Artcore’s Attempt and the Uphill Battle
Enter Artcore, a London-based platform offering a music retail service akin to Bandcamp. Tom Burnell, Artcore’s founder, acknowledges the challenges of challenging a colossal incumbent. Building a startup, as Burnell intimates, is an uphill battle, but the question lingers: Why hasn’t Artcore, with its comparable service and a user base in the tens of thousands, made a more significant dent in Bandcamp’s dominion?
The Struggle for Recognition
According to Matt Iliffe, CEO of Beyond, a company optimizing product experiences for major entities, smaller companies face a dual challenge: cutting through the noise to raise awareness and overcoming the safety people find in established platforms. There’s a prevailing sentiment of “better the devil you know,” hindering newcomers from making significant strides.
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The road to competition, as Nicki Sprinz, Global MD of ustwo, asserts, demands that a new platform be not just incrementally but exponentially better than its established counterpart. Merely replicating existing models won’t suffice; innovation and distinctiveness become prerequisites for success.