Polyphonic HMI: Mixing Music and Math
(Case Review)
Abstract
This paper is an analysis of a case study originally conducted by the Harvard Business School in August of 2005 and is based on the challenges of introducing a new technology into a market place that for decades been based on “gut feelings and intuition”. The new technology was initially designed to assist consumers in music stores find music that met a certain criteria. Later this was changed because of a sharp decline in music sales. The new revision of the technology was designed to assist music producers, record companies, and artists in the selection of music that could be successful. Faced with a very small marketing budget the challenge of the marketing team was to
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At the time the Polyphonic’s was ready go to market with HSS they had invested approximately $600,000 dollars on the development of Hit Song Science and found that they were running very low on capital investments. Because of this the management team had approximately $150,000 for marketing the product.
II. Analysis
In this section the case study will be broken down into segments that have been perceived as important and worth a closer review.
1) The first important piece of the case study deals with Grupo AIA. Grupo AIA had established itself as having a core competency of utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) and the natural sciences to solve complex business problems. [1] AIA saw potential use for a new technology in the music industry so they formed Polyphonic HMI. When they formed Polyphonic AIA brought in staff that were familiar with the music industry and the technology the initial program was designed for would assist consumers entering a music store in the selection of music that met certain criteria leading to greater customer satisfaction and higher sales.
Looking at the available information [2] Polyphonic should have seen that the market trend for sales from big box stores over previous decade had been in a sharp decline (Figure 1) and considered targeting a different market segment from the beginning. Polyphonic’s either didn’t see the trend or thought that it wouldn’t affect the release of the new technology. Because of the late discovery the
Sometimes it’s not so important that your product fits the exact needs of the segment you target; rather, it’s vital that customers perceive that you do, even if it’s not true. In order to achieve this, the proper amount of advertising and sending the appropriate message are both vital.
What value does Hit Song Science create? If you were Mike McCready, CEO of Polyphonic, which target market – unsigned artists, producers, or record companies would you pursue?
Polyphonic’s first idea was to market their technology of the HSS to retailers. The retailers would have stations in their stores so that people can rate songs. The problem was that they could not find a software company to work with.
The popular music industry in the late 1990s was dominated by a small number of integrated corporations with headquarters in Europe, the United States and Japan. This music market starts simply with an artist and moves along through many steps to the consumer. Everything has its start when a musician presents his music to a music manager, and if he/she finds the music promising, a contract is signed between the two, recordings are made and a marketing plan is drafted for the
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Now let’s run our analysis based on Sony where Polyphonic has the highest chances of making a good penetration. There are about 3000 singles released per year; of which 10%
This case study about the Spotify business model allows a broader vision of what the digital music industry is. In a short time, many companies have developed and managed marked their territory in a highly competitive industry. The start-up Spotify has undergone a remarkable evolution in a financial point of view but also in terms of its popularity. Its various competitive benefits regarding the market leader and its respect for music labels have enabled the company to be renowned and to have a reputation in the real business. Today, five years after its creation, Spotify is certainly criticized in some aspects of
Introduction: Setting the trend for the future, the distribution and consumption of recorded music transformed dramatically with the launching of Apple’s iTunes in 2001. The proliferation of online music subscription services and other music sharing services exerted a great pressure on the conventional music distribution business model. Combined with this transformation, piracy of digital music had a profound impact on the whole industry. These worsening conditions in the market place for recorded music forced both established and upcoming new artists to experiment with new ways of selling their music.
Since the iTunes music store was introduced on April 28, 2003, gross music sales have plummeted in the United States - from $11.8 billion in 2003 to $7.1 billion in 2012, according to the Recording Industry Association of America (Covert). Counterintuitively, during that time consumers were buying more music than ever. How is that possible? It 's because iTunes had made digital singles popular and was selling them cheap. This would change the music industry forever. In 2000, Americans bought 943 million CD albums (Covert), and digital sales didn’t even make a dent in comparison. But by 2007, those inexpensive singles overtook CDs by a wide margin, generating 819 million sales compared to just 500 million for the CD.
In 2000 the digital music was the next big thing in how consumers listen to music. The technological shift in music changed how the relationship is between the artists, recording companies, promoters and music stores on how they operate today. In the late 90’s and early 2000’s Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks allowed free exchange of music files with companies like Napster and Kazaa was a big step that allowed consumers to store large libraries of music. With the cost of hard drive space going down; it allowed for pocket-sized computers to store more information in a smaller space that open the door for apple to step in with the unveiling of the iPod and iTunes. These systems made it possible for storage and playback that gave consumers the
To perform a prefect marketing research, it is needed to identify and define the marketing research problem accurately and then develop a proper approach. The American Idol case is a challenging management decision and marketing research problem case, focusing on reasons why to conduct a study on the viewers and voters. In this case study, we review defining the marketing research problem and developing an approach process, including objective/theoretical framework, analytical model, research questions, hypothesizes and specification of information
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Now let’s run our analysis based on Sony where Polyphonic has the highest chances of making a good penetration. There are about 3000 singles released per year; of which 10%
But today’s customer—and today’s competition—requires a deeper level of understanding. Traditional market research is fine,
Collect customer e-mail addresses, to inform them of the dates of new releases pertaining to their music of interest and of up-coming events and promotions