The North America online audio section of our Statistics Compendium has seen some fascinating data added in the past few months.
Particularly in regards to how significant digital downloads and streaming are to US music fans in 2016.
Every so often I like to take a look at a website that I wouldn’t normally visit, from an industry we haven’t covered that much and put it through the customer journey test.
This week it’s the turn of Pandora, an international jewellery manufacturer founded in 1982, that entered the world of ecommerce in 2011.
Similar to previous posts on Ikea and Apple, I’m going to take a look at the convenience and experience of the shopping and checkout process from the point of view of a regular visitor visiting from search.
Large brands spend millions upon millions of dollars every year on celebrity endorsements.
For some brands, like Nike and H&M, writing large checks to prominent figures is a small price to pay for significant exposure and brand alignment with people who have their own powerful brands.
The latest update to our Internet Statistics Compendium collects all the most interesting freely digital data and trends published to the web over the past few months.
Like us, Mary Meeker strives to analyse online digital trends and publishes her own slideshows biannually (hosting them online here).
Amid a wealth of insight, Meeker’s recent stats collection highlights how online technologies are affecting traditional media. Her music consumption stats are particularly intriguing and relate to further research I’ve seen published lately.
There is little doubt that digital is the future of music. The CD may not be dead, but it might as well be.
Its replacement for millions of consumers has been digital music services of various kinds, ranging iTunes and the Amazon MP3 Store to Pandora and Spotify.
Network execs, client-side reps, and ad folks crowded the Televisual Expo organized by the Collaborative Alliance in New York City’s financial district last week.
The small but crowded tradeshow featured 50 vendors of heavyweights, such as DirecTV and Comcast, and newbies such as Tapjoy, which FastCompany featured last month in its list of most innovative firms.
Spotify is one of the most popular streaming music services in the world, and since its July debut in the U.S. and the recent launch of a deep Facebook integration , it has gained 250,000 U.S. subscribers, bringing the company’s worldwide paid subscriber total to “well north” of 2m.
But it’s not all good news for the Swedish-based company: while revenue grew from just over £11m in 2009 to just over £63m in 2010, during the same period Spotify’s after-tax loss jumped grew by nearly £10m to £26m.
Personalization vs. privacy. Behavioral targeting vs. big brother. When does it get creepy?
It’s rare that I catch myself being a full-fledged
consumer.
I’m not talking about the guy who has not spent the last 25 years in sales
and
marketing – the guy who has not spent studying and writing books and
lecturing
about online marketing since 1993 – the guy who does not climb all over
every
random video to bask in the glory of the Old Spice Guy. But it happened
again
today.
The road to online music streaming is littered with the bodies of startups with interesting ways of sharing music. And internet radio darling Pandora was almost one of them — multiple times. This weekend, The New York Times documented the various ways that Pandora almost went out of business over the 10 years of its existence.
Pandora is on track to earn $100 million this year. That turn around is due to a number of issues. Some of them are extenuating circumstances — like recently reduced royalty fees for streaming songs. But Pandora has also been paying attention to changes in consumer behavior and digital payment structures. Their new revenue streams — including online ads, new streaming deals and a paid streaming model — prove that there’s not always one way to bring in a dollar.
Starbucks has invested a lot in social media. From Twitter to Facebook to its own MyStarbucksIdea.com, Starbucks has a highly-visible social media footprint. And highly-visible results: over half a million followers on Twitter and more than 5m fans on Facebook.
Given its social media prowess, if any brand is capable of turning away from traditional marketing channels and reaching out to consumers online, it’s Starbucks. And that’s exactly what it’s doing this holiday season.
Google pretty much has its bases covered. Looking for an image? There’s Google Images. Looking for a video? Video results appear in search. As do products.
But one thing has been noticeably absent: music. Which is not an insignificant fact given that two of the top 10 search queries in the United States are music-related. But Google being Google, it has a plan for music.
The iPhone App Store may have sold over 1.5 billion mobile applications since its launch last year, but Google’s isn’t going to waste much time on pesky downloaded apps. It sees bigger opportunities on the mobile horizon. Like tailoring its Chrome browser to the space. And while it may suit Google just fine to focus its efforts on mobile browsing, developers shouldn’t abandon the native app space just yet.