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- 🔥 Music sounds expensive with you, Spotify
🔥 Music sounds expensive with you, Spotify
Plus: why its time to dig out your walkman
Oli Thomas
June 18, 2024
Ask me what 3 things I would take to a desert island, and somewhere in there would be my Spotify subscription.
Or, in an albeit weird game of Subscriptions “Sh*g, Marry, and Avoid” - I would be marrying Spotify (+ having a fling with Apple TV+, and avoiding Hayu like the plague).
Point being, I have grown to need my Spotify subscription. I barely search for music anymore, I just listen to the spot-on recommendations developed through finely-tuned algorithms that have been feasting on my listening data for over 15 years.
So, whilst Spotify’s announcement of further pricing tiers (on top of the 20%+ price increases over the last 12 months) may not be that well-timed given the ongoing cost of living crisis, it doesn’t really surprise me that they’re able to do it. This must be one of the ‘stickiest’ subscriptions out there (est. churn rate sub-2%).
The real question is just how much further can they go?
Vamos 👍
Ps - as always, please share any feedback and ideas on the newsletter
Spotify’s HiFi pricing tier
In July 2023, Spotify increased the price of its premium service from £9.99 to £10.99. Its Family plan went from £16.99 to £17.99.
In April 2024, Spotify increased the price again from £10.99 to £11.99 and £17.99 to £19.99 respectively
Having increased prices by 20% in less than a year, you’d think Spotify would be keeping a low profile on the pricing front. But last week, they announced a new pricing tier - an extra £5 per month for HiFi audio quality.
That’s £5 more for an audio quality that Apple Music and Amazon Music already offer in their standard subscription.
But - here’s the thing - since raising prices last year, Spotify’s paid subs have continued to grow. It turns out that, having not raised prices for years whilst adding new content and features, Spotify has built a very sticky and attractive proposition: its churn rate is less than 2% (vs 5%-10% for streaming services), and the share price reflects this sentiment - up 2x over the last 12 months.
Read more here
Rise of Retro
No sooner have I got myself a nice shiny pair of Airpods than it appears they’re now out of fashion.
Now wired headphones are back. Alongside dumb phones and cassettes.
Nostalgia has been permeating TV and music for some time, but the return to wired headphones as a fashion accessory is relatively new.
“Fashion brands like Kim Kardashian's SKIMS, Justin Bieber-approved Nahmias, and NYC-based Jane Wade have proposed wired earbuds as a stylish status symbol, simultaneously tapping into the devices' earned nostalgia and legible design language.”
Maybe its time to just accept my place in this world, don the Dad cap, grab some slippers, and watch fashionable young people from the sidelines.
Source: Nahmias / Indigital.TV
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Best of the Rest
PUBLISHING: Brits are taking over the newsrooms in the US. The Washington Post, The Wall St Journal, CNN, and The Daily Beast are now all led by Brits; hired due to their experience of dealing with the cutthroat nature of news and being more willing to ‘scorch the sacred’ cows to get the readers in.
GAMING: Horror Film Studio Blumhouse has moved into Gaming, announcing the launch of 6 horror-themed games last week.
FILM: Pay-it-forward films are in the news again - the concept of part-funding films by selling tickets in advance.
SPORTS: Liberty Global basically owns global motorsport after becoming the majority shareholder in Formula E…it now controls Formula 1, Formula E, and MotoGP.
WTF is Skibidi Toilet?
There’s a point in everyone’s life when new technology or new content comes along that you just don’t ‘get’. No matter how hard you try.
For the baby boomers, it was TikTok and Naked Attraction.
For Gen X and even Millennials, it could well be DaFuq!?Boom! and Skibidi Toilet.
Having amassed over 12 billion views on YouTube, and with 40M+ subscribers, its now one of the largest YouTube channels in the world and recently struck up a licencing agreement with Michael Bay (of Transformers fame) to create a line of toys.
This is the kind of global IP that can develop over a very short period of time on YouTube (less than 2 years) and rapidly expand across other verticals. Cue a Netflix / Amazon series to come.
Its pointless me trying to explain it. But in case you’re interested: it started as a toilet with a head popping out, singing a catchy song on repeat across multiple different videos. And its now evolved into a wider narrative in which humans with cameras for heads try and catch the toilets.
I told you it was a pointless exercise…
Read more here
Apple steps into the AI ring
Apple threw its hat in the AI ring last week with a launch event for its new generative AI features for the iPhone.
There are two very smart things about Apple’s approach:
Doubling down on data privacy - Apple has carved out a strong position as the most ‘private’ of the big tech players, and its Gen AI offering continued to build on this by making the point that it is “built with privacy, from the ground up”.
Bringing AI to the mass market - through incorporating things like ‘Genmoji’ (personalised emojis) and AI supported photo-editing within one of the most popular devices on the planet, Apple’s AI features will deliver simplicity and added value to a mainstream audience
Just when I didn’t think I could spend any more time with my iPhone, now I’ve got Genmoji prompts to look forward to…
Source: Apple
Read more here