Hello! Well, predictably Saturday was full of fake product japes and hijinks as corporate America continues its inexplicable struggle to keep the spirit of April Fools’ Day alive — the Post did its best to debunk every hoax this year. Today we’re exploring:
A classical comebach?
Last week, Apple released Apple Music Classical — a stand-alone streaming app designed for concerto connoisseurs. After its release, the app shot straight to #1 in the App Store, as fans of classical music — who've long been left behind in the switch to streaming — swiped and tapped through the 5 million tracks.
The initial popularity of the app is surprising — data from Luminate reveals that classical music captures just 0.9% of on-demand audio streams. That's way behind Rock, Pop, Country, Latin and nowhere near the broadly-defined “R&B / Hip-Hop” genre, which accounted for almost 30% of streams.
Classical music may never truly be "pop", but it's also clear that as a genre it's been poorly served by the streaming revolution... and it's all because of metadata.
Metadata just means “data about other data” — which in this context refers to the music's supplementary information, where a song file typically includes the song name, artist name, length and album, to mention but a few.
That taxonomy works for most music, but for classical the system breaks down. Bach’s concertos have been recorded many times, by different orchestras, with different soloists, arrangements, conductors, publishers and producers. Indeed, even the simplest piece of metadata, the track name, can be confusing. Take Beethoven’s popular Moonlight Sonata. That piece comes in 3 movements, and was originally marked “Sonata quasi una fantasia”, but the full name is technically “Beethoven's 14th piano sonata, Opus 27, Number 2”.
Apple’s app is hoping to cut through that complexity with more metadata for easier searchability.
March was a month to forget for banks, as smaller institutions bore the brunt of the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.
Deposit drain
That crisis spilled out of financial circles onto social media feeds, as depositors wondered aloud about the security of their assets — with some concerned enough to move their money elsewhere. Indeed, Federal Reserve data shows that, over the past 4 weeks, smaller banks in the US have seen $165bn withdrawn. That's the largest 4 week withdrawal number since records began in 1973, representing about 3% of total deposits.
Deposit flood
During the pandemic, these smaller banks helped hand out billions in PPP loans whilst also accepting a flood of deposits from people receiving their first stimulus checks — as seen in the data in April and May 2020, when hundreds of billions of dollars were deposited into smaller banks.
However, as depositors lost faith in smaller institutions they turned to the industry behemoths as a safe haven for their cash. The 25 largest US banks saw a $120bn increase in deposits in the week following the two bank collapses, as depositors presumably decided that "bigger was better" in this case. This was more than enough to cover the $30bn that 11 of those larger banks used to help save First Republic and prevent contagion.
Skipping rent
The majority of US millennials can no longer count themselves as members of generation rent. New analysis revealed that 2022 was the first year that buyers outweighed renters in the cohort, with 51.5% of millennials now owning their own place.
However, while millennial homeownership is at an all-time high in America, many in the generation clearly feel the reality of getting a foot on the property ladder is still some way off, with 18% reportedly “planning to rent forever”.
Buying up
Prospective buyers benefited from a more affordable housing market during the pandemic as mortgage rates dropped to historic lows. Although that brief window of affordability has slammed shut, millions of millennials used the opportunity to take the plunge and snap up homes in recent years.
Per data analysis from RentCafe, an apartment listing service, there are now 18.2 million millennial homeowners in the US, a 28% increase on the figure from 2019. The number of millennials with their own place now outweighs those who have a landlord by 1 million, after 300,000 people left rental arrangements in 2022. Somewhat predictably, baby boomers still dominate the property market, making up over 40% of American homeowners.
If Gen Z struggles on the property-purchasing front as much as millennials have historically, Zers will have to wait until 2038 before the majority of them have their own place.
• Tesla set a new quarterly delivery record, shipping ~423k cars in the first 3 months of 2023.
• UBS may cut up to 30% of its workforce, 36,000 people, after its merger with Credit Suisse.
• Caltech’s new smart bandage could make healing infected, chronic wounds much quicker and less expensive.
• Private jet flights in Europe hit a record high last year after soaring 64%, with the majority making ultra-short journeys.
• Visualizing the new hybrid work model in America.
• Apologies and corporate pet names: the words tech CEOs use when announcing layoffs.
• Mapping how parking lots have come to dominate US cities.
Quick cut: Which entertainment empire, that we were charting about in January, is set to combine with UFC in a deal that would create a $21bn company? [Answer below].
