Bust No. 1: Podcasts. Spotify (NYSE:SPOT) has made big investments into podcasts, once declared as “the next big thing.”

• They spent nearly $1B on huge deals with Gimlet, Joe Rogan and Ringer.
• Nearly six years after pushing into podcasts, it still only makes up ~2% of Spotify’s revenue (2021).
• Spotify has laid off dozens of podcast employees and canceled several shows.

Earlier this month, Spotify’s Chief Revenue Officer said podcasts were a “big drag on our business in 2022.”

Bust No. 2: Live-shopping. Meta’s (NASDAQ:META) Instagram is shutting down their live-streaming, once called the “future of shopping.”

This is part of the larger trend, social commerce (shopping via social media), which hasn’t caught on in the US despite being wildly popular and profitable in China.

• Per Accenture, 8 out of 10 social media users use social commerce to make purchases.
• But the majority of users in the US and UK haven’t bought anything this way yet.

Otherwise, streets in the west would also look like this:

Seriously, why are they there? Because users can search locally on apps, these streamers relocate to wealthy neighborhoods. Anything for the clicks.