Josefine Marie Beer

Josefine Marie Beer is a bachelor student of Business Administration at the Technical University of Cologne in Germany with a specialization in Controlling, Management and Logistics. During her studies she participated in an intercultural program at Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in Dalian, China, where she gained deep insights into a highly digitized media landscape. This experience deepened her already high enthusiasm for the creative and cultural industry as well as for digital markets.

In her bachelor thesis, Josefine intends to investigate the choice decision of young adults in Germany relating to subscription-based music streaming services. In this work, she is using Sawtooth Software’s Choice-Based Conjoint Software to determine the conditions under which a willingness to pay for subscription-based music streaming services exists. The aim is to identify the success factors of subscription-based music streaming services concerning this target group, which has not yet been examined in detail.

The research project can be traced back to the fact, that especially the generation of Digital Natives are proven to have a particularly low willingness to pay for subscription-based music streaming services. Furthermore, music streaming providers such as Spotify, who operates with the so-called Freemium model, struggle to run profitable. This is because the Freemium model generate the main revenue with a subscription-based premium-version, while a free ad-based version found a greater spread. Therefore, it is significant for the success of Freemium model providers to improve their conversion rate.

Moreover, with the help of this research, strategic recommendations can be derived for the marketing of subscription-based music streaming services. In addition, the study aims to better understand what causes users of music streaming services to switch from the free version to the paid premium version of the provider.