Spotify Becoming The Ruler of Music Platforms!

29

September

2016

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Only a few days ago the word came out that Spotify is interested in buying SoundCloud.

SoundCloud is an audio platform that enables its users to upload, share, and listen to each other songs. SoundCloud was founded in September 2007 in Stockholm, Sweden. But moved quickly to Berlin, Germany. SoundCloud received multiple funding’s from different venture capitalists. In January 2012, SoundCloud had 10 million registered users and only four months later they reached 15 million registered users. The big problem for SoundCloud is that it is struggling to become profitable. In 2014 it reported a turnover of 17.4m euro and an operating loss of 39m euro (Financial Times, 2016).

Spotify viewed SoundCloud as a threat as long as it was offering a cheaper or free subscription service. But SoundCloud can not survive with no paying users, so they came up with a SoundCloud Go version earlier this year, costing $9.99 a month. (Soundcloud, 2016)

Looking at all this, it could be a very smart step for Spotify to acquire SoundCloud. Both being music platforms, one being more creative than the other, this is the way to tackle the fierce competition of Amazon and Apple’s music services. If Spotify and SoundCloud become one platform, it will draw it users into a social network, allowing them to upload and share music instantly (Financial Times, 2016). Becoming a social network, can give Spotify the advantages of network effects. The willingness to pay for a Spotify account will increase due to the more diversity of music supply, creating demand-side scale economies. For the upcoming years Spotify will stay a Mono-homing platform, but it can eventually become a winner-takes-all platform.

My prediction for the music platform industry is that if this deal goes on, Sportify will become the biggest and most important player. Apple, Google, and Amazon have to come up with very cheap or creative ways to become as good as the combination of Spotify and SoundCloud

Reference:

https://www.ft.com/content/d03bedbe-85bb-11e6-8897-2359a58ac7a5

https://soundcloud.com/press/releases/2013/03/11/new-pro-plans

 

 

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Pokémon Go disrupts the gaming industry.

13

September

2016

4.6/5 (5)

We have all seen them walk around campus or somewhere in the city: people behind their phones playing ‘Pokémon Go’. Although the hype is somewhat over at this time, it has changed the way of playing video games.

Pokémon Go applies the old franchise to the real world using augmented reality. The game is played on a smartphone and direct players to various locations, either to find Pokémon or virtual items. They can even battle against other Pokémon. The game uses an ‘augmented-reality’ feature by using the phone’s camera to show a picture of the real world with a Pokémon digitally pictured.

Since the release of Pokémon Go it was an immediately success, ‘it has generated $14.04 million across mobile platforms’ (GamesIndustry.biz, 2016). This free to play game somehow disrupted the gaming industry. This game has managed to normalize the use of augmented reality. I think everybody believed that AR would never become a success without a Virtual Reality headset or Google Glasses. But Nintendo and Niantic (makers of Pokémon Go) show us how to make the best out of 5 billion people with a smartphone (MarketingWeek, 2016).

Not only the platforms where we play on changes, from PlayStations to Wii to smartphone and maybe even to Google Glass, but the way we interact with other players change. Players go out of their houses to play Pokémon Go, they meet other players at so called ‘Lures’ (an in game item that is planted at a Pokéstop to attract Pokémon). And they even travel to different cities to catch rare Pokémon.

I think we can say that Nintendo and Niantic re-invented the way of playing video games. The video games will be more community or social network driven, include augmented or virtual reality and relay on different online strategies. I hope that this is the new way of playing games and that this ‘old’ Pokémon franchise has disrupted the gaming industry.

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