Is Disney Plus one of the biggest launches of all time? (The Daily Charge, 2/5/2020)

Hey, am I the only one that didn't sign up for Disney Plus? There's still like, a couple million more people that doesn't need to get but not everyone can resist baby Yoda quite as long as you. All right, stick around for your Daily Charge. [MUSIC] Good morning and welcome to The Daily Charge. It's Wednesday, February 5th. I'm Alfred. And I'm Jo ni salzmann. And here today's headlines. [MUSIC] Since Disney plus launched in November, we've seen a lot of hands that the service was popular. Last night though Disney laid out just how popular in less than three months Disney plus hit 28.6 million members. Now I know nothing about streaming. So just Joan just how big is that really? That's really big. Bigger than Netflix? It's not bigger than Netflix. But Netflix has been streaming for a decade. Netflix is at a hundred and sixty seven million subscribers. So 28.6, you got a long way to go still. But Disney+ just launched. Less than 90 days ago. Okay, so- Less than three a month. At that pace, well, how many months away are we from Disney killing Netflix? That's a really good question. Everyone wants to know that. And we don't really know exactly except that We know that Disney is already like so they said it would take them five years to get to like 60 to 90 million, they're already almost halfway to the lower end of that threshold. So they're growing much faster than they thought they would better than any expectations. The other thing that's interesting is even though Disney plus Launched in November got like these millions of subscribers. Mostly in the US. Netflix is still growing in the US they managed in the midst of all these competition. They didn't grow a lot people are not really happy with how much they did grow. But they still are adding members even as Disney is vacuuming up all these other people for streaming services. So what's really hurting. is looking at the special security needs of personal health data. And that's one that's growing, both in the amount of data and the security issues connected to that. So we have these family of standards that provide more specific guidance to different industries. But we have this whole thing that we're trying to do here is we're looking at our information security management systems and we have It's Apple. They don't say how big they are. The things that we can kind of cobble together, we can't even cobble together any sort of numbers. We can generally, estimate that they have a lot of subscribers in the sense that they basically gave away Apple TV Plus. So anybody that's bought a device since September. So that means anyone that has a new iPhone, anyone that got something under the Christmas tree or for a holiday or a present or whatever during that holiday shopping season. They also are able to just flick a switch, basically, and turn on Apple TV. Plus, it probably means that they have a lot, but that's not paying numbers. So what's next, when are we gonna see Disney Plus maybe have Eleven joining the Avengers, or something like that? [LAUGH] Well, I don't know if that's gonna happen, that would be a really interesting crossover. But, I mean, we do know that Disney Plus is going to be Launching into Europe, launching into Europe, The Europe And India. They're going to launch in Europe and India in March. They're going to be expanding Hulu to international markets right now whose only in the US are going to expand that next year With a as in Disney, Disney because, Disney owns Hulu also.>> Boy. And then in terms of originals, we know that there's gonna be the first Marvel original series that like ties into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That first one's coming in August, the next season the Mandalorians in October and then they're gonna have their second Marvel original in December. So there's a lot coming up this year. All right, well, next up, Spotify. It's still in the lead of streaming music services. This morning Spotify said that it has hit 124 million subscribers. And that 271 million people are listening to Spotify, total. Joan, how does that stack up with competitors, like Tidal and Pandora? [LAUGH] Well, it's funny, Tidal isn't really talked about much, cuz no one, it's not really Amazon Music. So Amazon Music says they have 55 million people listening. That's not necesarily subscribers because you get Amazon Music included with Prime. Yeah. They say they have 35 million listeners. Apple in June said that Apple Music has 60 million and so obviously Spotify is double that number of subscribers. Not to mention the fact that like it has more than 200 million people listening every month. It's just it's a lot. It's the biggest subscription music service and the reason that they think that they can become even bigger is the focusing on podcast today. They said they're going to buy. Bill Simmons ringer like Network, which is a website for news, but mostly at the podcast Network at this point because you know, every single title title is actually an interesting example, but Pandora Apple music Amazon music. They all basically have the same catalog of stuff. Title's the one that has like these exclusives from its owners, but obviously that's not really working really well for them. So Spotify thinks that in order to distinguish themselves, they need to go after not necessarily music but podcasts, because that's not a commodity. They bought Gimlet recently to right? Yeah. They bought Gimlet last year, they bought Anchor last year, they. They budgeted up to $500 million to spend on podcast acquisitions. So why does Spotify care so much about podcasts? And how much would they like to buy the Daily Charge for? [LAUGH] They do have $500 million budgeted. We should start the bidding there. They like podcasts cuz they think that's a way to Distinguish themselves from everybody else. And, you know, it's also going right after Apple survivin podcasts are called podcasts because of the iPod like Apple's dominated podcast for a long time. So it'll be interesting to see as everyone moves over to streaming instead of downloads. If Spotify can eat apples lunch. Well yeah, I've seen that for Apple Music, the. The bigger draw for their podcast has been like what their live radio station stuff, right? Because that's what I've been hearing about it. No Yeah, cuz like there's news that happens on those like Nicki Minaj goes on some rant. Yeah, like Travis Scott's baby like I'm her like Live podcast right or like Dr. Dre will say something new There. I mean, is that kind of what Spotify's trying to go after or what is it, yeah? I don't think so. Radio One, I think you're talking about Radio One. Yeah. Which beats Radio One, I think. Whatever, I can't even remember what it's called, but that's not part of their subscription. I think that's something anyone can listen to, I think. Listen to for free. And so it is a way to draw interest, but the main reason Apple Music gets people to subscribe, it's because they're in everyone's pockets. It's because they're on iPhones, and it's the default thing. But, yeah, I don't know, we'll see. For The Daily Charge, I'm Alfred Ng. I'm Joanie Solsman. Thanks for joining us. [MUSIC]