Happy Monday, y’all! Hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you, we have some breaking news and some other stories I enjoyed, so let’s dive right in!
This will be the story of the day and possibly the week. Elon Musk just bought a $3B stake in Twitter, and is now the company’s largest shareholder. For reference, his stake is almost 4 times that of Jack Dorsey’s. There will be a lot of commentary about what this move signals, I’m already seeing a lot of chatter about how Elon will stop shadowbanning and ham-fisted censorship, etc. Let’s take a step back and remember: Elon’s Twitter account is essentially Tesla’s marketing. So this is simply about Elon getting more control over his company’s primary marketing channel. That’s all this is, a smart business move. Do I think this signals that Elon is coming in on a white horse to save Twitter from itself? I do not. I think he is going to use his ownership stake to push for changes that make it easier for him to use Twitter as a platform to market himself and his company. That’s it.
Elon Musk has taken a 9.2% stake in Twitter Inc. to become the platform’s biggest shareholder, a week after hinting he might shake up the social media industry https://t.co/wbqbL575l0
— Businessweek (@BW) April 4, 2022
Facebook and Instagram are the dominant players when it comes to driving purchases via livestreams. This isn’t a huge surprise, but I think we will see a lot of growth in the coming years from YouTube in this area as the platform is seriously trying to up its streaming game.
Around the world, Facebook is the most popular social app for livestream purchases. https://t.co/NO8C7rCIX6#facebook #meta #livestreamshopping pic.twitter.com/tu07SHehEl
— Chart of the Day (@ChartoftheDay_) April 1, 2022
2021 was another strong year for growth in paid music subscription services. As I’ve talked about for the last two years, covid and the ensuing lockdown changed consumer behavior and purchase patterns. Certain industries and products benefited greatly from these changes, and music subscription services are one of them. To be fair, paid music subscription services were already seeing solid growth prior to the pandemic, but that growth was only accelerated by customers spending more time at home, for both work and play.
The Number of Paid Music Subscriptions in the US Grew by >10% Last Year https://t.co/KcvxOcLEW3 @marketingcharts @RIAA
— marketingcharts (@marketingcharts) April 1, 2022
So that’s it for this week’s edition of Monday’s Marketing Minute! I hope you have an amazing and productive week!