Talk Data to me

Blog Post Number 5 – Monetization of data analytics

 “Talk Data to Me”

Time is money right? Well.... so is data so lets stop wasting time and get to it. Data monetization is becoming more and more frequent in today’s day and age. To sum it up quick, a company basically sells subscriptions to unique data it has created. Which sounds like a great idea, if a company is sitting on huge amounts of under- utilized data and wants to increase its value, why not sell it? In a digital economy there are many ways to monetize data. A company can improve internal business processes and decisions, wrap information around care products and services and sell information offerings to new and existing markets. All three of these approaches offer ways for a company to distinguish themselves in a market place. It is interesting after learning about data monetization to think of data as a product, I have never looked at it this way and it changes the way I’ve thought about data. To better understand data monetization, I think it is helpful to break it down and apply it to some relatable companies to show how they monetize data to get a better understanding of some of these approaches.

In my post last week, I mentioned how Spotify collects data in order to know there customers as best as they can. Now we can look at these two apps from a monetization approach. The music apps Pandora and Spotify have both found profitable ways to mine available sources of data regarding music and musical tastes. They’ve also created layers on top of their data that allow users to: search for the data they want receive suggestions about similar data that may interest them and use social media tools to share their data with friends.

At the heart of Pandora’s success is a machine algorithm that gets “smarter” over time. Every time a user clicks on a song and says they like it, the algorithm adds points to the metadata associated with that song like its artist, genre, beats per minute. The app then uses that metadata to search through larger repositories of music to find every song or artist that matches, or at least comes close to the one the customer already likes. Spotify, has a different twist on music and how it collects its data. Like Pandora, it offers a huge collection that ultimately has something for everyone. In addition, its social media feed allows users to easily share with friends whatever music tracks they’re currently listening to, favorite playlists and more. I personally think its cool to see a real time feed of what people are listening to, since no other social media app really includes music like that. New Apps like Bumble and possibly Tinder, even allow you to sink your Spotify to it, so you can match with other people who may have the same music interests as you. I think this is a cool way to collect data and combine a data app with a music app. Data is being collected in two forms this way, along with cross marketing.

Both apps tap more traditional revenue streams as well, including selling advertisements that are seen by those consumers who subscribe for free. Another way Spotify is monetizing its data is to allow third-party developers to create apps that can be hosted within the Spotify desktop player, providing such capabilities as synchronized lyrics, music reviews and others. In essence, they’re creating an environment around their data that functions as a marketing platform on which other companies will pay to appear.

Data monetization can be seen as a modern day gold rush. Everyone is scrambling to gather information about people in order to aid in their companies strategic measures. Companies are dying to get their hands on data and its almost like every time you go on a website it seems you have to enter your information just to view the page. Sometimes I find it can get a little out of hand if you ask me. Spotify and Pandora show how data monetization has tremendous potential for development in this field.

http://dataclairvoyance.com/blog/what-you-can-learn-from-a-few-data-monetization-examples/