December 18th, 2014
As Kite Media Consultancy was preparing for lift off, it was a salient lesson at how quickly the media landscape – and, indeed, the wider world itself – changes.
Possibly the greatest media development in Kite’s lifetime is the launch, implementation and global domination of iTunes. A great, great brand underpinned by a groundbreaking, ‘sexy’ product. The Apple juggernaut seemed unstoppable but, gradually, iTunes has been reeled in by Spotify and others with revenues reportedly down around 15% year on year.
The Spotify model is an interesting one with ‘free access’ customers being converted to paid subscribers – iTunes has remained fairly stagnant in its outreach relying perhaps on its brand strength and reach.
The purchase of Beats by Apple perhaps signals the way forward – there is a bundling deal in there somewhere – but the message is clear: it doesn’t matter who you are, unless you evolve you will die. A real lesson for a start up consultancy business…