Mark Mulligan’s latest blog looks at the boom in streaming in certain markets (Scandinavia, mainly) and links their success to the general market apathy there towards à la carte downloading. This raises an interesting point about the narrative of MP3s as a transitional format (they get consumers used to consuming music digitally and let them choose the tracks they want). Mulligan expands on this to look at the impact (or not) of Apple products in those markets (the iPod and iPhone, mainly). “Here the relationship is clear,” he suggest. “Streaming has taken hold where Apple has not.” This leads him to argue that streaming will grow, but slowly, in the markets where Apple has the whip hand. As for the growth potential of streaming? “[It] can make a digital market grow more quickly than downloads can (though it does so normally at the direct expense of downloads – download sales shrank in both Sweden and Norway in 2012 and 2013).”
Tools: platforms to help you reach new audiences
Tools: Kaiber
In the year or so since its launch, AI startup Kaiber has been making waves,…