Stickier music sites
23Apr08
If one assumes advertising (or other sorts of attention-based business models) will be the primary driver of revenues for online music services — or really any online services — then a total measure of attention is useful in establishing the value of the service.
I’ve generally presented music sites ranked by “people” (compete.com’s version of unique visitors). But really a total measure of attention should reflect:
- unique visitors
- frequency of visits (e.g. avg visits/mo)
- average “stay” per visit
I checked a few of the top music sites on the average stay measure and found some intriguing results:
I’m guessing that some of the reason Live365 ranks so highly has more to do with its user base (older, more passive) than specific site features. But it is somewhat surprising.
Filed under: Uncategorized, valuation, ventures | 3 Comments
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Sampled + Sorted 
Very interesting – I like the premise of the study but surely Live365 is “stickier” by your metric because of the nature of the service. It’s a radio service and many users will use it as such – launching the station and leaving it on “in the background” – but not necessarily “paying attention” to the site itself and therefore much less likely to be affected by any advertising or “attention-based revenue generators” Live365 may be running. They’re only paying attention to the music most of the time.
Yes, agree, esp when compared with iLike or imeem, both of which offer a more lean-forward experience. However, I’d have thought Pandora would reflect similar site times given it is also “pure” internet radio, by and large.
I was less surprised about Last b/c so many of its users just come to the site to check their personal charts (I recall Martin mentioning ages ago that only a small minority of users actually used its internet radio service, although this may have changed more recently).
The point about listeners paying attention (or not) while listening is an important one. Many/most internet radio listeners likely tune in while doing a spreadsheet, the laundry, whatever. And this will only increase as a bigger proportion of listening happens in the living room, on the iPhone, etc.
At some point, audio ads will be necessary – and I think viable, if done right – for internet radio services. And by “done right” I believe they have to be 4 things (prob a good subject to elaborate on in another post sometime):
1. short (no longer than 10-15 sec)
2. infrequent (no more than 4-6/hour)
3. relevant
4. creative (amusing, ironic, perhaps user-generated, etc)
Targetspot is one company that’s seeking to do this right (full disclosure: I consulted for TS last year and early this).