A mapping of the audio innovation platforms in the greek market & findings regarding gap-oportunities
Hello everyone! We are GRenADe, a team of 6 young visioners working their way through the marketing and advertisement field. The context of this particular project was to map audio and innovation platforms in the greek market so as to identify the gap and existing space for further opportunities-possibilities of expansion and development. We initiated our work with a secondary research so as to understand how the audio-related field works and then we proceeded to visualise these findings through miroboard.
In further detail, the graph depicts the 13 audio platforms that are dominant in Greece, and the variables on which our analysis is based are “popularity” and “innovation”, by taking into account also the variable of incusivity and differentiation. The highlight of the first quadrant is the top 3 platforms that the public loves and trusts, they are platfomrs of worldwide reputation: Spotify, YouTube and Shazam. They are estimated to have the biggest, most loyal audience, such as Youtube that stably has around 1,5 billion users. These platforms are also innovative, providing the public with ease, options and tools that make their music-audio experience more enjoyable and rich. For instance, Spotify provides the public with a huge variety of high-quality content and audio choices based on personal preferences and trends, and Shazam is in the lead regarding the patent of song-recognition. In the first quadrant, an other vital finding was SoundCloud, a social-media driven platform that connects creators with fans and that makes connections between the fans themselves, is very high in innovation. However, the greek audience is not that familiarized with its use and services, therefore the platform is not very popular.
Moving on to the second quadrant, it depicts all the innovative platforms that despite their bolder moves in the field do not have as much recognition. Tidal, TuneIn, Soundis and Deezer all have made considerable efforts to make interesting choices and enrich the audio experience. Tidal, owned by JayZ releases many exclusive songs and the sound quality is higher than any other, creating a space for professionals. TuneIn is a woldwide broadcasting platform for news, music, radio and online podcasts, Deezer is a french music platform famous in Europe for its innovative practises. The consumer can dowload songs for off-line use and transfers music from other apps and condenses it all in one. Finally, Soundis is the first aggregator in Greece that creates a mutual space for 23+ radios and 35+ podcasts.
The third quadrant, depicts Pandora and Amazon Music, two platforms with the least amount of both popularity and innovation. Pandora is considered to be the “grandparent” of audio-streaming services, that inspired the now popular ones, like Spotify. Amazon Music, despite its voice-assistant services that could be considered special, is not innovative or unique after all, because other platforms such as Deezer provide exactly the same services. Both of them are not as famous in the Greek public as the other 11 platforms. Finally, the forth quadrant refers to 3 audio platforms that despite not having this much innovation, are high regarding audience-preference. YouTube Music in Greece is the forth most popular audio platform, that does not innovate as much as the others, because it is exclusively a music-streaming platform, whilst Apple Music is less popular in Greece, but innovates more by providing the public with music, podcasts, audio books and radio. Finally, ΡαδιόφωνοFM is less popular than Apple Music or YouTube Music and its content has to do exclusively with radio streaming, and partially has partnerships with television.
DIFFERENTIATION-INCLUSIVITY
Yt: gives a platform to everyone regarding culture,sex or race to speak and be heard
SoundCloud: supports creators
Spotify, Pandora: fights gender inequality by hiring more women and with 30% women in its board
Deezer: Pride Channel
Soundis: supports LGBTQ openly, and generally very vocal about diversity in the audio world
TuneIn: supports independent creators by providing them with a platform,TuneIn on air
Pandora, Amazon Music: inclusive by hiring people from diverse backgrounds
Apple Music: music lists about diversity, Apple Music Fund for Independant Labels, hires minorities
ΡαδιοφωνοFM: aggregators and chanels for diversity like “Raising anti-racist, anti-bias kids”
Tidal: looking for systematic ways that racism,sexism, homophobia and other inequalities have been entrenched in a system through its cultural norms, systems, processes, networks and beyond.
Shazam: Partner with Coopera in diversity, equity and inclusion regarding strengtening community FIS (fights breast cancer, supports people with leukemia & lymphoma)
GAP
What is apparent from this graph, is a gap in the first quadrant. It is clear that the Greek audience feels more safe with the more mainstream platforms, like YouTube, Shazam and Spotify. Additionally, from the second quadrant it is apparent that there is considerable innovation being made in the field, there are many efforts and creative ideas with a lot of potential, but they are not widely spread or popular. Therefore, the greek market is in need for something groundbreaking and engaging in the audio-innovation field. There is an opportunity to create something that will align with the taste of the greek audience, which mainly prefers music, while keeping in touch with more traditional media, such as the radio in its more renewed form. The is need for a platform that will provide an easy-to-use, safe format for audio tools and services, that will combine the characteristics of the platforms in the 1st and 2nd quadrant with the maximum amount of engagement. Innovation is key, but the public doesn’t seem to trust easily something with which they are not familiarized, making innovation practices more difficult to be implemented successfully.
Greek users seem to prefer safe, easy-to-use, mainstream platforms.
So accordng to the Greek market-the Greek users, what is needed is an agreegator platform that will combine inclusivity in its portfolio and support all minorities by including them in its community and space. How is this possible? By giving directly and practically a voice to similar producers, and at the same time, by giving space for interaction with the interested audience so it can be connected with people of all communities, festures and qualities. Thus, it is possible to raise awareness for the importance of differentiation, but mainly to put these ideas into practice by promoting diversity and inclusivity real time. Greek users seem to trust easy-to-use, mainstream platforms and aggregators → these spaces-initiatives could make good use of this trust in order to promote in a more personal and honest way diversity and inclusivity.
Thanks for reading!
Members: Charalampos Ntzianos, Maria Ariadne Thymara, Costantinos Raptis, Athanasia-Evangelia Tsampoula, Elias Kkamari
Supervisor: Betty Tsakarestou
https://medium.com/startuplab-by-adandprlab-panteion-university?fbclid=IwAR0yH84KZI1yg3bK-fk4r5fDh6zfC7FRvkUU_lzacjke_kYJ2edEVKzcn7U
