Only 2% of Spotify artists earn more than $1k a year.
All Threads
In the early days of Spotify, users complained that the shuffle feature wasn’t random: how could two songs from the same artist play back to back? In reality the issue was a misunderstanding of chance, so Spotify actually made the feature less random to make it seem more random.
A fun nostalgia trip? Or a year long surveillance campaign?
People are a lot more negative about their spouses on Google search. Unlike social media, no one will see what they say.
The epic power of Squid Game. The hit Netflix show increased:
– Vans sales by 7,800%
– Korean signups on Duolingo by 76%
– Korean candy on show up 250%
In 2024, one of London’s most recognisable restaurants, marked its 30th anniversary by returning to its 1994 menu (and prices). A great way of appealing to price conscious consumers and standing out in the process.
Stansted airport group makes more money from car parks and shops than it does from aircraft fees.
At any one time, Starbucks has about $1.8 billion loaded on to customers’ gift cards or its app. If Starbucks was a bank and you treated the gift cards as deposits, it would be in the top 10% of banks in the United States.
Foreign companies struggle in China because their jobs don’t always fit into the traditional notions of stable careers. So Starbucks found a creative solution to keep employees’ families happy, hosting “Partner Family Forums” in the cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu, with over 1,000 families attending.
The Starbucks mobile ordering feature became so popular that baristas were unable to cope with the demand, wait times were longer, and the company reported that a ‘mid-teens percent’ of mobile orders went uncompleted. In short, it worsened the problem it was set up to solve.
In 2012, Starbucks baristas started to write the name of the customer on the side of their cups. Yes, a bit of extra hassle. But a more personal and memorable experience in return.
The Pratfall Effect states that people can demonstrate honesty by acknowledging a weakness. Stella applied this principle in 1982, before it had a name, with the iconic ‘Reassuringly Expensive’ campaign.
In 1972, Steve Jobs’ curiosity compelled him to take a calligraphy class at college, despite knowing it wouldn’t count towards his final degree. But this knowledge helped him create the Apple Mac’s slick, user-friendly typography – an integral part of its mass-market appeal.
According to the most commercially successful director of all time, “I always like to think of the audience when I am directing. Because I am the audience.”
When a company first releases shares, investors are unlikely to have much additional diagnostic information about the company’s performance. It turns out that NYSE companies with easy to pronounce names – i.e. more familiar to us – perform better than those whose names are hard to pronounce.