*This project is not in anyway endorsed or in collaboration with the Spotify Inc.
New Product Development Class final deliverable
Fall I, 2016 at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.
Research as a group, Graphic Design & Motion Graphics: Krystofer Kim
This video was made for educational purposes. (MBA project)
Project Summary:
Consumer Problem:
When we conducted user interviews, what we found was that a lot of people enjoyed sharing music with their friends but ran into the issue of public vs private songs, lacking shared tastes, and constant rotation between people if someone wanted to play something different. It was also awkward for our users when some of their friends would sing along and they would feel left out because they weren’t familiar with the song or the lyrics. Our insight was that people love sharing their music in social environments; however, there was no seamless way to do that. There was no offering on the market that could allow them to share common music and explore based on common preferences without manually building playlists.
From our interviews, we created a persona named Emily, who is 24, and a young professional in Finance. She frequently hangs out with her girlfriends and shares musical experiences with them either in concerts or at home/bar. Emily likes Adele but when here are girlfriends are over, she is careful to play only peppy music. She listens to music while working out and driving, and frequently gets bored with her playlist. She loves knowing what her friends are listening to, especially when she goes on road trips.
Our Solution/Positioning Statement:
Audiophile wants to be the go-to app for music aficionados who like to share. With unique features such as the Turntable and Singalong, Audiophile adds to the Spotify experience and enables everyone to be the DJ at the party.
Value proposition for Spotify:
- Ability to re-position their value from primarily a private experience to an easily shareable one
- Share of ad revenue from Audiophile
- Added features demonstrate dedication to user needs
- Ability to form strong relationships with various businesses who want to promote Audiophile at their location or sponsor a playlist.
Core Features:
Hangout Compatible Playlist (HCP) & Radio:
- Playlist grabs all common music within a group or between users
- Radio plays music based on HCP contents.
○ Radio prediction technology is something Spotify already has, therefore we can leverage that.
Business Compatible playlists
- You can select a business who is an App partner so your playlist can be included when you are in that place of business. Ex: Sharing your music at a bar.
○ Choosing to listen to a business playlist on your own also provides ad revenue from non- subscribed users
Shareable playlists
- Create public vs private playlists.
- Different public playlists to create for different occasions
Premium Features:
Take Turntable
- Feature that not only allows users to share common music, but each user can log on to the app and act as an individual DJ for the party.
Live Singalongs
- Users can turn on this feature during anytime, with any song played and be able to view the lyrics in real time as the song plays.
- Users can also use this as a karaoke device if connected to a larger screen.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
- Novel concept
- Brand association with Spotify partnership
- Visibility through partnership
Weaknesses
- Reliance on Spotify user base
- Reliance on the streaming service licensing to share libraries; music outside of that licensing may not be available
Opportunities
- Partnerships with local businesses
- Expansion into social networks or services such as dating sites/apps
Threats:
- Spotify internalizing the app features in their offering
- Similar add-on to Pandora
- Other streaming services may develop competing products
Competitors: Musictable and Lyrically
Pricing and Revenue Model: Freemium (as an add on to Spotify)
- Core Features
○ Since users already pay for Spotify, it wouldn’t make sense to ask for an add on fee. The app is mostly free. All the Core Features would be included for the free version of Spotify(with Ads).
- Premium
○ The Premium features would charge the user $1 extra that would be added on their Spotify bill. If users are not paying for spotify, they can sign on for $2 a month for premium features.
Revenue from Permission Marketing/Advertisement (Businesses can promote their shareable playlists for free with ads embedded)
- Ads will only appear in specially curated playlists by that businesses share. Ex: McDonalds may share a “Happy” playlist and you will get 1-2 ads if you chose to listen)
Market Sizing
| Spotify users in targeted cities and age group | 320,000 |
| Percentage of paying Audiophile users | 40% |
| Estimated annual revenue ($ million) | 1.56M |
Testing Strategy:
Our testing strategy will be to distribute our products and all it’s features for free in the initial Beta phase to our two main audience groups: 1. College goers and 2. Young Professionals. We also want to offer our features to businesses as test promotion strategy for them so that they can create and curate playlists measure ad impressions. We want to start by launching in limited big cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Las Vegas. We want to create a scarcity testing model, when were release to limited user groups and measure performance. These users are able to invite their friends and share the app. The aim is to build a word of mouth hype, after which we can release on a national scale.
From a more business point of view, we also plan on releasing the app and all it’s features for free for a select bars and social venues so that they can promote it to their audience. When the bar goers download the app for free, the premium features will only work at that given-geo location. This helps us spread the concept through channels other than users and test out the social venue-user relationship
