TCO 203 | Music Industry

203: Dish Network Sues Peloton plus our interview with Gayle Fine

TCO 203 | Music Industry

 

John Mills joins us to discuss Dish Network suing Peloton.

Peloton CFO Jill Woodworth had some insight into what the future of strength might look like.

Homecoming will be announced this week plus there’s official gear in the boutique.

Peloton announced their Champions Collection.

Dr. Jenn – Finding Time to Exercise When You’re a New Mom

It’s not too late to win a Tonal AND help Make-A-Wish.

There was a new beta release for sharing workouts on Instagram.

A new study shows that 2/3 of Americans prefer working out at home.

The Sun reports on a woman’s “embarrassing” Peloton usage.

InsideHook.com has tips on how to move from your Peloton to a road bike.

ZDNet talks about the Peloton Tread…just not the right one.

Angelo from MetPro joins us to discuss whether you should be counting calories or macros.

Mashable rights about Cody and how Peloton made the pandemic a little more bearable…but mostly about Cody.

Ally Love was on NPR’s “Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me.”

Annie Murphy from Schitt’s Creek has a Peloton.

Lifehacker writes about TechnoGym launching in Australia.

Business Insider talks about the latest Peloton challenger – Playpulse.

The latest artist collaboration features The White Stripes.

Don’t forget that Peloton4Parkinsons is almost upon us.

All this plus our interview with Gayle Fine!

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Dish Network Sues Peloton plus our interview with Gayle Fine

We’re doing something a little different. We want to tell you about another podcast you might like called The Best Advice Show. It’s easy to feel helpless as each new day breeds more uncertainty. The Best Advice Show is your super short daily reminder that there are weird, delightful and effective ways to survive and thrive in this world.

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You’ll hear heady advice about how to temper rage, quell jealousy, and investigate your shame. There’s fun stuff too like how to gamify cooking for yourself or how to avoid overflowing the toilet.

You can think of the best advice show like a hit workout for your soul. Each episode is only 3 to 5 minutes long.

Listen to it every weekday wherever you listen to The Clip Out.

We both just got done working out. That feels great to say. If we both seem out of breath, nothing weird happened, except me working out. What do you have in store for people?

We’ve got some fun topics to talk to John Mills about, another lawsuit. We got a little bit of a Homecoming update, new content. We’re going to talk to Dr. Jenn about finding time to exercise as a new mom. We’ve also got other connected fitness news. We have new features to discuss, Peloton in the news aplenty, a brand new feature dropping this week, all about nutrition, and then there are celebs, competitor, artists collaborations. It goes on and on.

On and on to the break of dawn. Before we get to all that. Shameless plugs, don’t forget we’re available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle PodcastsiHeart. Wherever you find your podcasts, you can find us. While you’re there, be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode. Maybe even leave us a review so people know that we’re worth checking out. We appreciate that. We have a new review. This is from Scrappy_P. It says, “Even more addicted. I’ve had my bike for almost two years and my Tread+ should be delivered in a couple of weeks. I started joining groups and following fellow Peloton members on Instagram, as I’ve immersed myself into the Peloton community more, my addiction has continued to grow. Now I’m addicted to this show. Crystal and Tom have great chemistry and I look forward to each new episode each week.”

Thank you for the very kind review.

Also, don’t forget, we have a Facebook page, Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. Check out our YouTube channel, where you can watch episodes in their entirety in full video. You can do that at YouTube.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there be sure and subscribe there too to get little reminders. You can sign up for our weekly newsletter where you get all the links and pictures and whatnot sent directly to your inbox when I remember to do it, which I’ve been on a streak.

It’s super convenient to get it all in one place.

You can do that at theclipout.com. There’s all of that. Let’s dig in. Shall we?

We shall.

Joining us via the magic of Zoom tube is John Mills. How’s it going, John?

Going great. I just got my second shot. I’m all ready to go now.

I know. I saw that on Facebook that you got your second shot.

I feel good but Erica is going, “I think I have a headache.” What’s funny is after the first shot, I was like, “That hurts. It feels good too.” She’s like, “You’re no woozy.” Now it’s the reverse. I’m like, “I didn’t feel anything. I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

At least you guys now know what to brace yourself for. When I got my shot, they were like, “I don’t know. Good luck to you, sir.” Let us know. I was like, “What can I expect?” They’re like, “That’s what you’re here for.” How do we know?

I don’t know. You tell us.

He had to fill up this little electronic diary every day to say what his symptoms were.

Here’s the worst part. I had to tell you the story quickly. I fill out my diary and they’re like, “How do you feel today? Did you have fatigue? I was like, “I did.” Everybody that’s gotten the shot now knows that you get tired. I get a call twenty minutes later and they’re like, “Fatigue is a sign of COVID. You’ve got to go back in for another test.” I’m like, “You gave me the shot and I literally drove home. I don’t think I got COVID in the car I drove in.”

They were like, “We know, but it’s protocol.”

I had to do all these. I had to go in and get it shoved up my nose again. They had these tubes that I had to spit in for 10 or 11 days.

Back then COVID tests were taking forever to process. We had to have him spit in a tube every single day until he got his negative results. It took ten days to get his results. This poor lady had to come and pick it up from our front porch every day.

I would leave it on the porch for the spit-airy to come and collect. That lady’s like, “I went to god damn college. Now I’m picking up spit. I’m driving around collecting spit with my Math degree. This is bull spit.” It was like, “I got to get the COVID test again?” That was the worst part, but they paid me also.

After I got my second shot, they were like, “We’re given free COVID tests as well. Did you want one?” I’m like, “I just got a shot. I don’t want that crazy test. I’m good. I’m just going home.”

Once again, Peloton is being sued. This is a new take on the lawsuit though.

It is but it’s ridiculous.

I don’t know that it is. That was my initial reaction.

Let’s explain what it is first.

John’s like, “Do you need me for this now? I thought this was my segment.”

No, this is all fun stuff. Dish Network, I’ve learned now, were suing other people in the past for the same reason. As a part of this suit, they’re suing ICON, owners of Nordic Track, ProForm and a bunch of other platforms, and Lululemon as it relates to Mirror over something relative to how they’re streaming media. They referenced in the suit their ability to fast forward and rewind video. It’s something relative to how they’re able to do that efficiently. I don’t know the details of the technology, but it’s something relative to that.

Maybe they do have something.

They’ve also sued Univision for this.

They’ve settled. Apparently, Univision was like, “You guys got us, all right,” over the same patents.

Univision is huge.

Probably that’s what will end up happening here.

All I know is what I read in this article, but if Univision has settled, my guess is these outlets are going to settle as well.

How interesting though that this makes Peloton, Mirror, and Nordic Track all on the same playing field. If this is a big, giant reality TV game, which I might be watching a little too much of lately, now they all teamed up to take this down, then they go beat each other up again after they’re done. That’s how I see this playing out.

Why don’t they name everybody? Why aren’t they naming like Echelon and Nautilus?

Maybe they’re working on a different system.

Wouldn’t this only count for on-demand classes for Peloton because you can’t fast forward through a regular class.

I was going to ask that. If it’s about fast forward and rewinding, can you even do that?

You can, but only on-demand. Could this change how on-demand classes work?

It could. I get the impression though. I’m with where Tom is. I think they’re not going to change how their platform works. If they truly have a case, which I think they may, they will settle in some way. That’s what I think will ultimately happen.

Especially if Univision settled, there’s probably already some sort of metric or paradigm. The issue they had with musicalize, nobody knew what the rules were. They had to sue each other until they figured out what the rules are. Now that they’ve already gone after Univision for it, there are rules in place. I think that’s why you don’t hear about music lawsuits involving these other bike streaming companies because now they know that if you do X, you pay Y.

They don’t want to mess with it. What Tonal does is they have radios stations. They also have a thing with Apple Music. You can play your own music through Apple Music. I hear what you guys are saying about settling. I think that is a very good point, but I want to reiterate that when I say on-demand, it’s only for classes that are taken on an iPad or something, not on the actual equipment. The reason I’m saying that is, wouldn’t it make more sense to make those platforms parity with the equipment? If it was me, I would be like, “Why are we doing this then? If we have to go pay out all this money, wouldn’t it be easier to just change this and make it the same as all the equipment? I don’t know. I’m just asking a question.

The more you can share with others, the more you let others flourish, which is better for you. Click To Tweet

Do we even know which part is triggering the lawsuit? Maybe it’s the interface on the bike and the tread.

You can’t pass forward on the bike.

I hear you, Crystal. Maybe that’s how it plays out. I find it interesting that the article in Bloomberg references that Dish was losing market share to folks that no longer want set-top boxes. They’re just going into streaming services. They had lost like 118,000 subscribers in 2020. Also, Comcast is suing them proactively saying, “Wait a minute. You just acquire some company games, some patents and now you’re on this rampage suing everybody over this patent you’ve required.” They’re trying to proactively stop this. That’s another piece of it that’s interesting. It feels like Dish has this legged-up. It worked with Univision and they were losing market share. This is their means to get back in the frame.

Now it sounds like Mad Dog g instead.

I will also say, arguing against my point, Univision is more inclined to settle with Dish because they want to be carried on Dish. If they go to war too much, Dish might go, “Until we get this figured out, how about we don’t carry any of your networks?”

Here’s what they’re going to do. They’re going to settle with all of them, then they’re going to end up having a Peloton, Nordic Track and Mirror app right within Dish Network. That’s what’s going to happen. I’m just kidding.

What’s also interesting when I’m reading the article, they sued Peloton based in Plano, Texas.

I did read that. I got some messages from, I don’t know if it’s okay to use her name because we didn’t discuss this. I’m not going to put her on blast here. She sent me some research that she had done. She is a corporate researcher. She sent me all these articles. One of which is from Techdirt. One federal judge has begun advertising for patent trolls to come to his court in Texas, which is related to all of this because Texas is known for this patent troll thing.

For being kind to the patent owners.

This judge is going around the country, pulling people in.

That sounds illegal.

Doesn’t it? Yet it’s happening.

That’s basically saying, “I will side in your favor.” What the hell?

That’s why Dish didn’t Sue Peloton corporate in New York. They’re suing Peloton, Plano so that they can make the court out of Texas so that they could get the favor of Texas in the patent.

The same person happened to also send me another thing. Apple ended up settling because of a patent troll also because of the same judge pulling these people in.

It’s crazy. If anything, you got to ask yourself, “What would be his incentive if he’s not getting a kickback?”

I don’t know. If he’s getting a kickback, you would think it’d be obvious. They would be able to figure that out.

Especially when you’re out there as a judge soliciting business.

I didn’t even know they could do that. I did think that was illegal, but the world’s a crazy place now.

Moving along, you also found an interesting interview with Jill Woodworth.

She attends some of these conferences from these financial institutions each year. It’s a common thing. They ask her questions and she gives a rundown on what’s going on with Peloton. That’s what this is. This is a part of that interview. I posted a couple of pieces. One of the question to Jill Woodworth was, why hasn’t Peloton allowed for watching things like Netflix, other than just the class, while you’re doing a workout and still get your metrics? Jill’s position is, “If you want to watch Netflix, do that after the class, go sit on your couch then. Our perspective is you need the experience of you’re dedicated to listening to what the instructor is saying. Do that, then go watch Netflix later. Bowflex, NordicTrack, ProForm, SoulCycle, all those other platforms allow Netflix.

Because they’re not engaging their members in the same way. There’s that proof that they’re not. I’m even trying to be mean. That’s just proof.

It’s also proved that Peloton knows what makes them sticky.

The interesting thing is that you throw out this little thing. I know this was directed to me. You were trying to rile me up.

I want to tag you? No, that’s too obvious.

I knew. I felt the target on my back like I pulled open Facebook and I was like, “Let me get out of the bulls-eye.” You were like, “Echelon doesn’t do that. I found something where Peloton and Echelon agree.” I think it’s not that Peloton and Echelon agree so much. Echelon is just copying Peloton.

They copied so much. They probably don’t even realize that they could. They’re just like, “Yeah. We’ll just cut and paste.”

When I was looking it up, I was going, “Everybody else allows it. Echelon must allow it.” When I was looking it up in Echelon, people are asking the questions in their forums. Every time Echelon’s like, “No, you can’t do that. We don’t allow that.” I’m like, “Are you serious? They’re aligned with the concept that Peloton states.” They see eye-to-eye, Echelon and Peloton.

They know how much people love peanut butter and jelly. That was them.

John, it’s not seeing eye-to-eye. It’s copying.

There’s another piece that you also listed about the same video that was taking place. Jill started talking about how they’re going to win strength. She described what you think is an OTARI-like strength device, which I listened to it. I see where you’re coming from, but she was vague enough that you could say that it’s not an OTARI-like strength device because she was like, “AI and cameras and forum.” She was vague.

At the time, that was on March 1st when that interview took place. We didn’t know about OTARI until March 22nd. It was just interesting to me when she’s talking about it. She’s like, “It might be something that does AI and forum correction. It might have a camera.” Just hearing it in retrospect, that describes an OTARI.

It does but that says that we’re probably on the right track with what we’re thinking. With her saying that in March and then announcing the acquisition at the end of March. I feel like we’re looking good for a May release because they’re letting out these little breadcrumbs. Peloton doesn’t let out bread crumbs. They just do it.

Unless it’s John Foley. He’s all excited. I’m waiting for him to one time go, “Okay, okay, okay.”

That’s why there’s always henchmen standing there. By henchmen, I mean like, “JV, no, don’t say it.”

I don’t even remember what he said when we were doing the Q&A, JV was literally like, “Don’t say this part.”

I know exactly what it was. Right at the beginning, we’re getting ready to go out on stage. She hands him the clicker and she’s like, “Whatever you do, do not press this button until we tell you to.” What is the first thing he did? Push the button, then he was like, “Sorry.”

TCO 203 | Music Industry

 

I got to love John. I love that dude. He’s such a good guy. He’s in love with his whole platform and everything here. You got to love John. He makes it real. Another thing though that I learned in listening to Jill and into some of the things John has said is that they consider strength much broader than just the strength type OTARI-like product. They consider rowing strength.

I can do their barre and Pilates. I get that. I’m on board, but when you go to rowing, I’m like, “No, dude, that’s just cardio.”

That’s how I see it too, but now it got me all confused because it’s clear that their focus is heavy on strength. If their mindset is that rowing is strength too, then I don’t know what they’re about to announce. It confuses me.

There are images out there of different patents that Peloton has. They’re like counterpart tab that they bought over time. There are rowers and there’s strength related to the rower. You’ve brought that up before that maybe there will be some strength related to the rower. Maybe that’s why they’re throwing it in because rowing by itself isn’t, but maybe there will be something attached to it that makes it that way.

Maybe that’s why it’s taken so long. They are rethinking how a rower functions.

It’s like they’re heavily talking strength, but we know in looking at the code, they’re the rower.

It’s irrefutable.

That’s why I’ve been saying they’re both coming. I’ve been telling people, “May 1st, they’re both coming.” Now I got people looking at me like, “John, if this doesn’t happen, I know where you live.”

They do because you post pictures of bears outside your house all the time.

Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time. Where can people find you?

They can find me on my Facebook page and my Facebook group Run, Lift & Live. They can find me @RunLiftAndLive on Instagram or at RunLiftAndLive.com.

Thank you.

Thanks. Nice seeing you guys.

By the time you’re reading this, it will most likely have been announced, but the Homecoming schedule is supposed to be announced on Friday, April 16th.

It’s going to drop sometime during the day. If you’re looking for that, you go to Homecoming.OnePeloton.com and get all of the details. Next episode we’ll be diving deep into that.

While we’re discussing Homecoming, you can already get your Homecoming gear so you’re ready to go.

Good for you, Tom. I’m happy to say that I did not care about this drop at all. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s cute. I like it. We were just talking about how I need to cut down on my water bottles. I have a water bottle problem. I only run hats because I don’t wear hats on a regular basis. I don’t need to pay that much for a towel. I have a thing about not paying a lot of money for it. It’s sweat.

It’s out there. If anybody’s interested.

It’s very pretty. It says 2021 on it, especially on the towel. It’s going to be great for people to have to memorialize. It’s also great that so many people get to attend in 2021 that couldn’t in the past because it’s open to everybody. That’ll be a good reminder of being able to have that swag.

Tori’s not back. We’re going to give you a quick update on what’s been going on in that story.

First, I want to say that Tori has gotten so much feedback from The Clip Out community, from the Peloton community at large, and everybody has given her so much support and also lots of ideas. She re-energized with some time off. I got a message from her that she is working on a new name and a new site. I will not be focused on 100% Peloton but of course, Peloton will be included. It’s going to be more about great looks for everybody and every budget. She wanted to also say thank you to The Clip Out community for being so supportive of her and welcoming of her.

One other little piece of related news when Tori was on talking through everything that happened, she talked about how there were other competitors that were doing the same thing that had not been shut down by Peloton. One of them, you guys hunted out on your own and you found them. I guess some people sent messages about what was going on with Tori. This person has come forward and said, “I reached out to Peloton after hearing about this. I didn’t know that this was an issue.” They’re redirecting as well. For those of you who are concerned and have not heard that update. I just wanted to make sure that you knew.

As we find out more, we will let you know.

Peloton announced this week their Champions Collections.

I am pumped about this. There are nine different champions. We’ve got Usain Bolt, Allyson Felix, Andre De Grasse, Angelique Kerber, Becky and Ellie Downie, John John Florence, Kathleen Baker, and Scout Bassett. They come from all different sports. In theory, you’re going to be able to train with them. They’re going to be on the leaderboard with us. According to the statement that came out on the blog, they’re saying that not only are they going to be training with us running on the leaderboard, but they’re also going to pop into live classes. We’re also going to hear about their favorite classes that they like to take. We’re going to hear about some of their favorite music and playlists and things that they like to work out too. Nobody knows exactly how it’s going to go down, but it’s super exciting. I can’t believe I’m going to get the chance to be on the same leaderboard and know it as Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the world. We’ve been to where he’s from. We’ve been in his little village. It was very cool to see that.

We also talked in the last episode about that Instagram post about the different artists. These aren’t artists, these are athletes.

They are listed, athletes. It was like celebrities and athletes. This feels like step one, doesn’t it?

It does. I was wondering if this is some insight into what we can expect from that collaboration.

I think that’s true. I think it is. I’m excited about it and it’s going to be during the month of May. I have a feeling we’re going to be hearing more about it at Homecoming.

That would make sense.

Joining us once again via the magic of Zoom tube is Dr. Jenn Mann, licensed marriage, family and child therapists, and sports psychology consultant. You may know her from VH1’s Couples Therapy with Dr. Jenn or VH1’s Family Therapy with Dr. Jenn or her long-running radio show, The Dr. Jenn Show and four best-selling books including The Relationship Fix: Dr. Jenn’s 6-Step Guide to Improving Communication, Connection and Intimacy. Dr. Jenn, hello.

It’s great to be here.

We’re going to have to add Tom’s sports therapists. It’s going to have to be on your list of accolades.

She’s adding, “Got Tom to workout on her LinkedIn page.”

I feel for you, Tom. I feel it is probably forget the bestselling books, forget the awards like that. I got Tom to exercise is now my claim to fame. I like to take credit for it. I probably can’t but I’m going to try.

I think you have at least partial credit in there. I definitely think so. We have another question from The Clip Out community. This one comes from Laura Silverman Weiss and she is a new mom. She has two kids. She’s working from home and she desperately wants to get on the bike, but time and sleep are hard to come by. She would like your advice.

I am a mother of twins and a working mom of twin. I understand this mom guilt and feeling pulled in every different direction. It’s really important in particular that moms do take this time for a lot of reasons. Everyone needs to take this time, especially a new mom. It’s very easy to get sucked into motherhood and to lose your identity and forget to take good care of yourself. It’s important on a number of levels. One is it it’s important to demonstrate to our children what self-care looks like. Two, that you got to put gasoline in the tank if the car is going to drive anywhere. A lot of the time, doing that workout is putting gas in the tank, even though sometimes it feels exhausting. Ultimately, in the end, we tend to feel better, we tend to have more energy. It tends to just benefit us enormously.

When it comes to the sleep aspect of it, because being a new parent, there are some times where you can’t avoid that your child has been up at night. You wake up exhausted. What I recommend are a few things that a lot of the time, it’s just a matter of getting on the bike or getting on the tread or pressing play and taking that yoga class. What I would recommend is that make it your goal to start. Don’t overdo it. Don’t be like, “I’m going to do a one-hour long run.” Forget it. I don’t care if you have an hour, if you’re exhausted, you’re a new mom, you didn’t get enough sleep. You don’t want to do something that’s going to ultimately injure you.

Start small especially if you are struggling to find the time and I am a big fan of a good Pack ‘N Play. Anything that contains your child in a small space safely, you can put it by your bike or your tread or whatever you’re using, and utilize that. Also, if you have a partner ask that partner, “I need 30 minutes a day that I can just have to myself,” or whatever it is that you can negotiate where that other person promises you that you can have this sacred time for yourself, but start small. People tend to be very all or nothing in their thinking about exercise.

If you’re a new mom, do a 5-minute class, do a 10-minute class, do a 20-minute class. Don’t even think about a 30-minute, a 45-minute, an hour class or anything crazy like that because you’re going to feel so much better about yourself. It also gets you back in the habit a lot. Starting to exercise after becoming a new parent is about developing the habit in the new contacts of your new life. It’s creating that carve out time and also creating that ability and that thinking of like, “What do I do next? I exercise. I put the kid down for a nap. It’s time for me to get on that bike.” Also looking at that as an important part of your being a mom that taking care of yourself and refueling is really important.

I would think doing a short class like a 5 or 10-minute class would almost be like an investment in your future in that it trains the kids, “Mom’s on the bike. It’s 10 minutes,” and then in six months, it can be 20 minutes and in a year, it can be 40 minutes. They just know, “Mom’s on the bike. Leave her alone.”

When my daughters were young, they were probably three when I started doing my radio show from home. They knew when mom is doing the radio show, “We don’t bother her.” When I started seeing some clients from home or started doing other business-related things from home, they knew, “If mom’s office door is close, she’s working and I respect that.” That’s a great point, Tom.

Also, I like the idea of asking your partner to help out for like 30 minutes because if they do it, that’s great. If they don’t, it’s a great litmus test to know if it’s time to find a new partner.

I also want to just add that if you have to get off the bike because there’s some reason, don’t feel like you lost, because you can’t pause. You had to get off the bike to go deal with something, you got back on. If you didn’t get back on, you didn’t get back on, but if you could get back on, those minutes lost are fine. It’s not a big deal. You did it. It’s okay.

That could be anxiety-provoking. When you know that you might be interrupted, what you may want to do is do a floor class on an iPad where you can pause it, because then you’re going to feel a little bit less anxious if you’re like, “I’ve got 20 minutes on new strength class on the floor.” That may be easier, not to mention that sometimes if you’re exhausted, you on the floor is good, ideally laying down. I especially bookmark any core class that is laying down. Thank you very much, Olivia and Matty.

Laying down is how you became a new mom in the first place.

It was a little different. I think there was someone else in the room, but yeah.

It’s a partner workout. Thank you so much for joining us. Until next time. Where can people find you?

You can find me on social media @DrJennMann. I do post my Peloton workouts in my Insta Stories. If you want to know what I’m working on, you can find me there. You can find me every week InStyle magazine. I have a column called Hump Day with Dr. Jenn.

Thank you.

We launched our contest Win a Tonal and it came out of the gate gangbusters. We were very excited. All the proceeds go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Tonal was kind enough to donate a Tonal, a year’s membership, and all the smart accessories. Since they donated all that, we didn’t have to go out of pocket. One hundred percent of the proceeds go to the Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Greater Bay Area. It costs on average $10,000 to grant a wish. We were like, “It’d be cool if we could raise enough to grant a wish. As of this recording, we’re at almost $7,000. We’ve almost got there in the first week, which is amazing. If you haven’t had a chance yet. You still got time. It’s for the entire month of April and you can go to the theclipout.com/winatonal. You can purchase entries. You can also get a free entry, but you can buy additional entries like $5 gets you 10, and then $10 gets you 30. The more you buy, the better the chances.

Stacy Revere was a guest on the show talking about auto-immune diseases. She was reaching out to me to let me know that she is making a very sizable donation because she is gunning for that Tonal. Also, she mentioned to me that her company matches when an employee is able to donate. Her company does triple donations. My point being that any of you out there who are donating, look into it to see if your company has that. You can add it. Unless it gets paid in April through the website that we’re using to collect the money, it won’t count toward that, but it’s Make-A-Wish and you’re just giving away the money otherwise, so why not?

You might as well throw a little extra at it. If for some reason you don’t want a Tonal and you’d still like a Tonal because they’re wonderful. They’re pretty sleek and it’s nice and easy to use. I love the set it and forget it aspect of it decides how much weight you need to lift. It will secretly increase the amount on you.

They added more features too. Now you can see everything on your smartwatch. You can have your heart rate right next to the little button on your smartwatch that turns it off and on if you have an Apple watch. You can increase or decrease the weight from your watch. How amazing is that?

That’s pretty slick. If you want to check that out, you can go to Tonal.com and you can save $100 off smart accessories with promo code, The Clip Out.

Also, we have another show all about Tonal called The Superset.

If you’re curious as to what this is all about, go check it out. It’s just like this. Except we talk about Tonal.

Peloton has a new way to share your workout with people.

You had the ability already to share your workout through Instagram, what you could not do was add a selfie to it. It was this cool image of whatever Peloton instructor you were working out with. Now you can add your selfie, and then with Instagram Stories, you can change it up however you want. You can throw some stickers on there, some words on there, tag your friends, etc. before you post. It’s all in beta. They are looking for people to reply to them and let them know, how can we improve this? What else would you like to see? Right now it shows how many rides you have. If you post a ride, it will show you, “Here’s how many rides you have,” so you can see. Some people didn’t like that you couldn’t see your PR anymore or your watts, there was something that was missing that changed that they didn’t like.

That’s a cool little feature.

I found this article. It’s not directly Peloton related, but it’s definitely Peloton adjacent. I thought it was interesting. It says, “Two-thirds of Americans would rather exercise at home than go back to the gym.” We’ve been seeing all these articles about what gyms can do to win people back? Will they win people back? What’s it going to look like post-pandemic?

Everybody’s trying to figure it out. I keep seeing different surveys that say different things. I feel like gyms are putting out stuff like, “Everybody’s coming back,” but then whenever I see articles they are like, “No, they’re not.”

I thought it was an interesting article that this survey indicates that people are like, “I’ve been working out at home and it’s pretty nice.”

Peloton has had a lot to do with that.

I concur. We’ve theorized for a while now that gyms are going to have problems winning people back post-pandemic. That certainly appears to be how things are shaking out.

In the interest of full disclosure, I feel like it’s important for people to know, I did not pick this particular story. Crystal found this story.

I did find this story. I knew that Tom would love it though. I think that I am right.

You’re not wrong, but it’s from the Sun.co.uk. It’s a woman mortified after a friend video her accidentally giving people an eyefull. We’re playing the video if you’re watching this on YouTube, once their ad is over. This woman’s riding her Peloton and you can see her silhouette in her apartment window, but it doesn’t look like a Peloton she’s riding.

It’s so embarrassing. She’s energetic. It looks like she might be doing some tap backs on the pipe.

Could there be some tapping going on there?

Yeah. She got a lot of teasing about this. The video went viral and she is mortified and I don’t blame her. I would be too, but it’s absolutely hilarious. I would also find the humor in it.

You can’t do that when you go back to the gym.

I guess you could. You’ll probably get thrown out of the gym though.

It depends on the kind of gym.

InsideHook.com has an article about how to make the leap from Peloton to big boy road cycling.

I can’t stand that. I hate that stupid title. It’s so patronizing to every man out there or woman who likes to road cycle. It’s patronizing in two different ways.

One, if you’re not road biking, then it doesn’t count, then also just the whole big boy. It’s just gross on a lot of levels.

Now that we’ve gotten past the title, I thought this was an interesting article because if you can scroll up, what it’s doing is saying, “If you like riding your Peloton, you might like riding outside.” Maybe you would like to try it, but you don’t know exactly why you need to do it. It walks through, here are the different things that you can do.

Peloton is not only a discovery tool but also a great help in increasing streams with those little hearts. Click To Tweet

What needs to know, what needs to take under advice to move outside to the outdoors with the road bike.

For those of you out there who are interested in this, read the article, that’s great. Also, I highly recommend that you join the Peloton Road Riders group on Facebook because they’re nice. They all ride road bikes as well as the Peloton bike, but they’re not like the title of this article.

They don’t say the phrase “big boy.”

I never heard them say that. Also, they have fun Peloton road jerseys that you can buy. I believe they just went on sale. You can get the latest one. You can get past years too and be part of the Peloton Road Riders.

ZD Net had an article about the best treadmill in 2021.

It’s great because Peloton got mentioned, but then the thing is that they mentioned the wrong Peloton tread. They say Peloton Tread+ launching May of 2021. The Tread+ has been out for a long time. The Peloton Tread is launching in May of 2021. ZD Net, all you got to do is reach out to me. I will prove your articles and make sure you have the correct Peloton information. At any rate, they made it to the list of their top contender as always.

Joining us via the magic of Zoom tube, you probably remember him from his interview a while back, it’s Angelo Poli from MetPro and people had so many questions about nutrition and things like that, what they could possibly be getting me to eat.

It’s a fair question.

He’s like, “Right now he eats three things over and over again.”

It’s been an experience.

Welcome to my world. We wanted to bring you some questions from our audience. We put up a couple of topics and let people just go in town with all their questions. We will start with the first one. The first one wants to know, “Are you counting macros or calories? If so, how do you take into account when you aren’t prepping the meals yourself?”

The answer is yes. At MetPro. Yes, we are counting the calories and the macros and it gets even worse. the glycemic load, the combination, the timing of the foods and all of that stuff, but here’s the good news. We’re doing it so you don’t have to. We’re doing all the backend calculations. That was one of the things that we spent the longest time working on developing because people were willing to be like, “That sounds good. These are foods that I like. Here’s what I like to eat and you’ve given me some good options, but for variety, how do I make changes on the fly? How do I change up the meal plan?” People don’t want to go to the store and look at the back of a label and figure it out. You almost have to have a PhD to figure out this is how many grams and how many are fitting into not just my overall day, but just the single meal that I’m being assigned here.

Instead, what we do with some of the technology that we leverage is you’re just going to go in and you’re going to choose from say, you pick a protein that you like. Pick from an extensive list of proteins. The system will look at what you’re assigned and say, “Here’s how much for this meal you’re going to have of this protein,” and then it’s going to do the same thing for your meal carbohydrates, your vegetable carbohydrates, your fats, etc. You’re not going to find lasagna and pizza on the menu. You’re going to eat it, but that’s going to be called a cheat meal. You’re going to have that once in a while. It’s going to be mostly whole foods, but we’ll take the guesswork out of it. The benefit of doing it that way is then when it’s time for your coach to calculate, “We do need to change something here to keep you progressive,” you don’t have to worry about it. It’s going to be right there in the palm of your hand. You’ll see it on your app. You can choose the same foods. You can choose different foods and it’ll do all the calculations for you.

One of the things I dig about the app is as you’re going through and selecting things when you hit your number that you’re supposed to be at, everything goes gray. It’s like, “You’re done selecting.”

It’s good because you don’t then add more than you should. It takes the guesswork out of it.

You can make your own choices because some things got to live in both worlds. You’re like, “If I give up a little bit of peanut butter, I can have a little bit more of whatever.” I joke about eating the same three things over and over again. That’s my court, not MetPro’s court. There are tons of stuff to eat there. It’s just I’m that weirdo about food. I don’t like very many things.

You mentioned that you can’t eat lasagna, but I have found a fun recipe. I add some wheat pasta and then I add some tomato sauce, and then I add a little bit of Jack cheese, and then some lean ground beef. Whenever you microwave it all like melt the cheese on top, it tastes like lasagna and it’s good.

Angelo let me have tomato sauce by the gallon.

You were the reason we built the gray screen into the app. That’s called the slap Tom’s hand away.

It’s like, “Slap the pizza out of his mouth.”

I love that you did that because it takes the guesswork out of it. I love the way you explained it because I have difficulty explaining it to people. In the past, I’ve done other things when you track macros, and when people hear tracking macros, it sounds time-intensive. What you guys have built is not time intensive. It did take me a couple of days to figure out how to build a meal. Once I got it, I was very comfortable with it and now I can build it on the fly.

The reason is there are no issues. As a culture and society, we’re so conditioned to the food logging generation, MyFitnessPal and all the great apps like that out there. They’re fabulous tools but the idea is to eat what you eat, and then tell it what you ate, and it’s going to give you, “Here’s what you ate and the details. That’s great.” That’s not MetPro. MetPro is going to tell you what to eat. They give you substitutions and say, “You don’t want that?”

It’s like, “If you give me too much wiggle room, there will be ice cream in there somewhere.”

The big question we get ironically is bananas. What happened to my bananas? A lot of people don’t realize that your food lists actually will evolve and change over time. There are some weeks you might have bananas as an available carbohydrate, in other weeks you might not, based on where you’re at in your progression. In other words, your coach may have adjusted your meal plan to one that’s not only more aggressive with calories and macronutrients but has also lowered the glycemic threshold for individual carbs or meals. There are things that are moving behind the scenes, but it’s not too painful. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see that it does take a willingness to prepare a few meals and to put a little bit of thoughtfulness into it. We don’t ask people to do that without offering results in return. That’s what it’s all about getting the results you’re after.

TCO 203 | Music Industry

Thank you so much for joining us to explain all that. Remind everybody where they can find you and where they can find MetPro.

Go to MetPro.co/tco for The Clip Out.

Thank you.

Mashable had an interesting article about how Peloton and its instructors became saviors in a hellish year at home.

A couple of weeks ago I said that Cody Rigsby is getting all the love.

We were like, “Did he hire a new publicist?”

This is proof of that. This is another love letter about Cody. They mentioned a lot of instructors and a lot of good things about Peloton, but Cody Rigsby is literally in the URL. It says Cody Rigsby.

Peloton instructors, Cody Rigsby, coronavirus, quarantine.

That tells you he was the focus of this article. It’s a great article. It’s long so I’m not going to go super into it. Definitely check it out if you get a chance. It’s just a feel-good, I love Peloton. It makes you remember all the reasons you love Peloton. It’s a good thing.

Ally love was featured on the NPR comedic game show, Wait, Wait… Don’t tell me.

My understanding is that there were lots of questions about the skeleton. Apparently, this will be a good way to see how well Ally Love can answer questions about the human skeleton.

I thought that was a reference to something that I wasn’t getting. There were literally questions about the skeletal system. I’m such a nerd. All I could think of was Skeletor. I’m like, “I’m pretty sure that’s not the one.”

No, not that one. It’s a different thing.

If you’re trying to find that one, we’ll put the link in our newsletter. If you sign up for that theclipout.com. You can also search for it. She was in the April 10th edition of Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!

Yahoo Life had an interview with Annie Murphy who people will know as Alexis Rose from Schitt’s Creek, or if your kids are in the car, Poops Creek.

I love the show. I love Annie Murphy and I love that she loves Peloton. If I could figure out a way to get her on the show, I would be in heaven. This is a great article. It’s just a good interview with her, but it also mentions her love of Peloton. We had to mention that we have yet another celebrity sighting. Some I get more excited about than others. This one is at the top of my list. I do love that show.

I think it was our anniversary. I got you a Schitt’s Creek poster autographed by the entire cast, except Catherine O’Hara, but other than her, we’ve got everybody on there. We got David, Patrick, Alexis, Johnny, Stevie and everybody. It was pretty cool.

We need to find just the perfect place for that. It is all framed and ready.

We have another company that wants to be Peloton.

We’ve talked about Technogym before. It’s been a long time like years at this point.

That is an ugly bike.

Technogym is the brand that went into Disney instead of Peloton.

I love Disney, but come on.

I know. That’s what I said. I will say Technogym has been around for a very long time and they’re very popular. The reason that I included this article was I thought it was interesting that they are taking their exercise bike to Australia at the exact same time Peloton is. I feel like it’s an interesting time to watch connected fitness because everybody’s battling it out. Peloton has the strength battle happening on the one hand, and then they’re moving to all these different countries and they’re battling it out over there. It’s just interesting to see that. There’s nothing exciting about this article other than that.

If you want to read the article, it will be in your newsletter. While we’re talking to competitors, I was saying how ugly that bike was and then I get to this bike and I’m like, what is that? My apologies, Technogym, your bike is beautiful because this thing is hideous.

Can I say their tagline or whatever the line underneath it? It says that the heels of Peloton. Somewhere on the stupid article, it says, “On the heels of Peloton, coming out with their bike now comes this new bike.” I’m just like, no, no, it’s not on the heels of the success of Peloton. It’s like six years later, guys. Is that the heels? Because that feels like the entire body.

I will say this and this bike is called the Play Pulse exercise bike. This is a hideous bike, but in their defense, at least it doesn’t look like a Peloton.

I will agree with that.

I got to give them that. At least that they’re doing something different. It doesn’t look like every other bike now looks like a Peloton.

It does different things. On that note, this is why I hate Echelon. They copy everything that Peloton does. You got to give credit where credit is due. They let you play games. You watch streaming apps like Netflix, Hulu and Twitch. It’s a very gamified bike. This is for somebody who needs a lot of attention in front of them to keep them engaged.

They don’t want something to motivate them. They want something to distract them while they exercise.

That’s what this bike is for. There is a market for that for sure. It’s not something that I would want because I think it looks uncomfortable. If I was at a hotel and in the gym, it was between that bike and a regular spin bike, I would probably jump on that just to see what it’s like if nothing else to try something different. That’s a good thing. I think they have a chance with that, depending on the price point. Honestly, I would redesign it.

I don’t know that I would like. It does stand out even though I think it’s ugly. It looks like it has a very small footprint.

It looks so uncomfortable. People complain about how small the Peloton seat is and that thing looks like it would get lost in your other oceans or that.

Another artist collaboration from Peloton. This time featuring The White Stripes.

The White Stripes are going to be coming up. We’ve got on the bike and we’ve got on the tread. I think there’s even strength and yoga for this one. That’s interesting. Do they even have a class slow enough for yoga? I can’t even picture that. It’s going to be Dennis Morton, Melia in Germany, and then Selena is going to be running. Andy Speer is going to be doing strength and Kristin McGee is going to be doing yoga.

The Spring drop that we referenced happened in the interim.

It was an expensive drop. Sorry.

I love how you bragged about how little you bought from the Homecoming drop. They had three items.

I refrained from buying all of them, Tom.

You could have bought all of them for probably less than $100.

No, that’s absolutely not true.

The hat was $25. The towel was $24. Was the water bottle, $50, but instead the Spring drop.

The interesting thing about this drop is that the Mother’s Day drop in the UK is in March. They dropped the Mother’s Day drop for the United States with Spring too. The weird thing is that it was under new items and it was back on page six. In the middle of my order, it started getting all screwy and I quickly order before it messed up, then they were gone and they took all of the Mother’s Day items down. I’m assuming they’re planning on putting those back up. I think that was a big whoopsie, but what I understand, everybody including myself, they went ahead and shipped them out. Everybody already has their orders from the Spring too. I think we’re over the whole pandemic, crazy shipping times on the apparel. That was nice. I already have it all, but it wasn’t cheap.

Finally, a reminder that the Peloton for Parkinson’s is just around the corner.

It starts on Saturday, April 24th. I think it’s like at 5:00 AM Central all the way until 7:00 PM. Apparently, I don’t even know why, but I guess I’m going to try to do all day on this thing. We’re going to see. I’m going to try. I don’t know that I can do it, but anyway, there are lots of people that can, and there are lots of people that are, and if you haven’t had a chance to sign up, please do go to RunSignup.com. The link is over on our Facebook page. It’s a long link.

It’ll be in the newsletter. Sign up for that at theclipout.com. It’ll get sent right to you.

You can ride virtually and also, there’s an option to ride on Zoom so we can all ride together. That’ll be a lot of fun if you take that option. I’m very excited.

Joining us is Gayle Fine. How is it going?

How are you, guys?

We are good. It’s good to see you. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this.

It’s my pleasure.

For people who are reading, I see memorabilia behind you.

It was my second prized possession. It’s a signed Derek Jeter jersey. I’m Yankees all the way.

I’m not a sports guy, but I can appreciate having that thing that you want. First off, knowing nothing about sports, why Jeter? If you’re a longtime Yankees fan, what makes him your favorite Yankee?

It’s not like I was alive when Babe Ruth was around.

Normally, people gravitate towards the players that they grew up watching and he’s more contemporary.

I grew up as a Phillies fan. I’m originally from Delaware. The Philadelphia Phillies was my team growing up. The Phillies weren’t that good. We had won the World Series in 1980 and that was about it. When I moved to New York, I can’t root for the Mets because they were the rivals of the Phillies, so I gravitated towards the Yankees. At that time, which was the mid-’90s, it was all about Derek Jeter. For that time period all the way until he retired, he was the captain. He was an all-star every year. He was the leader of the team.

When you developed your love for the Yankees, that was when he was there?

Correct.

That makes a lot of sense. The only thing I can say about the Yankees knowing nothing about sports is a line from a comedian, Doug Stanhope. You won’t like the joke, but it’s such a great joke. He was like, “Rooting for the Yankees is like going to the casino and rooting for the house.” I have to ask, what is your prized possession?

It’s my dog.

I thought that was going to be another great piece of memorabilia or something.

I have some gold records. I’m not a big memorabilia person. My other prized possessions, I have some autographed baseballs. I have a book that was written by a very famous baseball journalist named Hal Bodley that he wrote on the Philadelphia Phillies season of 1980. I have some signatures from the World Series team in the book. That’s a great and another baseball prized possession. When I was a kid, we had season tickets for the Phillies. After the game, I used to hang out and try and get players’ autographs.

It was back when you could do that.

Can you not do that anymore?

You can’t get near them anymore. One, there are too many wackos. It’s like a cottage industry of selling their autographs. It’s not a cottage industry. It’s just a straight-out industry.

Back in the late ’70s and early ’80s, you could wait by the door as the players exited. They would stop and sign. They weren’t thinking that you were going to sell what they were doing. In the area that I work in, I called them the Blue Pen Guys because when you sign something with a blue pen, you can replicate the signature. The Blue Pen Guys are people that you see at every hotel, at every concert backstage door and it’s the same guys. No matter what the artist is, they’re there. You know they’re not fans per se. They were just collecting.

When I used to work at the club level, there was a guy I would see all the time. He drove me crazy. He had a ten-year-old kid. He would show up with his kid and be like, “It’s for my kid. He just happened to have fifteen drumheads.” “Does he though?” “Yes.”

Everyone can try to make a buck. It’s all right.

You work in the music industry. What do you do in the music industry?

I’m a day-to-day manager. I work for a company called Q Prime, which is a music management firm. We manage artists globally. We have four offices and about 20, 25 artists.

She’s being modest. Q Prime is a big deal.

Thank you.

Do they represent the big household-name level artists?

We do. We represent most major alternative rock artists. We have a national office that represents some large country artists as well. Q Prime has been around 30 something years. We have a very nice track record.

Is Q Prime like Metallica?

That would be correct.

Are they Red Hot Chili Peppers?

We had managed the Red Hot Chili Peppers for twenty-something years. We no longer work with them, but yes, for a long time we had.

I’m curious how this works. Do you tend to take them on when they’re smaller and build them up? Do you move into a different period like a band scored a couple of hits and you’re like, “You’ve gotten to second base, let us help you get to the third or home?”

It’s a little bit of everything. We have emerging artists. We started working with Journey as an example. They’ve been around for quite a while. We have some other artists who are at a level. We work with them, help develop them and watch them grow.

Do you have a favorite type of artist that you like to work with?

For me? No. I started out in the publicity field. I’ve been working in the music industry for almost 30 years and have worked with everyone from female singers to rock bands, to alternative bands, to solo singers. To me, it’s all about, one, “Do I enjoy the music?” and two, “Do I enjoy the person?” Every single person who I’ve worked with I’ve loved working with, whether I still work with them or stopped working with them. That’s the most important thing.

When she first asked like, “What do you like working with?” my first thought was like, “Sober and humble.”

I like working with smart artists.

With artists in general, a lot of times, people would be surprised if they knew how smart some of these artists were.

A lot of the artists know what they want to be. They just need some help trying to figure out how to get there. They have an image in their mind of how they want to be perceived, addressed and interact. They need some help and guidance.

How did you drift into something like that? I’m assuming you weren’t twelve years old and you were like, “I want to manage artists.” I’m assuming there was a process.

I went to Boston University Grad School. I’m an undergraduate, but I was getting my Master’s in Mass Communication and Public Relations. I was doing an internship and then eventually got hired at a public relations firm called Cone Communications. One of their clients was Reebok. They were about to start something called the Human Rights Now! tour, which was a global tour in conjunction with Amnesty International that was Sting Peter Gabriel, Bruce Springsteen, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’Dour. We represented the Reebok side. One of the people that I worked with was a woman by the name of Kathy Schenker, who was Sting and Peter Gabriel’s publicist. I had some interaction with her and enjoyed working with her.

A few years later, Cone Communications started working with an organization called Farm Aid. Again, we worked with the nonprofit side. On the corporate side, Kathy also was the publicist for John Mellencamp. I had a chance to work with her yet again. It was the Farm Aid in Indianapolis. At the end of the show and our time there, she said, “If you ever want to think about coming to New York, let me know. I’d love to work with you and see what we could do together.” That time came about a year later and I called her and said, “I think I’m ready to leave Boston and come to New York.” She said, “Come down, let’s talk.” I moved to New York and took a cut in pay. I was a Senior Account Executive where I was before and I started as an assistant. Not that publicity is all that different on the corporate side, but obviously, you need to learn who the journalists are, a little bit more about the artists and how they operate and etc.

It’s so much about relationships. It’s hard to start that from the ground up of like, “I will have a relationship with you now.”

I know in St. Louis watching Tom interact with the different people he has to interact with and I know that’s on a much smaller scale, it’s very different than the corporate world that I’m in because there are all these processes. In what he does, there are no processes.

It’s very loose. With Kathy and worked my way up on that level. I was working with my own artists. One of those artists was Bruce Hornsby and another was The Smashing Pumpkins. They were managed by Q Prime. I had been with Kathy for eight years and got a call after doing some projects with Q Prime. They said, “Have you ever thought about coming over to the management side?” I said, “I like what I’m doing, but it would be nice to have a little change of pace and learn something new. Sure.” I came over and they said, “We don’t know exactly what we want to have you do, but we like working with you. Come on over.” That was when I moved over to Q Prime. I’m about to come in December 2021, it’ll be my 23rd year there.

Stability is not something you see a lot of in that industry. To stay at one place for that long is saying something.

I have the best bosses in the world. They are amazing and loyal. We have very low turnover. My mantra in life is, “If I wake up on a daily basis and dread going into the office or dread going into work, I’m done. It’s time to leave.” I don’t have that, which is a real pleasure.

It’s not the easiest industry for women. For you to be that successful, have that degree of longevity and run across another woman who wasn’t threatened, but was willing to help, that’s pretty awesome.

Kathy Schenker is an amazing woman. She was such a great mentor for me and allowed me to grow and learn. She had no qualms about sharing her expertise and knowledge and letting me thrive. I give a lot of kudos to her.

That’s a rare quality. Many people guard all that so much and it never ultimately benefits you.

As a person, the more that you can share with others and let others flourish, the better for you.

Yes, maybe those people will eventually move on. In the meantime, you’ve surrounded yourself with people who are next-level good working for you until they get to the next level. I never understood the rationale. In the middle of all that excitement, you got Peloton.

Tell us how you found Peloton. How did that turn out?

I’ve had my Peloton and it’ll be three years this coming June 2021. I started on the app. I was at a gym and said, “I’m going to try this.” I had seen some of the commercials. I didn’t have any friends who had it. No one in my circle had been talking about it. I said, “Let me try it out.” I started on the treadmill using the gym at the treadmill but using the app. I liked it. I used a stationary bike. It was okay, but I had no clue if I was doing it right or not. I just did it. I loved the classes. I loved the music, which is an important part of the entire experience for me.

We started having conversations with Peloton about one of our artists in doing a ride. I said, “If I’m going to experience this, it’s time to get a Peloton.” I did. I started the journey and fell in love. I don’t do the tread anymore because I don’t have a tread. I don’t belong to a gym. I stopped my gym membership about three months into my first year with the Peloton. Now, I have to buy plus. I love every single aspect about it.

With all the music lawsuits and all that kerfuffle going on, what was your take on all that as that was playing out being on the other end of it or both ends of it in a way?

I knew that they would end up with a settlement because the opportunity is too good for both sides. When you have an opportunity on the music side for artists and publishers and then you have an opportunity for Peloton who’s trying to grow their business as well, there’s a settlement to be had. It makes no sense to keep everything going. With new platforms, that kind of stuff is always going to happen. That’s why there’s a settlement. It’s growing pains.

It was what we were saying the whole time. I was like, “Nobody knows how to bill it because it’s so new. Nobody’s in agreement. They’re going to go in a ring and punch each other in the face. The lawyers will want much money. They’ll know what the rate is. We’re done.”

Tom, you’ve nailed it.

I wish someone would have agreed with me that easily when I was saying all that. Everybody was, “No, they’re stealing.”

I think like you said, the issue was no one knew what Peloton was and what the platform was. It was, “Do we position this like a streaming service? Do we position this like a stadium kind of license?” That was a lot of the problems that we knew and what format it fit in.

A lot of the artists didn’t fully realize it yet. It benefits artists in a way that radio used to. We know radio had special rates because if you got on the radio, you’d sell more records. As the importance of radio has declined, I bet your Peloton has not sold records because nobody buys them in the same way anymore, but it’s increased streams. You’ve never heard of Lizzo until Peloton.

Artists are very smart, but sometimes they’re not as up on a lot of things. I would imagine that a lot of artists had no idea what Peloton was. She probably didn’t even make it up to the artist level. It made it up to a lower level. Tom, you’ve nailed it in. Not only is it a discovery tool, but the little hearts that you can hit on that go right into your library. That increases streams for sure.

I’m curious if you have any thoughts about all of Peloton’s competition at this point. A lot of them can’t match Peloton with the kind of content that Peloton does. There are very few exceptions to that like Apple Fitness+. They have their music that they can pull from the ads to the content. Do you see that some of these competitors are trying to do the same types of things that Peloton has done with the music industry? Are they going a completely different way? What are you thinking?

I know that some of them have tried to get licenses but not knowing the intricacies of that particular license, I don’t know that they can compete not only on a monetary level but on a mass level. Apple Fitness+ is a different story, but even their numbers, I don’t think right now are competitive to what Peloton is. I think Peloton, as it grows on a more global level, which you guys have talked about before with some of these possible copyrights in Australia and other parts of Europe, their scale up on that level from a music perspective and reach will be huge.

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In a lot of ways, the music industry is still very segmented by country. There are so many artists that are a big deal in Australia that doesn’t mean here or vice versa. It’s a lot easier for American artists to go to other countries, but for other artists to make it here, it’s night and day. This is a platform if they can start threading that through the system, you might see a lot of those kinds of geographic barriers break down for artists in a way that they were never able to with radio.

Wouldn’t that be fascinating? That would be cool to see that take off like that.

That’s an absolute possibility as they grow. Like you said, Tom, there are artists, who are huge even in Canada and in America you’ve never heard of before. Those same Canadian artists are huge in Germany. It connects the dots and gives them all a voice or an opportunity globally.

What was the Canadian band whose lead singer just passed away?

The Tragically Hip.

In Canada, this guy knew he was dying and they did a farewell concert. In America, if The Tragically Hip came to town, they’d play a 1,500-seat room. Now, Canada has laws in place for radio and television that forces them for a certain percentage of their content has to be Canadian. It used to be called MAPL. It was Music, Artist, Performance and Lyrics. Each letter stood for a different thing. It was like 3 to 5 had to be Canadian in content. You would hit these weird things where all of a sudden, Bryan Adams would sign to an American label and he wouldn’t be a Canadian artist anymore. He didn’t count. I’m using that as an example. I don’t know if that’s exactly true, but it happened with other major Canadian artists.

We have a Canadian artist, Three Days Grace. If they’re Canadian, that counts for X amount of points. If they record their album in Canada, it counts. If they write the songs, it counts as something else. If their producer is Canadian, it counts for something else.

If one of the songs is about back bacon, it counts.

I knew that was going to be a joke. I can tell.

If they write the songs while wearing a toque, that counts. Any references to hockey automatically count unless it’s air hockey.

At your company, are there a lot of artists who come from other countries? Is that a small percentage?

It’s not a small percentage. Most of our artists are US Americans, but we have Canadian, a couple of UK and a couple of Irish.

Irish are the worst.

Don’t say that.

He’s saying that because he’s Irish.

It’s the punctuation mark on my name. Seriously though, Irish music is awful. Maybe not the modern-day stuff, but if you go back to the traditional Irish music, punch me in the face.

Tom, no Riverdance for you?

No Riverdance. I love musicals and stuff. I’ll see that stuff all day long, but Riverdance.

Maybe it has tones you don’t like. I have a thing with tones. Now, that you’ve had your bike, do you find that more people in your circle have Peloton?

It is scary how many people now that I’m friends with within my circle, both in work and outside of work, especially since the pandemic, are not only on it but posted and talked about it constantly. I was like, “Where did this come from all of a sudden?” It was bizarre.

In a lot of ways, it’s like watching an artist mature and then blow up. It’s like when they started, they weren’t even a big club. It was like a 300-seater. You watch them keep climbing.

Now, they’re at a freaking stadium.

It’s been a very similar trajectory. It reached a critical mass like a tipping point for the public where all of a sudden, you didn’t have to explain. I’m old enough to remember when I had to explain to people who U2 was. One day, you didn’t have to do that anymore. That’s how Peloton spun.

It’s a great analogy. A lot of times with an artist, you can pinpoint the one thing that got them over the hump this one song, this one tour or this one TV appearance. With Peloton, I don’t know that you can point to that.

You can’t.

The pandemic definitely fast-forwarded it, but they already had so much momentum going into it.

It wasn’t like they were a struggling company prior to the pandemic. They were already on fire, but the pandemic poured gasoline on their fire.

When people look back in history, they’re going to point to the pandemic. That’s going to be the moment that the industry says that they went crazy.

People will rewrite history and make it sound like they were not that big of a deal until the pandemic and that is not accurate. That will be the easy way to tell the story.

 

I’m trying to think in my head which commercial it was. It might have been the Bishop Briggs commercial. Champion was the song that they used on that.

It was a real upbeat commercial and had the Champion song playing in the background. It gets your attention. I remember that was the very first commercial I saw on our local TV. We were so excited.

I remember that was a commercial that even though that I knew about Peloton, I saw that commercial constantly be at sport shows, Bravo show, Food Network and news stations that it was every single day. It was upbeat. I was like, “I got to try this.” It finally beat me down where it was like, “I’m going to try the app. I’m just going to dip my toes in it and see what happens here.” It worked. Maybe six months after that was when they went public or maybe a little bit longer. Maybe six months to a year after that was the pandemic.

It was like there was a baby snowball and then that had another snowball. The next thing you know, it’s like in Bugs Bunny where the big avalanche is coming now. Do you use any of the other content for Peloton? Do you stick just to the bike?

No, hell. I use the bike, strength, yoga, meditation and stretching. I belong to two different Facebook groups that we do challenges every month. It’s a scheduled out one. It is called Fello Army. It’s an arms challenge every month where we do the same class for a month or sometimes it’s two classes.

I thought you were selling AK-47s out of the back of a truck. I was worried for a second.

We’re doing Emma Lovewell five-minute classes, one every day. On Saturday, we do all five. There’s another one that I joined, the Breakthrough Crew, which came off of Peloton. They set up every day for a month different challenges. That group especially has allowed me to explore platforms, meditation and yoga, which I hadn’t done that much other than the sleep meditation because I find the sleep meditation amazing. For someone who is up very late at night and is twiddling, working, having that has been a life-changer. The strength is amazing. I love the strength.

I love that you’re getting such a well-rounded use out of all the different things that Peloton has to offer. That’s cool.

I try and experiment. There are some things that I’ve experimented with that I will never go back to again, but that’s okay. Dance cardio, it’s not me. It’s not happening.

I thought dance cardio was fun, but I felt dumb doing it. What I mean by that is I have zero ability to coordinate my moves to a beat. It cannot happen. It’s awful.

You’re coordinating to your beat.

I’m very offbeat from everybody else. Let’s just say that.

I couldn’t do it. My timing only works with comedy. Some people say, “Not even that.”

There’s a reason why some of us left or didn’t do gym classes and that was it. You would be in the back of that class and you weren’t in the front row. You were in the back and were like, “I’m stepping here and there doing the steps. I can’t memorize the steps.” I was like, “What am I doing here?”

I’ve never understood when people would complain about getting picked last in gym class. I was like, “Please, pick me last. I’m awful. Put no stock in my abilities whatsoever.” If somebody picked me third, I’d be like, “Jesus Christ, I get we’re friends, but dude, you do not want me to be a part of this.” When I got picked last, I was like, “Right on, thank you. The pressure is off. I loved it.” Have artists started requesting ways to take their Peloton on the road yet? Do you know about that? Has that been a thing?

None of mine have, but I know that there are. One of our artist’s tour managers, Guy Sykes, built a road case for his Peloton.

Can you say who he works with? I feel like I’ve worked with him. Who is it?

Volbeat.

I’ve done not done a Volbeat show. I feel like I’ve run across that name before at work.

I’m sure he’s worked with other artists.

There was a guy who’s been in the Peloton world for a couple of years. I don’t remember exactly when he came in. It wasn’t too long after we started the show because I was going to interview him. He had made this custom case for his Peloton and started taking it. I don’t think it was the same guy.

He worked with Neil Diamond.

At the time, he’s worked with other artists since then. That name doesn’t sound familiar.

He has a case that he travels around the world with.

He used to patent that because so many artists would want that.

I have artists who have regular bikes that they would take around or treadmills that they would request on their rider. Tom, you can explain all about riders. It’s easy to put it in a case, put it on the truck and take it around.

Jeff Dunham has a whole thing for his elliptical. It folds out and then it never leaves the case. It’s like some transformer thing in hard folds. They pack it back up and he goes.

Here’s the other great thing that I have found. I was using Peloton when we were on the road. You don’t have to have a Peloton to use the Peloton stuff. You can use it anywhere. When I was traveling on a tour, I would go to the hotel gym, have my app with me, be able to use the strength and treadmill classes, get on whatever bike they had at the hotel gym or whatever gym they let you use and do it that way. I think that’s the great thing about what Peloton offers. Having a bike is an amazing thing, but you don’t have to. You can have all of the great things about Peloton anywhere you are in the world without necessarily having to have that.

The bike is ideal, but in a pinch, you can use whatever bike is in your hotel gym and muddle through.

I couldn’t do that as well back in the day because I had my Android phone. There were so many things that weren’t on the Android app. I couldn’t do things. You couldn’t preload classes. You couldn’t find collections and things like that, but it’s better now.

I will also say, traveling in Europe and I think this is such a great thing and a big deal. The partnership that Peloton signed with Precor will be huge because I can tell you in Europe, especially how many hotel gyms use Precor equipment.

That’s an interesting tidbit that we would not know. Do you mind sharing your leaderboard name with people? Do you want people to leave you alone?

I don’t care. It’s Gayle3R.

Why 3R?

That was my first apartment in New York City.

What a great story. I love that.

It’s not like I spend it on pizza. In some of the leaderboard names, I’m not that creative. I was like, “That’s easy.”

Yours is super meaningful. It’s got a heart.

Being from the Midwest, I would think everything would be long numbers. I wouldn’t think it would be 3R. I live in apartment 1267A.

I lived on the third floor and it was apartment R.

Do you have any advice for people entering the world of Peloton?

Explore everything. That’s the most important thing. For me, when I first got on it, there were three things I did and one thing I didn’t do. The three things that I did was I went on Reddit and scanned that. I went and watched a couple of rides before getting on the bike so I could get a feel for how the class operated. I had done spinning before and didn’t like it. The reason why I didn’t like what I had done at gyms, one, it was usually all the same kind of music. Two, at one of the places that I went to, they had a big leaderboard in the front. It said your bike number. You would move up and down the leaderboard. I want to be able to do what I want to do. I’m not a big leaderboard for competitiveness. I always cringe that I was always at the bottom. I was like, “I want to be able to enjoy this and try and improve on myself and not feel like I’m a loser by being at the bottom.”

I did find this helpful and I’m not saying this because I’m talking to you. When I first discovered you, I went back and listened from the very first episode, all the way up to where I was. I learned so much about interesting tidbits, different instructors and how the Peloton community operates. I thank you because it was very helpful. The other thing I would say is, I have been adding HIIT or Tabata into one of my days. On one of the rides that I did, the instructor said, “You should be throwing up right now.” I was like, “No, I don’t want to do this.” It’s because that happens doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try that instructor in a different realm or a different type of ride. For every time that they do that, another time you’ll get a Golden Buddha story.

These instructors have to talk a lot. If there’s anyone who will be the first to say, “Don’t write somebody off just because of one offhanded remark that might have upset you,” because I’d be the first person who gets written off. Is that the optimal thing to say? No. At the moment, he or she was probably trying to be goofy, but it didn’t come out right. I’ve been there.

Every person is different. Motivationally, some people may respond well to that type of interaction. I wasn’t saying it in a negative way. I was saying it for me that motivation doesn’t work. There are instructors who use different methods for different rides. Sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn’t, but I don’t allow that to say, “I’m never going to try a ride by that instructor.” For me, it’s all about the music. I usually only do, I will. Now, I only do one live ride a week at home. They’ve changed the times, so it doesn’t work, but Sundays are my Jenn Sherman rides, 9:30, that’s it. I know I’m going to get a kick-ass playlist and I’m going to get a motivational talk. I want to be able to listen and go. That’s how I choose my rides.

At the end of every day, I’ll look at the new rides that came up. I’ll look at the playlist and I’m like, “That’ll be interesting. Bookmark.” A lot of times, it takes me out of certain instructors, but those instructors will also do different rides that you wouldn’t expect at a different time. With the exception of the German instructors, because I need to be able to understand what they’re saying, even though you can do subtitles, I tried every instructor. There’s not a bad one of the bunch.

Thank you so much for taking the time out of what I’m sure is a busy day to join us. We greatly appreciate it.

As you know, a mutual friend suggested that this would be a good idea. I was like, “I don’t know enough if I have a lot to offer, but sure, why not?”

It was a great idea. We love hearing people, not just their Peloton stories, but also their life stories and people with different kinds of jobs.

Also, how you incorporate everything into your life differently because we all do, it’s all highlighting different people from the community. I loved hearing your story and your hush because it’s awesome. People are going to love it.

It was a pleasure talking with you. You do an amazing show and service to our community. Thank you.

Thank you. Where can people find you if you would like to be found?

I’m on Facebook, Gayle Fine. I’m on Instagram, @GCF123. You don’t want to find me on Clubhouse. I’m on Twitter, @GCF123. The usual places, I’m not too hard to find.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

It was good talking to you.

I guess that brings this episode to a close. What pray tell do you have in store for people next episode?

We’re going to be talking to Doug Cone. We’re going to be talking music again, but a totally different subset of that conversation. I am looking forward to that conversation.

That sounds great. Until then, where can people find you?

People can find me on Facebook at Facebook.com/crystaldokeefe. They can find me on Instagram, Twitter, the bike, and of course the tread @ClipoutCrystal.

You can find me on Twitter @RogerQBert or on Facebook at Facebook.com/tomokeefe. You can find the show online on Facebook.com/TheClipOut. While you’re there, like the page, join the group. You can watch the episodes at Youtube.com/TheClipOut and wherever you’re getting your podcasts from. Be sure and follow us so you never miss an episode and sign up for our newsletter at theclipout.com. That’s it for this one. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, keep running.

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