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Google has been dealt a significant blow in one of its key overseas markets. India’s Supreme Court on Thursday declined to block an antitrust order that requires the Android-maker to make a series of changes that could topple its financial viability.

India’s apex court rejected to block the ruling against Google by the nation’s antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India. The court extended the deadline for enforcement of CCI’s order by one week, however.

The matter will now go back to the country’s appellate tribunal, the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT), where Google previously failed to secure any relief. The Supreme Court has directed NCLAT to make its decision by March 31. The challenge for Google is that unless NCLAT reaches a decision in Google’s favor by this month, the tech giant will have to make a series of changes to Android.

The Competition Commission of India late last year slapped two fines against Google, alleging the Android-maker abused the Play Store’s dominant position in the country and required Android device makers to pre-install its entire Google Mobile Suite.

The CCI has ordered Google to not require licensing of its Play Store to be linked with mandating installation of several Google apps such as Chrome and YouTube. The watchdog has also ordered Google to allow removal of all its apps from phones and give smartphone users the ability to change their search engine provider. The CCI also fined Google $162 million in its first order.

Google warned earlier this month that if the Indian antitrust watchdog’s ruling is allowed to progress it would result in devices getting expensive in the South Asian market and lead to proliferation of unchecked apps that will pose threats for individual and national security, escalating its concerns over the future of Android in the key overseas region.

“Predatory apps that expose users to financial fraud, data theft and a number of other dangers abound on the internet, both from India and other countries. While Google holds itself accountable for the apps on Play Store and scans for malware as well compliance with local laws, the same checks may not be in place for apps sideloaded from other sources,” the company said.

Google is facing mounting scrutiny from governments across the globe as policymakers begin to worry about the reach of technology giants and assess whether that is in detriment to local companies. Google lost its appealagainst a record $4.3 billion fine in EU for using the dominance of Android to thwart competition. It’s also subject to Germany’s new regulation that targets large companies.

India’s top court rejects Google plea to block Android antitrust ruling by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch

Just a few days after announcing a significant round of layoffs that will impact 18,000 employees, Amazon is trying to find money wherever it can as the company announced that it would end AmazonSmile.

AmazonSmile is a donation program that redirects 0.5% of the cost of all eligible products toward charities. It is a separate website that lets you browse and buy items just like on Amazon.com. But Amazon would keep track of your purchases and donate money on your behalf.

The company started sending an email to Amazon customers announcing the change. AmazonSmile will remain open until February 20, 2023.

“After almost a decade, the program has not grown to create the impact that we had originally hoped. With so many eligible organizations — more than 1 million globally — our ability to have an impact was often spread too thin,” the company wrote.

Since 2013, Amazon has donated $400 million through the AmazonSmile program. Bigger organizations likely received a bigger share of those donations while smaller ones only received a few dollars per year. But nonprofits are not going to say no to $400 million…

Charities that have participated in the AmazonSmile program will receive a one-time donation from Amazon that will be equivalent to three months of AmazonSmile donations. It’s a sort of severance package for nonprofits.

The end of the program is going to have an impact on Amazon’s bottom line in two ways. First, the company no longer has to set aside 0.5% on purchases made on AmazonSmile. Second, there were people actively working on the separate storefront, charity relationships and more. Shutting down AmazonSmile means that the company can lay off some people who were working on the program.

Amazon started informing people who are impacted by the layoffs yesterday. The timing of this announcement means that the end of the AmazonSmile program is directly tied to the company’s biggest-ever round of jobs cuts.

Amazon currently has a market capitalization of $974 billion. In its most recent earnings report, the company announced $2.5 billion in operating income. It wasn’t a record quarter, but Amazon isn’t on the verge of bankruptcy.

Amazon ends charity donation program AmazonSmile by Romain Dillet originally published on TechCrunch

Music streaming platforms all claim to use both artificial intelligence and manual curation to find new songs from emerging artists. But users often have to listen to many songs just to find some likable tracks — that’s because they don’t have any control over the recommendation algorithm. Romanian developer duo Alex Ruber and Andrei Patru have developed an app called Smores that improves this process and helps you easily add new music to your library.

Smores is a free iOS app that lets users listen to a short clip from a song based on their listening history. Users can skip through the tracks using a vertical feed just like TikTok.

The app connects to your Spotify account and uses the Spotify API to find new songs for you. If you enjoy a song clip, you can tap on the like button and it will be added to a playlist called “Smores discovery” in your Spotify account. Alternatively, you can also add the song to one or many of your pre-existing playlists.

The developers told TechCrunch in an email that they set to build the app to discover new music themselves. So they launched the first version of Smores last September.

“We love discovering new music, but we were stuck in our recommendation bubbles and it took too long to sift through the sheer volume of new music coming out. At the same time, we had a hunch: that you only need to listen to the ‘right’ snippet of a song to know if you like it or not: Shazam’s popularity points to this being the case,” they said.

The duo said that they wanted to have more control over the discovery algorithm and build transparency into the app. To that end, Smores has a ton of in-built controls to change users’ recommendation feed. Users can filter out suggestions based on their top six microgenres of the month. These change as they listen to more music and like more songs on the app.

The app’s advanced settings enable you to define snippet length (from 5 seconds to 60 seconds); limit discovery based on the number of followers an artist has on Spotify; and filter out songs by BPM (beats per minute), song key, and release date.

One of the neat things about the app is that it makes sure that you’re not going to listen to the same song ever again. Plus, the developers said that they have tweaked the algorithm in such a way that it figures out the “best” part of the song to play in a snippet. They said that a lot of users tend to like the song in just five seconds of hearing it if the app plays the right preview.

Retaining users and future plans

Music discovery apps are fun to use but it’s hard to build an audience that regularly uses an app. Despite this challenge, the developers said they have managed to retain a good amount of users (7% for week eight) and they have heard positive things from regular users.

“It’s true that cadence is low for music discovery apps in general. The casual listener will actively discover new music maybe once every 3 months. Casual listeners, DJs, and playlist curators rave about how much they love the ease of use, the speed, the convenience, and the quality of our recommendations,” they said.

Currently, the team is focused on building features like Smores radio and integrating Apple Music or other streaming platforms. Down the line, they want to introduce an Android version and possibly a premium tier — though they haven’t nailed down the paid features.

More AI in music

Music fans have often complained about AI’s growing role in music discovery and distribution. And yet, companies and app developers have relied on AI more — but they use it to give more control over algorithms with buttons and filters.

Bytedance’s music app Resso — currently available only in India, Brazil, and Indonesia — banks on a vertical feed and the company’s proven AI prowess to have casual listeners find new artists. The Chinese tech giant is also aiming to launch TikTok Music globally — AI-powered music suggestions will likely play a critical role in the service.

App developers are also taking the help of AI to introduce features to music apps. LineupSupply, an app that converted festival posters into playlists, switched its name to Playlist AI. The app also introduced a new feature that lets you write a prompt like “Dance artists who were popular in 1990s” to generate a playlist.

Smores is a music discovery app with a TikTok-like feed by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Without customers, there can be no business. So how can you drive new customers to your startup or keep existing ones engaged? The answer is simple: Growth marketing.

As a growth marketer who has honed this craft for the past decade, I’ve been exposed to countless courses, and I can confidently attest that doing the work is the best way to learn the skills to excel in this profession.

I am not saying you need to immediately join a Series A startup or land a growth marketing role at a large corporation. Instead, I have broken down how you can teach yourself growth marketing in five easy steps:

Setting up a landing page.
Launching a paid acquisition channel.
Booting up an email marketing campaign.
A/B test growth experimentation.
Deciding which metrics matter most for your startup.

In this third part of my five-part series, we’ll examine how to set up email marketing to push consumers through your funnel and drive conversions. For the entirety of this series, we will assume we are working on a direct-to-consumer (DTC) athletic supplement brand.

Your growth funnel

Even if you have the most premium product and amazing product-market fit, if you aren’t leveraging email marketing, you’re leaving huge leaks in the bucket. You can think of email marketing as a way to plug the holes that consumers are leaking out of at various stages of your funnel.

The funnel for our athletic supplement would look simple in comparison to something like getting someone to sign up to drive for Uber. I’ll show what both these funnels look like below.

Athletic supplement funnel: Ad view > website view > add to cart > email entered > checkout process (adding payment and shipping information) > purchase.

Uber driver funnel: Ad view > website view > email entered > basic identity questions (i.e., date of birth) > sensitive identity questions (i.e., driver’s license, SSN) > KYC background check consent > download mobile app > complete first drive.

As the complexity of the funnel increases, so does the potential for leaks, as do the opportunities for email marketing to plug them up.

For our athletic supplement, I would start with three automated email campaigns:

Consumers who enter their email but don’t purchase.
Consumers who add payment/shipping info but don’t purchase.
Consumers who purchase but haven’t repurchased in 30 days.

Teach yourself growth marketing: How to boot up an email marketing campaign by Ram Iyer originally published on TechCrunch