Spotify deja vu: is video killing the radio star again?

This article was originally published via The Guardian Media Network.

spotify-video adsOur world is being transformed by technology, but history, as the latest Spotify announcement shows, is destined to repeat itself.

In 1981, Viacom launched MTV. It used footage from the first moon landing and the song Video Killed the Radio Star to make it clear to the music labels and advertisers that it meant business. Before MTV, the music business (with the help of radio) was doing well. But video quickly took the industry to new heights. Fueled by the new medium, global music sales revenue quadrupled, before losing steam due to the new hip technology called the internet (and piracy).

Born in 2006, Spotify was the Swedish knight in shining armour using secret weapons like freemium and streaming to save the music industry from piracy. Last week, that knight called in the cavalry in the form of video streaming. Just like in the 80s, the music streaming business was doing OK (Spotify generated $1.3bn in revenue each year and is currently valued at $8bn), but the future was looking challenging – the company tripled its losses since 2012 and with Apple launching its own service in a few weeks – who knows when Spotify will turn a profit. For a company that is hoping to have its stock market launch soon, that’s an unbearable thought.

Spotify is trying to position its announcement as an evolution (not a revolution) of its business. Something along the lines of “music was just the beginning, now we will add TV clips and podcasts to create an entertainment platform”. One could say that Snapchat made a similar move a few months ago when it began offering video updates on top of its messaging app.

Spotify’s move, however, is quite different. Spotify is, first and foremost, a music service. Not just a distribution platform. If we know one thing about Spotify’s massive user base, it is that they love music. But interestingly, in the press event last week, where the video feature was announced – music took the back seat. When showcasing some of the new video content, Spotify chose to highlight short clips from comedy TV shows like Broad City and not music videos or interviews with artists that complement Spotify’s core offering. It seems as if in Spotify’s video realm, TV killed the radio star yet again.

The truth is that monetising music with a freemium business model is hard. Pandora, just like Spotify, is also sweating to make it work.

From a product design standpoint, there is something almost unfair in this story, since Spotify did a great job in designing a fantastic music experience: the catalogue is huge, the device support is superb, the playlists are great for sharing, the play queue is a cool tool for occasional DJing, the user profiles are what social discovery is all about and the recent announcement of Spotify Running makes perfect sense. And let’s not forget the best part – much of this is available for free.

But all of that wasn’t enough and so Spotify had to change focus and expand its content offering.

Maybe last week’s press event doesn’t mean that much and music fans have nothing to worry about. Maybe Spotify, just like MTV in the 80s, will take content streaming business to new heights with the introduction of video. Maybe Spotify, like MTV in its heyday, will be as innovative with TV clips as it was with the music streaming experience. Maybe it will even challenge YouTube’s viewing experience that hasn’t changed much over the years. But those are all big maybes.

One thing is clear – Spotify must make TV clips work with music. One will not work without the other. Just look at what happened to MTV once it lost all interest in music and its core fan base to focus solely on reality TV – it’s dying.

With millions of music fans who love Spotify and are looking forward to a bright new age for the industry, one can only hope that Spotify knows what it’s doing and that history will not come full circle.

Why is YouTube brand Maker Studios worth more than Marvel to Disney?

This article was originally published via The Guardian Media Network.

maker-studios-logo-lWe are all used to seeing movie and TV stars being promoted in the subway. Well, YouTube now feels that if you have at least 1.4 million registered fans – you are worthy of an ad campaign as well.

Hollywood is clearly taking note of the potential of YouTube talent. About a month ago, in one of its biggest deals in recent years, Disney bought Maker Studios for roughly $1bn – or about £600m (half of it in cash and the rest in Disney stock). Maker Studios represents many popular YouTube talents and help them to produce and monetise their content.

This deal reminded me of the deal in 2009 in which Disney acquired Marvel. When comparing the valuation of Marvel and Maker at the moment of purchase, the difference is staggering. In 2009, the year it was acquired, Marvel did about $670m in sales. Disney paid $4.94bn for Marvel, which gave it a valuation multiple of about seven.

In the case of Maker Studios, the revenue numbers were not public knowledge. But we do know that Maker was evaluated at $300m about six months ago, when it went through another round of funding. Even if we assume that Maker got a very generous valuation back then (say 10x), its revenue couldn’t have been more than $30m. Given that Disney bought it for $500m (with up to $450m in performance-based earn-out), Maker basically received an evaluation of between 16x and 31x. What makes Maker Studios worth at least 220% – and possibly as much as 440% – more than the people who brought us Spiderman?

Much of it is about the number of YouTube subscribers. Maker’s revenue may be small but its reach is massive. It claims to have 5.5bn monthly views and 380 million subscribers. In that sense, Maker’s acquisition is more similar to Facebook buying WhatsApp for $19bn. WhatsApp had 450 million users at the time, which means that Facebook paid about $42 per user, while Disney paid about $2.60 per user. So maybe Maker’s price tag makes sense after all.

“Eyeballs valuation” is another sign of technology and entertainment convergence, where every content property can be easily measured. But what happens now? How can the Maker acquisition drive much higher revenues for Disney’s stockholders?

Maker will start by fostering and monetising its biggest asset: the direct relationship with subscribers. The first stage will be to cut out the middleman – YouTube. Maker recently launched its video site, called Maker.TV (powered by the Blip player that Maker bought last year). While the YouTube channels will still be operated, I assume much of Maker’s energy will now be directed towards moving its fans to Maker.TV. This is strategic for Maker for several reasons:

Ad revenue – YouTube takes about 30%-45% of any ad revenue. In addition, Maker has to work with YouTube on selling its ads and it has much less flexibility with advertisers.

Sponsorships – Maker needs to be able to create more branding and sponsorship opportunities around its original content. This is extremely hard to do within YouTube’s unified design.

User targeting – Maker needs to know everything about its users: their email addresses, viewing history and engagement levels. It also needs to be able to track viewing trends. This data is worth money. If Maker can offer more targeted ads, it can receive higher CPMs from advertisers and deliver them better click-through rates. In addition, data is key to offering appealing content recommendations. On YouTube, Maker has little control over the suggested content. On its own site, it can push its original content and record – and subsequently act on – the data on what’s working and what’s not.

Now that online video distribution and social media marketing make content more accessible than ever before, we are likely to see more content makers following Sesame Street’s lead and creating their own holistic website experience, in addition to their YouTube channel. This is vital to creating a direct relationship with viewers, which is what is driving today’s eye-watering acquisitions in technology and entertainment.