671 episodes

Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.

Decoder with Nilay Patel The Verge

    • Business
    • 4.1 • 2.8K Ratings

Decoder is a show from The Verge about big ideas — and other problems. Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel talks to a diverse cast of innovators and policymakers at the frontiers of business and technology to reveal how they’re navigating an ever-changing landscape, what keeps them up at night, and what it all means for our shared future.

    Taylor Swift vs. Ronald Reagan: The Ticketmaster story

    Taylor Swift vs. Ronald Reagan: The Ticketmaster story

    This special episode dives deep on Taylor Swift, Ticketmaster, and how a handful of policy changes in the 1980s led to one firm so thoroughly dominating the live events business in the United States that Congress held a hearing in 2023, because Taylor Swift fans were so upset about antitrust law. That sentence is wild. We’re going to unpack all of this with the help of some experts. Here we go.

    Transcript:
    https://www.theverge.com/e/23409098

    Credits:
    Thanks so much to everyone who talked to us and shared their valuable insights for this episode including Dean Budnik, Florian Ederer, Russ Tannen, and Sandeep Vaheesan. And special thanks to Makena Kelly and Jake Kastrenakes. 
    This episode was written and reported by Jackie McDermott and Owen Grove. It was produced by Jackie McDermott, Owen Grove, and Creighton DeSimone with help from Jasmine Lewis. It was edited by Callie Wright. 
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 33 min
    ‘The Goliath is Amazon’: after 100 years, Barnes & Noble wants to go back to its indie roots

    ‘The Goliath is Amazon’: after 100 years, Barnes & Noble wants to go back to its indie roots

    In this installment of our Centennial Series on companies that are over 100 years old, we are talking to Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt. The last few decades have thrown some hurdles in Barnes & Noble’s way, however. Far from being the monster that inspired the plot of the movie You’ve Got Mail, it’s had to face down a new Goliath called Amazon and the general decline of big-box retail stores. After years of closures and declining revenues, Barnes & Noble was bought out by activist investors in 2019, who installed Daunt as CEO, and he’s managed to turn things around by doing two main things. 
    First, he has decentralized operations of the stores, letting each store act like a local bookshop and giving his booksellers more control over what titles they sell and display. He immediately ended a system that allowed publishers to pay for special placement in bookstores, which he said corrupted the entire system in service of short-term profits. Second, he’s using Barnes & Noble’s scale to build a purchasing and distribution pipeline that serves as the rest of the book industry’s competitor to Amazon. 
    We get into all of it — the culture wars, J.K. Rowling, book ban bills in states across the country, and how Barnes & Noble went from being the bully on the block to competing with Amazon.

    Links
    Hedge Fund Buys Barnes & Noble
    Can Britain’s Top Bookseller Save Barnes & Noble? - The New York Times
    How Barnes & Noble transformed its brand from corporate bully to lovable neighborhood bookstore
    Barnes & Noble to expand, marking a new chapter for private equity
    #BookTok: Is TikTok changing the publishing industry? 
    How book lovers on TikTok are changing the publishing industry
    Barnes & Noble History

    Transcript:
    https://www.theverge.com/e/23406145

    Credits:
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Hadley Robinson and it was edited by Jackson Bierfeldt. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr 3 min
    Why Spotify wants to look like TikTok, with co-president Gustav Söderström

    Why Spotify wants to look like TikTok, with co-president Gustav Söderström

    Gustav Söderström has worked at Spotify for a long time; his first big project was leading the launch of its mobile app back in 2009. That makes him the perfect company leader to talk to about Spotify’s recent redesign, which introduces a visual, TikTok-like feed for discovering new content on the app’s homepage. As his boss CEO Daniel Ek put it last week, it’s “the biggest change Spotify has undergone since we introduced mobile.”
    With the title of co-president and chief product and technology officer, Söderström is responsible for not only how Spotify looks and feels but also all the AI work happening behind the scenes to power its increasingly important recommendations. According to Söderström, it turns out that improving those recommendations is actually at the heart of the big redesign. “I think companies that don’t have an efficient user interface for a machine learning world are not going to be able to leverage machine learning,” he told Alex Heath on the newest episode of Decoder.

    Links:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napster
    Spotify is laying off 6 percent of its global workforce, CEO announces
    Spotify’s new design turns your music and podcasts into a TikTok feed
    Alex Heath's Tweet
    Functional versus Unit Organizations
    Two-Pizza Teams

    Transcript:
    https://www.theverge.com/e/23402123

    Credits:
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr
    Can Xerox reinvent itself for another 100 years?

    Can Xerox reinvent itself for another 100 years?

    Intro:
    Steve Bandrowczak, the CEO of Xerox, an iconic company that got started all the way back in 1906 as a manufacturer of photo paper and is, of course, best known for pioneering the copy machine. Here in 2023, Xerox has moved well beyond paper. It now works with companies large and small to provide IT services: it optimizes workflows, manages data, automates parts of businesses, and yes, still fixes the printers.
    Steve insists there’s still a lot in the world to print, and selling and servicing printers continues to be where Xerox begins its relationships with most customers. And fixing printers is getting high tech: Steve is excited about his new AR app that walks you through getting the copy machine working again so you don’t have to wait for a technician to come fix it. 
    We also talked about the future of Xerox’s legendary Palo Alto Research Center, or PARC, whether Xerox wants more consolidation, and we even spitball some ideas about how to get Gen Z excited about printers. 

    Links:
    John Visentin, Xerox C.E.O., Dies at 59
    Xerox Ousts CEO In Deal With Icahn
    Carl Icahn Makes Case for Xerox-HP Union
    Xerox abandons $35 billion hostile bid for HP
    Apple Lisa: the ‘OK’ Computer
    About PARC, a Xerox Company

    Transcript:
    https://www.theverge.com/e/23394156

    Credits:
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Hadley Robinson and it was edited by Jackson Bierfeldt. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr 3 min
    How Reddit is getting simpler — and dealing with TikTok, with chief product officer Pali Bhat

    How Reddit is getting simpler — and dealing with TikTok, with chief product officer Pali Bhat

    Pali Bhat joined Reddit from Google about a year ago — he’s actually Reddit’s first-ever chief product officer, which is pretty surprising considering that Reddit is a series of product experiences: the reading experience, the writing experience, and importantly, the moderation experience. One thing we always say on Decoder is that the real product of any social network is content moderation, and Reddit is maybe the best example of that: every subreddit is shaped by volunteer moderators who use the tools Reddit builds for them. So Pali has a big job bringing all these products together and making them better, all while trying to grow Reddit as a platform.

    This was a really deep conversation, and it touched on a lot of big Decoder themes. I think you’re going to like it. Okay, Pali Bhat, the chief product officer of Reddit. Here we go.
    Links:
    New features aimed at making Reddit easier to use: an update on our product priorities focussed on simplification
    Reddit’s new features include a TikTok-style video feed
    Reddit is bringing back r/Place, its April Fools’ Day art experiment
    How to buy a social network, with Tumblr CEO Matt Mullenweg
    Microsoft thinks AI can beat Google at search — CEO Satya Nadella explains why
    AI-generated fiction is flooding literary magazines — but not fooling anyone

    Transcript:
    https://www.theverge.com/e/23390325

    Credits:
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr 1 min
    Podcasting? Radio? It’s all one big opportunity for iHeartMedia digital CEO Conal Byrne

    Podcasting? Radio? It’s all one big opportunity for iHeartMedia digital CEO Conal Byrne

    We taped this episode live at Hot Pod Summit. That’s our conference for the podcast industry. We have a whole newsletter for podcasters. It’s called Hot Pod, written by our very own Ariel Shapiro. Hot Pod Summit is where we bring that community of creators, trendsetters and decision-makers together to explore the latest developments in podcasting, audiobooks, and more. It was a packed house and a great time.
    We ended the day by recording our first-ever live Decoder with Conal Byrne, CEO of iHeartMedia’s digital audio group. Conal oversees podcasting at a giant radio company, and his group accounts for a quarter of iHeart’s revenue, which was $1 billion last quarter alone. His team makes some of the biggest podcasts around, with huge talent like Will Ferrell, Shonda Rhimes, and Charlamagne tha God, who you’ll hear Conal talk about quite a lot.
    Conal and iHeart Digital earned that success by doing some unconventional things. Whereas other big podcasting players like Spotify and Apple have tried to boost revenue through subscriptions or platform exclusivity, Conal shunned those approaches and said he’s going for big audience reach, made possible in part by his ability to run ads and even shows on iHeart’s huge network of traditional radio stations.
    But that maverick approach has included some controversial steps as well. Last year, Verge alumni and Bloomberg reporter Ashley Carman reported that iHeart worked with a firm called Jun Group to essentially buy podcast downloads through video games. To many in the industry, that seemed pretty disingenuous. So of course I asked Conal about that and lots more. He was a great guest, super game to answer the questions, especially in front of a live audience.

    Links:
    iHeartMedia Buys Stuff Media for $55 Million - WSJ 
    Podcasters Are Buying Millions of Listeners Through Mobile-Game Ads 
    Cost Per Thousand (CPM) Definition and Its Role in Marketing
    Spotify reportedly paid $200 million for Joe Rogan’s podcast - The Verge
    Chris Dixon thinks web3 is the future of the internet — is it? - Decoder, The Verge
    Decoder with Nilay Patel (@decoderpod) Official | TikTok  

    Transcript:
    https://www.theverge.com/e/23381445

    Credits:
    Decoder is a production of The Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    It was produced by Creighton DeSimone and Jackie McDermott and it was edited by Callie Wright. 
    The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Our Editorial Director is Brooke Minters and our Executive Director is Eleanor Donovan.
    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

    • 1 hr 8 min

Customer Reviews

4.1 out of 5
2.8K Ratings

2.8K Ratings

Andelpink ,

Great Podcast but…

Nilay is a great host, he does a superb job interviewing people. Decoder has some of of the most interesting people in the tech and business worlds on regularly. Im excited to see who they have an each week. Having said that, it’s evident that this show is heavily influenced by liberal ideology. I question if Nilay truly believes in some of the principles he advocates for on the show. I have a feeling that the people writing his checks are influencing that aspect of the show. That’s why I only give it four stars.

40 chicken ,

Chip war author Chris Miller

Podcasts don’t get any better than this. The information about how ultraviolet lithography machines work was fascinating. Intel betting against this technology was a epic mistake. The United States are really going to have to scramble to cover the distance created by TSMC.

false psychology ,

Has not disappointed once

You guys are all on point with current news regarding a multitude of industries. Journalists that belong on NPR.. thank you all!

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