As a music lover in 2018, it is almost impossible to avoid streaming services and their neatly priced subscriptions.
There are two major players that account for 110 million subscribers globally and make up 32% of the US market for music purchases – Apple (15%) and Spotify (17%). As such, it only makes sense to pit the two streaming app giants against one another to see who reigns supreme in terms of having a superior UX.
In December, we witnessed many brands celebrating Christmas in typically grandiose fashion, as well as happily waving goodbye to the fiasco that was 2016.
Here’s a round-up of the best stories and campaigns from the month.
I was privileged to hear Avinash Kaushik speak at Syzygy’s excellent Digital Innovation Day last week.
Avinash discussed some of his favourite mobile experiences.
Here are 12 of them.
Last week saw three of the strangest brand tie-ups for a while.
The first was that Nike Starbucks shoe, retailing at $100, the second, a strained Wayne Rooney cameo (see below) in an X-Men adventure (and some blue-faced mascots at a United game), the third, green and red Angry Birds burger buns at McDonald’s.
This got me thinking – what are the best brand tie-ups of the past few years?
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.
Student.com has had quite a lot of press recently, what with $60m of investment from the founders of Spotify.
The website is new to me, so I thought I’d have a look through and pick out some points of interest.
In my right hand I have a mug of Brazilian coffee (Fruit and Nut Espresso).
The coffee was delivered through my letter box yesterday, courtesy of Pact Coffee, one of many coffee subscription services.
However, Pact doesn’t like to think of itself as a subscription service. Its founder, Stephen Rapoport, believes many subscription services work for the business but not for the customer.
So, if the model is often abused, just what makes a good subscription service?
Service and product design are in the ascendancy, becoming increasingly important within marketing and engineering departments.
Ashley Friedlein makes the claim in his trends for 2016, citing the number of consultancies and systems integrators that have made design acquisitions (see this Wired article for how IBM is beefing up its design creds).
Service design follows naturally from a focus on customer experience (as a central tenet of that dreaded term, digital transformation).
The tide may already have turned towards big data, but the waves are about to get a whole lot bigger.
From watches and wearables, to beacons and smart home systems, connected devices are expected to exceed 38bn by 2020, and each one will generate valuable data about what consumers think and how they behave.
Are you excited by Apple Music? I think I’m excited by Apple Music. Let’s discuss whether this is a valid opinion or not.
One of the first subjects I really got my teeth into on the blog two years ago was digital music, both in its streaming and downloadable formats.
Last week, Starbucks and Spotify announced a partnership that will see the popular music streaming service integrated into Starbucks’ 7,000 stores and its 10 million member strong loyalty program, My Starbucks Rewards.