On Monday nights I teach a radio management course to college students at FDU. This week’s homework was to tell me who they thought would win in the streaming audio wars.
Half the class went with Pandora. The Pandorans like the market share lead that Pandora has. They like the product. They like free. They don’t mind the ads. They wouldn’t mind super-targetted ads. They like Pandora and their generation isn’t going to change to another service.
The other half of the class went with Apple. They have seen what Apple has done in other spaces. They think Apple hangs back and watches what others do then they come in and do it better. They like the advantage iTunes Radio has of being on the phone.
So I jumped in and asked if anyone has heard of Galaxy. Oh yeah that.
Milk isn’t on their radar (yet?). This particular set of students all have iPhones, so factor that into the conversation. But the “it’s on my phone” argument will hold for both services. My two cents is it is kind of impossible/not-smart to ignore the amount of units Samsung is selling.
Nobody picked Beats Audio. Beats is perceived as having way cool headphones. They’ll even spend the extra buck to get Beats headphones over my hypothetical “Walmart headphones that sound better.” But as far as paying for Beats Audio…non-starter.
So I called their bluff and told them Spotify was now $5 for college students. In previous classes they told me that $5 was the price-point they would go for. Now that it’s a reality they still aren’t interested.
I don’t think they understand Spotify – but that’s Spotify’s problem, right? Pandora is the perceived cool with the college kids.
Now, I wouldn’t go making any billion dollar bets based upon an adjunct-professor and 12 college kids, but I do really really enjoy these discussions every week. We throw things around and play in the hypothetical sandbox. And in that sandbox, here’s one…
What if Apple decides (because it is cash-rich) to throw money at Howard Stern when he is a free agent. What if they just want to own the space…and go grab the biggest fish. Would “free” Howard on iTunes radio get people to the service? Would it move phones? Would it increase use of CarPlay?
I’m not ready to make a half-billion dollar bet on a college class vamping…but it’s an interesting hypothetical discussion to have.