Spotify Attracts Investment: Musicians Fight for Royalty Rules


It’s often been said that content is king on the Internet, but recent investment in Spotify, the online music site, and battles over online music royalties by musicians who have also become among the Web’s biggest content creators drives home the value of content in every business…including yours. Content doesn’t just have inherent value of its own. It can help you define your brand, market, and sell your products, and even be the main product of your business, as we’ll see below. Let’s look at how content online or off can help you build value in your business today.

Investing in Content

This ain’t YouTube. Another $100 million in investment from Coca-Cola and other big players in the streaming music service known as Spotify is the best example of the value of content in any business model. As opposed to services like YouTube, which essentially depend on users for content, Spotify’s whole business model depends on its ability to deliver content, specifically commercially released music from a variety of artists, to subscribers with both free and paid subscription accounts. The music is expensive and the company has yet to be profitable. The New York Times

Pandora’s box. Another streaming music delivery service wants to change the way it pays content creators, specifically some of the biggest chart-toppers in the music industry, but the artists aren’t having it. The battle lines are drawn to determine the value of content online, at least the most popular tunes. Only you can determine the value of quality content when building your business, and that value will depend on how you use it. It’s important to understand what content can do for you. The Hill

Balance of Power

Who’s in the driver’s seat? Guest posting is an important way content is used by small businesses online to market their expertise and build their brand. This much is really no secret, but the question is whether content creators or business owners and managers should be in charge of how relationships with editors of various sites are handled. Blogger Amanda DiSilvestro makes the case that content creators should always be in the driver’s seat. Get Busy Media

The author as brand. In an admittedly whimsical approach to the idea of Google Authorship and AuthorRank, blogger Tyson Stevens argues that content creators are becoming brands of their own. If you haven’t thought of your business as a content creator, perhaps you should. The expertise and authority behind content creation is becoming a new kind of currency both on and off the Web. Right Hat SEO

Better Sales

A graphic description. Content comes in all flavors, from blog posts to other kinds of marketing copy, but the most interesting content trends to watch are those that take on a category of their own. Infographics are an excellent example of this. Very popular in Internet marketing, infographics are an exciting component to add into your marketing mix. Blogger Juliana Weiss-Roessler tells you how and why. Intechnic

On with the show. You may not think of a PowerPoint presentation as content that can build your business’s brand, but Bernd Geropp would probably disagree. Here he explains with an entertaining video and accompanying post why the content you present in a meeting must be every bit as entertaining as that cool blog post, video, or infographic on your Website. Otherwise you may be subjecting your audience to a fate Bernd calls “death by PowerPoint.” More Leadership, Less Management

An air of mystery. If your experience with sales is limited to making a couple of cold calls and shooting out a few e-mails to prospects on your list, then welcome to the wondrous world of Paul Castain. Castain’s approach combines the mystery and drama of great storytelling with the rhythm and balance of fine art…and he even uses props. Paul’s content includes hand addressed direct mail pieces with a QR code leading directly to a landing page explaining more about his offer. It may not be everyone’s version of content marketing, but it gets results. Sales Playbook

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  1. Great roundup and interesting take. I for one am an avid user of Spotify (listening to it as I type this). Content is definitely one of the main elements of a valuable business and I think that Spotify certainly has that covered.