Reflections on Simon Sinek's TED Talk

A brand that I currently believe embodies the “why, how, what” format discussed in Simon Sinek's interesting TED talk is Spotify. While its platform itself is revolutionary in terms of the trend it helped set for the music industry going forward, I wouldn’t say that’s the reason it’s becoming so ubiquitous. Spotify’s slogan is “music for every moment,” and it appears that this is the “why” that informs what they do. They don’t just want to be a streaming service. Grooveshark is a streaming service, and it is ever so slowly falling into irrelevancy. Spotify wants to provide the soundtrack to your life, and it just so happens that they have a user-friendly streaming service that does so. By doing this, they made Spotify seem more important than what it actually is (even if the technology and music library itself is very significant), and the hype level before Spotify reached the United States was very high.

In terms of the law of diffusion of innovation, I fall under different categories as a consumer depending on the kind of item or service being offered. If it is music related, I’m usually either an early adopter or early majority. Beats Music, a competitor to Spotify, is one such example. I was intrigued by its focus on music curation and its bold claims, and I made sure to download the free trial the day it came out. I still have a subscription to Beats Music because I enjoy the interface and the various listening options it provides. With other technology, however, I normally fall under the late majority grouping. For instance, a few of my friends have been trying to convince me to switch from an iPhone to a Samsung Galaxy for quite a while, and I only finally made the switch around holiday season last year, as my iPhone was starting to malfunction. I was mulling making the switch long before that point, but I only finally did so out of needing a phone that works and general iPhone fatigue.