Topic: Business models
SoundCloud Cuts 40% of Staff, Closes San Francisco and London Offices (Jul 6, 2017)
SoundCloud is significantly reducing its staff and closing two of its offices in a bid to cut costs and reduce losses as one potential acquisition after another seems to fizzle. Twitter and Spotify were each reported as suitors earlier, but both ultimately moved on, and just in the last few days French music streaming service Deezer was also mulling an acquisition. I’m guessing these cuts are a sign that that deal also fell through and SoundCloud now realizes its only hope for survival is going it alone. That continues to be a really tough proposition, because SoundCloud continues to struggle to find a role for itself as a paid rather than free service. It’s become enormously popular as a free music source, but almost all the artists who start their careers on SoundCloud eventually cross over to the mainstream music industry and its more established business models, including paid streaming, which is becoming increasingly important and is driving almost all the revenue growth in the industry. SoundCloud’s failure to cross over with those artists to the paid streaming world is likely to be fatal unless salvation comes in the form of an acquisition.
via Bloomberg
Apple News Reportedly Readying Ad Platform Integration for Publishers (Jul 5, 2017)
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Uber Talking to SEC About Giving Drivers Equity (Jun 29, 2017)
According to Axios, Uber has been meeting with the Securities and Exchange Commission to discuss giving drivers equity in the company. As the piece notes, this was something recently-acquired ride sharing startup Juno promised to do, but which it found legally difficult given SEC regulations. Of course, if drivers were employees, there would be entirely standard ways to deal with stock-based compensation, but the combination of the fact that Uber is a private company and drivers are contractors rather than employees make this more complex. Given the historical meteoric rise of Uber’s valuation, I could certainly see the appeal for drivers of getting a stake in the company, though the attraction will have waned a little as there have been reports of shares selling at lower prices in the private markets over recent months. Longer term, there are still big questions about whether Uber’s valuation will continue to grow if it doesn’t have a clear path to profitability and doesn’t seem to be winning decisively against Lyft and other big competitors in its important markets. And its big investment in autonomous driving is another potential huge cash sink which isn’t guaranteed to pay off, especially given the distraction and uncertainty created by the Waymo lawsuit and the departure of Anthony Levandowski and Travis Kalanick in recent weeks. Still, Uber does seem to be genuinely interested in trying to find ways to improve its relationship with drivers recently, and this is another potential step in that direction.
via Axios
Snapchat Places Custom Geofilters Tool Directly in App for Ordinary Users (Jun 28, 2017)
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Uber Pool Burned Through Cash for Months in San Francisco (May 31, 2017)
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★ Uber is Charging Dynamic Prices for Rides, Widening Gap with Driver Payments (May 19, 2017)
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Amazon Starts Issuing Payments to Some Alexa Skills Developers (May 16, 2017)
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Apple Reduces App Affiliate Fees from 7% to 2.5% With a Week’s Notice (Apr 24, 2017)
I noted this change myself this morning as I’m part of the affiliate program at Apple (we’ve very occasionally linked to the App Store and iTunes Store from the Beyond Devices Podcast site). The change affects app and in-app purchases, and represents both a short notice and significant reduction to the commissions affiliates have been paid in the past, without any kind of explanation or justification from Apple. There are several possible explanations: Apple could be adjusting this cut downward ahead of a reduction in its cut on apps and in-app purchases to be announced at WWDC in just over a month; it could have decided that too many companies are gaming the system, e.g. by linking to their own apps on the store and taking a bigger cut; it may have decided that it would rather foster better discoverability on the App Store than have third parties do it; or it could be something else entirely. Hopefully the other shoe will drop at WWDC – whether in the way I’ve suggested above or in some other way – but it’s entirely possible that we’ll never know. This isn’t a great signal to send people trying to build a business around the App Store, though, because it suggests capriciousness and unpredictability. And especially because it hurts those businesses which – like Apple – have eschewed advertising as a business model largely or entirely because of the tradeoffs it entails.
via MacStories
Microsoft’s Minecraft Set to Launch its Own Currency – Bloomberg (Apr 10, 2017)
On the face of it, this could look like the in-app purchase model that so many other games have used so successfully over the last few years, which would look like capitulation on the part of Microsoft to the prevailing model. However, even though the article implies towards the end that that’s what’s happening here, this is actually something different. Whereas the classic IAP model often holds progress in the game hostage to the purchase of various items through the medium of in-app currency, Minecraft has always eschewed that model, instead charging a high up-front fee to purchase the game in the first place, with a small number of in-app purchases for specific items. It is now opening up that latter model to a small number of third parties, and while the use of in-game currency as the medium may carry echoes of the classic IAP model, this is something very different. Given the addictive qualities of the IAP model, that’s a very good thing, given that the game’s audience is largely children. The last thing Microsoft wants is for Minecraft to get a reputation for being a sort of Candy Crush for kids, whereas it’s currently known as a game that has at least some educational qualities.
via Bloomberg