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I'm agreeing with nearly everything people are posting;
Long ads should be a thing of the past and they have to be relative in length to the media - i.e. a 30 second ad is acceptable when you're streaming a 90 minute film, but it's never going to fly on a 5 min EDM track.
Out of principle, I click off that media if I see it has an ad over 10 secs, and I can guarantee that the ADD generation has even less patience.
But even is BP's Play cost them a million, that's just 2% of their annual revenue. They must have been bleeding money our of every orifice to take $50m, only having 80 employees, be an online only service (not brick and morter overheads etc) and STILL manage to lose money. I mean fuck, even if you paid every employee $200,000, that's still not 30% of your annual revenue.
The thing is though, and what most people don't have a clue about, is that so many of these apparently "thriving" or popular online sites are ginormous loss making ventures.
What their ownership is hoping for is a silly money buyout (exactly what happened to beatport) as they know they're not making a penny and never will.
I know of one very online group buying promotional site (does well over $150m in revenue a year) and has had over $200m in investment in the past five years and has only lost money and never turned a profit.
Why do these companies (beatport included) do this? because these are exit strategy businesses. They are not designed to make money in the traditional sense of selling goods or services at a greater amount that their expenditure.
All they are interested in is making a brand that has value as some speculated intellectual property vehicle, all so some huge investment company will buy off them for millions.
As with beatport, they were bought, then they actually get a proper look at the company (not just an esoteric projected worth based off potential market share etc) and the bloodbath is the result.
Data has now outstripped voice calls or texting, and I even know some people don't care for voice plans, just as much data as they can get.
Look at what T-mobile and AT&T are doing here in the USA; offering you unlimited calls, text & text - but here's the kicker - the data is capped. You have to pay more to get higher limits. All of T-mobiles current plans are capped at 500mb, and you have to pay more to get more. They've already recognized that data is now where the money is at.
The problem with selling yourself cheaply at the start is that when you need to jack it up later, some other startup is then offering the same of not more for less.
Beatport did shoot themselves in the foot though with the classification thing. It used to be pretty damn easy to find what you want by genre - now I have to know the name of the artist or label to even get close, and frankly they've done a really sloppy job of recommending similar music to you. What it lacks is the function of when you used to go in to a record store and ask the guy working there for stuff and actually get some pointed, and on point, recommendations.
They also made it way too easy to get a release out there. I know we've all talked about the fact vinyl, due to the medium and steps involved was in effect a type of filter that stopped awful or badly produced music from seeing the light of day, but Beatport made the situation even worse - any muppet with fruityloops can get a progressive release now lol.
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Beatport “Bloodbath” As Dance Music Startup Lays Off Engineers
