Following on from my recent article on the challenges in the broadcast media space, it was interesting to see the data released by Nielsen SoundScan relating to music consumption trends. It showed that in the first half of the year there’s been an almost 12% drop in digital album sales, alongside a 13% drop in…
One industry that isn’t a stranger to commercial innovation is the music industry. Taking recording formats as an example, since the late 19th century there have been several waves of advancement, including: – Phonograph cylinder (1888-1920’s) – Vinyl (1920’s – early 1990s ) – Cassettes (Late 1970’s – early 2000’s) – CD’s (1982 – )…
One of the key battlegrounds between Google and Apple over the next few months will be in the area of music streaming. The companies are likely to take subtly different approaches in terms of service offering and business model. Google’s recently launched ‘Play Music All Access’ is a subscription based service similar to Spotify and…
One of the great examples of recent time that is used when people talk about innovation is the iPhone, however, in recent times the iPhone has been under stiff competition from other handset manufacturers and platform providers. It is widely acknowledged that the last iPhone didn’t really wow the world in the way that previous…
The Ubiquity of Apps – An Opportunity in Education (via innov8-Ed) It’s difficult to think about a world without apps, however, it is only five years since the launch of the iTunes App Store. In this time apps have become ubiquitous and found across all platforms and not just the Apple iOS. Over the past…
This 5-Year-Old Kid Just Spent Over $2,500 In 5-Minute iPad App Buying Spree. Quite a catchy headline in Fast Company where yet again a child had been let loose with their parent’s iPad and had managed to rack up a big bill. In this instance Apple has agreed to refund the money, however, as they pointed…
As I write this article I’m surrounded by bookshelves loaded with books. Gazing at them looking for inspiration it becomes clear that there are two categories, those such as cookery books and reference books which get used many times, and those such as modern fiction which are really one time reads. With ‘real’ books we…
Some had said that the release of the new Blackberry 10 device and OS was its last chance. There was certainly a lot riding on it. Since Blackberry’s high point in terms of innovative poster child, other players, notably Apple, have taken that crown. Apple in particular, from its consumer roots, has created some revolutionary…
As Apple fans the world over waited for the release of the iPhone 5 last month the focus was really on the hardware as most of the new features of the next release of the iOS6 operating system had been publicized already. In general there have been no real issues with the new hardware this time round,…
It’s hard to envisage a world without mobile phones, but they have only been around for some 20 years. I remember back in the 90’s, with the proliferation of providers and competition there was a bit of an arms race between the networks to create the most attractive packages. For the consumer this often meant confusion and…