Spotify has been in a long battle with the music industry over its controversial streaming business model. While the music industry has undergone a lot of change in the last decade it still hasn’t fully adjusted to the change, leaving the industry in somewhat of a standoff. Spotify, currently the leading streaming company, has been at the forefront of this stand off as they work to introduce the music industry to a new revenue model. Over the last several years Spotify has been making strides toward acceptance as they have worked to educate artists about their site and have steadily increased the royalties they pay out. This acceptance however hit a major hiccup 2 weeks ago, when Taylor Swift pulled her entire collection of music off the site.

On the subject Taylor stated, “I think there should be an inherent value placed on art. I didn’t see that happening, perception-wise, when I put my music on Spotify.”
Taylor has been vocal about her distaste of streaming services as she feels streaming sites are part of the reason album sales are shrinking. Though Taylor has voiced a negative opinion about streaming as a whole she has left her collection on both Beats Music and Rhapsody. Before pulling her collection off Spotify, Taylor had asked the site to make her content only available to paying users which Spotify responded was against their policy. Taylor also asked for her content to only be available outside the United States but this again was against Spotify’s policy. The two sites that still have Taylor’s content are sites that require a paid membership.

“With Beats Music and Rhapsody you have to pay for a premium package in order to access my albums. And that places a perception of value on what I’ve created.” – Taylor swift

While Taylor has made a very public separation from streaming, the real question is whether or not this will affect the Spotify. In response to the ordeal Spotify’s founder Daniel Ek released an open letter to the singer explaining why she made the wrong decision in pulling her music.

In the essay, “2 Billion and Counting” Daniel Ek wrote- “Taylor Swift is absolutely right: music is art, art has real value, and artists deserve to be paid for it. We started Spotify because we love music and piracy was killing it. So all the talk swirling around lately about how Spotify is making money on the backs of artists upsets me big time. Our whole reason for existence is to help fans find music and help artists connect with fans through a platform that protects them from piracy and pays them for their amazing work.”- Daniel Ek
This letter makes a very important argument, which is Spotify makes money where it didn’t exist by combating illegal downloading. In the same letter the founder explains that Taylor was on track to make 6 million this year had she left her collection on Spotify. Further than the 6 million the number was on track to increase significantly every year as the site grows. Daniel Ek made it clear in the essay that Spotify is not against artists; rather they are working very hard to make sure artists are properly compensated.

“Here’s the thing I really want artists to understand: Our interests are totally aligned with yours. Even if you don’t believe that’s our goal, look at our business. Our whole business is to maximize the value of your music,” he said. “We don’t use music to drive sales of hardware or software. We use music to get people to pay for music. The more we grow, the more we’ll pay you.” –Daniel EK
The Spotify battle is long over as it is a matter of educating both the public and those in the music industry on the business model of streaming. Spotify’s response to Taylor shows that the site is willing to fight back against artists to make streaming successful. While Taylors move to take down her music got a lot of buzz it, also got a lot of people stepping up to defend Spotify.  If Spotify is able to continue its efforts to educate artist on the benefits of streaming, it may have a fighting chance.  Spotify has proven that they can handle even one to the biggest pop stars dismissing their site. Though the future is not clear, it looks like the streaming site is here to stay.

Facebook wants to enter the workplace and in a big way. In the next year Facebook hopes to launch a new side to its site that would allow colleagues to collaborate on projects, share documents and function as an in office communicator. In Facebook’s London headquarters the company says they have been developing the program for a long time.
The site would feature a very similar design to the existing personal site, but would strictly be for inner office collaboration. User’s personal profiles will have no connection to the work profiles. The site would feature similar news feed and group functions, allowing users to post content for the entire company as well as preform smaller team work. While much of what the site will feature is still speculation many have wondered how Facebook for work will rival preexisting office applications.
Forbes contributor Erika Morphy states- “that Salesforce Chatter is already a popular service used by thousands of Salesforce.com users. Slack has also become a popular collaboration service that’s challenging Atlassian’s HipChat and Campfire, with its clean interface for chatting with colleagues or sharing documents and links.”
Further than just communication sites alone there has been speculation about Facebooks profile feature and how it could function in a very similar way to LinkedIn. If users are able to create a public business profile that moves with them from organization to organization as a user changes jobs the site could function as an online resume tool.
While there are many existing office communicator application out there already, there is speculation that Facebooks well-known name will lead it to success. Many offices have had to ban Facebook across the country as their employees are too addicted to the site. Facebook in the office could prove to be very popular among employees leading many companies to switch communicators. More so then popularity the familiar interface would mean little transition time for companies as the majority of employees are already accustomed with how the site works. The counter to this argument being that most employees have no say over their company’s communication systems as it is often a decision made in IT departments. With Facebook at work the site will only be available to employees if the company as a whole signs up for the service.
Facebook also faces another issue, privacy; can it get companies to trust the site? In today’s corporate structure much of what happens within the walls of a company is top secret. Posting and collaborating on sensitive documents on the internet would be worrisome to many.
Facebook has many issues that it must look at to become successful in this office space, however if done right it has the possibility to change the game. Facebook at work is currently in the testing phase at a select few organizations across the country. Though it is still unclear when Facebook will officially launch the site, it is definitely something to watch for.

Sephora, one of the most famous cosmetics shops in the world, just finished its semiannual sale on November 10. The 20% off event was for VIBs and VIB ROGUEs, who have, respectively, spent more than $350 or $1,000 in the past year. However, many qualified accounts with Asian surnames were blocked during the sale this year. Sephora released an official announcement on its Facebook page on Nov. 7, stating that they were deactivating accounts to stop reselling. But the company is facing possible charges not because their attempt to regulate its market. Many accounts with Asian surnames were deactivated, though the owners claimed that they’d never resold any items. Some of them even said that they didn’t buy anything on Sephora.com during the sale this year, yet their accounts were still locked. Now there’s an outrage on Sephora’s Facebook page.

Many Asian consumers are now complaining on Sephora’s Facebook page about their accounts’ being deactivated for no reason.

It seems that the reselling phenomenon is the key issue here. However, Sephora actually has its stores in China. Why do Chinese purchase oversea? This article will look into the reasons why people resell Sephora products to China.

As mentioned, Sephora has its stores in China, but people still buy from Sephora.com. There’re mainly 2 reasons: Some brands that are exclusive in the U.S., and more importantly, it’s much cheaper to buy directly from the website. For instance, the price for the Rose Mask produced by Fresh is $58 on Sephora.com. Chinese Sephora stores don’t carry the brand. If consumers turn to Fresh stores – which now only exist in Beijing and Shanghai – to make a purchase, it will cost them￥500, which is about $82 – the price is 41.4% higher than it is in America. This is because Chinese government places high customs tax on import goods.

Besides, it is said that the quality of skincare products sold in manufacture countries is much better than those sold elsewhere, which is considered an open secret in the cosmetic industry – and Sephora sells a lot domestic products. Last but not least, Chinese Sephora also doesn’t do well in marketing itself, so few people actually go to stores and make a purchase – these are all the reasons why Chinese consumers turned to Sephora in America.

However, high customs tax, low product quality and diversity, and poor image of Chinese Sephora are not the only reasons why resellers exist. One of those whose accounts were banned decided to file a class action against Sephora for discrimination against Asians. He made an announcement on Weibo, encouraging people whose accounts had been unfairly deactivated to leave their contact information to the lawyer in charge. Interestingly, he mentioned that he had asked certain promotion account to help him tweet the message, but he was refused because there’s interest conflict between helping him and the account’s relationship with Sephora.

The Weibo announcement made by a Chinese consumer whose account was deactivated for no reason. He’s now working with a lawyer to file against Sephora for discrimination against Asians, especially Chinese.

It’s interesting because, many promotion accounts on Weibo constantly tweet about sales going on on Sephora.com. However, Sephora.com explicitly points out on its website that international shipping only includes Germany, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. So it doesn’t ship to China, yet it’s advertising on Chinese promotion accounts, where most of Chinese consumers get the latest promotion information.

Shipping policy on Sephora.com.

One of the Weibo accounts which had tweeted about promotions on Sephora.com. According to Rise_Against_Sephora, it is this account which has refused his request for help with the class action.

 The same promotion account had publicized information about how Chinese can buy from foreign websites such as 6PM and Saks, which shows that its target audience includes those who are living in China, though its account description is “looking for deals for Chinese who are living in North America.”

Now that Chinese consumers have seen the promotion information, they want to make a purchase. Since Sephora doesn’t ship to China, consumers use transshipment companies to deliver their products. Here’s how it works. They buy things on Sephora.com. The address they leave on the website belongs to a transshipment company. The company will receive the orders, and will send them to the buyers. Everything looks perfect, until Sephora began to ban transshipment addresses. From more than a year ago, consumers started to complain that their orders had been declined due to detected transshipment addresses.

A consumer was complaining about the fact that Sephora doesn’t allow people to use transshipment companies to purchase.

 Since consumers can no longer make a purchase on their own, they start to look for individuals to help them place an order. This is the most major reason why there’re resellers targeting at Sephora. Some people said that resellers might hoard hundreds of the same products while they’re on sale, which is not fair to other consumers. However, on one hand, there’s a limit on the number of the same products that one can purchase online, so it should be hard for one to hoard. But on the other hand, though Sephora has made a limitation online, it doesn’t limit the quantities that one can purchase in stores, except for some limited-edition gift sets.

All in all, Sephora has banned all possible means by which Chinese consumers can make a purchase on their own; but at the mean time, it’s advertising in China. Sephora said that some accounts were locked due to the purpose to control resell, but it’s actually implementing different rules online and offline. It seems that Sephora is blaming resellers, but the company itself is one of the reasons that contribute to the phenomenon. Some even argue that Sephora is hypocritical, because it wants to utilize huge purchasing power in China, but at the same time, when it’s short of supply, Asian accounts are the first to be locked with “justified reasons.[1]”

It’s not suggesting that Sephora is guilty. However, the contradictions in the company’s rules do make it seem suspicious. Regardless of the fact whether Sephora is discriminating against Asians, the company obviously has a lot of PR work to do if it still wants to stable the Asian market, especially the Chinese market.

The latest update on the issue is that the promotion account which advocates Sephora and has refused to help with the sue, has contacted the management of Weibo, trying to filter some of the tweets that the person who raised the class action publicized. Obviously, this is not the best PR it can do.

The anti-Sephora Weibo account @Rise_Against_Sephora claimed that Weibo had hidden some of his tweets. In the picture, it is his conversation history with the promotion account which advocates Sephora. Actually, in one of the tweets he publicized last night, he mentioned the exact name of the promotion account – but that tweet can’t be found now.

Another tweet just publicized by Rise_Against_Sephora, stating that his tweet was filtered again.

[1] Resource: http://www.douban.com/group/topic/66540865/