Audio startuptelling — MoodiOn
What’s better than creating something you always wanted, with the dream-team of yours in zero time? Well, we also wouldn’t know if we weren’t part of Genεsis Team. In the context of ADandPRLAB of Panteion University in collaboration with Antenna Music, we were asked to develop our audio innovation idea. We delivered MoodiOn, an app that meets the needs of today’s consumer, along with a complete startup business plan.
How did this idea come to light?
During our discussions we found out that:
· 80% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase from a brand that provides personalized experiences.
· 71% of consumers feel frustrated when their (shopping) experience is impersonal.
What’s more, digital audio proved resilient during the pandemic and growth in digital audio should continue. So, we combined the trends and the needs, found the point of intersection & presented our idea.
MoodiOn is an app that provides high-quality and personalized audio content not just according to people’s taste, but also their mood. What we want to achieve with this app is to become the biggest radio and podcast aggregator in Greece (potentially globally), to cooperate with many Greek radio stations and podcast creators in order to offer the company of radio and podcast to all audio lovers through personalized, tailor-made, high quality content.
More specifically, the idea is for the user to download the MoodiOn app for free and find the music that fits one’s mood best. With all one’s favorite radio stations and podcasts included, MoodiOn aggregator promises to offer the smoothest listening experience. There is also a premium, ad-free version, for those who don’t want to get interrupted by any advertisements.
To substantiate our audio startup idea, we conducted both primary and secondary research. The results of both confirmed our optimistic estimates about the quick and successful absorption of MoodiOn from the market.
Regarding the primary research, we made and gave out two questionnaires, one to potential users/target audience and the other to potential partners/radio stations. We were glad to find out that most of the participants would download an app like ours.
As the secondary research is concerned, we found out that young people are highly engaged with music and radio is still an essential source of information and entertainment in Greece.
Competition
As competitors of MoodiOn, we perceive every Greek radio aggregator and more specifically apps that curate audio content. Our main competitor is SoundIs, as it is an app that aggregates some radio stations and offers other audio experiences as well, such as podcasts. The other Greek radio aggregators share similar features with minimal variations.
To have a clearer picture of where we place ourselves in the market, we carried out a mapping of our competitors.
The gap that appears in the market is that no app offers an audio experience based on your mood.
Who would benefit from our app, you may wonder? The answer to that is almost everyone. Radio listeners, music lovers, and podcast enthusiasts of every gender in the age range of 16–55.
One of the next steps of our work was to fully elaborate on the creation of our business model and adapt all insights given from our research.
We will use a freemium revenue model that offers a basic, limited, ad-supported service for free and an unlimited premium service for a subscription fee. Our main purpose is to attract a large base of users with a free service and convert free users to a premium value proposition and in the meantime to balance the cost of free and premium versions.
As Steve Jobs once said: ‘’ You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards’’ to achieve that we made a visual representation of how our app intersects with our customer’s desires and expectations.
And after all this research, we were finally able to position our audio startup somewhere in the existing market.
But before we got into that, we had to double check and make sure that we were suggesting something innovating and somewhat different from our competitors. The way to do that, we figured, is to 1) make our services seem special and 2) make our customers/users/partners feel special too. That is to say, to point out where we hold advantage against our competitors. So, we proceeded to highlight that competitive advantage by doing the following statement: No other Greek Radio Aggregator, but MoodiOn, personalizes content based on your mood and provides other audio experiences too (e.g. podcasts).
Coming back to our positioning as an audio startup, our team worked closely on defining various and important elements as follow:
Market Type: We had a better understanding of the four market types and placed ourselves in one of them. Specifically our app fits to that exact type: A new product in an existing market.
What Is It?: At this point we could answer this question with confidence. MoodiOn is an audio aggregator — more specifically it aggregates radio stations as well as podcasts. What makes it stand out is its personalization, based on the user’s mood & taste.
High-Level Positioning Strategy: We focused on why our features were better/different than the competition.
Tagline: That was also the time when we came up with “Hear your mood.”
Target Segment: We decided on our “targeting plan”:
· B2C: Radio listeners, Music lovers, Podcast enthusiasts, Male/Female, Age group: 16–55,
· B2B: Greek radio stations, podcasters.
Position Statement: MoodiOn is positioned as an app that provides users an audio experience by enabling them to listen to their choice of radio stations/podcasts according to their mood.
You might think “But how exactly is MoodiOn going to act like a B2B company?”. It didn’t take us long to figure it out for ourselves. In the very beginning, we were a bit too ambitious thinking that we want to include every Greek radio station there is. After our research, we were reminded that starting small (but bold) in the marketing world might actually work better in the long run (suggesting further future development) but also realized that wasn’t a very realistic plan for a startup company to begin with. That’s how we came down to some possible synergies with FM stations & podcasts from Athens and Thessaloniki.
And that’s where the creativity started to kick in. Of course, we wanted to visualize our work, to make it seem more alive and create real buzz. Can you blame us? After all “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Our team did its best to balance theory and practice (considering our given time).
We first decided to produce a short video that promotes our services best and is placed on YouTube (unskippable ad format) where many people could notice. You can watch it on YouTube here.
Then, we also created this (side) digital banner which could appear on many websites or social media platforms. Or even as an interactive, choosing the mood of the individual’s choice.
Following a way more traditional style of advertising we made a poster and visualized it all over bust stations and subways.
Last but not least, we even made a UX/UI prototype making all of our ideas of this project come to life. You can download a very early beta version of the app right here.
Overall, we were glad to participate in a project, in which we were free to use our knowledge and skills we have developed so far, and also get hands-on experience on audio startup building. In fact, we recently submitted that exact idea about this audio startup to the 14th University Competition and Entrepreneurship & Innovation in which we qualified to the second phase. So, this “startuptelling” may has come to an end but another one begins now!
At this point we would like to thank our lab professor Betty Tsakarestou and ms. Domnika Skreta for their helpful guidance and for giving us yet another chance to innovate.
It’s been great and we would do it all again!
The Genεsis team:
