Virtualization, Media and Broadcasting
Article | July 13, 2022
The market disconnect between the proliferation of independent content creators and the consolidation of brand IP into the hands of ever-fewer major players is growing increasingly stark.
On the one hand, independent artists are the fastest-growing sector of the music market. User-generated content (UGC) has proved a huge success during lockdown for the likes of TikTok and Roblox. The traditional brand celebrity spokesperson has ceded ground to the influencer, and even they to the micro-influencer. Content proliferation has driven increasingly niche content to niche audiences, finding smaller fan bases to resonate with instead of attempting the now nigh-impossible cut-through to mainstream popularity. This is the paradox of small: the long tail accounts for a growing share of content consumption, but the fractional economics of on-demand environments means that those in the long tail earn too little to be economically sustainable. Access to the means of distribution may have been democratised, but access to meaningful rights income has not.
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Technologies, Virtualization
Article | July 27, 2022
The first half of 2021 has been a year of continued change and disruption for subscription video. The global incumbent subscription video on demand (SVOD) leaders, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, have been busy signalling to the financial markets how they intend to entrench their market dominance in light of the ongoing market acquisition pushes unleashed by the D2C disruptors following the D2C ‘big bang’ moment of Q4 2019 – Q2 2021.
Netflix announced in January that it was no longer going to borrow on the financial markets to fund its day-to-day operations – specifically for its content acquisition budget, which is now driven predominately by commissioning original content for its service. This leaves the SVOD leader with $14.9 billion of outstanding long-term debt to service as it seeks to live within its means by commissioning future content from its ongoing cashflow. In Q1 2021 alone Netflix spent $500 million on servicing this debt pile versus $1.7 billion in net income generated over the same period.
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Technologies, Business
Article | July 20, 2022
Live streaming is an effective tool to attract the attention of your potential clients in the B2B SaaS domain. You can influence users and prospects without stretching your marketing budget. In a survey by Wyzowl, it was reported that 86% of businesses were relying on videos as a marketing tool. All you need to make the most of this tool is a good device, a strong internet connection, and the right live streaming application.
Live Streaming: It’s All about the Connection
Every business focuses on creating connections with their prospects through every form of communication, like discord, social media and websites. As a medium, live streaming offers an exciting opportunity to make this connection interactive. Let us look at what it can help you do:
Build Your Brand
Real-time comments, likes, and shares take brand interaction to another level. You can reiterate your brand’s ability to responsibly respond to your customers and create a new benchmark for how you deliver customer experience. Since live streams are unscripted, you can also showcase your brand’s ingenuity in handling customer issues without any hang-ups.
Connect With Customers
A live stream will help you connect with your customers in a novel way. Not only will your customers participate in your brand journey, but they will also feel excited to learn about your offerings. Tapping into their curious minds and influencing their buying decisions will be easier once they become visually engaged in your stream.
Get Instant Feedback
Product enhancements are a result of priceless customer feedback. When you present your products to customers over a live stream, they understand the product features and benefits in real-time and offer their feedback instantly, so you know what you need to work on. This feedback can also be the fodder for your content and marketing strategies.
Keep Customers Informed
Customers prefer watching interactive videos more than reading detailed emails on products. Keep your customers informed and updated about your latest product information through regular live streams. You can highlight important product updates that can help customers elevate their businesses and address any concerns that might hamper your sales through a stream.
Boost Your B2B SaaS Business with Live Streaming
Now that we have seen what exactly live streaming can do for businesses, let us narrow it down to the B2B SaaS domain. Here is how you can improve your SaaS sales with live streaming:
Speed up problem resolution
Allow customers to request live streams on what they need. Through live streams, you can troubleshoot for them without making them wait in queues or for your responses over email. If you address one customer’s problem over the stream, it can help you reduce and eliminate similar problems other customers are facing.
Conduct detailed product tours
If you live stream your product tour, you can show your customers how it works in detail. Product tours will help you create a personal connection with businesses because you can highlight how your product will help them address their pain points. You can also answer questions in detail and communicate with them better.
Save the videos as tutorials
Your live streams can become tutorials for your customers. Your ‘How-to’ live streams can help them understand your product and solve their problems without any brand intervention or waiting period.
Reel in the customers
Give your customers a glimpse of the trends in the SaaS industry. Update them on industry events, expos, and conferences they can attend. Let them see what goes behind making the product and get their opinion on new product ideas.
It’s a Wrap
B2B SaaS leaders must develop appealing live streaming strategies to solve customer problems, identify their needs, and connect with them on new platforms to increase sales and product uptake.
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Media and Broadcasting
Article | June 4, 2021
News that New York-based Pershing Square Tontine Holdings is planning to acquire 10% of UMGis the latest in a wave of financial transactions in the music rights space. Alongside this, Believe’s impending IPO has the potential to be one of the biggest things to happen to the independent music sector in some time, and comes as part of a wave of IPOs (e.g.WMG,UMG), SPACs (e.g.Anghami,Reservoir) and no end of catalogue funds and acquisition vehicles. This trend, with good cause, has been referred to as the ‘financialisation of music’ but that only captures part of what is at play here. This is more than simply an influx of capital and debt; financial institutions are now becoming part of the plumbing of the music business, and in turn they are changing the definition of what constitutes success. This shift in objectives and desired outcomes has the potential to rebalance how the music industry operates.
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