Week Eleven

Revealing Gaps, Targets & Audiences for a New Product or Service Idea

Existing Services

Letterboxd: Letterboxd is an online social platform for sharing your taste in film. You use the app to keep track of movies, series or documentaries you’ve watched, write and share reviews. To use the app you must sign up for a free account and then you can search for which movies you’ve seen or create a watchlist for the movies you are interested in watching. You’ll find lots of information about each movie on it’s own dedicated page including: a synopsis, list of cast and crew members, director, studios involved, genre and more.

As you can see to the right you also get given weekly and monthly statistics for the year. You can see how many movies you’ve watched and the average per month and per week. You can also see your movie milestones for the year, for example: your 1st, 50th and 200th movie of the year. I really like these features of the app as it really gives you an insight into your movie watching habits and helps you keep track of how many movies your watching per week/month.

Discogs: Discogs is an online database and marketplace of music releases which allows users to catalogue their music collections and sell anything they no longer want. The database connects a global community of people seeking an elevated relationship with music. You scan the barcodes on your your vinyl, cds or cassettes to add it to your collection and you can also search for albums and add them to

Research

I am going to include some screenshots from my friend’s account as she is a frequent user of Letterboxd.

To the left you can see the app gives you statistics for each year you’ve had the app. It tells you your overall stats such as: how many movies you’ve watched, how many you have reviewed and the number of hours spent watching. It also shows you your highest rated films of the year so far.

To the right is what the review posts look like.

It includes: the film poster, the title of the film, the year of release, the number of stars rated, the date watched, the comment and how many likes the review has. I really like this layout as it has all the important features of a review at a glance. You can also simultaneously post your review to other social media platforms to reach a larger audience.

On the app you can also view the activity of your friends and people you follow, explore trending movies and popular reviews. Users can write whatever they like about films which gives readers a immediate sense of the movie without having to read a really long critic review. Popular reviews are short and bite-size, which makes them easy to scroll through and more shareable. Many reviews have started going viral due to their short and snappy nature and with the ability to share to twitter and instagram. The more these reviews go viral the more people become interested in the platform.

The success of Letterboxd: Letterboxd was founded in 2011 by Matthew Buchanan and Karl Von Randow. A decade later and the film focused social network site is a huge success. It’s now in 200 countries with over 8.4 million active members, there have been 103 million reviews written and 1.25 billion movies marked as watched by it’s members. The Covid-19 pandemic was terrible for the movie business however, it was a roaring success for Letterboxd. In the beginning Letterboxd was mainly for passionate movie watchers to track what they were watching and publish reviews. But in recent years the app went mainstream, with the pandemic creating an explosion of home-viewing and people searching for things to watch while isolating at home. The increased usage doubled growth during the pandemic.

Goodreads: Goodreads is the world’s largest site for readers and book recommendations. You use the app to track the books you’re reading, have read and want to read, leave ratings and write reviews. You can see what books your friends are reading and also get personalised recommendations of what books to read next. You’ll find lots of information about each book on it’s own dedicated page including: the title, cover, a synopsis, average rating, genre, about the author and similar books.

Again, I am going to include some screenshots from my friend’s account as she is a frequent user of Goodreads.

As you can see above Goodreads gives you yearly statistics including, the number of pages and books you’ve read, the

shortest and longest book you’ve read and which were the most and least popular of the books you’ve read. Goodreads is like a giant online book club; you can see what your friends are reading, read their reviews and comment on them. As well as this there are book recommendations, book reviews, discussion forums, bookish groups and many other features. Not only can you use the app to keep track of books you’ve read and the ones you want to read, you can also set a reading goal for the year. Another thing you can do is keep track of all the books you own by scanning your book’s IBSN code, so when you buy new books you don’t have to worry about remembering every book you own.

The success of Goodreads: Goodreads was founded in early 2007 by two young Stanford graduates, Otis Chandler and his wife Elizabeth Khuri-Chandler. Goodreads has hit huge numbers, in 2017 the site had over 60 million accounts globally and over 30,000 book reviews posted each day, it also hosts over 20,000 book clubs. The Goodreads site connects millions of book enthusiasts all over the world. Amazon bought Goodreads for a reported $150 million, with the hope the online book community would advance it’s mission of selling everything to everyone. However, many people in the publishing industry are saying the site hasn’t been well maintained or updated with what you would expect from social communities and apps in 2023. It’s like Amazon bought it and then abandoned it.

Key Competitors

your ‘wantlist’. I personally love to use this app to catalogue my vinyl collection so I will include some screenshots of what the app looks like below.

The homepage (very left) includes a section for ‘what’s hot’ which features all the albums that are being catalogued and sold most frequently. It also includes a list of all the albums that are ‘most collected’ which is all the albums that are most popular in people’s catalogues. It also shows a list of the ‘most wanted’ which shows the most popular albums in people’s wantlists.

As you can see above you can select the pressing of the vinyl you own and add it to your collection. For example I have scanned the barcode on my copy of Sam Fender’s album Hypersonic Missiles and it takes me to the page for my pressing which is the b&w cornetto pressing. Each pressing of the album has it’s own dedicated page, so for my Sam Fender album it shows you the sales history of the album which gives you an idea of how much the vinyl is worth. So as you can see above this vinyl has sold for a lowest price of £23.70 but it has sold for a highest price of £100. It also gives you the price it has most recently sold for and a list of all the copies that are currently for sale. Then on the right you can see what the homepage looks like, this page features your username, a profile photo and the year you’ve been a member since. At the top you can also see your buyer and seller rating and an estimated collection value. The estimated collection value adds the whole of your collection and gives you an estimated total for the lowest, average and highest price your collection would be worth. Then below that you can see the total in your collection and the total in your wantlist.

The success of Disocgs: The Discogs database of music includes more than 15 million releases, 8 million artists and 1.7 million labels, it’s a user generated database with over 602 thousand contributors since 2000. With the help of these contributors Discogs has become a highly respected, crowdsourced discography destination that serves as one of the most trusted resources for music collectors, sellers, researchers and casual music fans. The Discogs database continues to grow everyday and the marketplace connects buyers and sellers across the globe. This ranges from store owners to speciality collectors to casual collectors; you can find anything from new releases to rare collectible finds. In 2021 there were 13.1 million vinyl sales through the site.

Although Disocgs isn’t primarily a music rating platform I still consider it to be one of my key competitors as it’s arguablely the largest music app/platform out there at the moment.

Musicboard: Musicboard is a social platform that allows you to keep track of all the music you listen to and grow your passion for music with friends. You just sign up for a free account and then you can write reviews, rate albums and compile lists. The app also allows you to browse the top 250 and most popular sections to discover new artists and music. I have included some screenshots of the app below:

I have included screenshots of what a review looks like on the app as well as a snippet of the ‘popular this week’ feature. I really like the layout of the review section (very left) as I think it includes everything you need to write a review and looks easy to use.

It includes: a profile photo and name, date listened, tagline, star rating, space for the review and the amount of likes on the review. The part I like the best it the album you are reviewing is at the top of the review and it gives you the option to be able to play the album and listen for yourself if you are intrigued after reading the review. There are many other features you can use on musicboard but you have to pay for the pro version, this costs £46.99 per year or £4.99 a month. With the pro account you get

extra features such as: in depth statistics, a personal banner and ability to share favourite albums on profile, unlimited length on reviews and more.

Success of musicboard: Musicboard is still a fairly new app as it was only founded in 202, it’s vision to build a thriving and positive community of music-lovers, where people from all over the world can connect through their shared love of music. Tens of thousands already use musicboard to share their thoughts and opinions within music with over 6 million ratings recorded already.

I couldn’t find anymore information on the success of musicboard as it’s still a fairly new app. I overall like the layout of the reviewing section and I like that you can explore the top albums however, I don’t like that you have to pay quite a lot of money to be able to access all the extra features.