Week Four - There's An App for That

Popular culture today is increasingly more reliant on our mobile devices.  There seems to be an app for almost anything. We are bombarded by millions of apps, some that are useless in retrospect, others that are brilliant and innovative. When asking myself the question what would you create if given the opportunity to design an app, I decided it would be interesting and useful to create an app that allows you to mix music, similar to a DJ on turntables. It would be really interesting to have one almost identical actually, and that also gave information and notes that would teach you how to actually DJ and mix, yet serve more as a tutorial. On this app, you would be able to download music and maybe with a subscription could have access to specific DJ's and artists newest music releases. I would even go so far as to offer different systems to learn on the app - for example you can choose which mixer you want to use, and generally they would all operate through Scratch Live, or some other similar music mixing software.

I thought that this app was beneficial because of the transitions currently in the music industry. I think it would be a way to bring back money into the business. This can dramatically affect the consumer market and target the niche market of young, creative, music loving generation and aspiring DJ's and artists. "The American consumer market consists of more than 300 million people who consume more than $14 trillion worth of goods and services each year, making it one of the most attractive consumer markets in the world. The world consumer market consists of more than 6.8 billion people who annually consume an estimated $70 trillion worth of goods and services" (Armstrong/Kotler, p. 136). In creating the app, the goal would be to allow for young passionate creative Apple users to adopt the system of purchasing music again and finding value in having a superior outlet where only the newest, hottest music would be released and shared on this app alone. Individual differences in innovativeness are what affect the rate of adoption. "People differ greatly in their readiness to try new products" (Armstrong/Kotler, p. 156).  In my quest of looking through apps I noticed another dilemma we are faced with as consumers in today's world... on our purchase making journey we undergo a tremendous task of scanning through too many alternatives. We must evaluate them and sometimes it becomes overwhelming. Therefore, I think in this case, the people most likely to use this app would be the innovators of the music industry. "Innovators are venturesome—they try new ideas at some risk"(Armstrong/Kotler, p. 157).

In my research to see if there was an App that exists similar to this I was shocked to find that there were a few apps very similar to this ideation. One of the first to pop up was DJMixer. I actually decided to download the app and am now beginning to use it and mix my own songs. It just goes to show you that if you can think it, then it's safe to assume that there is probably already an app for that! That's not to say you can't always improve upon what's already there, but in today's world, I think that is the biggest challenge. It isn't just about creating, it's about innovating.