spr

Ramblings & Reblogs on music + tech + media + marketing + culture Studies @ Kellogg SOM Previously @ TFA Tweets Instagrams Listens Read more about me

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From Medium to Small

Yesterday Medium founder Evan Williams took to the platform to announce that his company would be laying off a third of its staff (about 50 people across sales and support, including its Head of Publisher Development) and closing its New York and D.C. offices. He also made the bold proclamation that ad-driven publishing is dead. The full quote:

Upon further reflection, it’s clear that the broken system is ad-driven media on the internet. It simply doesn’t serve people. In fact, it’s not designed to. The vast majority of articles, videos, and other “content” we all consume on a daily basis is paid for — directly or indirectly — by corporations who are funding it in order to advance their goals. And it is measured, amplified, and rewarded based on its ability to do that. Period. As a result, we get…well, what we get. And it’s getting worse.

Although it’s fair to point out the irony of operating a publishing platform open to all viewpoints that also happens to be funded in part by #SponsoredContent and the multinationals of the world, his announcement doesn’t provide a realistic alternative to the ad model. As Nieman Lab’s headline bluntly pointed out today: “Medium lays off dozens as it tries to find a publishing business model that may not actually exist yet.” While the concepts of micropayments and subscription models are options, it seems pretty far-fetched to expect that the average consumer – who is used to getting endless content for free and has found elaborate ways to avoid the New York Times’ own paywall – would be willing to dish out to read the ramblings of a long-forgotten Facebook friend or indulge in this week’s latest hate-read. If that was Medium’s strategy all along, then it would have been better suited to courting sought-after writers and editors to curate premium verticals that could potentially command a price.

To that end, Medium’s now-dismissed Head of Publisher Development did do a strong job of encouraging niche publishing networks – including ThinkProgress, The Ringer, and a personal favorite of mine, The Awl – to migrate to Medium. Although Medium offered fewer banner ads to help these blogs generate their own revenue, the publisher program drew in publishers with promises that Medium would connect them to brands seeking sponsored content. According to Nieman Lab, these ad deals are no longer an option, leaving publishers with a platform that doesn’t allow traditional side-bar ads nor has the support staff capacity to help cultivate ad deals. It’s a fairly depressing convergence of VC-backed tech “disruption” of a model that largely worked for publishers (albeit imperfectly) in the first place.

One interesting side note is that Williams was also a co-founder of Twitter, which has its own well-chronicled saga of generating user growth and reaching profitability. Both companies essentially began as blogging or microblogging platforms and emerged as both self-branding as well as media-sharing tools for its users. For its part, Twitter is beginning to recognize its value as a media company and has embraced media’s traditional ad generation model. Medium appears to be going a different, leaner route and my main hope is that the publishers who migrated to the site can continue to thrive under that untested model. 

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A Selection of the 30 Most Disappointing Under 30

Oksana Iyovitch: purchased a kitten after seeing a picture on the Twitter feed Cute Emergency. Tried to return it when it “got too big.”

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best of 2016

Currently on break from grad school for at least a couple more days, which has finally given me the mental space to conjure up a ~list~ of some of the good things to come out of 2016.

Some albums and songs that made this year a little brighter:

lps and eps of the year

10) charli xcx - vroom vroom ep 9) abra - princess ep 8) 21 savage & metro boomin - savage mode 7) beyonce - lemonade 6) dawn richard - redemption 5) radiohead - a moon shaped pool 4) kaytranada - 99.9% 3) jessy lanza - oh no 2) frank ocean - blonde 1) blood orange - freetown sound

songs that put a :) on my face

25) drake - “feel no ways” 24) abra - “crybaby” 23) nicolas jaar - “no” 22) radiohead - “daydreaming” 21) beyonce - “sorry” 20) solange - “don’t touch my hair (feat. sampha)” 19) kanye west - “fade” 18) frank ocean - “pink + white” 17) drake - “too good (feat. rihanna)” 16) haerts - “eva” 15) jessy lanza - “vv violence” 14) charli xcx - “vroom vroom” 13) young thug - “wyclef jean” 12) burial - “young death” 11) abra - “pull up” 10) radiohead - “true love waits” 9) beyonce - “formation” 8) kaytranada - “lite spots” 7) dawn richard - “renegades” 6) james blake - “timeless” 5) 21 savage & metro boomin - “x (feat. future)” 4) kanye west - “ultralight beam (feat.. chance the rapper, kirk franklin, kelly price, the-dream)” 3) frank ocean - “nikes” 2) blood orange - “best to you (feat. empress of)” 1) jessy lanza - “it means i love you”

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Children of Men and 2016

As most media outlets bemoan 2016 as “the worst year EVER,” New York Mag published one of the more interesting end-of-year hot takes by reflecting on 2016′s parallels to 2006's Children of Men. That film was one of the most impactful movies I saw during my college years. It not only featured one of my favorite directors (Alfonso Cuarón) and actors (Clive Owen) but it also presented an eerily realistic dystopian take on the perils of geopolitical conflicts, covering many of the forces I was studying in my undergraduate history and comparative politics classes. 

While the movie was largely considered a commercial flop, it’s now re-emerging as an uncanny predictor of the dynamics that would shape the horror-filled headlines this year (xenophobia, a mass refugee crisis, regular European terror attacks). In another undergrad throwback, even political scientist Francis Fukuyama -- whose own pro-liberal democracy “end of history” theory was largely disproven in recent years -- said that the themes in Children of Men “should be on a lot of peoples’ minds after Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump and a lot of anti-immigrant sentiment.” 

Vulture’s on-point retrospective includes interviews with Cuarón detailing studios’ initial reluctance to greenlight Children of Men (and how his stint directing a Harry Potter franchise flick came in handy) and how Universal dropped the ball in effectively promoting it. There’s also some interesting details on the film’s many iconic long-take cinematography shots. This afternoon, I rewatched the film’s much-renowned 379-second one-take shot, and the experience left me choked up -- what appeared far-fetched as a college sophomore has become all-too-possible today.

Per the article:

Only after speaking with Cuarón did I realize why I wept: not with sorrow, but with hope for my own future. Children of Men imagines a fallen world, yes, but it also imagines a once-cynical person being reborn with purpose and clarity. It’s a story about how people like me, those who have the luxury of tuning out, need to awaken. This has been a brutal year, but we were already suffering from a kind of spiritual infertility: The old ideologies long ago stopped working. In a period where the philosophical pillars supporting the global left, right, and center are crumbling, the film’s desperate plea for the creation and protection of new ideas feels bracingly relevant.

Vulture, published in the December 26, 2016 issue of New York Magazine

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No Good

No Good, a song by Oneohtrix Point Never on Spotify

still one of the most devastatingly perfect songs of this decade.

Oneohtrix Point Never - “No Good” via Spotify

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Freetown Sound is the best album of 2016 thus far.

Blood Orange & Nelly Furtado - “Hadron Collider”

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New York, 1968 – Tadanori Yokoo

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Missing the hazy, lo-fi Bethany Cosentino vibes from yesteryear

Best Coast - “Boy” from 2009′s Where the Boys Are EP

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And the award for best use of a Gal Costa sample so far this year goes to...

Kaytranada - “Lite Spots”

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Who Is A Millennial?

Now that millennials have officially overtaken baby boomers as the U.S.’s largest living demographic, Alex Balk from the Awl has some thoughts on generational labels.

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The new Radiohead album A Moon Shaped Pool has been a splendid surprise and IMO it’s the band’s best release since the Amnesiac era. My favorite track so far is the subdued “Daydreaming,” which is the second song into the album. Despite its seemingly simplistic structure, it manages build tension and emotion while maintaining a classic melancholy Radiohead feel. 

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"New media” product and content partnerships

One year ago yesterday, Facebook rolled out “Instant Articles,” which allowed partners like the New York Times and Buzzfeed to host lightning quick-loading articles directly within Facebook. By serving its users articles in a nano-second instead of directing them to slower-loading external browsers, Facebook reasoned that this new publishing format would provide a better user experience and lead to higher engagement. Soon after "Instant Articles" was announced, (some) publishers quickly bemoaned that this was the latest example of tech companies cannibalizing media distributors by controlling their ad revenue streams and gaining access to valuable user analytics. Skeptical outlets predicted that this new offering would better serve Mark Zuckerberg’s bottom line than publishers’ best interests.

A year later, the cynicism appears to have been a bit overblown. 

After initially rolling out “Instant Articles” to just nine publishers, Facebook opened the product to all publishers last month and the initial engagement data is positive, showing that users are 20% more likely to read and 30% more likely to share an “Instant Article,” which bodes well for ad revenue generation. Google and Apple have since developed their own models while LinkedIn is reportedly in talks with publishers to create an “Instant Articles”-style product focused on business news. Apart from providing a more cohesive environment for Facebook users to take the latest Buzzfeed quiz or catch up on the presidential election news cycle, Facebook has also demonstrated that it truly values its partnerships with media publishers by listening and responding to their requests, whether it’s to increase the number of ads on an individual article or allow publishers to promote sponsored content. 

In an interview with The Verge, Facebook’s VP of Product Management Will Cathcart explained how the company strikes a balance between enhancing its consumers’ experience and monetizing “Instant Articles” without disillusioning its corporate partners – media publishers. 

(Emphasis mine):

We got into [”Instant Articles”] to improve a core part of the consumer experience. People come to Facebook for news, and they want to read it. If we make that experience better for consumers, that makes News Feed better overall, which is good for us. It’s good for us to serve the needs and desires people have when they come to Facebook. We deeply believe that the only way to have publishers use Instant Articles is if this works for them. So we’ve always had, from the beginning, the approach of figuring out what publishers need and realizing this needs to be net better for publishers’ businesses. And I think that’s why, a year later, if you look at all the changes we’ve made, they’ve been changes that are in response to publisher feedback, and not in the other direction, which might have been the fear.

As an initial skeptic of how this product would impact the Brave New World of Publishing, I’m genuinely happy that Facebook publicly recognizes that "Instant Articles” will only succeed as a mutually-beneficial partnership with media companies. Just in the past few months, it’s becoming exceedingly clear that technology platforms will lose out on their targeted markets if they refuse to truly partner with its most valuable content sources.

Case in point is Spotify, which in recent years has revolutionized the music streaming business while paying artists anywhere from $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream. When TIDAL rolled out early last year, the Jay Z-owned streaming platform was widely mocked as a less-than competitor to Spotify since it relied primarily off the cachet of its investors’ collective star power. However, TIDAL got the last laugh this year when Kanye West, Rihanna, Beyoncé, and other major players dropped wildly-hyped albums and TIDAL leveraged its exclusive streaming rights to those releases. Apple Music also maximized its partnership with Drake on the eve of his Views album drop with an exclusive Beats 1 radio show, which fans obsessively listened to as they wildly speculated about the album’s lyrical content on Twitter. 

TIDAL got 1.2 million new users to sign-up for its service in just the week after Beyoncé’s Lemonade was released, leading to a total of 3 million TIDAL users. While this isn’t quite on the scale of Spotify’s 30 million paying users or Apple Music’s 13 million, Queen Bey has single-handedly shown the power (and business) that one in-demand artist can generate. It would be a mistake for Spotify’s executives to not pay any attention to this phenomenon, particularly as consumers re-assess which single streaming service best deserves their $$$.

As both media publishers and musicians recognize the value they bring their audiences, it’s up to tech firms to decide whether to be true partners in this new media landscape. By creating financial incentives for writers or bands to serve their “content” – whether it’s listicles, live streams, or a "visual album” – across different platforms, tech companies can grow and sustain an engaged audience while also validating its creative partners.

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The selfie focus group

The dominance of mobile advertising has been pretty entrenched for the past few years but there’s an emerging mobile trend: the digital focus group. The New York Times profiled a Chicago-based company called Pay Your Selfie, an app that pings its users to post selfies of themselves completing seemingly mundane tasks like eating breakfast or brushing their teeth. The users are paid per photo and Pay Your Selfie then uses this data to generate consumer insights reports that it shares with partner companies, which include Procter & Gamble and Lakeshore Beverage. Since these photos are taken in a more natural environment, companies gain access to authentic data on, say, the most popular cereals amongst millennials or the teeth brushing habits of 30-something professionals.

As more people develop an intimate relationship with their smart phones, it will be interesting to watch marketers leverage these devices to better understand and cater to their customer’s needs.

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James Blake always drops his gloom-filed LPs on the cusp of spring, although I don’t mind the cognitive dissonance too much since they’re consistently excellent. Just today, he announced that his next release Radio Silence -- his first LP since 2013′s Overgrown -- is finally complete. He commemorated the occasion by teasing fans with “Timeless,” a subdued electro-banger that successfully evokes both the simplistic beats from his earlier releases while still pushing new sonic ground.

(via FACT)

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Happy #IntlWomensDay

Yesterday was International Women’s Day, which left me reflecting on the importance of highlighting women's voices in traditionally male spaces, particularly since I’ll soon be entering an MBA program in which male students and professors hold the majority. There are incredible programs, such as Forté Foundation, that encourage women to pursue management degrees via executive coaching and school funding. This support network allows more talented women to enter the management pipeline, but once they’re in it, it’s up to instructors, conference organizations, and hiring managers to advocate for diverse perspectives to be heard in classes, on panels, and within organizations.

A recent Fast Company article highlights the importance of bringing divergent viewpoints to a broader audience by inviting more women to sit on panels. Many panel moderators know countless talented women and underrepresented minorities to invite to speak, but it takes a purposeful effort to ensure that a female startup founder is seated at the “Entrepreneurship” panel rather than just the “Women in Entrepreneurship” one. As the article concludes, “It’s not about optics or statistics, so much as ensuring that all voices are heard. It’s not about the panel photo-op; it’s about empowering everyone to share their story.“ Amen.

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Oneohtrix Point Never // Four Tet

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Loyalty programs and consumer behavior

Starbucks inspired some Twitter outrage a few weeks ago when the company unveiled its new customer loyalty program, which now rewards its frappuccino-chuggers based on their dollars spent rather than the previously-used metric of number of store visits. The move places Starbucks’ rewards system more in line with recent upgrades made by airline companies. Since the announcement, Starbucks’ customer buzz score – a rough indication of a brand’s customer perception – dropped from 60 to 29 (out of 100), per the YouGov BrandIndex. AdWeek also quoted several brand consultants who unanimously agreed that Starbucks’ move “erodes good will” amongst coffee-drinkers, who’d previously relied on their $2 drip coffee purchases affording them the same rewards program benefits as a triple-shot venti latte drinker. According to AdWeek, this move is seen as an opportunity for Dunkin Donuts or other down-market coffeehouses to poach peeved Starbucks loyalists. 

While customer sentiment towards Starbucks may not be at its strongest right now, I ultimately think this is a good move for the coffee behemoth. Across industries, ranging from retail chains to gyms, companies want to ensure they’re expending the right resources to attract and retain customers who’ll ultimately generate the most profit. Although Starbucks’ new program is currently unpopular, it will reward customers who add a bagel to their grande americano order or go on afternoon latte runs on behalf of their coworkers. Previously, these customers would get the same reward as a tall iced coffee consumer but now they’ll receive a concrete incentive to spend those extra bucks. Given Starbucks’ ubiquity on every street corner and in every mall, it will be a taller order for its irked customers to find a new go-to coffee shop than to stop in for their standard order. Once the new program goes into effect in April, we’ll see whether these changes actually impact where consumers go for their morning (and afternoon) cup of joe.