tracking research over the last several months.
00:04:23So I want to talk about it.
00:04:25And I want to talk especially about the thing that you tried to do
00:04:28where you tried to convince people that it's not insane to spend many thousands of dollars on your bed.
00:04:34But before we get to all of that, I want to talk about sleep maxing.
00:04:37Because you brought up in one of your recent stories this thing that I find really fascinating,
00:04:42which is that sleep tracking has become the thing.
00:04:46In a way that I can't remember this sort of quantified self trend being mainstream quite like this maybe ever,
00:04:57or at least since the, like, get 10,000 steps craze sort of took over everybody.
00:05:02Like, sleep is, it's such a thing, it's having such a moment.
00:05:06And I'm curious what you make of that.
00:05:10Like, why do you think sleep has gone viral in the way that it has?
00:05:14So I think that we all feel a lot of existential dread.
00:05:18And there are so many things that are externally out of our control.
00:05:22At the same time, like, you have a lot of really health conscious people at this point in time.
00:05:27I attribute that and, like, my little bubble to, like, all of these devices that Apple, Samsung, Google say will save your life.
00:05:34And, you know, these are things you can by and large control.
00:05:38Sleep, you know, talk to any doctor, they're going to tell you get a good night's worth of sleep.
00:05:43Sleep, eat nutrient dense foods, exercise.
00:05:47Every single health professional is going to tell you that if you can master these three things, your life will be better.
00:05:53Like, they, you know, and I think that message really does kind of just solidify when you hit your 30s and things start creaking and you have disposable income.
00:06:05And you just realize, oh, man, like sleep actually is pretty important.
00:06:10These doctors, they're actually not lying.
00:06:12If my sleep is bad, I feel bad.
00:06:14If my sleep is good, I feel good.
00:06:17So it's a very easy way to just dramatically improve the things that you can control.
00:06:24Like, your anxiety will go down if you sleep well.
00:06:28Your health will improve if you sleep well.
00:06:30It'll be easier for you to lose weight if you sleep well.
00:06:32It'll be easier for you to build muscle.
00:06:34If you sleep well, it'll be easier for you to just do literally anything and have better mental health if you sleep well.
00:06:40So I think that's kind of where this intensity around sleep maxing comes from.
00:06:45And, you know, like, what is sleep maxing?
00:06:47Sleep maxing is literally just buying several products to try and hack your sleep.
00:06:53So it's like really a convergence of late-stage capitalism and existential dread, shaking hands like that meme in your TikTok shop to tell you, like, if you just do this one thing, you might sleep a little bit better and feel better while you deal with a bunch of other crap.
00:07:10And so I think that's honestly where it comes from.
00:07:13And they're not wrong is the thing I'm going to say.
00:07:17Well, and I think it's true.
00:07:18I mean, it strikes me as you explain those three things, the eat better, exercise more, and sleep more, essentially.
00:07:26Sleep better is by far the least costly of those three things.
00:07:32Like, eating better is hard.
00:07:35Yes.
00:07:35All the tasty foods are bad for you.
00:07:37It's just a fact of the universe.
00:07:40It's hard.
00:07:41It's the thing I struggle with the most.
00:07:42It's more expensive.
00:07:44It's more complicated.
00:07:45Like, it's very hard to eat well.
00:07:47It's also hard to exercise a lot.
00:07:50It just requires a lot of commitment and dedication, and the opportunity cost is high because I could be sitting on my couch watching television, and I'm not.
00:07:57Also, it's painful.
00:07:59Yeah, it sucks.
00:07:59It's painful.
00:08:00Yeah.
00:08:01And kudos to you, who you get up and do it anyway.
00:08:06Sleep has, in theory, none of those costs.
00:08:10Like, if I can—I'm going to lie in bed for eight hours at night.
00:08:14If I can make those eight hours more efficient, that is all upside, right?
00:08:18Like, it's the only one of those three that if getting better sleep has zero downsides.
00:08:24It's also enjoyable.
00:08:26Getting a good night's sleep is really great.
00:08:29It is the most enjoyable of these three things that you can fix your life.
00:08:33It would be one thing if, like, the activity of going to sleep really sucked, but, like, going to sleep is great.
00:08:37It's so good.
00:08:38It's not like exercise that way, where you feel really good at the end but not during.
00:08:42Sleep is just awesome the whole time.
00:08:44It's just great the whole—like, whenever you see someone going to bed and they're sleeping,
00:08:48they're always, like, sleeping with a little smile on their face, a sleeping baby, good vibes.
00:08:53And, like, you look at insomniacs, they have bags under their eyes, they generally don't look good.
00:08:58So, like, just culturally speaking, sleep is by far the easiest thing you can do.
00:09:03And it's, you know, in terms of, like, effort put in to results immediately seen,
00:09:10you will immediately feel the effects of good sleep,
00:09:12whereas you will not immediately feel the effects of sticking to a nutritious diet or exercising over a long period of time.
00:09:19Like, those things are all, like, you know you should do them, they're going to suck while you do them,
00:09:24and you have to have delayed gratification.
00:09:26There's none of that complicatedness with sleep.
00:09:29Sleep, instant gratification.
00:09:31Yeah.
00:09:31It'll feel good literally in hours and you won't have to do anything at all.
00:09:37It's pretty great.
00:09:38Yeah.
00:09:38So it seems like in that vein of trying to do better with sleep, A, there's a lot of snake oil.
00:09:45I mostly don't want to talk about the snake oil, but I think by and large, if you see a thing on TikTok in the TikTok shop, you should assume it's nonsense.
00:09:51I think that's true of everything, definitely including sleep maxing.
00:09:55Mouth tape, I legitimately, that makes me angry, mouth tape.
00:09:59Yeah.
00:10:00But yeah.
00:10:00Yeah, we're just going to leave that aside.
00:10:01But it seems to me there are sort of two separate things that the tech industry has to figure out here.
00:10:08One is how to successfully tell how you're sleeping, right?
00:10:13And the sleep tracking thing has been happening for forever.
00:10:16The reason we were talking about this a few weeks ago is we were talking about the Aura Ring.
00:10:19Like the idea of using some device or another to track your sleep goes back a long ways.
00:10:25So I would assume we're pretty good at that now.
00:10:28Are we pretty good at that now?
00:10:29We are okay at that now.
00:10:32So what we are really good at is telling when you go to sleep and when you wake up.
00:10:38The sleep stages, so like the REM sleep, the deep sleep, the light sleep, dubious.
00:10:45Okay.
00:10:45And that stuff is really important.
00:10:47That stuff is important if you want to get more granular or if you're having sleep problems and you're trying to figure out what's going on.
00:10:57So Aura, they put a lot of research into it.
00:11:00But even there, only like our algorithm is like, I think it's 70% to 80% in agreement with the gold standard, which is polysomnography.
00:11:10And that's when you go into a little clinic and they put stuff on you and you sleep there for a night and the scientists watch you and measure your brain waves.
00:11:17So that's the clinical gold standard.
00:11:19And most consumer-grade sleep trackers that are out there on the market, at best, we are getting around 70% to 80% in that range.
00:11:28So, you know, like, so we're much better than we used to be.
00:11:33But in the grand scheme of things, you do have to really take it as a very unsatisfying, oh, this is my baseline.
00:11:42I probably will know when I have a crappy night of sleep.
00:11:45Yeah.
00:11:46Right.
00:11:46But you can, from that baseline, view trends like, oh, you have a lot of breathing disturbances.
00:11:52Maybe you have sleep apnea and you should go to a doctor and maybe get a CPAP and see how that improves your sleep quality.
00:12:03So like that's kind of the real thought process behind sleep tracking, as well as like another really valuable thing is having a sleep routine.
00:12:12So something that a sleep tracker can do is help you build that sleep routine by going, you regularly go to sleep at this time and wake up at this time.
00:12:20Good job, buddy.
00:12:21You are super consistent with that.
00:12:24Or, you know, if you're just really having crappy sleep and you see that you wake up a ton of times in the night and you go, aha, that is the 3 a.m.
00:12:31cat is angry at standard time and that kibble is not coming at the time that they are used to.
00:12:37So they screamed and woke me up.
00:12:39Like you can view patterns and trends kind of easily in that way.
00:12:42It just it's not super automatic, right?
00:12:44Because you have to tag like angry cat, like some of my sleep tracking devices literally got an angry cat tag.
00:12:52And I can tell you they wake me up quite frequently because they're angry.
00:12:56But I don't need a sleep tracker for that because obviously the cat is hitting me in the face and whatnot.
00:13:01Well, so that's been the challenge with me with sleep tracking for forever, right?
00:13:05Which is I think the idea that it tells you when you went to bed and when you woke up is nothing.
00:13:13Like I know that it's it's like it's like if the only thing a fitness tracker could tell me was that I went for a walk.
00:13:20Like I don't need that.
00:13:21That's that's not helpful.
00:13:23But I will say to the credit of these devices, I think the thing you just said about these kind of macro trends that it can give back to you.
00:13:31One thing that happened to me very recently was my wife and I got a sleep number bed a few years ago.
00:13:37We went from trying to perpetually compromise on firmness to just being like, we need a bed with two different firmnesses.
00:13:43So we got a sleep number bed. It's fine.
00:13:46We got like the cheapest, crappiest one. It's fine.
00:13:48But it does the thing we needed to do. And it gives me like a sleep score every morning.
00:13:52And I think the sleep score is mostly meaningless, generally speaking.
00:13:57But one thing it did for me over time was it said, hey, David, just FYI, your sleep scores tend to be the best when you go to bed about 11 and you wake up about 630.
00:14:06And it's just like that. Just that one thing was like, OK, this seven and a half hour window of sleep seems to be what you need in order to be successful.
00:14:15And that was so it was one of the things I like never really paid attention to, but was so helpful that like a that's about the amount of sleep I need to be a successful functioning adult.
00:14:26But also this window actually kind of works was very helpful.
00:14:31And I'm like that that alone is like, OK, we've now you've done something for me that I would not have done on my own.
00:14:36Yeah, that's that's honestly the thing about self-quantification is that it takes a really long time to tell you something useful.
00:14:43And sometimes the stuff that it points out to you is going to be super obvious to everyone else.
00:14:51But to yourself, you're like, oh, I never really thought about that. Oh, I never really paid attention to that.
00:14:54So on the surface, it's all really dumb.
00:14:58But one thing that they show time and time again is that logging these things will make you more aware of them.
00:15:03So like I personally hate calorie tracking.
00:15:07I hate logging food. I also have learned a lot about logging my food over time.
00:15:13Like I'm just like, oh, I was extremely protein deficient.
00:15:15I thought I was getting enough protein. No, I wasn't. Oh, I tend to like stress eat.
00:15:21Oh, wow. That's like when you have to log all the things that you're stress eating, you will be more aware of those habits.
00:15:27So that's primarily the benefit of sleep tracking, even if on the surface you look at it and you're just like, well, duh.
00:15:35Like, yeah, I had one the other night where my my sleep score was 14 because I went to bed and I got up at two o'clock with a toddler who didn't want to go back to sleep.
00:15:46And I spent the whole rest of the night in his room. And it's like, yeah, thanks, bed.
00:15:49I got a notification that I got a 14. Like, that's how that. Thank you.
00:15:53Great. Cool. Helpful. Which brings me to the second thing that I think is complicated and interesting in this space right now is step one is like figure out how you're doing.
00:16:03Right. And step two is make it better. And I think the challenge with a lot of these devices, all these wearables, and this is the thing we've talked about many times, is that the so what the like, what do I do about this thing?
00:16:15Right. And like, you've seen this on the Apple watch where it'll like prompt you to go for a walk at the end of the night to hit your goals.
00:16:23And sometimes that's good. And sometimes I'm like, shut up. I don't want to go for a 61 minute walk at 10 p.m. to hit my goals.
00:16:29Well, yeah. Like, I'm good. Thank you, Apple. But I think the trick with sleep is figuring out how to make things better.
00:16:37And I think this is what brings us to these adventures in $5,000 mattresses. Let's just just explain this thing to me that you've been sleeping on for the last few months.
00:16:47I've been sleeping on the 8 Sleep Pod 4 Ultra. I have previously tested the 8 Sleep Pod 2 Pro cover. And basically, this is a smart mattress cover. It's not even the mattress.
00:17:00The mattress is my mattress that I spent a good amount of money on because I really do think you should invest in sleep. Clearly.
00:17:09A good couch and a good mattress are like the two grown up purchases I think are worth all of the outrageous amounts of dollars you will spend on them.
00:17:17I personally spent seven years in Japan sleeping on a really cheap futon and I actually got several musculoskeletal pain to the point where my doctor sat me down in Japan and in Japanese was just like, Victoria-san, you need to buy an actual mattress.
00:17:36So, you know, that was a huge life lesson for me. So take this into context that when I was saying, you know, I was willing to test and seriously consider a $4,700 mattress for not mattress, but mattress cover.
00:17:53Right. Not even a mattress.
00:17:54Not even a mattress. A cover with a base at the bottom. So the base will elevate. So you can use that manually and be like, hey, I feel like being comfy while I read. And so it'll elevate you in that way.
00:18:06But the more like sleep maxing bits of it is that there is like a special position where it slightly elevates your feet for sleep position and supposedly the AI in this thing will adjust the position of the bed while you're sleeping to minimize snoring.
00:18:23I have woken up while it's been moving the bed to make my spouse stop snoring.
00:18:29I was just about to say, who's the snorer in the bed?
00:18:32It's not me. I have quantifiable proof in our marriage that I am not the one snoring. So, you know, this can be great fodder or not in your marriage to be like, I am not the snorer. You, sir, are the snorer.
00:18:46But, you know, I have actually woken up while this bed has been adjusting and watched as their snoring dramatically lessened and just like in a sleep addled state going like, oh, you mean I don't have to like smack you and be like, wake up, you're snoring. It's woken me up. I can just go like, oh, this is a fever dream going back to sleep and whatnot.
00:19:08So, that is one thing that it does. But the thing that they're most famous for doing, I certainly buried this lead, is that it adjusts the temperature. So, there's tubing inside of this smart mattress and water runs through it from this hub and I am perpetually cold. So, I like to crank it up and it's warm and it's toasty and I fall asleep so quickly. Normally, I like tossing and turning.
00:19:33Wait, all right, let's just confession time here on the Verge cast. Left to your own devices, what's the thermostat at when you're sleeping?
00:19:40Warm, like in the winter, minimum 75.
00:19:45Wow.
00:19:46I need to be toasty. I need to be warm. I need a heavy blanket year round. Like I get cold so easily and if I'm cold, I don't fall asleep. So, I need to be toasty.
00:20:00I'm the opposite. I used to get in trouble when I was a kid because I would sleep with a window open in the dead of winter. Because for me, it's like cold face, giant blanket, that's the life. That's where I want to be. But then getting out of bed is awful. The worst.
00:20:17No, I don't mess around with cold stuff. I like to be warm, toasty, snug as a bug in the fetal position. That's me. My spouse, however, like this summer, like I think the max cold setting you can go on this bed is negative 10 and they were just like negative 10. I want to sleep on a slab of ice. I'm living this penguin life.
00:20:41And honestly, they can do that on their side of the bed. I can be in toasty heaven and they can be in ice cold hell and we can both be super happy about that.
00:20:50Wait, but there's something interesting in that though because I think on the one hand, we have lots of science at this point about like optimal temperatures for getting good sleep and things you mentioned like the position your body should be at to not snore. So, I can imagine in some world that like what this mattress pad ought to do for you is optimize all of it automatically and be like, no, trust me, I know what is required to get.
00:21:14Oh, it does do that. Okay, because I was going to say giving you a lot of buttons and knobs might actually not be helpful, but it will attempt to solve these problems for you. Okay.
00:21:22Yeah, I know that it has this AI feature, which is locked behind a subscription, which is why everyone's like, are you crazy? And yes, actually.
00:21:29To be fair, I do think a subscription mattress is just in principle ridiculous, even though I sort of understand why it exists. In principle, it's ridiculous.
00:21:38In principle, subscribing to your mattress is ludicrous. I think I wrote that in my review. It is absolutely batshit insane, ludicrous. But you're not even subscribing to the mattress, you're subscribing to the mattress cover. So, it's absolutely bonkers, honky-tonk insane. But at the same time, I cannot lie, I have been sleeping so well. Even when external circumstances in this world are crazy, I sleep like a baby.
00:22:06So, if you have that mode on, it will attempt to balance all the temperature and space and adjustments of the positioning. It'll try to just do all that for you.
00:22:17It does all of that for you, and then when you look it up in the app in the morning, it's so proud. It's like, Autopilot made four adjustments last night to help you sleep longer. So, I look at it, and it's like these micro-adjustments to temperature.
00:22:28So, I need to be very toasty to fall asleep, but to stay asleep, I apparently need to sleep cooler. So, it'll do that. It'll adjust during the middle of the night to the temperature to help me stay asleep.
00:22:40And the longer you test this stuff, the better it gets. And to the point where I'm just like, oh my god, all my other corroborating sleep tracker data has basically said my sleep has been spectacular for the last six months.
00:22:55And I'm putting on muscle. I am losing fat at the same time. I wake up at 4.30 a.m. now feeling completely rested because I go to bed at an insane grandpa time, like 9.30, 9, 9.30 or whatever.
00:23:13And I'm out here. I just pop out of bed in the mornings a lot of times just like, hi, I'm super rested. Time to go on a run, which I never thought was possible for me. I have a history of insomnia. I don't fall asleep easily. Previously in the past, and I have the data to back it up, I have had really crappy sleep scores.
00:23:35So, it's just wild to see that and to feel the improvement in my life and then think, this is $4,799 and it comes with a $300 per year subscription or something along those lines. So, really, testing this, my whole thing has just been like, how much is a good night's sleep worth? How much is the best night's sleep worth to me?
00:24:03Well, so, let's actually separate those questions, right? Because I think if you look at the 8 sleep thing as kind of the very end of a spectrum, right? Which is like, it is doing the most and it is charging the most.
00:24:16It's actually doing the middle. Sleep Number has like $10,000 beds.
00:24:21Do they really?
00:24:22They do. So, this being modular and fitting on your existing mattress is actually kind of like mid-high spectrum. It's not the craziest end of the spectrum.
00:24:31All right. So, we'll put that at like a 7 out of 10. Sleep Number, I can't even fathom. I don't want to know because I can't afford it and I don't want to know. But I'm curious, I remember, I don't even know if these are still really a thing, but there was this run of sleep tracking apps and there were the gadgets that would sit on your bedside table that would try to do this. Have we gotten anywhere with those? Can these approximate some of the stuff you're talking about?
00:24:55Some of them can. I actually really liked the Amazon Halo Rise, which is rare for me because all of the Amazon Halo products I hated with like a burning passion.
00:25:04You and everybody else, it turns out.
00:25:07That was not special. That was not a hot take. But I liked this bedside lamp that gently woke you up with light because that's actually quite effective. I've tested a bunch of these. It's really effective to wake up with light. So, smart lights are really great if you hate alarms. They just come on, you wake up kind of naturally because that's just how circadian rhythms in your brain works.
00:25:31I actually like that. It's sleep tracking. My cat got in the way, so I got a lot of really inaccurate results. So, when you have these non-invasive, non-invasive in the sense that they're not on your body in any way, on the nightstand, they can be very hit or miss. They can be great if you sleep alone, don't have pets, don't have a bed partner. That can be cool, I guess.
00:25:55But, you know, this is an option. It's there. I've tested the Withing Sleep, which is like a little mattress that you stick under your mattress. So, it's like a little pad that you stick under your mattress.
00:26:08Oh, right. It looks like a little heating pad kind of deal, right?
00:26:11Yeah. Super affordable. I think that's a really great budget option if you want to track your sleep, but you are like, these people are crazy. I am not spending thousands of dollars on this mattress that does all of these things, which is totally valid. I think you are probably fiscally very responsible if that's your reaction.
00:26:30But every morning you wake up feeling a little smug about your decisions.
00:26:32I feel so good waking up on this mattress, let me tell you. Nobody hates this more than me. I hate this the most for me, personally.
00:26:43I think this goes on the list of never try the really expensive thing because once you know, you can't go back.
00:26:49You can't go back.
00:26:51It's the recommendation I always give with headphones. If you don't want to buy a really nice pair of headphones, don't ever try a really nice pair of headphones because it will ruin everything else for you. And I feel like this is the same thing.
00:27:00You can't miss what you don't know.
00:27:02A hundred percent.
00:27:04Yeah, so there are cheaper versions of those things. I actually think the smart home is really great if you want to just hack it and have stuff that is multifunctional because the other problem with a lot of the stuff is it's very one dimensional, one function, it does one thing.
00:27:24Smart lights, you can program them so you can wake up naturally that way. That's great. It can really help with you setting a routine.
00:27:31Smart thermostat is not going to stop your marital problems and fights over what temperature the thermostat is, but you can schedule it.
00:27:41So that can help create a much more inviting sleep environment for you.
00:27:47So those are all much more affordable hacks that have multifunctional purposes that I personally have used and found to be good.
00:27:57Does it beat this expensive bed? No, no, it does not. But at the same time, it is really about what is it worth to you and how good do you want to feel after your night of sleep?
00:28:13I have sleep problems, so it means a lot to me. But if you're someone who sleeps like the dead on the crappiest Ikea mattress, you don't need this stuff. You're good. You're Gucci.
00:28:26I definitely understand the criticism and I'm just sitting there alongside you nodding my head and going, yes, yes, you are completely correct. I agree with you a hundred percent.
00:28:38At the same time, though, if you're listening to this and you are desperately looking for a reason to buy this, here it is.
00:28:46This is not like buying a really fancy pair of running shoes you might never have or like overinvesting in workout equipment that you're never going to use.
00:28:55This will work. This is like you just put this on your bed and it will start doing things in the same way that sleep is happening anyway.
00:29:03Adding something like this into the repertoire just helps. It's just going to help. This is why I want the version of this that is like 60% as good and 20% of the price because it's like that's the one that it's like, just give me the magic pillow and everything will be fine. You know what I mean? That's the dream.
00:29:22Speaking of magic pillows, many, many, many years ago I tested a smart pillow, which was the most insane thing because it had a speaker inside of the pillow. So it would track your sleeping and your snoring because there's a microphone in there.
00:29:38And then it would wake you up to your music inside the pillow. It was one of the most ridiculous pieces of sleep tech I've ever tested.
00:29:45But yeah, another thing I tested was the Oslo Sleepbuds recently, which is the Bose Sleepbuds resurrected. They had a lot of people who are fans of those. And it's really great if you have a noisy environment because that's the one thing that this bed can't solve, right?
00:30:03It can't solve if you live in a city and your neighbor upstairs loves to practice salsa at 3 a.m. in the morning. Or in my case, if Hackensack loves to send garbage trucks outside of your house at exactly 5 a.m. and you're just like, oh, I'm awake now. Having these buds in your ear, it can muffle a lot of the noise.
00:30:28So I used to be a religious user of that. My spouse is a religious user of not the Bose ones because those, once again, very expensive. Or the Oslo ones are expensive. But he has the cheaper Anchorsound Core, which allows them to play their true crime podcasts, which why you want to go to bed listening to murder is a thing I don't necessarily understand.
00:30:52But it works for them. So they do that. They love it. It falls out of their ear, which we don't love. But the Bose design is very good for side sleepers. I don't feel discomfort. They don't fall out of my ear. Pretty great. Those will apparently come with sleep tracking sometime in 2025. So yeah, we're out here. We're sleep maxing. We're just sleep maxing and just trying to figure it out.
00:31:16The earbuds are one that I have always felt like could be more than they are. So I'm actually encouraged to hear that they're going to do some sleep tracking stuff with it. Because one thing you and I have heard a lot of over the years is people saying the ears are a really interesting place to do wearables stuff. And especially if you're going to start to think about how do I gently help you go to sleep and gently help you wake up? That's a thing you can do with a thing in your ears. I don't know if it can help you not snore or fix the temperature. Probably not.
00:31:44But there's little things that if you're just doing a tracker, you probably can't do. But if you have this device that is just going to sit in your ears all night, it feels like there's more you could do. So maybe there is a roadmap of interesting stuff to come there.
00:32:00Especially for helping you fall asleep. Because I think that's something that a lot of people have issues with is just falling asleep, figuring out ways to fall asleep. So staying asleep, it's a valuable thing because I have tried the smart alarm clocks. I've tried the hatch restore. That TikTok made me try it. It's on my nightstand. And that, you know, just having a sleep partner doesn't really work out well for me.
00:32:29The light? Great. Love that. Waking up.
00:32:33How does it feel to know that you and my one-year-old son have the same alarm clock? Is that good? Is that cool?
00:32:38He loves it. It works great for him.
00:32:40He sleeps like a baby. So honestly, I'm trying to live that life. So it makes me feel great.
00:32:49That's good. All right. Before you let you go, any other sleep gadgets on your mind? Anything else you've been looking at or trying or hoping to try?
00:32:57Honestly, I'm just going to reiterate one last time that you should invest in your sleep in whatever way and don't cheap out on it. Sometimes the right decision is to buy a $5,000 mattress cover. Sometimes that is the right decision.
00:33:16This is where we were going to land because The Verge's editorial policies dictate that you don't get to keep this thing. At some point, this beautiful device that has changed your life is going to leave your house. What happens then? Can you go back?
00:33:31I'm going to buy it. It's either going to be a long-term sleep testing control device so that I can test it for sleep trackers. For journalism purposes. Or you just have to buy the thing because I can't go back.
00:33:50If it was just a simple matter of also returning it and knowing that that's what it was going to be, that'd be cool. But because this has my biological material on it, they will not necessarily return it. They will destroy it. And then that just feels like e-waste. So I'll figure out a way. I'll figure out financing. I will do long-term test tracking.
00:34:15But this is one of the things where I'm just going to have to buy it, honestly. If it comes down to it. It has a huge impact on my life. My sleep quality is so much better. You can think I'm crazy all you like. I'll figure it out. I'll figure it out. My husband does not agree with me, but I'll figure it out.
00:34:38That's their problem, not yours.
00:34:39That's their problem, not mine. I will be figuring this out and I will be paying an absurd subscription.
00:34:45That's how they get you. Don't test it unless you're willing to buy it, people.
00:34:49I'm not proud of my life choices, but they are mine.
00:34:52These are the things we do for our audience, Vy. We spend outrageous amounts of money on beautiful nights of sleep.
00:34:58You know, I'm winning. So there you go.
00:35:03All right, Vy, thank you as always.
00:35:05Thanks for having me.
00:35:07All right, we got to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to talk about music. We'll be right back.
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00:35:53You could also say goodbye to that cluttered dashboard because this car shows you everything you want to know and nothing you don't.
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00:36:27All right, we're back.
00:36:28If you use Spotify, I'm sure you know the DJ feature.
00:36:32You click on it, it has this AI-generated voice that greets you, and then it plays you music.
00:36:38And that's the idea.
00:36:39It is supposed to be a sort of constantly updated, AI-curated playlist of music that you'd like.
00:36:46I love this feature.
00:36:48I listen to it all the time.
00:36:49I think the voice bit is kind of weird, but I think the idea that I can just sit down and essentially press play and have something play music for me that I'm going to like is very powerful.
00:37:01Allison Johnson on our team feels slightly differently.
00:37:04She has also been testing AI DJ stuff, has a lot of thoughts, and I figured we just need to hash this out.
00:37:12I'm also working on a big story about what the best music app is because I'm sort of over Spotify and trying to find something else, and finding something else is a challenge.
00:37:21So I'm hoping Allison can help me talk through this one piece of it and try to make sense of things.
00:37:27Let's just get into it.
00:37:28Allison, hello.
00:37:29Hello.
00:37:30I should tell everybody that I'm interrupting a day off for you to do this.
00:37:34So I and everyone listening owe you a great debt of gratitude.
00:37:38I'm happy to be here.
00:37:39I get to talk to another adult for a little bit before I go to the Children's Museum.
00:37:44I'm happy to do it.
00:37:47So real quick, I want to talk about AI DJs, but first I want to know kind of your theory of the case about Spotify's AI DJ in particular.
00:37:58This is very clearly a thing you've been thinking about a lot, and there's a lot of interesting context, but you've come to a conclusion about these things, and I want to know what that is.
00:38:06Yeah.
00:38:07So Spotify, like every other tech company with an app, has been shoving AI into everything over the past year.
00:38:17And the one that caught my eye recently is this AI DJ, which is not actually new.
00:38:24It's been around like a year, but it just kind of popped up in my feed, and I was like, sure, I'll try this weird thing.
00:38:32And right out of the gate, it's just so strange because it talks to you.
00:38:36It goes, hey, Allison, blah, blah, blah.
00:38:39They kind of launch into a DJ spiel about what they're going to play, and then it gets into the music.
00:38:48And not surprisingly, in any way, it's all stuff that I really like because what company has more data about what music I like to listen to than Spotify?
00:39:01Yeah.
00:39:02I was just kind of like, what is this?
00:39:04And I listened to it.
00:39:05I kept with it for a day and off and on throughout a week just to be like, what is going on here?
00:39:14But you don't like that.
00:39:16You just described such a good thing.
00:39:18And this is why I think this is so interesting and why I want to talk about it.
00:39:21What you just said, I'm just going to say it back to you, is you clicked on a thing that greeted you by name and then played a bunch of music in a row that you really like.
00:39:30And this feels like a problem.
00:39:31Terrible.
00:39:32Yeah.
00:39:33No.
00:39:34So here's the thing.
00:39:37Kind of the flip side is that we have a local radio station in Seattle, KXP, that I've listened to forever since before I moved to Seattle.
00:39:49And it's just kind of like a daily habit.
00:39:53It's on in the background all the time.
00:39:55It's on in the car.
00:39:56And I don't know if it's a Seattle thing or a me thing or what it is, but the osmosis of like you have these like parasocial relationships with the DJs that kind of start you like have your favorite DJs.
00:40:10And then the weird thing in Seattle is like I'll be out on the bike path and I'll see Kevin Cole going the other direction after his show.
00:40:18I'm like, oh, they're real humans.
00:40:21They're out here just like we are.
00:40:24And I feel like in Seattle, like a very music-y town, that counts as like an actual celebrity setting.
00:40:29Like that's legit.
00:40:30Oh, for sure.
00:40:31Yeah.
00:40:32The whole rest of my bike ride I was like, oh, my God, Kevin Cole was going the other way.
00:40:37So that's kind of like the background where maybe I bring a little more skepticism to it where I'm like, you know, to me, a radio DJ is like a real person and I have favorite radio DJs.
00:40:52And yeah, hearing this, which is just an imitation of that, just like maybe I was just not going to like it right out of the gate.
00:41:03But that's my bias I brought to it, I guess.
00:41:06So this is part of why I wanted to talk about this, because I think trying to figure out what feels wrong about the AI DJ actually feels like a really useful sort of metaphor for all of AI.
00:41:19And I think this is a lot of what you were getting at in this piece.
00:41:22And I think why it struck me, too.
00:41:24There's this question of, OK, is it a bad thing that it is pretty much exclusively playing music I definitely for sure am going to like?
00:41:32Like for me, I was listening to my DJ all morning.
00:41:35And I mean, it is just down the middle David Bait, right?
00:41:39One of it was like, there was this guy I found who was doing like punk rock covers of old songs on TikTok.
00:41:46And then I listened to a bunch of his stuff on Spotify.
00:41:48And it was just like, what if we just played nine of his songs in a row?
00:41:51I was like, great. I'm in. Let's do it.
00:41:54And then there was a bunch of like synthy 80s pop music, which Spotify, like you said, has immense knowledge of the fact that that is music I am always going to like.
00:42:05And so it was like a no skips playlist for an hour and a half.
00:42:09And I got to the end and I was like, did I get anything out of any of that?
00:42:12Like, could I tell you what songs it played? It was just sort of music.
00:42:15So there's the question of like, is that the right thing?
00:42:18And then there's the question of like, is this product even a good idea?
00:42:22And that goes back to the like, it's a person, quote unquote, talking to you, quote unquote, as it goes.
00:42:30And there is this thing about this. This thing is obviously trying to seem like a person.
00:42:37And I think one of the things we're seeing about AI a lot is AI that is trying to seem like a person.
00:42:42And I think in some ways, this is just the most sort of nakedly straightforward version of that.
00:42:50And it rubs me the wrong way, too. And I can't figure out if it's just because it's not very good or if it's because it's the wrong idea.
00:42:57Yeah. And it's, I mean, it's pretty convincing. Like, it just sounds like a person talking to you.
00:43:04And I think, like, to me, it just feels like this is not somewhere I need AI.
00:43:12Like, I'm good with Spotify putting together a playlist for me.
00:43:17You know, I use the playlist feature, the AI playlist feature quite a bit where I'm like, I want to hear upbeat jazz.
00:43:26There can't be any lyrics because I'm writing a blog, you know, and like, it spits out a playlist and it's great.
00:43:32Which is also AI, by the way.
00:43:34Yeah.
00:43:35It's a different flavor of it, but that is still very much AI.
00:43:38And I'm totally good with that. I'm like, do not try to insert a human into this interaction.
00:43:46You know, it's a very, like, transactional, like, this is fine.
00:43:51So that's where I think I'm just weirded out by the DJs.
00:43:56Like, we have human DJs. We have people. If you want to listen to the radio, you can do that.
00:44:02Like, who is asking for this? I put it in the box of who was asking for this.
00:44:08No, I think that's totally right.
00:44:10And I think I made a lot of fun of Apple Music when Apple Music came out and they had, you know, Beats 1 and all of these celebrity-driven radio stations, essentially.
00:44:21And my theory then was like, who wants this? Right?
00:44:25Like, I have a library full of infinite music.
00:44:29Why am I going to spend two hours a week listening to, like, whatever John Mayer feels like playing?
00:44:37I was wrong about that for, I think, exactly the reason you're describing.
00:44:42That there is a lot of time that I just want what I want, right?
00:44:48Which is, like, a giant library full of music and I'm going to go in and I'm going to be like, I would like to listen to the Wicked soundtrack, please.
00:44:54Go listen to the Wicked soundtrack. Great. That is better than the radio.
00:44:58And then there's all the way on the other side, there is the, like, just expand my brain a little bit.
00:45:05Right? And I think that AI is not doing successfully at all.
00:45:10Yeah.
00:45:11And this goes back to the, like, is it right to just play me songs that I like a bunch of times in a row?
00:45:15I think that is such an easy win if your goal is to just get people to keep listening.
00:45:22But it doesn't feel good.
00:45:24Like, in a way that, like, you talked about, you know, some of the stuff you've gotten from KEXP is, like, meaningful stuff and you, like, remember the experience and it feels cool and you feel like part of a community.
00:45:34I don't think it's possible to get any of that from this AI stuff.
00:45:37Yeah, that's exactly it.
00:45:39And the metaphor I landed on is, like, listening to KEXP is sort of like a well-rounded meal.
00:45:47Like, there's stuff I really like, there's stuff I'm sort of into, there's stuff I just straight up do not like.
00:45:54But it feels like a balanced experience.
00:45:59And the AI DJ is just straight up feeding me, like, all this stuff I like.
00:46:04I'm like, I love M&M's, I don't want to eat M&M's all day long, you know?
00:46:09Like, you get a stomachache eventually.
00:46:12And that's just kind of how it feels to me.
00:46:15And there is, like, yeah, it just, it hits different.
00:46:19There's, like, I hear Tears for Fears come on in the grocery store and I'm like, well, they know that a woman in her late 30s is probably shopping, is going to love this.
00:46:32And they're right.
00:46:33But then my, you know, favorite DJ plays it on KEXP because she really loves it.
00:46:39I'm like, oh, this is, it just, it's more meaningful, I think.
00:46:44Yeah.
00:46:45The one part of it I have trouble with is the, is it good to play me stuff that I hate side of things, right?
00:46:52Because I think, and you made this case a little bit in your piece, and I think it's been a thing for you of, like, the percentage of things that I hear from these DJs or whatever that I actively don't like is good and important.
00:47:05And there's part of me that sort of intellectually understands that, but then part of me that's like, well, A, that's the time when I turn off the radio, right?
00:47:14Or B, what if it just only played things that I liked?
00:47:20And then I'm back to the AI DJ thing that it's like, again, you can see how you get there, right?
00:47:25Where it's like, if we just keep playing songs that you like, you won't turn the thing off.
00:47:30And so, what responsibility does it have to just inject randomness into your life in, even on the grand likelihood that you're going to hate it?
00:47:41And in a weird way, I feel like this is something we're not dealing with at all in the rest of AI.
00:47:47But it's the kind of question we're going to have to have all the time when we get to things like all of these sort of information retrieval services and the way that we think about generating images and text.
00:47:57Should it write you a bad email one out of ten times just to keep you on your toes?
00:48:01Just to feel more real, yeah.
00:48:03There's a weird personalization echo chamber, I think, that you can get into.
00:48:10And it's, I don't know, maybe there's times when I'm like, yeah, I want to be in the echo chamber of music I like.
00:48:19I don't feel like eating my vegetables today.
00:48:23I just want to hear the stuff I like.
00:48:26But I think it's like, that's probably different for every person.
00:48:30And I think there's a different limit of like, when do I feel like, okay, I should probably listen to something else and get something else mixed in here.
00:48:41And then, I don't know, then when I go back to listening to Washed Out or whatever I'm doing, it's like, it sounds great.
00:48:48I'm like, yeah, I love this.
00:48:50Yeah, I like the M&M's analogy a lot, right?
00:48:53It's like, it's good to have comfort food.
00:48:55But if you only eat comfort food, like comfort food is comfort food because you don't eat it all the time.
00:49:00That is kind of the point.
00:49:01Right, exactly.
00:49:03Yeah.
00:49:04Do you think that's something AI can get better at?
00:49:06Like, is there someone at Spotify who can tweak that algorithm to make that work?
00:49:11I think it, I mean, it probably could.
00:49:15But, you know, someone commented on the article and it really resonated with me that when a human plays something that you don't like, they like it.
00:49:26Like, they have a reason for playing it.
00:49:28And you kind of like weigh it differently in your head.
00:49:31And you kind of give it a chance, maybe more than if this robot.
00:49:35Like, I'm like more offended when the robot plays something I don't like.
00:49:39I'm like, excuse me?
00:49:42Where did you come up with this?
00:49:44That's so true.
00:49:45Yeah.
00:49:46And there's a sense of like, you, the robot, should know.
00:49:49Yeah, yeah.
00:49:50Like, you dumbass Spotify DJ.
00:49:53You know everything about what I like.
00:49:55Why are you playing me this?
00:49:57Yeah, get out of here with this.
00:49:58It tried to do that.
00:50:00I turned it on the other day and it was like, here are some songs that are shaping rock music right now.
00:50:06And I was like, absolutely not.
00:50:08I'm good.
00:50:10I'm good.
00:50:11Just play the stuff I want to hear.
00:50:14Yeah.
00:50:15I don't know.
00:50:16Again, I keep coming back to this question of like, can better AI get closer to these things?
00:50:22I think I'm just so stuck on this question of like, what is necessary for humans to do?
00:50:29And I think the point our commenter was making about having someone say that they like this to you is really powerful.
00:50:36I mean, we talk to people all the time about like, recommendation systems.
00:50:40And like, we think about this with like, buying guides and all this stuff, right?
00:50:44Like, someone you trust liking something is an incredibly good predictor of whether you're going to like that thing.
00:50:51Because you're more likely to like that thing because you like the person who recommended it.
00:50:54Like, there is some wild human nature thing inside of that that I think you just can't replicate with a computer.
00:51:02And it's true of like, the Netflix algorithm and everything else, right?
00:51:05Even if it puts the perfect thing at the top, I'm still probably more likely to like the thing that you told me to watch than the thing that Netflix told me to watch.
00:51:13Even if statistically Netflix is right.
00:51:15You know what I mean?
00:51:16Yeah.
00:51:17And so I wonder, to some extent, if it's a matter of Spotify and everyone else doing this kind of thing just totally barking up the wrong tree.
00:51:26Or if it's like, maybe if the voice was 10% more convincing, I wouldn't even know and it would start to feel like a person.
00:51:35I feel like there's a, you feel the intention behind it a little bit.
00:51:40Like, when I hear something on the radio, it's maybe something I don't like.
00:51:44Like, there's a person playing it.
00:51:47It's their job to curate music and they like it.
00:51:52The intention behind the Spotify AI DJ is a little murkier, where it's like, I think you just want me to keep using Spotify, you know?
00:52:03Or it's like, I just can't shake that feeling of like, this is a robot.
00:52:09It's a convincing robot.
00:52:11You are basically like the voice of, I don't know, a corporate entity?
00:52:18Like, that's not at the front of my mind when I'm listening to it.
00:52:21But I think it's somewhere in the back where I'm sort of like, I don't quite trust the intentions.
00:52:27Like, when it's trying to introduce me to whatever's coming next in rock music, I'm like, well, are these sponsored?
00:52:35Or are they just like, did a human pick these?
00:52:40Like, I just don't know where it's coming from.
00:52:42It feels, yeah, it feels murkier, I think.
00:52:45Yeah, and then ironically, I think there are probably similar questions worth asking about a lot of radio DJs.
00:52:51True.
00:52:52But it feels different even when it's not, right?
00:52:55And I think that thing is really important.
00:52:57And like, for Spotify, I think if you rewind a bunch of years, Spotify and everybody else always talked about, we need this sort of human-computer combo to do this stuff really well.
00:53:09And I think my experience, at least, was there was a long time where Spotify's curated playlists were where I did the vast majority of my listening.
00:53:18Oh, yeah.
00:53:19And it was a mix of like, you know, Rap Caviar was like the biggest playlist on planet Earth.
00:53:25And it was a person.
00:53:26They had a ton of machine help.
00:53:28They get all kinds of listening data.
00:53:29They get all kinds of like, you know, quantitative and qualitative data about the songs themselves.
00:53:34But ultimately, they're putting the thing together.
00:53:37And I feel like Spotify probably most of all, but to some extent, kind of all of these media services of any kind, have just leaned further and further and further into the machine.
00:53:49And maybe the right answer is just like a human face on the machine.
00:53:55Right.
00:53:56The cynical answer is they hire a DJ to just say the words to you instead of a machine saying the words to you.
00:54:04But it does feel like that combination is being lost.
00:54:09And I think part of the reason I wanted to talk to you about this is I'm curious about your own music habits, because I was thinking about my own after reading your story.
00:54:15And I spend a shocking amount of my time in the like daily mixes that Spotify does.
00:54:22It has like six of them.
00:54:23One of mine is always country.
00:54:25One of mine is always like movie soundtracks, which is awesome because that's why I work all day.
00:54:29Like it rips.
00:54:30It's great.
00:54:32But I spend a lot of time in those.
00:54:33And that's AI.
00:54:34There's no person involved in that.
00:54:36That is the computer curating music for me.
00:54:38But that's not like I get to the end of those playlists and I couldn't tell you anything about them.
00:54:43They're just kind of the noise I have on during the day.
00:54:46Yeah.
00:54:47And reading your article, I was like, oh, I need to go back to listening to the radio in the car just as like a new kind of sensory experience for music.
00:54:56Because all music is background noise to me now in a way that I kind of hate.
00:55:00And I think Spotify has done that to me.
00:55:02Yeah.
00:55:03Yeah.
00:55:04That's it's funny because like I feel like that's a big reason why we all signed up for Spotify was like, well, the algorithm is really good and you're going to find stuff that you actually like.
00:55:15And that was like kind of a groundbreaking concept at the time.
00:55:21And I do find a lot of music I like through recommended stuff on Spotify.
00:55:28But yeah, it is a different like you do get into the too many M&M's situation or at least I do pretty quickly because I will just happily keep listening to my 80s inspired synth pop bands.
00:55:49And then, yeah, it feels good to like there's a couple of DJs I like a lot on KXP.
00:55:58And I think when one of the things they do is play the songs that I didn't realize I wanted to hear and they feel kind of out of left field.
00:56:08And there's like love the Spotify algorithm for what it does.
00:56:13But then I do want it's like gratifying when I hear something I'm like I had no idea that I needed to hear Stevie Wonder like as much as I did.
00:56:24And you hear it on the radio is like that was perfect.
00:56:27I feel like it just it just comes down to feeling like there is something there with AI and Spotify has had a lot of success with it.
00:56:37I think they're kind of leaning into that is getting to a point of like, well, yeah, the AI was good, but I didn't want to like talk to the AI like it wasn't the AI that I was here for.
00:56:52I was here because the AI was helping me get to good music that I like.
00:56:57It's not the entity I want to be interacting with.
00:57:02And it's like such a cringy moment right now where everybody's like, you know, you are going to Instagram.
00:57:08It's like, do you want to interact with AI?
00:57:11No, I want to see what my friends are doing.
00:57:15I know I have come to the point where I'm like, I think we need to get to the point where we think of AI like we think of, you know, TCP IP, like crucial infrastructure to how all of this works.
00:57:27And if it works correctly, you should never, ever for one second have to think about it.
00:57:31I don't spend time thinking about packet loss on the Internet anymore because it works now.
00:57:38But that's not the point of any of it.
00:57:40All of it enables other stuff.
00:57:42And I think right now we are at a moment where AI is like the main character and what it should be is like the camera.
00:57:50You know what I mean?
00:57:51Yeah, exactly.
00:57:52It's a bad metaphor, but I'm totally with you.
00:57:55So now that you've been messing with this way of music consumption, what do you feel like is the right answer?
00:58:00How are you going to do your own music to make sure you're getting the right kind of diet?
00:58:04I feel like I have a pretty, I mean, our use case is kind of weird in that, like, I can't listen to songs with lyrics during the day.
00:58:13Fair.
00:58:14When I'm writing.
00:58:15Movie soundtracks.
00:58:16It's the only way.
00:58:17Movie soundtracks is good.
00:58:18I like that.
00:58:19The Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack for like five years was all I wrote to.
00:58:23If everything I start writing sounds like super epic and like, you'll know I've been putting on the Pirates of the Caribbean.
00:58:30Cannot recommend it enough.
00:58:31Yeah.
00:58:32Yeah.
00:58:33So I have like kind of my, my genre for when I'm writing and working during the day.
00:58:38I think probably in there, there's even a little room to experiment.
00:58:41Like I've listened to the same like coffee table jazz playlist probably a hundred times.
00:58:49But then, yeah, it's like when the working day is over, I kind of like, I like having KXP on while I'm doing the dishes and while I'm in the car picking up my kid.
00:58:58And yeah, it doesn't feel it's like I don't need everything to be a banger.
00:59:04I don't know.
00:59:05Like maybe in different situations, I'm a little more like, okay, I want to listen to whatever it is right now.
00:59:12But sort of feels like a nice way to unplug from the day and hear a person hear some probably a lot of songs I'll like.
00:59:21Yeah, I think there's something to the kind of unoptimizedness of that that is really, I don't know, encouraging and compelling in a way that listening to a playlist of things that are sort of ruthlessly constructed for your oral pleasure is like,
00:59:41you get to the point where you're like, okay, these are great songs and I'm kind of over it.
00:59:47But then the peaks and valleys of like, oh my God, I love that song versus what is this trash that they're playing for me for the next three minutes.
00:59:57It is, it's just so hard to replicate.
00:59:59And I think we're going to see a lot of companies and products try to emulate that.
01:00:04I'm not sure it's possible.
01:00:06I just don't know if you can do that with computers in a way that people doing people things is going to keep working like that.
01:00:13So should everyone listen to KEXP?
01:00:15Like is the move here find your own local radio station or just get into KEXP and it'll solve all your problems?
01:00:20I think it is.
01:00:22KEXP is streaming worldwide online.
01:00:25I am not a paid spokesperson for KEXP.
01:00:29I just don't really like it.
01:00:32But yeah, no, that was the really amazing thing about this.
01:00:36Comments on this article or people chiming in like, yeah, I have this station and, you know, shout out to the station in Milwaukee or wherever you are.
01:00:45And they're out there.
01:00:47It was really gratifying to hear that people have their favorite indie radio stations in our super optimized, super Spotify time.
01:00:58So it was great to hear.
01:01:00I will say the one other thing I would add in terms of like places to go for this kind of thing is YouTube is a surprisingly rich place for people basically just doing radio.
01:01:12Yeah.
01:01:13Like I think a lot of people know Lo-Fi Girl and stuff like that, which is a thing I really like for sort of the right vibe with new music.
01:01:22I use it sort of as a mood setting thing, which I'm very happy to outsource.
01:01:27Like I don't need to know what the songs are called.
01:01:29I just want I trust them to sort of make me feel the way that I'm looking for.
01:01:33But there are also lots of people out there doing really interesting mixes of like different kinds of genres and doing all kinds of really long radio DJ sets, essentially.
01:01:43And there's tons of great radio to do there.
01:01:47But I also would encourage people to go poke around on the sort of endlessly streaming YouTube stations.
01:01:53Yeah.
01:01:54Because there's there's some very cool stuff out there.
01:01:56Yeah, awesome.
01:01:57I think we all need a little more of the like weird random discovery in our lives.
01:02:01It's good.
01:02:02Eat your vegetables.
01:02:03Don't eat M&M's all day.
01:02:04As much as I hate to say it, John Mayer's Apple Music radio station is very good.
01:02:08It's very good.
01:02:09It's like I like John Mayer a lot against my will.
01:02:14But here we are.
01:02:15This is just this is just what happened.
01:02:17He's a good musician.
01:02:18It's he's like undeniable.
01:02:20However you feel about him.
01:02:21Yeah.
01:02:22Yeah, exactly.
01:02:23This is this is where I've landed.
01:02:25All right.
01:02:26Give us a music recommendation.
01:02:27Then I'll let you leave while we're telling people to listen.
01:02:29What should everybody go listen to?
01:02:30Oh, gosh.
01:02:33I just heard.
01:02:35Oh, Sudan archives.
01:02:37I saw her at a festival.
01:02:40I hear her on KXV all the time.
01:02:42She's a Cincinnati girl like I am.
01:02:45Check her out.
01:02:46I love everything she's doing.
01:02:48Love that.
01:02:49I have been listening to Kacey Musgraves nonstop for like two weeks.
01:02:52So it's probably good for me to go.
01:02:54Yeah.
01:02:55This will be good.
01:02:56Let's switch it up.
01:02:57Allison, go have fun at the Children's Museum.
01:02:59Thank you as always.
01:03:00Thanks.
01:03:02All right.
01:03:03We got to take one more break and then we're going to come back and take a question from the Vergecast hotline.
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01:04:19Alright, we're back. Let's get to the hotline.
01:04:23As always, the number is 866-VERGE-11. The email is vergecast at theverge.com.
01:04:28We love all of your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week.
01:04:32Thank you to everybody who has reached out with thoughts about how we should be covering politics and the next Trump administration and just the next four years of life in America.
01:04:43We have a lot to think about. It's been really great to hear your thoughts on what you do and don't want us to talk about and do and don't care about yourselves,
01:04:51and how we as The Verge can make this stuff make sense both kind of in our world but in a broader world.
01:04:57Thank you to everybody who's reached out.
01:04:59But this week, we do not have a question about that.
01:05:01We have a question about one of the true central tenets of The Verge cast, and that is the Frame TV.
01:05:08Let's hear it.
01:05:11Hey, this is Pete from North Carolina.
01:05:13I need some advice on the Frame TV.
01:05:15I'm probably not a normal TV buyer in that I'm almost 40, and I've never bought a TV.
01:05:20The only reason I'm in the market now is that we had some inclement weather out here recently,
01:05:23and our old TV that was going on like 20 years old, I got a piece of a window through it.
01:05:29So what I'm looking at is the only place in our house for a TV is the main room up on the mantel place.
01:05:34It's pretty central, and I hate the idea of having a big, empty, black void staring at the room,
01:05:40especially with our little kids because they're just going to demand that some sort of cartoon is played on it.
01:05:45It's also, well, it used to be next to a big window that is getting repaired, and so it gets a lot of light.
01:05:52And between that, it kind of seemed like the Frame TV or something like it would be a good fit
01:05:59so that it's not getting too much glare, and when it's off, it's not just begging for something to be turned on.
01:06:06So that being said, I see 50, 55-inch TVs on Best Buy for like $200 to $300, while the Frame TV is over $1,000.
01:06:20Can I justify paying that much for something that hopefully will look nice?
01:06:26Is that a good tradeoff? Is the Frame TV actually what I want in the middle of my main room that I'm going to be looking at all the time?
01:06:33I would love any advice you can give me. Thanks. Bye.
01:06:37When someone asks the question, is the Frame TV actually what I want?
01:06:41There is only one person to bring in, and it's Nilay Patel. Hi, Nilay.
01:06:44I'm just going to answer that question with a statement, which is that Hollywood is doomed.
01:06:52Embedded in that question, if you listen to it carefully, is the complete destruction of the film and TV industry as we know it.
01:07:00Say more.
01:07:01Pete, you don't want a TV. You're 40 years old. You've gone your entire life without purchasing a TV.
01:07:07And yours got broken, and you're like, I should have a TV in this space, because you think you need a TV.
01:07:14And maybe you watch it sometimes. And you don't want your kids to watch cartoons on the TV.
01:07:18So you're going to buy something else out of obligation to cultural norms.
01:07:24And you're actively looking to spend money on a TV whose picture quality sucks to prioritize how it looks when it's turned off.
01:07:34It is just a little, it's a little hop from there to not having a TV.
01:07:40I don't know how more clearly I can say this. Hollywood is doomed.
01:07:44People don't want to watch the TVs. They want to watch TikTok.
01:07:48I mean, it is. It is true in a way that I had never really thought about until you said that, that you are just assumed to have a television.
01:07:56Like we watch a lot of HGTV in our house. And one of the things that drives me the most crazy is whenever they stage the houses at the end.
01:08:04They're always beautiful and perfect and well set up. And you always sit there and go, well, where's the TV going to go?
01:08:09They're going to have to flip all this around because they're going to have to have a TV because you have to have a TV.
01:08:14The fact that people will spend money, I will answer the actual question on the frame TV, but I'm just embedded in this question.
01:08:21In this thought process is the end of the assumption that everyone's going to watch TV.
01:08:27And once you break that assumption, everything goes to hell.
01:08:30The description is kind of, I have a space on a wall where I'm supposed to put a TV, not I want a TV.
01:08:36That is kind of the premise of this question. You're right.
01:08:39Yeah. Put a, hang up a picture.
01:08:43What if you bought a thousand dollar TV that let you hang up all the pictures?
01:08:46Right. Can I just do that?
01:08:48Maybe that's what you want and you should spend the money on that. Right.
01:08:51But if what you want is to sometimes watch TV, you should spend $200 on a 55 inch TV and put it on a roller stand and roll it into the garage.
01:09:03And then roll it back out when you want to watch TV, like, and you will quickly find that maybe you never wanted to watch TV at all.
01:09:10And I just, as a person who has giant expensive TVs and wants to watch movies on them, I every single day think, boy, this TV is off most of the time.
01:09:23Like we don't have it on all the time. I have friends and family that keep their TVs on 24 seven.
01:09:28Fine. That's another way to go, but it doesn't sound like that's what Pete wants to do.
01:09:32The reason I'm always ranting and raving about the frame TV is that the TV of it is pretty compromised, right?
01:09:40It's a, it's a very old panel.
01:09:42It doesn't have local dimming backlight.
01:09:44It's not Samsung's latest LCD tech.
01:09:46It doesn't have Dolby Vision, which is a Samsung choice.
01:09:50It runs Tizen.
01:09:51Like, I'm just sorry.
01:09:52Yeah.
01:09:53Right. Like it's all, it's all this stuff.
01:09:55Uh, but it has the matte finish and it has the art store and you can put a frame on it and you can hang it on the wall and people prioritize how it looks way over the picture quality or the, how the TV of it works.
01:10:09And that's, and that's fine.
01:10:10I'm just saying it's just a short hop to the next thing.
01:10:13So Pete, what I recommend is you really feel like you need to have a matte finish TV showing a picture.
01:10:18There are now much cheaper riffs on a frame TV from a bunch of companies.
01:10:23TCL has one.
01:10:24Hisense has one.
01:10:26Right.
01:10:27Like everyone knows this is the market.
01:10:28And I think the prices will come down.
01:10:30The frame TV itself is whatever, like the art store.
01:10:33Samsung has done a great job with the art store.
01:10:36They have spent a lot of time and energy making the deals and getting the licenses and da da da da.
01:10:42But are you going to pay $50 a month for the art store?
01:10:44If you're not, then you should just get another matte finish TV that can be framed of which now there are several and put up a picture of your family or something.
01:10:51Yeah.
01:10:52Ironically, Pete, I think is coming into this thinking he's, he's kind of like really trying to decide which is the best TV to buy, which like would make him kneel.
01:11:00I people he's actually my people.
01:11:02He's like, I don't care about my TV.
01:11:04I just need to have one, right?
01:11:06Like, I think if you're starting from a 20 year old TV, frankly, the frame TV is probably going to look great.
01:11:11The 20 year old panel you had on your wall.
01:11:13It's probably a big upgrade to even the frame TV.
01:11:17But I do think you're right that clearly the goal is not.
01:11:20I want the best television.
01:11:22Is it the frame TV?
01:11:23Like, I don't think anyone is arguing that it's that and that's not what Pete wants either.
01:11:26Yeah.
01:11:27If you want to spend $1,000 on a TV, it's not great.
01:11:29You should buy a 55 inch OLED.
01:11:31Right.
01:11:32But I think if, if the question is like, how do I solve this specific problem that I have?
01:11:36It seems like the cheapest riff on the frame TV is probably what you're after.
01:11:40Or get, uh, what's that?
01:11:42Samsung is easel TV.
01:11:43These are all expensive.
01:11:44Uh, get that LG suitcase TV.
01:11:46I'm not kidding.
01:11:48You don't want a TV.
01:11:49That might be the solve.
01:11:50Buy a TV that goes in a suitcase and put it on the kitchen table once a month when you want to watch a movie.
01:11:56Like, there are just many, many more ways to solve the problem of sometimes we all want to sit around the screen.
01:12:03Get a projector and pick up a bed sheet.
01:12:06I had the projector thought, but I think the place it sits in Pete's house where it's like a space that gets a lot of light and is kind of screwy.
01:12:13That might be, that might undo the projector, but, but I think the, the TV you can put away theory here in some way is actually maybe the solution.
01:12:22Yeah.
01:12:23I looked it up.
01:12:24I'd forgotten what it's called.
01:12:25It's the LG stand by me.
01:12:26Go.
01:12:27Uh, it's a 27 inch TV.
01:12:31It's in a, you know, it's something like a, one of those like James Bond metal briefcases.
01:12:35It's expensive.
01:12:36It lists it over a thousand.
01:12:38I bet on black Friday it gets really cheap.
01:12:41Buy a smart monitor.
01:12:42I have a 40 inch Samsung smart monitor that I bought for $300.
01:12:48Throw that in the closet.
01:12:49Like, I'm just saying there are many, many more ways to solve this problem or buy a cheap frame TV.
01:12:55But I, I've just, every time I get this question out, I hear from people who are like, I want a TV that looks good when it's off.
01:13:02And I'm constantly coming back to, it is just a tiny jump to, I don't need this at all.
01:13:08Right.
01:13:09Yeah.
01:13:10I mean, it makes me think, do you remember that CES a few years ago where LG had that rollable TV that you like pulled up out of a case?
01:13:17Like, that's the kind of thing we all need.
01:13:20Just like, I just, I want to be able to hide that behind a bunch of books and then pull it out, unroll it and watch a movie and then put it away.
01:13:26And I think like, that's the sort of thing that would be great.
01:13:30And I think the thing about Pete's question I keep thinking about is, is if I put this TV here, my kids will want something on it.
01:13:36And like, I'm sure you feel that, but like, oh God, do I feel that?
01:13:39I would love to be able to, I hide the remote now because if he can't find the remote, I'm like, oh, sorry, I can't find the remote.
01:13:47But he goes, he just points at the TV, which is at his eye level and is like, put it on.
01:13:53And it would be, there is more and more appeal to putting the TV away than ever for me.
01:13:59It's all, it's all fun and games until they get iPads.
01:14:03That problem instantly resolves the second the iPad or the Chromebook is delivered, right?
01:14:07For better and for worse.
01:14:09Even things that I've tried to turn into like, this is a TV thing.
01:14:14The Eras Tour.
01:14:15We're going to watch this on the TV.
01:14:17She instantly figured out how to get it on Disney Plus, right?
01:14:20Like, everything moved.
01:14:21Yesterday I walked into our kitchen and she was listening to music on her iPad speakers in a house where she is surrounded by speakers.
01:14:28Can just speak into the void to ask a music service to start playing and knows how to use AirPlay.
01:14:34I've taught my six-year-old how to use AirPlay.
01:14:36Still listening to music on her iPad speakers.
01:14:39What are we going to do about this?
01:14:41I bought a whole Sonos system and my wife listens to podcasts out of the speaker on her phone and it will never, ever stop making me crazy.
01:14:48Mine as well.
01:14:49I'm just saying, Pete, buy what you want.
01:14:52Buy what fits your budget.
01:14:53Most people just prioritize size.
01:14:57All TVs are right.
01:14:58I'm going to call up Casey Newton here.
01:15:00Casey asked me what TV to buy and I told him and then he bought a frame TV and I said, how's the picture?
01:15:05And he was like, it's so bright.
01:15:07And that was the end of that conversation.
01:15:10Yeah.
01:15:11And that's that's Casey is also my people when it comes to TVs.
01:15:15We're talking about this in early November.
01:15:17So we're just a few days away from Black Friday.
01:15:19So the frame TV will go on huge sale.
01:15:21Always does.
01:15:22Last year's frame TV, which is fine.
01:15:25Samsung spends no money developing the same TV every year and they just collect huge margins on them.
01:15:31Last year's frame TV will go on even deeper sale.
01:15:33And then you've got the new class of competitors, right?
01:15:38You've got the Hisense Canvas TV, the TCL NXT frame TV, the next frame TV.
01:15:45Amazon has the Fire TV Omni, which has adaptive brightness and art.
01:15:51There's just a lot of these and they're all going to go on sale on Black Friday.
01:15:55And it's worth just looking at them and thinking, will this solve my problem of it's there?
01:16:01That's the problem you're trying to solve.
01:16:03Yeah, I just looked it up, by the way, the 55 inch Omni TV currently on sale for $369.
01:16:08Like this is this is a cheaper problem to solve than a thousand dollar frame TV.
01:16:13However you choose to solve it, you can do it for less than a thousand dollar frame TV.
01:16:16I feel pretty good about that.
01:16:18And I'm 100% confident that they'll be even cheaper on Black Friday.
01:16:22Yeah, there we go.
01:16:23That's just the way it goes.
01:16:24Awesome. All right. I hope this helps.
01:16:26Pete, let us know what you end up doing and send us pictures of your setup.
01:16:29I'm very curious.
01:16:30Neal, I thank you as always.
01:16:32You're dead to me.
01:16:34All right. That is it for the Verge cast today.
01:16:35Thank you to everyone who came on the show.
01:16:37And thank you as always for listening.
01:16:39There's lots more on everything we talked about at theverge.com.
01:16:42V's review of the eight sleep thing is great.
01:16:45Allison's story about AI DJs.
01:16:47All of our many, many, too many, frankly, stories about frame TVs.
01:16:52All of it on the website.
01:16:54I'll put some links in the show notes.
01:16:55But as always, read theverge.com.
01:16:57It's a good website. I like it.
01:16:59And as always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings,
01:17:02or other televisions that you'd like to spend too much money on,
01:17:06you can always email us at vergecast at theverge.com.
01:17:09Or like I said, call the hotline 866-VERGE11.
01:17:12We love hearing from you.
01:17:14The Slack room that all the questions get pumped into is bumping, my friends.
01:17:19It's great times in there.
01:17:20Thank you to everybody who calls.
01:17:21And thank you to everybody who emails.
01:17:23This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poore, and Eric Gomez.
01:17:26VergeCast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
01:17:29Nila and I will be back on Friday to talk about all the AI news,
01:17:34some more Mac stuff, just a whole lot going on right now.
01:17:37We'll see you then. Rock and roll.
01:17:45Support for The VergeCast comes from Polestar.
01:17:50Polestar's first all-electric SUV, Polestar 3,
01:17:53is now on the roads across the U.S., and it's ready to make an impression.
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01:18:09That includes an intuitive infotainment screen,
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01:18:14And you can have Google turn on your favorite podcast
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01:18:21See what else Polestar 3 has to offer
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