Skreemr
Between iTunes, Pandora, lastfm and hosts of other sources for music online, today's online music “shopper” is given numerous opportunities to find music on the internet. Skreemr, though just another source for mp3s, boasts itself as “The World's Greatest Mp3 Search Site.” Whether this claim is valid or not, the site does provide mp3s ready for play for free along with the source of where it came from.
The navigation and layout of Skreemr could definitely use a touch-up. Though basic, Skreemr provides many opportunities for sharing music.After you type in whatever song or artist you would like to listen to, multiple results appear, including remixed versions of the song you may have been looking for.
The site gives users a chance to rate the song and also links users to twitter, flickr, gruvr, youtube, wikipedia and lyricwiki. Gruvr gives information about local shows and concert tours. Links to Amazon are also available, if the user wants to download the song and songs can be sent to the user's phone as a ringtone as well.
Skreemr uses the free pricing strategy. It also utilizes the advertising model, with banner ads on the homepage and on the search pages. Since Skreemr distributes digital content, there is zero marginal cost. However, there is no labor exchange.
It's hard to measure how successful Skreemr is, despite its claim. Skreemr doesn't host any of the music itself, rather, it indexes music already available online. I suppose since not many people (or at least not me) have heard of Skreemr, that speaks to its popularity and most likely its financial success. Though there aren't too many ads on the site, the basic layout draws the eye to the visuals in the ads.
One major flaw that I see in Skreemr's business model is that it has no social networking aspect. If it did incorporate some sort of either user-generated content or at least some sort of social community, it could have as much popularity as lastfm or Pandora. One portion that could be expanded is Skreemr's “AudioRank” feature, which makes the higher rated items show up at the top of the list when searched. This can easily be incorporated into a social community, with top rated songs of the day or week highlighted on the home page. This could give Skreemr more credibility and possibly more success in the online world.
2 comments:
This is an interesting site. You are correct in identifying the pricing strategy and revenue model in place. You really have to wonder if they can make it since they're really just a reference site. I can see the value here but it's pretty specialized. Good suggestion to add social networking.
Grade - 5
Betsy;
Nice work on this blog. You've supplemented your case analyses with added content and the whole site looks great. 5/5 points for overall quality.
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