Case 1

After sampling some of the new music releases, Daniel Ek (who is CEO of Spotify) ended his Spotify session. Soon, millions of Spotify users would know he had listened to which song as the profile of Spotify’s CEO was one of the default accounts that Spotify will follow by          default. Spotify users can click the link, listen to the music, share it on Facebook, or include   the song in a “virtual tape” that could be posted online. The company was proud of the social features of Spotify’s client software, which had played important role in the growth of            Spotify.

Beside, Spotify’s functionality was simple. When the user launched the application, music      started to play automatically, resuming the last active playlist. Users could search for any       song straight from the home screen, access their list of favorite songs and artistes, access their playlists, and browse the most popular tracks and artists of the moments. The radio feature     brought several preset thematic radio stations and allowed users to create new ones using a     variety of guidelines. Spotify also had a “discover” feature that suggested new artists based    on the user’s listening habits.

Spotify is one of the world’s leading on-demand music streaming services, who offers digital copyright restricted recorded music and podcasts, including more than 60 million songs, from record labels and media companies. As a freemium service, basic features of Spotify are free with advertisements and limited control. The additional features, such as offline listening and commercial-free listening, are offered via paid subscriptions. In early 2016 it reported had      more than 100 million users, 30 million of whom paid a monthly fee for Spotify’s premium   services.

However, Spotify’s traditional competitors did not stand still as Spotify grew. Deezer, while  still not available in the U.S., far surpassed Spotify in its international footprint: by far, it was available in 186 countries or territories.

Spotify had been able to fend off competitive forces from Apple’s streaming services, Apple Music, who gain users at a frantic pace when it is launched in early 2016. In just six months, Apple music had attained 10 million paid users, a milestone that took Spotify many years to achieve. Moreover, there were strong rumors that Pandora, which had more than 70 million  users and was able to offer lower pricing, was preparing to launch as on-demand streaming  services by the end of this year (2016).

The existing competition was not the only thing to which Spotify had to pay attention.          Several new trends could signal new disruptions to the streaming service market. Artists       generally complained about the reduced royalty rates that streaming music paid in                 comparison to other distribution methods, and they were seen as trying to reassert their         position in the music business. For example, Taylor Swift – one of the top-selling artists of  the 2010s – removed her entire catalog from Spotify, complaining that the free service          undermined the royalty payments artists received.  Moreover, companies such as Amazon    were trying to leverage their bargain power and presence to bundle music streaming services with video steaming. For example, Amazon’s Prime service offers access to not only music  but also moves and television shows, all for a monthly fee.

Answer the following questions:

1.   According to Porter’s competitive forces model:

a)   what are the five competitive forces that shape the fate of a firm?

b)   Who are the competitive forces for Spotify in this article

c)    and how did they may make troubles for Spotify and even disrupt Spotify? Please analyze the competitive forces for Spotify in this article according to Porter’s       competitive forces model. (10 marks)

2.   Provide a table to compare 3 – 4 competitive advantages (e.g., Catalog, does it have some features others do not, price, reputation, sustainability etc.) across two leading music        steaming service providers in China market that you are interested (e.g., NetEase              CloudMusic, QQ Music, Apple Music, Kugou Music, and Spotify) (8 marks).

3.   Which one do you prefer? Explain your preference based on your comparisons. (2 marks)

Case 2 (see the chapter on Relational Databases)

OpenCart is an online store management system. It is PHP-based, using a MySQL database and HTML components. Support is provided for different languages and currencies. It is     freely available under the GNU General Public License. An example relational database is  shown below. This database stores data about customers, orders, and shipping of a store on OpenCart. A relational database manages data in tables.

Do the following:

1.   Please draw the entity-relationship diagram to illustrate the relationship(s) among the entities in the above database. (6 marks)

2.   Please list the primary key and foreign key ofthe Orders Table. (4 marks)

3.   DBMS users for large and midrange computers, such as DB2, Oracle, or SQL Server, would employ SQL to retrieve the information they needed from the database.

a)   Please insert an order where order_id is 6, item is mousepad, amount is 700, and customer is 5. (2 marks).

b)   Please use SQL statement to read all information about customers from USA. (2 marks)

c)   Display the results of the below SQL statement:

SELECT * FROM Customers, Shippings where

Customers.customer_id=Shippings.customer AND status='Pending'

(6 marks)