Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Finally we have reached the 2000s: a point in history where people don't have to go out and pay $15 for a CD. As a new millennium began, the introduction of an online musical movement was making its way to the top. With Pandora leading off in 2000, it was followed by Itunes, YouTube and then Spotify in 2006. We successfully reached a way to get music for free... Or are we missing something? These online music streaming services all have their own secret conditions. Consumers are blind to see them until they get to a point where they must pay to get what they desire. Music services alter to get the attention of the consumer - or is it for the advertiser? But the trick behind it all is, music medias just want money, and to get that, they take advantage of the advertisers.
Imagine just looking up your musical craving and the perfect playlist shows up for you; well now you've just met Spotify. No matter what genre, artist or song you're trying to find, Spotify has got it all. It even lets you type in a mood and BAM! There's a pre-made playlist waiting for you to indulge into the music. It has song lists for workouts, rainy days and even hard heavy metal for those who just like to scream (not to my liking).
But what seems to be the perfect app, isn't oh-so flawless. With Spotify's popularity rising, this is a perfect opportunity for advertisers. While we are enraptured by music, we are rudely interrupted by the perky voice of Flo saying, "HI SPOTIFY USERS! Flo here!". But that's not all; there are plenty more annoying and loud ads that disrupt the music. Over the course of an hour of listening to Spotify, I was disturbed by five ads, which may not seem like a lot. But, they were not ads that I preferred to listen to.
But then I thought, there must be a reason behind the choice in such maddening advertisements. Then it clicked; they chose them so that the users would upgrade to Spotify Premium and pay monthly. With Spotify Premium, users pay for privileges like having no interruptions. Therefore, I just knew this was their plan. They support Flo's screaming voice to provoke the user to upgrade and pay money to escape the intrusions.
This abuse of discourteous ads is a strategy used to take money from the consumer. With out the ads, Spotify would not be gaining as much as it does now. Having 10 million subscribers paying 9.99 a month, Spotify makes a profit of $99,900,000 per month. Now that is what I call a good use of advertisements.
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Hope, there is some good stuff in here. Some. You do quantify the presence of advertisements in an hours worth of Spotify radio. You also explore the coercive influence of marketing. It is possible that companies want people to pay to avoid ads. However, one would have to do some analysis to confirm this. What is the difference between the revenue that Spotify generates from advertisements and that which it generates from people paying to avoid them? Until you know the answer to this question, your thesis will sound more like a conspiracy theory than an actual conclusion.
ReplyDeleteMy biggest issue is your use of empty phrases. I sense that you have some budding talent as a writer, but you need to develop some disciplined proofreading habits. Let me show you some indicators of undisciplined writing in just your first paragraph. You begin by writing, "we have reached the 2000s." Who is "we" and why do you preface this with "Finally"? I don't get it. Had people been waiting for this millennium? You say that the "online musical movement was making its way to the top." The "top" of what? This seems like an odd expression - one we use colloquially all the time, but one we should definitely avoid in writing. Every word you use needs to have a tangible significance. Then you write "With Pandora leading off in 2000." What does "leading off" mean?