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Innovative product and customer retention: Strategies in the music business ‐ An analysis of Santana's enhanced album “Shaman”;

2003; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14241270309390034

1424-1277

Michel Clément, Marcel Engh, Bodo Thielmann,

Technology Adoption and User Behaviour

Abstract The music business is facing hard times with declining CD sales and increasing piracy. Whereas the economic downturn is one reason for lower sales, the industry has decided to target the second factor, the fast diffusion of technologies such as CD burners and peer‐to‐peer networks like KaZaA allowing massive illegal distribution of music. Some labels focused on an offensive strategy to promote their artists. New services are being added to so called Enhanced CDs that create a new user experience. These CDs offer bonus content (i.e. videos, additional songs, pictures, or lyrics) stored directly on the CD that can be accessed on the PC. Other CDs offer (additionally) online access to actual bonus content or services (i.e. tour dates or news) if the CD is entered in the FC. The impact of these services on consumer experience has not yet been researched in depth and it remains unclear if consumers actually use the offered services on Enhanced CDs. The music label Arista has introduced several new albums on Enhanced CDs to the market providing more value to the user instead of reducing the utility by focusing only on copy protection. This article analyzes the usage of such services provided by Arista and focuses on Santana's new album “Shaman”;. Using a unique data set provided byfavakitty Media (Bandlirik) and Arista, we show for the first time what services are actually used by Santana fans and compare the results to albums of other artists such as TIC or Toni Braxton. Our results indicate that Enhanced CDs are used frequently by a relatively small group of fans, providing more value to the customer and creating a stronger relation between fans and artists.