income – Page 2 – Ewan Spence

Spotify is no friend of the independent musician

Posted on July 20, 2011July 20, 2011 by Ewan Spence

Matthew Ebel: If 10,000 people buy a track from iTunes, I can pay off my credit cards and keep making music. If 10,000 people listen to a track on Spotify, I earn $13 and change. Spotify may have spent all their effort on the US launch to woo the big labels, but I’m more concerned about how much of an impact this will have on smaller bands and individuals. I doubt U2 would notice the impact of Spotify either way, but fifty album sales can have a noticeable effect on the indie musicians. Support good music, don’t just stream Spotify

Zuckerberg earns almost $100 million a quarter from Zynga

Posted on July 19, 2011July 19, 2011 by Ewan Spence

Facebook already netted something like $83.7 million in the first quarter of this year as its 30 percent cut of virtual goods sold by Zynga, and brings in tens of millions of dollars per year in additional revenue from Zynga advertising its games on the Facebook platform.

The vulnerable side of Silicon Valley is advertising

Posted on July 13, 2011July 13, 2011 by Ewan Spence

Indeed, the engineers and the engineering culture of the Valley have always had a certain distaste for advertising, and for advertising salesmen (the kind of people who usually end up running media companies)—too messy, too intrusive, and, worst of all, too dumb… Media companies, on the other hand, are different, and the VCs know it. Get typecast as a media company—a mere seller of advertising—and you get a media company valuation. Which makes it a great irony that advertising is the only way the Silicon Valley platform companies have ended up making their money. Chip Bayers at AdWeek shows the

Free, ad-supported, paid, freemium? What’s right for your smartphone app?

Posted on July 9, 2011July 8, 2011 by Ewan Spence

For teams that have always charged players up-front with a premium pricing model, the thought of distributing games for free makes them very uncomfortable. I made the switch myself when I joined a free-to-play social games start-up as a Studio Director in 2009, so I’m well aware of both the anxiety and the opportunity.