FRUKT on Music

JACK HORNER

It's everywhere you take your ears. The other day I even heard the comforting voice of 'Roberta' in my local charity shop. Obviously being ahead of the old adoption curve we've been Spotifying since early Beta stages last year and it's safe to say we are hooked. Getting hands dirty with cheeky collaborative playlists and inviting all our friends to join the party.

We've seen its popularity spiral first hand - from colleagues, to friends, to their friends, their parents and now Whitechapel's charity shops. As Spotify announces it has passed it's millionth user, it is clear that they have boldy leaped across Moore's Chasm between the 'early adopters' and the 'early majority' with safe distance. So 18 years on from the "Crossing the Chasm" gospel was published why are some propositions getting it right but others still getting it oh so wrong? What makes for a successful shift from those early supporters to the mainstream public? The key, as Moore points out, is to market to each of the 5 segments in the product adoption cycle separately.

Spotify perfected this with a cunningly planned snowball effect. In a similar way to the Gmail phenomena they staged a public beta with limited invites sent to opinion-formers, cool agencies and big gobbed bloggers. We all felt pretty special because after all we only had 5 invites each so we had to think carefully about who would actually appreciate Spotify. I selected my taste-maker friends of course and presumably so did everyone else. These people were key in seeding it in the mainstream. They weren't techy geeks, or industry bandwagon jumpers. They were all (fairly) normal people who loved the simplicity of Spotify.

There were no lengthy sign up processes, no downloading times, easy user interfaces and above-all a large enough library for more discerning musos. Within months they opened up the invitations to include those on the periphery of truly mainstream audiences and sure enough everyone is talking about it.

The challenge is the next wave of growth, getting the daytime radio listeners, who have little interest in interacting much with their media, to spend a little time playing with it so they can appreciate how easy it is to use. That said, the radio feature on Spotify is blissfully easy to use, but results vary with some pretty unusual selections of tracks. Traditionally it's this next wave of growth that needs significant marketing budget to push the service out to a mass audience - so we wait to see how this is managed by the Spotify marketeers.

Obviously as more brands get on board with more creative campaigns, that will also help spread the word. So all you media & marketing people out there - download it, and check out and add to some of our collaborative playlists...

Tracks I Wish I'd Played Drums On

80s Movie Classics

Legendary Boy Bands and Their Art

As a closing thought, another new service launched today using mixtape analogy to package new music. Time will tell if they can cross the chasm with equal success.

(Thanks to Natasha "Scrat" Peskin who co-wrote this post)