Assignment 3 – Spotify Business

Hi Colleen, Your website looks great and provides a really well rounded overview of spotify business. As a whole, this is not a venture that I would invest in for the sole reason that I am not sure how much interest there is surrounded on staying up to date and current in business trends and news. I think most people would glance over as a quick hobby or check in, but would not use this type of app as often as one would use the music side of spotify. I think there is more of a connection for music as being more universal where as business information and background is for a more specific, targeted group of individuals.

Thanks for sharing, Colleen. This presentation looks very professional, well done! I can relate to feeling out of your comfort zone on the business side of things, a challenge for sure! If I were the CEO of Spotify, I would invest in expansion into different sectors but as an EVA, no. I am not sure that the vision is clear enough or that the market isn't already saturated with similar opportunities. Being able to add business you are interested in and read their business reports would be neat. There is a lot of unanswered factors here. With more information, I believe this could be a profitable venture.

Hi Colleen! I like your pitch and think that the video pitch and the website are professionally done. Wonderful job! I feel your value proposition "be in the know while on the go" is very effective. However, I would not invest in this venture. In addition to having little knowledge with music streaming sites, I do not think that "music for everyone" and "business for everyone" are a great match. I feel like people turn to music to enjoy their time free of business. I can listen to music while working, but if I listen to business news or podcast while working, I do not retain much. I am not sure whether Spotify business will make Spotify more successful and bring more happy customers (as I care about Return on Investment), or will send more of them to Spotify competitors.

Review: Nice work with the video and site. Very professional looking. If the product is only for businesses, to provide updates about the company to employees, it seems like the businesses would have other methods already that are more secure. If this venture is to provide updates about the companies to the general public, it seems like it would be similar to a press release or a business news channel that covers all types of businesses not just for that one company as specific updates about the status of a company's operations wouldn't be available to the general public for obvious reasons. If the venture is to provide news for specific businesses to the public, it doesn't seem like it would be used often either. The concept is interesting but not new as I do like to listen to Business news once in awhile. Maybe instead of using Spotify Business to introduce the business updates, use it to hold tutorials on how to use specific products that businesses carries would be better. Because in our current day, businesses usually have their own website to introduce and notify the public already so having it available on Spotify Business to listen to doesn't seem practical. Just my opinion. But great job.

FEEDBACK

An interesting presentation. I am not looking to invest in this kind of venture at this time, however, so I will only offer some feedback on your presentation.

I must admit that I am a bit skittish of this product (Spotify). There have been several high-profile defections from the product of late (such as Taylor Swift), and I wonder at the ability of the company to outmaneuver Apple. Going toe-to-toe with a giant like Apple, especially when they have clearly stated their desire to “own the market,” makes me nervous. But it does seem like a good startup and it has been wildly successful so far. The idea of diversifying the product into different markets is a great idea.

I am not quite sure if the existing product clearly translates into the venture you are proposing, however. I would like to see more about how companies can create playlists, and how these playlists will be distributed and used in Spotify. Good presentation, though! Thanks!

Hello Colleen Your venture pitch looks very professional and polished. I know little about the business world so I would need to spend more time learning about your product before I decided to invest in it. Launching your business venture on an already existing platform is a smart way to do it. I have done the same with my own venture. I am curious if there are other ventures out there that are like this and what might the competition be. My understanding is that this is something that investors would take advantage of but I am not sure. Overall it is very well done though I am not sure I would invest in this as it seems this type of service might be quite vulnerable to completion in the ever-changing online world.

REVIEW: Amazing presentation of your venture. It looks and feels so polish/finished, so bravo on such a job. I enjoyed the novel idea of using something like Spotify or the Streaming Music platform for company advertisement. And this is what it is, for companies to advertise how they grow and new projects on the horizon. If you aim for it to be more of a review of business, the question I would ask is who qualifies to do the reviewing and analyses? I was slightly confused by this since in your website, you noted that companies will be allowed to buy accounts that allow for playlists. So this means that the company will create the content and of course a company will portray itself in the most positive light, so that means that it is very much like an ad campaign and public relation media. If this is the venture, I would not invest since I have my doubts of people wishing to listen to adverts. I would invest under this condition: Build a framework of having independent business analysis done on fortune 500 companies, in depth breakdown of company strategy and position as well as its financial position. This is insight that I as a user or an investor will pay money to listen to. Also, up and coming startups may be the bread and butter to your platform. Seeing accomplished and established companies such as Canadian Tire or KPMG does not move the needle in terms of the return of my investment. They are blue chippers. What you need is a few home runs in the bank. What is exciting is listening to a company that is in the early development stage. They are in a market that is ripe for the picking and needs just a few strokes of luck to turn upwards and onwards. Where do I find this piece of nugget of intel….INVENTISITFY! (Changed your name too!)

Hi Colleen, great job with the pitches! However, as an EVA, I would not invest in Spotify Business. First, from a personal perspective, I have very limited knowledge with music streaming sites/apps and I find myself continuously going back to Youtube, so I feel that I would not be able to offer much to your venture in terms of knowledge and guidance. Secondly, part of the reason why I keep going back to Youtube is that these music streaming sites seem to keep getting merged and deleted. Within a year, I found my preferred Songza bought out by and switched to Google Play. As I didn't love that platform, I shortly switch to Samsung Milk Music only to have that shut down soon after. All this happened within a year. The unstable nature of this niche makes me very uncomfortable as an investor. You have identified a very strong competitor in Apple and I am not familiar with Apple Music, but one advantage Spotify may also have is that it is not system specific unlike most of Apple's proprietary products. I am really not familiary with how Spotify works, but I am also curious what types of podcast businesses are allowed to put or are there no restrictions? I am assuming that these podcasts from businesses may get automatically streamed to a user's listening experience since you mentioned that users did not need to follow the company to get their podcast. If this is the case, what is in place to prevent businesses from creating podcast ads (like TV infomercials) that get streamed into a paid user's playlist (a user who has paid not to get ads)?

Yes - If I was CEO the of Spotify, I would invest in developing this product. Spotify is a small, but immensely successful fish in a pond that has, of late, attracted some great white sharks. With the launch of Apple music, and Google's purchase of Songza and subsequent foray into music streaming, Spotify will be hard pressed to compete on a dollar for dollar level with their competition. One way to stay competitive is to continue innovating new ways to deliver content to listeners that they can't get anywhere else. That being said, I think the long term viability of Spotify might be in danger. What is stopping its larger, deep pocketed competitors from adopting a 'wait and see' approach and integrating Spotify's hard-won successes in new spaces at a fraction of the development and venture costs? I would have liked to see more in this pitch about how the monetization works. I liked the idea of companies paying to host or create content, but there still seemed to be a per-subscriber cost. Is this for an ad-free version?