New Blog!

I’m starting up a new blog (Zune’dOut) based upon one of my branding/product ideas, but it most definitely won’t be a branding blog. I will continue to post on mgmtnow, and hope this will get me posting more often on both.

Focus

I’m super passionate about music in general, and specifically the Zune product Microsoft offers. Unfortunately I think Microsoft has really missed the boat on their marketing strategy for this product, and this is why they’re hovering at 3% market-share.

The Zune’s key differentiator is that it allows you to download unlimited music (so long as it’s on the pass) and keep it until you cancel, in addition you also get 10 songs a month rolled into the deal all for $15 a month. Think of this product as Netflix where they let you keep 1 movie a month.

The Problem

People were used to renting movies; no one is used to renting music. Netflix spent millions and millions on marketing to create an effective brand and get people used to the idea of subscription based renting and mail delivery.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has focused their marketing resources on trying to create a Zune is sexy image, when Apple the purveyors of everything sleek and revolutionary in design are the market leaders.  I don’t have the figures but given the subject matter of the tv ads I have seen I can’t imagine the subscription marketing efforts amount to anything more than 25% of advertising budget.

My Solution

One of the biggest challenges in a subscription system is keeping customers engaged. Netflix spent millions to create a profiling recommendation system, including a contest that led to a $1 million payout to a programmer to improve the algorithm.

I think Microsoft should be crowd sourcing their “algorithm”, now I’m not saying they have to get a bunch of programmers to improve the marketplace (not that it wouldn’t help). No I’m talking about encouragement, ecosystem building, and creating more features around music sharing “djing” outside of their current social efforts.

Since I see this as a great way to drive their subscriptions, I decided it would be a good project to undertake and see if I could get any traction behind.

Possible Revenue Streams

The standard AdSense model of revenue generation is obviously one way to go. Another interesting revenue stream may be Zune’s affiliate system, whereby they pay you a set fee for every Zune