This week Amazon (AMZN) finally released its new streaming service, Amazon Music Unlimited, becoming the latest major company to enter the already saturated streaming market dominated by Spotify and Apple Music (AAPL).

Amazon may be officially pricing its option at the same $9.99 a month as every other streaming service, but the company has a trick up its sleeve: It’s undercutting the competition for its Prime members (charging $7.99 a month) and consumers who have the company’s home devices like the Echo and Echo Dot ($3.99).

Though Amazon doesn’t disclose its Prime subscriber count, estimates have topped 54 million, making it likely that half the households in the country have Prime—making this $2 discount accessible to a massive number of people who likely already subscribe to Apple Music, Spotify, or Tidal.

And for the 4 million customers who own a voice-assistant Echo system, Amazon is sweetening the deal even more, offering the service for just $3.99 a month for those who use its home platform.

It’s fair to assume that most people who pay for a music streaming service like Spotify or Apple Music have Prime already—and could save $2 per month by switching to Amazon Music Unlimited. However, there may be plenty of reasons for people who already subscribe to another service to stay with their current music provider and forego the $24 savings.

What Amazon brings to the table

Clearly, Amazon’s got the price going for it for most potential customers. For someone who doesn’t currently pay for a platform but has Prime, this may be a compelling case—especially for an Echo user who wants the smoothest possible integration with the Alexa platform and their smart home environment. Given that all you have to do is ask an Echo to play a song, it’s actually like having a personal DJ on hand, 24/7.

In general, the differences between the streaming services lay deep in the weeds, and may not be enough to push someone over the speedbump of switching services and porting playlists and personalization on multiple devices. As one of my Yahoo Finance colleagues mused: music streaming services are becoming a lot like banks these days – they’re all pretty similar, in quality, features, and music selection. That’s a good analogy—you really can’t go that wrong.

Spotify’s longer tenure and greater user base means it may have your friends on it, a valuable feature if you love to share. And those users have created a massive amount of playlists, something that algorithms can only approximate. These playlists cover almost any kind of music you could ask for. Recently, I felt like listening to some ‘80s prom tunes and actually found a few playlists already made. It also works with Amazon’s Echo platforms.

Apple Music has a few things in its corner as well. Obviously, as an Apple product it has Apple’s design team behind it—and thus flawlessly integrates with Apple hardware. And it has managed to negotiate deals with Taylor Swift. (The new Amazon service does, too.) It also has robust music recommendation software like Spotify and exclusive radio programs like Beats 1 and other popular radio stations DJed by a human.

The next two most popular options have advantages as well. Tidal, whose subscriber count – at under 5 million – lags behind the 17 million of Apple Music and 40 million of Spotify, offers ultra-high fidelity and exclusives from Beyoncé and Kanye West. Google Play, whose subscriber count isn’t publicized, offers commercial-free YouTube, which is enough to tip the scales for video-heavy users.

In terms of catalogue, the services don’t differ too much except for a few musicians—albeit big ones like Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Kanye—and have more similarities than differences, which include pricing schemes for family plans (most of them cost $9.99 a month or $14.99 a month for a six-user family plan).

In the end, choosing among all these services amounts to a relatively small decision, though an informed consumer can maximize what they’ll get out of their $9.99 if they choose the right one. And if Amazon really wants to pry market share from this very competitive space, it might need to sweeten the deal even more to distinguish itself.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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How many customers has Wells Fargo (WFC) lost in the wake of its scandal, which resulted in fines totaling $185 million, a $60 million clawback from two executives, and the retirement of its former CEO, John Stumpf? How has all this affected customer loyalty?

And furthermore, how many customers did the 2.1 million accounts that were opened represent, since many customers found more than one fraudulently-opened account in their names?

These questions have been on investor, analyst, and consumer advocates’ minds alike, and in his first earnings call after just 48 hours on the job, Wells Fargo’s (WFC) CEO Timothy Sloan was asked them directly by CLSA analyst Mike Mayo.

“The customer count is somewhat lower than the product count with respect to the 1.5 million deposit accounts,” a Wells Fargo executive responded. He said the number of people affected was in the neighborhood of 1.1 million. “So a three-to-two ratio there.”

Mayo followed up, asking about customer retention rates, about which the executive gave no numbers on how many customers the bank had lost.

“It’s a little frustrating not getting that retention information,” Mayo said.

“Listen I appreciate your question,” replied Sloan. “But we’ve just spent 30 minutes talking about what’s going on at the company, and we’ve provided much information and many slides that provided a tremendous amount of detail, and we’ve deliberately and diligently walked through our businesses and if that doesn’t satisfy you, I’m sorry.”

In fairness to the new CEO, it may be too early to get a reliable estimate on retention rate. For example, a number today could later have to be be revised much higher.

So when is the public going to get this information? Sloan said the company would likely offer more information at the next investor day, which usually occurs in the spring.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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Two horrific stats from Wells Fargo’s disastrous September

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Wells Fargo’s (WFC) third quarter earnings finally answered some questions consumers had about exactly how the company would remedy the cross-sell scandal, in which the bank opened 2.1 million accounts without permission,

Though the stark number of new account openings—down a whopping amount—indicate much of the public currently sees the bank as a condemned building, Wells Fargo detailed its process of “making things right” with consumers affected by its misdeeds.

In its third quarter presentation, Wells Fargo said it is looking into how customers’ credit scores may have been affected by the 565,000 unwanted credit cards, and that it’s working with credit bureaus to expunge the fraudulent files and restore credit, or furnish the card connected to the account for the people who decided to keep their cards. In addition to that, the San Francisco-based bank will be looking into the indirect and more costly consequences of how the new accounts impacted consumers’ credit scores – for example, the effect it might have on a loan’s interest rate.

“For additional products obtained from Wells Fargo,” wrote the bank, “we are analyzing whether a reduction in their FICO score may have impacted the size of a line or affected the pricing that the customer received, and if so we will adjust the line size, reduce pricing and refund the overage.”

“Our intent is to err on the side of the customer and make it right,” said new Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan in the conference call.

For customers who received loans not under Wells Fargo’s umbrella, the bank may still pay consumers the difference to fully square the damage.

“For products obtained from another financial services firm we will use our business model as a proxy to dimension estimated impact but we will work with customers on understanding their unique situation.”

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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Wells Fargo (WFC) saw a sharp drop in new account openings in September, a month during which the bank made national headlines for defrauding its customers.

On Thursday, the company announced earnings declined from a year ago. But its earnings presentation was a little different this year, with a giant section finally painting the bank’s fraudulent account openings in great detail. The fallout from the cross-selling scandal that stemmed from its draconian sales goals that led to 5,300 lower-level employees being fired echoed through the presentation’s slides, but perhaps nowhere worse than in the number of account openings.

The news broke on September 8th, as the bank settled with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for a $100 million fine, the largest in its brief history. The bank also settled with the City of Los Angeles and the Office of the Controller of the Currency for another $85 million. The news percolated up in the news cycle until September 20th, when it reached the front page after a Pacino-esque grilling from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren that went viral and got the public truly angry in the following days.

Even though Wells Fargo’s worst days in terms of PR cleanup came in the final 10 days in September, two numbers indicate just how horrible consumers saw the 565,000 credit cards without permission.

Compared to August, consumers decided to apply for 30% fewer credit cards. And compared to last September, 25% fewer. For a financial industry that usually talks in “bips,”—increments of 0.01%—this is a massive number.

For the other aspect of the scandal, the deposit side, the numbers paint an equally grim picture of consumer sentiment.

Consumer checking account openings, which like credit cards, had enjoyed a good run in the black, took enormous stumbles as well. Year-over-year, the bank saw 25% fewer checking accounts opened and a whopping 30% fewer in comparison to August.

These numbers are only the beginning. Considering that much of the public hadn’t paid particularly close attention until the viral videos of CEO John Stumpf’s grilling by the Senate Banking Committee—and then the House Financial Services Committee. The public won’t see really the extent of the damage until the Q4 call happens on January 13th.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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Undecided voter Ken Bone asked a question in the second presidential debate on Sunday, went full-on viral by Monday, and on Wednesday around noon, slid into lingerie/costume store Yandy.com as a “sexy” Halloween costume.

Philosophical questions about whether Ken Bone was already sexy enough aside—clearly, he was/is—this niche e-commerce site displayed an unbelievably fast reaction to the news. While people on eBay (EBAY) have put together Ken Bone costume kits, pieced together from real things, Yandy’s version is proprietary and made from scratch.

And it’s not the first time. Last October, the company moved on the New York City subway Pizza Rat video and, after rushing a costume to market, rode the viral wave to a Halloween success.

How did they do it so fast?

“The main thing that makes it possible is that we make it in Los Angeles,” Yandy CEO Chad Horstman told Yahoo Finance. “That helps a lot for all our exclusives—designed and made in the USA.”

Directly after the debate, when it was clear that Ken Bone had resonated with the American public and a star had been born, Horstman and the Yandy team went into action to create the “Sexy Undecided Voter Costume”—in this case a more skin-baring version of Bone’s now-famous red polo sweater, with a red crop top, fake mustache, glasses and microphone. “We came together as a team and figured out how to put this costume together. I think this was pretty close to our fastest.”

The pizza rat costume came out faster—but it wasn’t made from scratch. “We took a mouse costume we were already making and quickly produced pizza pockets. We didn’t even have to shoot it—we photoshopped it on.”

Yandy’s domestic manufacturing doesn’t just help catch the viral wave—it takes the pressure off estimating how viral something is going to get. That flexibility is key so that you don’t end up with a thousand unsold Ken Bone costumes.

In this case, the initial batch of a few hundred sold out instantly, even at the steep $99 price tag. But thanks to this supply chain, Horstman said it should be in stock Thursday.

Finding and deciding which things to make is pretty casual, often taken from suggestions by friends and family. “We don’t use any metrics, we see what’s trending on our Facebook feeds and YouTube,” said Horstman. “When something’s going viral, if we can make a costume that people will be able to recognize, we’ll do it.

In this case, Horstman’s logic was simple. “It’s hard to project how popular these things will be, but with this particular one, ‘The Undecided Voter,’—I think there’s a lot of undecided voters.”
While Yandy has jumped on viral events in the past two Octobers, mere weeks before Halloween, the company will veer from the traditional season if the occasion suggests itself. After BuzzFeed’s infamous “what-color-is-this-dress”, in February, Yandy took it to market anyway. But according to Horstman, “it’s definitely more exciting when it happens in the middle of Halloween [season].”

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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The US is starting to look a lot more like Italy, and not just because a man reminiscent of Silvio Berlusconi is in the finals for president. According to new data from Fidelity, living at home isn’t the date-ender it used to be, with most people of all ages giving it the okay. Clearly, George Costanza was born too soon.

Fidelity’s biennial Millennial Money Study, which surveyed 615 people, found that two-thirds of millennials, Gen-Xers, and baby boomers think it’s more acceptable now for college graduates to move back in with their parents—a percentage large enough to override a presidential veto. And while they may not in some countries like Italy, these modern family living situations have been around for a while, with the UK’s Independent newspaper reporting that 66% of adult men aged 18 to 35 in Italy were living with mamma in 2015. While some people have pointed to the Great Recession and high youth unemployment as having driven these numbers up, they were at 60% before before the financial crisis, according to a popularly-cited figure from Eurostat.

In terms of actual domestic bliss with parents, Fidelity found that one in five (21%) of millennials live at home—up from 14% in 2014. But the umbilical cords are long enough these days so parents can still help from afar. Almost half the millennials surveyed have at least some expense paid for by their parents—not surprising, given how much family cellphone plans save and the likeliness of many parents asking to be paid back.

At first glance, it’s easy to use these numbers to impugn the Youngs for failing to grow up to the American ideal of rugged independence. However that view would fail to recognize many benefits of this type of arrangement.

According to the Fidelity report, the lack of stigma towards nuclear families that stay together has some significant benefits. In addition to giving their offspring access to a financial role model for longer, the relationship allows for more efficient sharing of costs. Think the family plan, but on a greater scale. For example, an empty nest may have plenty of space for the child to move back in without disrupting parents’ lives and keeping costs down for the kids with favorable rent or a gift-tax loophole. In practice, some of this cost sharing has allowed millennials’ savings to keep up with their older counterparts. Among survey respondents, millennials did not differ greatly from older generations in retirement savings and emergency fund maintenance. In fact, their emergency funds were higher on average.

Overall, Fidelity’s survey showed one thing many spicy-sounding surveys about millennials fail to illustrate: There’s really not that many differences. Across the board, the responses of the different generations just didn’t vary that much, showing consensus in questions far beyond the acceptability of George Costanza’s lifestyle. This means it’s not just the Youngs moving the  needle against the grain, but that the grain is changing too.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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In the wake of the Wells Fargo (WFC) scandal, in which the bank’s employees created up to 2 million accounts without permission, it’s hard to find any winners.

Certainly not the inconvenienced customers who had to deal with canceling accounts they never authorized. Not regulators like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whose very existence was questioned yet again when it didn’t find out about the fraud until long after it began. And not former-CEO John Stumpf, whose retirement was announced Wednesday evening.  

At first glance, the bank itself might even appear to be the winner. Wells Fargo paid a $185 million fine that roughly amounts to a rounding error given its revenue of $86 billion. Moreover, Wells Fargo clawed back $60 million from executives in the wake of the scandal. Still, the bank is battered, with its relationship to customers in tatters and the possibility of more sanctions for its executives. Perhaps as Patrick Swayze mused in “Roadhouse,” nobody wins a fight.

But in revisiting how the saga unfolded, it’s clear one victor did emerge: Senator Elizabeth Warren, who used a power relatively new to Congress to —virality.

Soon after the bank agreed to cough up $185 million, the Senate Banking Committee called Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf into the chamber to answer its questions. Quickly, it turned into a brutal grilling as Warren and others berated Stumpf for failing to stop the problem. As Warren demanded to know whether he had or planned to pay back his CEO-grade compensation or resign, Stumpf sheepishly deferred that decision to the board he sits on and chairs.

As my colleague Rick Newman pointed out, Warren and the committee didn’t have authority to administer any real punishment, which made Warren look like an ineffectual grandstander at first. The federal government does not and never has run Wells Fargo and does not have the power to claw back compensation or fire an employee; that power rests with the board.

But in that hearing, Warren wasn’t playing checkers. The former Harvard law professor was playing Kasparov-grade chess.

From the moment Warren began her 18-minute tirade, the wires began to buzz, and the testimony made a rare flow off C-Span 2 to the internet and social media. Putting on one heck of a show, Warren channeled the betrayed public, flagellating Stumpf for the bank’s misdeeds under his leadership.

The people know their champion when they see one, and in short order a Facebook video posted by Warren just after the public shaming racked up more than 11 million views and almost 200,000 shares. (Warren’s office declined to comment for this story or on their video-heavy Facebook page.) AlterNet posted it and netted over 7 million, and multiple other news organizations including the BBC, NBC, NowThis, Huffington Post had their own Facebook clips of Warren’s grilling, racking up well over a million views each. And this is just one platform.

Exactly a week later, Wells Fargo said it would claw back $60 million from Stumpf and head of community banking Carrie Tolstedt, who led the community banking division that violated its customers’ trust.

And now on Wednesday, Stumpf has “retired.”

Although Warren did not herself use legislation or official congressional power to get Wells Fargo to claw back $60 million from executives, her public shaming and the Facebook post that followed fanned the public opinion fires so vigorously that the bank’s board had to do something to quell shareholders and an angry public.

Warren’s flagellation may have connected more acutely with people’s feelings more than other news coverage of the fraud, satisfying a public who couldn’t call up the CEO to vent themselves. Plus, they even got to see a big guy sweat.

Warren’s viral speech goes far beyond Stumpf. Her performance in Congress was tantamount to another, far greater fine. Before her speech, the bank could have come out relatively unscathed, since the offenses didn’t severely damage most of the customers involved. But when Warren turned up the volume, it became a public relations disaster.

In the days after the hearing, people dumped Wells Fargo in the midst of a soaring market, driving the price down to 3.6%. A Credit Suisse analyst mused “what we don’t know is where this ends,” and cut 2017 earning per share $0.15—which, in absolute terms, is $772.5 million in earnings. Deutsche Bank revised similarly, cutting its earnings estimates for 2017 by $1 billion, adding that “this could have a longer term effect on valuation.” As the Charlotte Observer noted, this is the largest decline of any of the big six banks.

Clearly a public shaming will not work in every situation, especially in the private sector, as “pharma bro” Martin Shkreli showed the world when, in a congressional hearing, he invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. Not everyone has a board and shareholders to answer to.

But for the right company, in the right situation, and—most importantly—with a lawmaker up to the rhetorical challenge, it’s another tool to keep corporations honest.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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Chase’s (JPM) Sapphire Reserve credit card has done something no credit card in history has done. It has, bewilderingly, gone viral. It’s been the subject of countless Reddit threads including a 12,952 comment behemoth. Bloomberg put it on the cover of Businessweek. New cardholders have uploaded ghastly unboxing videos. I even heard people at work talking about it in the elevator.

Skeptics may be thinking: Who cares? It’s just a credit card. But the Sapphire Reserve really does punch the weight of its viral fame. For many the monstrous 100,000-point signup bonus (for people who spend $1,333 a month), discounted bookings through the Chase rewards website, triple points multiplier for travel and dining, a $300 travel credit, $100 Global Entry credit, and more perks, shrinks the $450 fee into a minor detail.

The benefits have only sparked part of the conversation around the Sapphire Reserve. A good chunk of every story about this card has revolved around the fact that Chase ran out of the metallic card blanks that give it a “plunk effect” when it hits the table. In the interim, people with excellent credit scores had to subsist on plebeian plastic.

People including me. But unlike the people with whom I shared an elevator, I think this temporary glitch in the supply chain made the card even better.

Shiny, ostentatious, heavy, and loud, the metal versions are like the Donald Trump of credit cards, drawing attention to themselves every time they clang on the table, a sound which screams “look at me!” But is anyone really impressed? There’s an old anecdote about a Teamsters union man asked by Congress whether the union was powerful. “Well, Senator, being powerful is a bit like being ladylike,” he reportedly said. “If you have to say you are you probably ain’t.” He could have been talking about credit cards.

The thirst for a metal card has never looked good. A few years ago a black card for people who couldn’t get black cards came out, launched by the social club Magnises. Linked to an existing credit or—gasp—debit card, the formerly $450-a-month (now $257.55) membership attempted to fill the black-card-sized hole in the hearts of a certain demographic of millennials, giving them an exclusive lounge of materialists (think Madonna, not Marx) and a few more grams in their wallet if personally approved by the company’s founder. For its many offenses – including defeating the purpose of black card scarcity, the founder approving applicants based on “coolness,” and the lack of any rewards points or connection to a financial institution – I remember it getting mercilessly mocked.

Before the Chase Sapphire Preferred and the new Reserve took off, most traditional elite credit card issuers like American Express, Citi, and Barclays at least understood this need for subtlety and painted them all-black—the color of stealth and discretion. (JP Morgan, on the other hand, has a Palladium card for its private banking clients and boy does it have the Midas touch!)

Still, all metal cards miss the fundamental point that people who truly care about the color, weight, and feel of a credit card (of all things!) instead of its utility and benefits are probably not impressing anyone. It might seem cool to respond to “cash or plastic” by whipping out metal, but all it means is that you’ll have to mail it back into Chase when it expires unless you have the jaws of life on hand. To paraphrase New York Times Men’s Style editor Jim Windolf: that metal Chase Sapphire Reserve makes you look desperate. Get an advantage over your rivals by getting it in plastic.

A day before Hurricane Matthew battered the southeast, Georgia-based fast food chain Waffle House tweeted that “all restaurants on 1-95 between Titusville, FL and Fort Pierce, FL are closed.”

Although the restaurant chain’s Twitter account only has around 66,900 followers and is hardly retweeted, 1,980 people retweeted that post.

Every hurricane season, lore about Waffle House’s relationship with hurricane preparedness and disaster relief emerges, including the “Waffle House Index,” which legend maintains is a proxy used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for how bad things are.  “Green” is full operations, “yellow” is a partial menu with generator power, and “red” is the apocalypse.

According to FEMA, a lot of this is actually true.

“It’s an informal relationship,” Philip Strouse, FEMA’s Private Sector Liaison, told Yahoo Finance. “Waffle House stays on when the wind’s blowing—they never close. They have a small footprint, they’re easy, and if these little stores are going out when it only takes a few people to staff…that’s bad.”

So resistant to closure is this chain – which has about 2,100 locations, mostly in the South – that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Strouse said some Waffle House managers actually had a hard time finding the keys to the doors because they close so infrequently.

According to Strouse, the very unofficial index all started when FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate was director of the Florida Emergency Management Division. Noticing Waffle House’s incredible resilience in the face of natural disaster, Fugate coined the index in May 2011 after the Joplin, Mo., tornado. “He was saying if the Waffle House closes, it’s really bad and you know to go to work there first.” So when he came to FEMA in 2009, Fugate brought his barometer to the new position.

Many people misunderstand how the index works, however—a fact that’s partially represented by the response to that Waffle House tweet on Wednesday and articles like this. As an emergency management agency, FEMA handles the aftermath more than the run-up, funneling federal assets to damaged areas that need it most. “We really support the state and the state supports the local community,” said Strouse.

Hurricane Isaac Puts FEMA @WaffleHouse Index to Work http://t.co/jKaF6qDQ

— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) August 29, 2012

This means you should pay closer attention to the index post-hurricane. “The index was for aftermath, for damage assessments,” said Strouse. The chain’s ability to function on essentially nothing also makes it a prime location for first responders, who know they can get something to eat—almost no matter what.

As a Waffle House spokesperson told Eater on Friday, “Once the storm is over, if we are able to open without power we will operate on a limited menu until power resumes or we are able to operate on generator.”

But that’s not to say it’s not useful to know about store closings before the fact. In addition to Waffle House, FEMA pays attention to much of the private sector goings-on in the days before impact, seeing who evacuates and closes and who stays open.

“It gives us a feel for what is actually happening—like social media—from the private sector side,” said Strouse. FEMA doesn’t endorse or favor any specific companies, but communicates with much of the private sector: big-box stores, Lowe’s, Home Depot, FedEx, UPS, and other restaurant chains like Chick-fil-A and Arby’s. All this provides a signal in aggregate whether communities are really evacuating, giving the agency valuable intel as to what the challenges will be when the winds die down.

Likewise, says Strouse, the agency and other official bodies communicate valuable information to the private sector. “It’s all the info they need and we need—it’s reciprocal. They look at the public sector, and they want to know when the governor is going to declare an emergency or do evacuations and close schools. It gives them planning assumptions to save time and money, and to turn off lights and lock doors based on when evacuations take place.”

As of publication, 48 Waffle House restaurants are closed for Hurricane Matthew.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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As scores of irritating autoplay videos in your Facebook (FB) newsfeed may have told you, video is the hottest thing in digital publishing right now. It’s not hard to see why: A video playing on a computer or mobile device typically has a captive audience, and the advertisement that comes before it can’t be scrolled and ignored past like a banner. For advertisers, it’s like applying the Ludovico technique from “A Clockwork Orange”—a guarantee of a successful ad view.

In the industry’s more and more quixotic quest for sustainable monetization, video investment has skyrocketed, buoyed by Facebook prioritization of video content, a convenient delivery system in the post-homepage era. For example BuzzFeed, a bellwether of digital media trends, recently performed a second reorganization this year, steering its ship strongly towards video. As its CEO Jonah Peretti wrote at the time, “As digital video becomes ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will find an expression as video.” This pretty much reflects the views of most publications today—including this one.

Of late, however, video has taken on bubble-like qualities, and in the past few weeks two facts have emerged that suggest the walls of the bubble are getting thinner—not just big as the social media feeds suggest.

To start off, Facebook has defined a “video view” since at least 2014 as “a view of three seconds or more.” (A “video play” is the solicited version, where the user clicks on the video.) Though this isn’t really different from a traditional banner ad conversion standard, the meager number garnered attention last month when the Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook had artificially inflated video views by 60%-80%. That we are experiencing a boom in online video is indisputable—the numbers have been staggering—but it might not be quite as sweet as reported.

The digital content video boom suffered a second hit, this week, when a Pew survey found that younger adults—the millennials advertisers spend billions wooing—prefer text to video when consuming news, a big part of digital publishing. In fact, the only demographics that preferred watching news were people 50 or older, and they tended to watch on TV, not online, by an overwhelming margin of 88% to 4% (a few did not discriminate, apparently.) Across all ages, the younger the demographic the more people preferred reading news over watching it. Though 46% of Americans prefer watching news, the number fell to 38% among people 18 to 29. (Of this young, tech savvy demographic, 42% prefer reading it—and online.)

Given the advertising industry’s affinity for surveying, this revelation can’t really be a surprise, so it may not end up being the pencil that pops the Bubblicious, but it certainly jives with some basic facts about video.

Lest we forget, videos ask far more than any other type of content (for now, until VR booms). Time-crunched or impatient viewers can’t skim a video quickly as they might a listicle—the previous big craze in digital publishing ushered in by Buzzfeed. Additionally, while viewers can now watch and understand a video without sound thanks to subtitles, they manifest more as an attention grabbing technique to get viewers to unmute than a viable audio substitute for someone looking to consume content without headphones.

The list of potential reasons Pew survey respondents might like to keep their news in written form goes on and on. It’s hard to save videos for later, there’s an increased data demand, it drains battery faster, it freezes computers, it has awful and distracting music, it can’t hyperlink to sources and relevant content, and it means you have to go out of your way to hit the pause or mute buttons. Of course, video’s imposition and demands from the consumer is one of the key reasons why advertisers will pay publishers more for it—it’s way harder to ignore.

Is there anything better than when an error occurs on an autoplay video and you get to read a text story in peace?

— Shane Fearo (@shaneferro) October 7, 2016

This isn’t to say video isn’t as effective as text as a means to communicate information or entertain. With today’s technological capabilities and viewer demand, it only makes sense to invest in video. But if the media industry wants to remain stable it needs to recognize that while it may be okay to be mobile or video first, there’s a good chance it won’t work out if you’re not consumer-first and know when to stick with good old text.

Ethan Wolff-Mann is a writer at Yahoo Finance focusing on consumerism, tech, and personal finance. Follow him on Twitter @ewolffmann.

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