Ep04 - Why do some apps and websites suck?

In this episode, we explore why people in the UAE get frustrated with apps and websites. We discuss key takeaways from the World Government Summit and how one major sporting event doesn't pay artists for their talent.

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Welcome along, it's episode four of Aeolian sands. If this is the first time you've tuned in, thank you very much for making it part of your day. And if you're regularly listening to us, welcome back. It's very good to have you with us. This week, we're working out why apps suck, and how often we're throwing our phones at the wall in annoyance. And we'll also be exploring what was making the headlines at the World Government Summit, Mr. Musk had a few things to say. And just how much did Rihanna get paid to appear? The Super Bowl? Might not be as much as you might expect. But first up Mir, how are you this week? Good. Another week. We're storming through change of season. It's getting warm in Dubai. As expected, no surprise there. It's a Friday. Let's get into it. Well, big bold question. This week, we quiz the UAE about websites and apps. We love this topic. We all use them every single day. But how often are people getting frustrated by them? So the wording of the question was, how often do you get frustrated by apps or websites, and his results 60% of people so six in 10, people get frustrated by apps or websites every single week. And that rises to more than three quarters. 76% of people get frustrated on a monthly basis. So vast majority of people in the UAE getting annoyed all the time at apps and websites. Why do you think this is poor design, really. So we looked at kind of global data as well. So the kind of the top four reasons for frustration. When a person is frustrated, or stressed or anxious when using a website or an application, the top reason is slow load times, it just takes too long to load. And they think either their connection is not live or honestly the website sucks, loading errors. For whatever reason the website fails to load or the app fails to open or it crashes, dead links or buttons, so links that you know, or spaces where you think you can click on a button that you think you can click, but it actually does nothing. And that leads to frustration as well. And then. And then the last kind of the fourth top reason for frustration was bad navigation circular unintuitive kind of people being unsure of where to go to get the information that they need. Yeah, makes sense, doesn't it disconnected journeys, user experience, I often find that here in this part of the world is there's possibly poor communication, poor messages that perhaps are on the website, badly organised tabs as well. Sometimes it's really difficult to find your way around things. And, and probably my biggest frustration is language. I know that I'm I live in a part of the world where the vast majority of the region is Arabic speaking. I am not an Arab speaker. I'm an English native speaker. And, you know, I've had a number of issues with, say, for example, my phone provider, no matter how hard I try, and I tell them numerous times in many different ways, whether it's through chatbots, speaking to real people when I can, and you know, even going into two stores and saying, Look, I don't speak Arabic, but you keep sending me texts in in Arabic, I have no idea what they say. Now, obviously, I can stick them onto the Translate. But when I phone up, for example, all the options that I have, are in Arabic, same with my bank, I had the same the same issue. And it makes it more difficult for me to to kind of navigate apps or websites when I don't have that as a first option. I have to kind of try and scroll through. And I'm sure it it's the other way around as well. You know, there's a lot of businesses that international businesses that come to the region, and they're English first, they're just not optimised for Arabic. You know, even just the navigation of pages from from left to right versus right to left. And I think that's one of the primary problems that we have here. If you look at designers within the web space, and people who create apps. So there's obviously UI user interface, right? There's UX user experience, and that kind of all sits under this umbrella of digital experience, right? So when they're planning this architecture of this website, or this app, a lot of times most of the focus, and possibly a lot of the budget is spent on making this thing look really good. Right? And they put maybe they will tend to overlook or have a lot more oversight over the experience of an app practically how are people going to use this website? Interesting global research found by full story Um, they at the start of this year, they found that almost half of consumers don't care which app or website is it that they're visiting, as long as it works. So they're able to perform the function, or checkout, or get access to their banking app, as long as it works. That's what's most important to them. And you know, and that's a real pain point for brands and businesses. So it's really, you know, you think that, Oh, my website, or my app doesn't look good. That's why people are not going to use it or visit it. But it's actually poor UX UI or dx design thinking, which leads to a real pain point for brands and businesses. So further research found that it directly impacts sentiment and sales, 75% of people are likely to abandon the site, or the transaction 55% are unlikely to return. And 54% will, will trust a brand less based on their digital experience of that website and app. So it has real world implications. When was the last time you got frustrated by an app or a website? Oh, I've made a list. So we're gonna go into it, I made a list of my pet peeves of really bad, or really annoying things that annoy me in terms of UX UI, maybe because I'm a bit more conscious. Because we work a lot with brands and businesses. And we look at architecture and Sitemaps for maps and navigation journeys. And, and, you know, plot plotting that all out, but it's quite interesting. I kicked something before we go into those exact things. I just say slow speed as well. Yeah, you know, when we've come a long way since dial up. But I think it's also made us more impatient, when it comes to how quickly pages load. And obviously, obviously, that can be the internet connection, but it can also be how well optimised the websites or apps are as well. 100% Like I said, the number one reason for frustration was slow load times. I you know, I was kind of researching and going deeper into all of this, and this UX designer, there's actually a website, everyone should check it out. I guarantee it's the most horrible torture experience that you're gonna have. It's actually called the world's worst website. ever.com. So he's basically built a website, that is just the most horrendous thing to you don't know, it doesn't load when it does load, you don't know where to go. The information is like everywhere is just insane. But But yeah, definitely worth a Google and kind of go through it just you know, to feel grateful about websites that are maybe not 100%. Great, but better than the world's worst website for sure. Do you think you're getting more annoyed at websites than your, your female relatives? Because apparently men according to our survey, which we did, men are getting a bit more angry on a daily basis than women. That's interesting. I think I would get more annoyed. I think possibly women have more patience. At least my wife doesn't really get that frustrated. For me. It's quite annoying. But also like, can you do you remember, before the pandemic, like three years ago, how bad the banking apps used to be? I mean, I won't name them. Some of them might be our clients, but but they were they were really, really bad. Right? There was no like face ID it was like it would never load, you could never do anything. Some of them have got worse, though. Yeah. Again, no names. But I've had some issues with with these things. And it was it was it brings up another area, which is human human error. My my phone wasn't properly synced on the time settings, which this particular app wanted it to be automated time settings in order for it to work. Now, obviously, I didn't know that. I don't even know when i On Clicked the automated time probably when I flew somewhere and changed the time manually. But you know that that syncing between the technology itself and what the expectations are from the person who's developing that app, and the actual settings that you have individually, sometimes they don't match. And that can be that that disconnect between the technology and the person who uses it. So what was the actual I was I was the dumbass Oh, you're you're you're the one who I was the one who messed around settings on my phone. And therefore it wasn't it wasn't entirely what the people who were creating the banking app would have expected and how easy it was I basically broke the banking app, or you broke my own stupidity. Wow. And do you think like that, that feedback actually escalated further, were to a point where they're actually going to update the app for instances like that. Yeah, I mean, you'd hope so. But obviously, it needs to be volume, right? If there's been hundreds of people who face that issue. Now, the fact is when when I actually got a call from the bank about this particular thing, saying hey, look, have you done this, this this and it was the first thing they said. So my suspicion News. I wasn't the first person to have that issue. Okay. That's pretty interesting. But yeah, I mean, these these kinds of little details. And obviously, it's very hard to, to plan when you're doing design thinking it's very hard to plan for every simple, you kind of look at that middle average, that median of users. But there are, it's very hard to plan for every kind of extreme on the peripheral to those edge use cases, right, specifically. But I think there's still a lot of things that they don't do well, and, and like I said, they're the this directly impact sales, right for businesses. You we all we've always heard cases of, for example, I think it was, it was Microsoft that played around with the colour of the button to check out. And that led to a 50% increase in conversions. Most C commerce or or shopping, wherever transaction is required, they always ask you before that you create an account, right. And they realise that because again, looking at how people are interacting, they created that checkout as a guest. So you don't actually have to create an account. And that again, reduce that friction to increase conversion. So it can be money, one money lost, it could work either way. Here to kind of really interesting examples, I found where bad UX UI can result in, in money lost. Remember, in the earlier days of the App Store, Google, Amazon play, the Play Store, they kind of realised that the the kids were playing with the devices, the tablets, and I'm sure people have heard of those. And they were just purchasing, like on like, the different games like Angry Birds or whatever. They were just doing hundreds of dollars worth of game purchases that their parents weren't aware of. But it still happens. It still happens. Right? So actually, parents took these tech companies to court. And obviously, all three of them Amazon, Apple, Google, they all kind of claimed that they made enough disclosures when you're kind of confirming to purchase these, but they lost in court. So Google had to refund $19 million to individual users, Apple had to refund $32.5 million. B with a beat with a B million million. Yeah. Alright, drop in the ocean for them. We'll take it further there. In 2009, someone in Walmart said that, hey, we you know, we should be speaking to our customers. And let's let's find out from these customers. So this is an example of bad UX UI design. Right? So they said, Yeah, all right. We're gonna run a survey, let's send it out to our database. It was a one question survey. All right. And the question was, would you like Walmart to be less cluttered? Right? And the only option was yes or no. Now, if I was to ask you, would you like a supermarket or space or any, you know, kind of shopping experience to be less cluttered? Obviously, everyone would say yes. Right. And which turned out everybody did say yes, or the majority of it. So Walmart then proceeded to, based on that result, removed 15% of their inventory off the floor, which resulted in 1.8 5 billion loss in sales. A bet the guy who did that the whole team was fired. The whole team was fired. I don't think they ran a survey after that ever again. But yeah, and is that when Walmart realised that the customer the customer's opinion, doesn't matter, doesn't matter. We just gave things away. Yeah, exactly. Fair enough. So also, then looking a little bit more into this particular survey, which we did here in the region. In terms of age, the younger you are, the more likely you are to get frustrated by technology. So a little over eight in 10, people who are in that Gen Zed age bracket 18 to 2425, that gave get frustrated by apps every single month, but people who are over the age of 45, it's around about 66%, there's about 16% difference in age based on that kind of 20 year difference in age bracket. I'm not quite sure why, you know, the people over 45, on on justice, frustrated, because certainly, when I think of older people using technology, you know, they tend to not be as good at using it. So I would have thought it would have been just as high if not higher than then younger people. I just think like, younger people, their expectations are like through the roof, right? Where there's such a privileged, like, do you remember when we didn't have cell phones, or we had to connect to the internet, and you had to you had that dial up modem? And it was like, God forbid somebody picked up the phone while you were connected to your internet and you couldn't, you know, so there I think you know, that meme where it's like, come on granddad's. You know, a bit but it's true, right? Because I think of like the comedian Louie CK, he did a bit where he's on an aeroplane and it was like, you know, whatever, delta or whatever. And Delta was like, oh, ladies and gentlemen. I'm we're proud to announce that we have a new service on all our flights, and you can now connect to the internet. Right? So everyone's like, Oh, great. The guy sitting next to him was like, fantastic connect. And like two minutes later, it stops working and the guys like, right? Like how, like, are you not amazed that you're like sitting in a seat flying through the sky, where, you know, reaching your destination in two hours, like you should be grateful, right? But people are disappointed. And I think that's where the frustration comes. Speaking of spoiled, Westerners are apparently the most impatient in here in the region, when it comes to apps and websites with 83% of getting frustrated every single month. That compared to 79% of Emirati, so quite quite close 75% of Asian expats and apparently the most chill of all our Arab expats. 73%. So there's about 10% difference between Western experts and Arab experts, Sharjah residents have higher expectations from apps and websites than those living in Abu Dhabi, by full 10 percentage points. So again, you know, perhaps more expectations from from people in charge. I don't know if there's a particular reason for that. Do they have, you know, use certain technology that they just want to access instantly? Are Abu Dhabi people just super chill? I don't know. Like, I think we should. If any event, if we know anyone, or anyone's watching or listening that lives in Sharjah, I'd love to find out why, you know, and then I guess there's also the market comparison, you know, are we getting spoilt in the Middle East? Our access to the latest technology, our increasingly connected presence on the Internet, we're doing more and more online? And does that just naturally mean that we're getting more and more frustrated by things that we have to interact with on a day to day basis, when we're, for example, logging into video conference calls yesterday, it took 25 minutes for me to get on to the particular conference call, not going to rip the particular service. But, you know, we're not individuals are we were. And that's that was the issue, we just couldn't get on to the service. And it wasn't just me, it was also you. And there was that disconnect. And it meant that we were kind of a little bit late for a client call. And you have to send the apologies, and it just doesn't look as professional, that technology needs to be right there to be, you know, up to the standards that you expect on both personal and professional level. Yeah, absolutely. I think I think it's important to also understand that it may also differ, and it'd be interesting to see. And I think that's why like Asian experts were possibly less so frustrated by the technology than Western experts. Because, you know, internet speeds, latency is slower over there. So their expectation for sites to load or apps to load is is this, you know, it's way faster. It's comparison, right? It's perspective. So possibly, when things don't work here, that's what gets people frustrated. So I actually listed down some really annoying things that annoy me, personally. And I'd love to get your perspective, this annoys you as well, or what do you think is the actual reason behind it? So some annoying UI UX fails for me? So WhatsApp, you know, they have that feature where you can delete a message? Yes. Right. Why show the person that you've deleted the message the recipient? It's a good it's a good question, right? Like, who is the designer that thought that look, okay, now I could just make that disappear. Like, it never really happened, right? John's deleted the message. Yeah. Hey, what? What did you want to say there? John? It causes me Yeah, was it is pretty easy. It's very clear. Exactly. Like, it's just why let the person know. So if anybody knows the answer to this, I'd love to, I'd love to hear that. Yeah, that's that's one kind of really one thing that I've always worried. And I've thought about, but I just never could figure it out. The second thing that I hate are, you know, on websites or apps, long lists, right? Especially the nationality or your place of residence. So if you're a web designer or an app designer in the UAE, right? If you just do a Google search, you'll pretty much know the top 10 nationalities that reside in the UAE. Why do I need to scroll all the way down through 190? Nations to the bottom to select United Arab Emirates, right? It just, I mean, why are they just have the top 10 nationalities at the top right. So like UK, you know, Egypt, Syria, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, etc. So make it easy, and then you can have the long list. For me, I think it makes sense A to Zed. I don't have frustration with that kind of makes sense to me to have A to Z. And so just scroll all the way. And finally, if you can just, you know type a letter, that kind of short answer. But you're most likely like the people visiting that app or downloading that app or setting up their account are based here. So just and that's a that's an example of a good UI UX. Design. The old days people who live union like Albania, Andorra, they've got no problem with it. Oh, yeah, there. Yeah, or Afghanistan, right? Any of the countries that they're there they haven't they haven't good. Another one that I hate is live chat. Because you know, it's always like advertised on the website or on the app as I speak to someone right now. But as soon as you load it up, it's like, oh, you've been placed in a queue, please wait for your number HTTP will speak to you in four days. Yeah. So that's another quite annoying one that I have. And then the last one that I that I really, really hate are apps that. So for example, if you want to, you know, they'll have a tab for it. So like your profile or your account, but if you need to change something, so like, I have the zoom app, on my phone, right. And I also have my Adobe app on the phone. But if I need to change something within the profile, for example, update my password, right? Or change my plan. It tells me to go to the website, to log in on a browser and go to the website to do that. Right? Why not just have everything on the app? Like why have an app and then also kind of forced me to go to the website? That annoys me as well? Yeah, I, for me, I think it's, it's also it kind of raises a bigger topic. But the syncing between brands, you know, and there's there's been a quite a large scale, legal dispute in North America with certain businesses being brought to head to head about being anti competitive. It's a huge potential issue for the for the future, I think as big tech goes head to head with each other, you know, the, on the one hand, you've got regulators sort of saying, look, you've got to open things up for, for competition, you've got to be able to make sure that people can interact between different brands. So Google, Apple, Android, Microsoft, whatever it is, that they've got to be able to kind of sync properly with each other. But I actually think we're entering the age of the tech wars. I think we might have to pick sides, I think that it's going to be whether it's overt or, you know, a bit more behind the scenes, I just think that we're going to have to be forced into this issue of, are we are we Apple users? Are we google? Are we are we Microsoft? We all use all of them at the moment. But in 10 years, will all of us be kind of using the different technology between? Will it become more harmonious, will it be easier to share between a Google Drive and syncing up with your Microsoft Teams? Will it I don't know? Will it be more, more likely that we are, you know, specialists in a certain type of technology? And I think that that's the that's the big battle that we're facing. It's it's it's a huge potential issue for us as individual users of technology, and particularly for those big BMI thick tech giants. So I think there are cases that are taking place, and discussions in Congress as well, right in the US around antitrust. And yeah, the Right, exactly, this is all about making it better for competition between brands so that it's better for the consumer. Whether that actually translates all the tech giant's just innovate beyond this. And they always have been, they've always, they always stay a step ahead of the regulator. Yeah, innovation is always going to be ahead of regulation. And that's across any industry, any sector. And that, you know, interestingly brings us to something which we'll be talking about in the in the new section in a moment. I'll be talking about the in the news in a moment. But of course, if you want to immerse yourself more into the topics that we discuss across Aeolian sands, you can head to Duke mayor.com. And you can read the technology and lifestyle report that we've got on there. It's a beautiful PDF. It's got lots of themes and more detail. Check it out@gmail.com. It's under the research section. Now, in the news, where we look at some of the headlines reverberating across the Middle East this week, we're wading through the talking points from the World Government Summit. Yeah, so the ninth edition of the World Government Summit took place in Dubai. It was established in 2013 by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed, and essentially, his vision and mission to inspire and enable the next generation of government, which we know His Highness Sheikh Mohammed is quite a visionary when it comes to really thinking out of the box in terms of the role that governance plays in daily lives for the residents of Dubai and, and people living in the UAE. So this year, the themes on the agenda were development and governance, future of societies and healthcare. So how are how are FUTURE CITIES designed and the importance of health care and social services within them? Exploring the frontiers how space and the advancement of technology and innovation can benefit governments of today. economic resilience in light of climate change, geopolitical instability, currency fluctuation, market instability, and then city design and sustainability, and of course, learning and work. Now, these are the themes, but no matter how hard you try, you can't escape Elon Musk. He grabbed the podium, he talked about some quite major issues. Now, we covered AI in quite a lot of detail in previous episodes. But a quick take from me on this one me Elon, reckons we should regulate AI. What do you think? I, I tend to agree. I think it's, it's moving quite fast. There are a lot of players. And we kind of only hear about the ones that have blown up recently, like barred from Google or chat GBT, from which is now essentially going to be implemented across Microsoft's tech stack. But there I think I was looking at a figure they were around 90 other companies that are using similar forms of generative transformers, AI analytics and machine learning tools across different use cases. There's no regulation at this stage. There's no framework or a roadmap in terms of how to regulate. And there's not really any discussion happening at the moment as well, I think the kind of following the FTX debacle, we're still kind of coming or regulators are still coming to grips in terms of how to manage digital assets and cryptocurrency. So AI is kind of not even on the on the agenda for regulators at this moment. I think, demanding regulations a bit rich from a guy who drills holes through cities, he scatters space with private satellites, and he creates self driving vehicles, where more than 360,000 of them have been recalled for safety reasons. Innovation has always been the priority over regulation for Elon Musk himself. So I have to be a bit cynical when I hear him say that he thinks that things with AI should be regulated. What's in it for him? He's not necessarily wrong. But what's in it for him to actually say it stand on a public forum and say that? Well, I think, I mean, we have to think about it from a perspective from context as well. He was speaking at the Government Summit, right? So he's speaking to world leaders. He's speaking to regulation, don't they that, you know, you say regulation, they love it, right regulation and policy and framework. So he's playing to the audiences. He's playing to the audience. Plus, I think he's been he's been saying this for quite some time. So he's been talking about the the threat of AI, the threat of not necessarily regulated, but there's no oversight in terms of the direction that it's gonna go. Right. And I think that is, that is a key, key topic to explore. And there should be debate and conversation around these topics, because it'll only help improve the technology, but also the use cases. Yeah, I mean, in this instance, I actually agree with Ilan. So he also is talking about the education system, he thinks it should be reduced to around about 10 years, give or take. And he says that the emphasis should be on critical thinking, and research abilities. So he says education should be down to 10 years. Yeah. So he thinks that education is taking too long at the moment. You start school at what four or five years old, when you're going right through until maybe as much as 20 years beyond that, just to get you know, a degree and then kind of leave. And you know, from when you first started it's 20 year gap. He thinks that that should be reduced down and that by the time people are 16 or 18 years old, they should be able to go and attack and really get into the world and start contributing. Yeah, I mean, I'd agree with that. I think he has kids, he has his own school, right. Elon has his own school, so that I think they're like 15 Kids, his kids study in that school as well. There's like, no curriculum. It's, it's, it's like a decentralised version of a school very future facing all the secrets dystopian. Yeah, very dystopian. But I tend to agree, I think, you know, as again, it's not maybe not controversial, but headline grabbing, right. And that's what Elon is great at. I think the bigger conversation is the education sector in the industry. And academia is a legacy. It's a legacy legacy. Industry within within our within our daily lives, right. It hasn't really changed much. And I think they need to really relook at what education is, how it's empowering the youth preparing them for the future, what kind of skills and I think that's again, the education industry is very, very low. large business. So it's a very, very big place to disrupt. It's not easy. But I would tend to agree. I think education needs to be looked at whether it's 10 years or zero years, up for anything that's different from what is on offer to kids today. Yeah, I think education isn't evolving fast enough children are leaving school, they're unprepared for reality. I also think there's a huge potential for gamification of education. You know, imagine this, this ability now to step into virtual reality matter versus where you're exploring the world. You can visit different countries, what a great way to do geography. What about artificial intelligence, actually recreating scenes from historic moments, you know, big battles of the past? What a great way to immerse people into history. What about language, having virtual sessions using technology with actual native speakers from across the world, there's great potential using technology using the the amazing resources that we have at our fingertips, whether education and systems itself, and how that's being controlled by, as you say, large corporations that perhaps have their own interest in keeping things in the status quo. That's not necessarily happening. And I think I think it over the next few years, we're going to see massive disruption in education. But the primary problem for me, particularly in Western economies, and from what I hear from from friends who are in the teaching space, that there's a lack of respect for teachers in many countries, and whether it's learning remotely, teenage teenagers don't have the discipline to study, they've got their PlayStation or an Xbox in the corner. You know, which one's going to be more interesting to me listening to the teacher on on Zoom or, or playing playing a game whilst I've, you know, cleverly setup something that makes it look as though I'm actually tuned into the lesson. So you have to make learning more fun, it has to it has to be hands on, it's got a, it's got to involve and use the latest technologies, it's got to be creative. And I also think you've got to have choice for students, they've got to feel empowered, that they're doing things that they are actually interested in wanting to learn. But I'm gonna challenge you on that, I think, going back to the findings within the life and Technology Report, right? You're advocating for using more gamification and technology within learning. And a lot of people are finding it harder to disconnect from technology. So we're talking about okay, now virtual learning, getting them in the metaverse, gamification of the education system. So I think the tools are, you know, the tools are just one side of the story. When it comes to education, I think the kind of the real conversation that that's required is, is practical learning versus academic learning. Right? You'll learn a lot more by standing outside and setting up a lemonade stand in terms of how to market how to sell how to price, how to build a product, how to deliver a service, right, how to manage your books, what's your profit, gross profit, net profit revenue is, you know, you can learn a lot from that. And I think that's, and that kind of critical thinking and emotional thinking. And, you know, that's those are skills that are possibly not being delivered within academic learning, which a lot of times at the pace of which the world is moving with things, exponentially changing every day, especially in technology. You know, by the time you complete that four year university degree, the world changed. But I would I would actually say that people learn in different ways. You're saying that, you know, you go out and you set up that lemonade stand and whatever. But what does that teach us about things like philosophy or things which are more emotive? When it comes to learning people have different ways of exploring, you know, how they want to learn. Obviously, some people are very visual, others aren't others like to listen and put on a podcast or, or something where they can learn things by just listening. Some people are are applied, they like doing things they like getting stuck into things. Some people like reading text, this is why different content, different ways of doing things. Obviously, we deal with different content on a daily basis. That's why you have to have a mix, because people like different things they like, like learning in different ways. So when it comes to education, you've got to have different resources for different people. But I think look, reduction in years of education, the clear winners are parents because education is expensive. Well and get them out of the house, get out of the house at 16. Come on, get out and get get to work the amount of money parents have to save and pay for decent education for their children. If education is down from you know 12 years or 14 years down to eight or 10. That's considerable savings. A lucky You're not going to find a parent who disagrees with you me. One of the other things that was talked about and I think it's very important to mention is that we had Dr. Sultan Al Jabber. He's in charge of lots of things. He's got so many titles, I'm not going to go through them all. But he he deals with everything from advanced technology to leading our NOC and master huge organisations. And it was actually in his role as Managing Director of cop 28 That he addressed the World Government Summit. And he said a couple of things. Firstly, he said, We shouldn't be using the same energies that powered the first industrial revolution, big bold statement from somebody who's in charge of app knock. And he says admissions must fall by 43% in the next seven years, in order to prevent worse global climate effects and increased climate driven issues for humanity. Yeah, I mean, very interesting. And absolutely, and this is the right forum to talk about and discuss and debate such topics, because you have actual decision makers and people of influence that can drive this change. And it's not something that you can do overnight, but it's a number of different moving pieces across energy, transport, infrastructure, education, technology, that all come together to this meeting point or this target of 2030. And I think a lot of the way that even the way that we're, you know, building today, from construction to agriculture, I think they're, we're still kind of not building for the future. Right? It's, we're, what's the what's the phrase where you kind of put a bandaid on leak? Or on a wound? Or what is it? Like you just where there's a small leak, and you just keep fixing the hole attaching a hole, he patching a hole fixing the issue? Exactly, yep. So people need to kind of before they kind of take on any of these initiatives, they really need to think of the long term effect and how it will roll out and how it can be inclusive rather than exclusive where each of these different things are speaking to each other for accumulative effect of of reaching a desired outcome. Now, we'll be exploring this in a lot more detail in the coming podcasts. So it's a bit of a challenge. For those of you listening, we'd love to hear your suggestions on what we should be asking people in the region about environment and nature. Should we ask about recycling? Should we get views on climate change? Let us know your thoughts by dropping an email to info at Duke mit.com. That's info@dkemir.com the best ones we'll be using to survey people across the Middle East for our next series of big bold questions. Now rounding off the show is under the radar. In the past weeks, we've discussed everything from nuclear fusion to 100 year old predictions and rubber production. Mir What have you got up your sleeve this week? The Super Bowl. So raw topic for me as an Eagles fan very, very raw topics. I know China heavily. And that's why I picked it as the topic for today for under the radar. See if I open some wounds for me. Yes. And I do not watch. So disclaimer, I don't watch American football, or know much about the Super Bowl. But I came across quite an interesting article. And obviously we know that the Super Bowl and the NFL. It's kind of one of the biggest sporting events for North America and American football watching nations. Do you so how much do you think they? What's the viewership? Do we know kind of this year? Was it better? I think it's anywhere between 300 and 400 million people. A lot of North American watches it obviously. And then various parts of the world. I think it's something around that because they were talking about the World Cup being tuned in to buy, you know, sort of 2 billion or 3 billion being 10 times bigger than the Superbowl. So it must be somewhere around that region. Yeah, apparently. According to Nielsen specifically for North American audiences. This was a six year high for the Superbowl. So they increased one percentage point from last year's viewership. But in terms of revenue, they generate a massive amount. According to the US National Retail Federation. The Superbowl is expected was expected to generate 16 point 5 billion in nationwide spending from consumers, multiple streams of course, sponsorships tickets, ad sales, merch sales, and obviously all the local businesses that benefit from hosting the Superbowl. Kind of look at the numbers any estimates vary, of course, but from ticket sales, it was around$60 million ad sales around 7 million broadcasting rights 3 billion so a lot a lot of money. It's a it's a it's a big cash cow for the NFL. I've got to grab you straightaway though and say hold on a second Super Bowl. Millions and millions of people watching it around the world. How Is this under the radar hour under the radar segment? Plot twist. Did you know that halftime artists actually don't get paid an artist fee to perform? No. I mean, obviously, we have talked about this a little bit before doing the podcast. And I had no idea that people would get paid, not get paid anything for poor performing. Yeah, I was I was kind of I was kind of shocked and, you know, quick history lesson for people who are possibly not familiar with the Super Bowl. So kind of, you know, during the 60s 60s to 70s, that decade, the Super Bowl was more about entertaining the crowd at the stadium, rather than grabbing new eyes through television. The halftime shows were typically performed by college marching bands, as they still do, you know, in college football exactly, you know, growing popularity of the Super Bowl by 1972. This kind of started or the, or the idea of celebrities and well known performers to perform during halftime shows. By the Now obviously, a lot was happening in America between the 70s and the 90s. You know, social unrest, race riots, liberal movements, Vietnam. So what they kind of realised that what's happening at the halftime show is not resonating with actually what's the popular culture in the country, right. So there was a band that performed four years in a row, you know, and kind of their viewership was dwindling. In 1992, the Super Bowl, which would air on CBS. At that time, there was a rival network, called Fox. And they aired an episode of the sketch comedy series in Living Colour during the halftime period. And the viewership of the second half of the game dropped by 22%. So approximately 22 million viewers were sucked away from their televisions due to this, due to this sketch, and counter programming started picking up so all these people started doing special one off halftime sketches or presentations. During halftime, the NFL wasn't going to let this happen. So they all got together in a boardroom. And they decided that we're going to fight back. So they said, Hey, we're gonna go after major artists and the first major artists to do the Superbowl show was Michael Jackson. And he asked for a million dollars in artists fee to perform. And after tough negotiations, there was no artists fee paid to Michael Jackson, and exchange, the NFL and Frito lays, which was the key sponsor at that time donated$100,000, to his Heal the World Foundation. Okay. And that, and since then, this has been the precedent, the NFL, for Super Bowl halftime shows, do not pay artists a fee, they pay for all the production, all the production costs associated with the performance of the halftime show. Now, because I knew we were going to be talking about this, I had a quick look at how musicians are actually making money. Because, you know, the natural assumption is they go they perform, they do these big concerts, and they make a fortune, but, but actually, it's quite normal for big festivals to actually pay less. So as an example, you might have watched the Glastonbury where the Rolling Stones performed, and they didn't get paid a fee, they actually lost money because they paid for some of the setup there. Some artists will get paid millions of dollars, others don't. You know, I was looking at some of the fees that have been commanded. You know, Lady Gaga has charged $4 million for a festival performance. So she actually has been paid a decent sum for turning up to one of the big festivals. You know, at the other end of the scale, there's dance acts like sigma got paid$30,000, not very much, probably didn't even pay for the cost of their travel. Eminem, somewhere in the middle, a million dollars. You know, there's different fees paid for different festivals. And it really does vary a huge, huge amount. And then there's all the kind of day to day artists, musicians, who are perhaps a bit more struggling and they're not big names that you've heard of, who were actually paying to turn up to these festivals. They're paying for their own things and they're, they're bringing their own kit and then they have absolutely nothing they're paying for their own hotels transport, whatever. And they end up losing money on on attending these festivals, but it's such a big brand exposure for the karate they take that risk and that's the kind of negotiation right or what the deal that's put on the table the promise for exposure dollars, right. And I thought okay, that's quite interesting. Anyway, like Rihanna, the weekend. Lady Gaga, Bruno Mars, these are Grammy nominated Hall of Fame artists, right do they need the exposure and I wanted to see like okay, let's say they don't get the paid the artists fee. Did they? Did they see any of that? exposure, come back to them in profit or revenue. JLo and Shakira following their her halftime performance, their Spotify streams went up up to 300%. In the following weeks. Rihanna in recently for her, she was really smart. What she did was she did a bespoke documentary of behind the scenes of her preparing for her halftime show. So that's the way she monetized her her show where she didn't get paid for the artists fee. Right. So there are interesting ways that these artists can get paid. Even though if it's not an artists fees directly from the NFL. But I think one of the things that I was personally not really happy about or I thought it was not ethical, is all of the D support artists, right around Rihanna. So obviously, Ron doesn't need it. But all the support artists around them, the dancers, the the musicians, the the, the performers, they're not paid at all. They attend as volunteers. They have to fly there, you know, from wherever they have to worry about their own accommodation. They have rehearsals. And and yeah, I think I think that's not really that fair. Yeah, that's fair enough to say. But then again, you know, a lot of these people that you say, Oh, I was a Superbowl dancer, how many opportunities are you going to get from that? Now, interestingly, one of the ways in which people can monetize beyond the streaming or beyond the documentaries that they may make, is to be private gigs and corporate parties. It's a massive, massive earner for these artists. So back in 2014, JLo, performed in Macau, and she got paid $1.4 million for a short set for a wealthy Chinese family. You know, you've got everybody from pit bull and flow writer performing at bar mitzvahs and weddings. Beyonce, opening the Atlantis The Royal it was a private thing. She got paid 10s of millions of dollars to perform that yacht, Andrea Bocelli, someone paid $1 million to just do a short one song duet with him. Because he had a dream to sing with Andrea Bocelli. It all organised by these private lifestyle firms, which which set up these grand parties is drilling into and seeing what Acts actually don't accept these things. Bruce Springsteen, and you, too, are apparently a couple of the acts according to Rolling Stone magazine, who do not accept private gigs or corporate parties. You know, they don't want to be doing these kinds of things. You know, when you look at the kind of corporate parties, you have big luxury brands who need to make an impact, and they have to do something like that to bring in big acts to really appeal to their audience, their audiences. Yeah. The the ethical thing on this is that, generally, the agents when they're approached with a big ol bag of cash, I'm not sure they're doing too much in terms of vetting who the hosts are. We've had a number of instances where musicians have actually apologised for performing it. But these particular private gigs, because perhaps the people who they've performed in front of haven't been the best people in the world. Yeah, yeah. And I think it's part of the MO for the agent as well, right? They know that their tour dates, so they kind of look at these opportunities for private gigs, appearances, speaking opportunities, private one on one engagements across wherever the the artists is travelling. So yeah, not being paid for your, for your creativity, or your skill or your expertise, for the promise of exposure. I'd love to find out who of which one of our listeners would agree to work with their dream brand, or perform at their dream venue, and it's for free in exchange for that exposure, or do you think hard and fast? Absolutely not. I should be paid for my creativity and expertise. Show me the money, man, show me the money. Remember to follow us on Instagram, we're on@duke_mir. You can tune into our TikTok, get lots of exposure@aeoliansands. And of course, it's all on YouTube, Spotify, and wherever else you might get your podcasts. We appreciate you listening and thank you for being part of this week's episode. We'll catch you next time on Aeolian Sands.