Wednesday 26 May 2010

Go shopping, cast your vote

The Dutch elections are only two weeks away and not only the political parties are demanding our attention. Many other institutions benefit from the confusion among citizens: what to choose on June 9th?

Brand research company Brand Asset Evaluator developed the BrandVoting website. Based on your preferences as a consumer, the website gives you advice on which party you should vote.


Categories include brand preference in cars, beer, charity organisations, cheese (!), ice cream, jeans... Although every brand has a certain set of brand values which may be represented by a polical party, it all looks pretty silly. Brand Asset Evaluator is not clear about the realization of the BrandVoting monitor. I reckon it's combining its data of consumer preference and political preference of their panel members, and thus teams up brands with political parties. However, I think no-one should decide on who to give their precious vote based on their shampoo prefererence. Nothing wrong with fun and games, but use your brain!

Tuesday 18 May 2010

Spotify: never stop the music

After many months of anticipating by countless Dutch music freaks (including myself), the day has finally come: Spotify is here! The Swedish music streaming service is available in The Netherlands as of today. Yours truly has been enthousiastic ever since I visited my friend in London who was using it while I was there: it's free, you can find almost any artist you're looking for and you stream the songs online, so no more excessive data storage! Although I was sceptical at first (sometimes it looks like cool concepts like these never seem to reach our small country), I've tried it today and I must say: the rumours are true! Spotify is great! So what's the business model? Here's a commercial that explains Spotify how works and positions it as the next step in the evolution of music:



Spotify is a programme anyone can download for free and install on their computer. With a personal login code, you can access your profile with your stored playlists and favourite tracks from any computer (if the software is installed, of course). There are three kinds of subscription possibilities: Free, Unlimited and Premium. Users can get access to Spotify for free, but then they'll hear advertisements between the songs. With an invitation for a free account you have unlimited access, without one you'll only get 20 hours per month. Unlimited users pay € 4,99 and get no adverts, and Premium members get several extras for € 9,99 per month: enhanced mp3 quality, access to Spotify on your mobile and exclusive content.

Once you've chosen your kind of deal, you can start listening to the 8 million tracks that are currently availble. Spotify also has many plug-ins to connect your listening behaviour to social networks, such as Last.fm or Facebook. Happy listening!