The new way to feed ourselves

Since the Green Revolution, we are entering in the era of the most radical transformation of our food industry. From sensors and software that help farmers improve margins, to crowdfunding platforms that help food artisans kick-start their business, to big data and apps that allow consumers to make more informed choices, there has been an explosion of startups and innovators who are disrupting how food is produced, distributed, sold and consumed.

This is the invention of the FOODTECH !

What is the FoodTech? 

Foodtech is the alliance between the food industry and the restauration trough the new technologies. It is the management, logic and optimization to improve a pre-defined process: they are computerized tools designed to organize and scanning the activity of a restaurant or to be more environmentally friendly by controlling the food in the consumer's plate. The start ups dedicated to Foodtech are multiplying: an offer that matches demand and have a future. 

And in the world?

At the time when consumers around the world are constantly connected via their smartphones, their computers or tablets, some have found an innovative way to raise awareness on their plates and food consumption.

Of course, habits are not the same from one country to another, especially in terms of food. The Foodtech debuted in the US and is currently experiencing a real massive emergence in Europe.

If the US is still rooted in industrial habits and where research tends more towards the time savings that discovery, the French are in turn contains the pioneers of European by enrolling more in a gastronomic culture which aims to spread growing giants supermarkets to refocus on quality products or to use to promote exchanges between people.

The funding for these start ups amount to several million euros and quickly found investors for their projects: the best French example is undoubtedly the hive that says yes with a fundraiser more than 8 millions euro. While the digital restaurant to the shared plate homestay through home delivery, which are these signs behind this concept increasingly downloaded on smartphones? What is their means of action to disrupt eating habits?

And the firms? 

Today, all the media become the message and the way of life has change a lot. That's why many firms use it to spread their messages. For them, the food is essential in our life and they have to sensitize people but the better way to do so is using the technologies. 

The Foodtech take into consideration the possible future, a better future and many startups were born. 

We can see firms who helped farmers with software like the french one: SMAG, there is also all the firms who propose a service of delivery (menu from a restaurant to our home) like Deliveroo or Takeiteasy. 

But that's not only that, there is also all the apps, sites who propose to help us with our consumption and what to eat, how to eat this type of food... 

The Foodtech gradually transforms the contemporary food landscape through various methods: reconciling consumers with feeding, lifting constraints such as time, fatigue or lack of originality to create meals, exploring new products and to meet professionals. Internet here fulfills a unifying mission: to collect and reduce distances and intermediaries. In these systems, everyone is benefiting from the smallest producer through restaurantion and adapted to gastronomy and travel.

Now you can go around the world and the region through simple methods and from any device connected to the Internet. Anyone can access and solutions are proposed according to all budgets and all the shopping habits: just register and track the movement and know a little better the world around us.

The Foodtech represent a tendency to follow closely and which is to know more and more important worldwide. To get started, simply connect!

How the soul of music is slowly dying: About the digitalization of music industry

Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, Soundcloud, YouTube - the list of music streaming providers is constantly increasing. Today’s kids know exactly where they can listen to their favorite music. The times where every single vinyl was a lucky discovery in the record shop are clearly over. In the beginning of the Internet age, music industry was still fighting against serious problems with piracy.  Everyone who grew up during those times has been walking around with a taken-for-grantedness when it comes to refusing to pay for music. Now with streaming gaining the upper hand, illegal downloading seems to be off the table. But is this new financing model enough to live up to past times?

The digital age and its technical achievements are giving us the background music we were missing in our lives for such a long time. The musical accompaniment of our emotional state, no matter where, no matter when, seems to function with the simple inserting of little, in plastic encased membranes deep down into our ears. Only one more click to open the right app and the unbelievable amount of more than 35 million songs is provided to the music enthusiast.

It has not always been like that. If you try to think back a couple of years, you will probably remember the one guy in your clique who digitally recorded every imaginable track that you needed for your iPod or for the next party on a 500 gigabyte harddrive. Not only him, but everyone knew that he did not spend a penny for a single of those mp3-tracks. I mean, who is even paying for music? After all, music is everywhere to be found on the Internet and if you want to get it for free, you can get it for free. The “generation for free” agreed silently with the hushed up, but consciously perceived illegal Internet platforms (as well as with not paying for news on the Internet). The Internet seems to have opened the Pandora’s box of music industry.

People who think ahead see many financial losses at the end of this non-existing value chain that need to be regulated somehow. A first and careful attempt to come closer the consumer, who doesn’t want to pay for musical art, is the act of streaming - with affordable prices, a relentlessly growing mass of music and with a development towards a completely non-existing valuing of music itself. The musically always updated consumer is thanking for this offer and at the same time kicking the artists with 7.99 € per month right in the back. Without any guilty conscience, because why should you have one? The legality of music consumption seems to suppress the morality of those minimal costs. Nevertheless, the industry prefers a minor contribution to the costs over watching the pirates downloading illegally or the lawyers suing those pirates furthermore. The artist is recognizing this development first, then accepting it and then slowly burying all his dreams of a “Golden Record” according to music recording sales certification.

Music video blocked by GEMA

Groundbreaking concerning the payment of artists whose videos have been uploaded on YouTube has been the agreement between YouTube and GEMA (Society for musical performing and mechanical reproduction rights) in Germany in the beginning of November 2016. Since 2009, many YouTube music videos from major label artists as well as videos with background music have not been accessible for German users, because GEMA wanted YouTube to pay a fee for video views of GEMA-protected artists (70.000 in Germany plus several foreign rightholders). YouTube on the other hand refused to pay the required amount for the copyrights, saying that the person who uploads a video should pay for it and not the platform. Many negotiations for a new agreement and several law suits later, they came to an agreement - YouTube pays money to the GEMA and users can finally enjoy limitless music again. Other YouTube-competitors like Spotify have come to an agreement with GEMA too.

It's all about the money, money, money

The future of music streaming is benefiting from the disadvantages of downloading. With its iTunes store, Apple revolutionized the market for digital music and afforded the user to cram his harddrive just like before, but without having a bad conscience about it. In the end, the result is basically the same: a flood of music files, in which you found by accident - after inserting the USB cable of the harddrive into the computer - a once purchased classic record again. MP3-downloading on the other hand is gathering dust. Who doesn’t believe that should ask himself, which songs he bought digitally during the last years. The list will be difficult to count. The revived vinyl-lover will probably laugh about all of this. But if you pay 12 € for a vinyl instead of 1.49 € per song, you sense music not only haptically, you are also way more aware of it. The slow monetizing of a model for the (social) musical center seems to fill in the gap suitably. The harddrive has been relocated into the cloud, the price structure has been adjusted and the consumer is happy again.

Music straight out of the cloud

The words of the real music-enthusiasts criticizing all the “shuffle-players” and “track-skippers” are still legit. People who are walking through the city listening to shuffle-mode, skipping the first song after three seconds, then the next one and again and again until they are thinking “oh yeah, that’s it, that’s exactly the song I wanted to listen to, what a coincidence I found it in this great shuffle-mode”, they are probably having a different understanding of music than people who still go to vinyl shops and rummage in huge CD shelves. That doesn’t mean that this is a bad thing, but the awareness of music as an art form is getting lost.

Music on demand, just out of the pocket

What Spotify once started seems to function for the market. Increasing sales figures of the vinyl industry (30% in 2015) are harming the streaming industry probably just as little as the cinema harmed the theatre. The entertainment is comparable, but the audience is different. People who love haptic and collect vinyls or even CDs are surely having a bigger understanding for the higher prices, but besides that, they are maybe also using the advantages of the mobile music market in their pockets, with its outrageously cheap, but market-conform prices and which they can use wherever and whenever they like to. Sooner or later, streaming will indeed be mainstreaming. 

Sharing economy, a new concept of this 21th century

I’m almost sure you have already heard about Uber, Airbnb, Blablacar, and so on… These start-up have a common point : they are all from the sharing economy.

What is the sharing economy?

Also called “collaborative economy”, it is a concept that is being developed in the 21^th century. So it’s just the beginning and we haven't finished hearing about it. The core of this economy is the “collaboration”.

This economy comes from the development of the web and networks.

It's based on a peer-to-peer, “P2P”, principle. In fact, the aim is to connect two groups of people:

Those who wants to share something (the offeror), and those who need something (the consumer). It is an exchange created through technology.

The sharing economy is the meeting of two innovation :  DIGITAL  &  SOCIAL

These start-ups connect people through an application and a website, also called “ a platform”. It is the creation of communities.

Indeed, this economy was built by the experiments of lots of individual and independent people, who were looking to create something new, they wanted to reinvent the society. It is the result of a collective intelligence.

This economy has expended due to economical crisis of the 21^th century. Indeed, it was an alternative for both:

-        The offeror (because it creates new qualified jobs for those who work on the platform, and it enables individual offerors to earn money)

-        The consumer (this economy enables lower prices, and that offsets the decline of the purchase power).

Moreover, the awareness about the environmental footprints also played a role, because people seem more conscious of this problem. For example, this concept tends to:

-        Revitalize the local economy (because it enables people to buy local or old stuff)

-        Reduce the pollution (because of the carpooling)

Who are they?

Start-ups following this concept are multiplying. This sharing economy is based on four notions:

-        The collaborative consumption of goods or services. Ex: Uber, Airbnb, eBay, Popmyday, Boatbound

-        The crowdfunding. Ex: KissKissBankBank

-        The education, also called “open knowledge”. Ex: Kokoroe

-        The contributory production

Thereby, we have just understood that this sharing economy is present in many different fields.

Arun Sundarajan, a professor at New York University, says that :

" It’s one thing to trust someone enough to let them send you a bow through eBay, it’s another thing to get into someone’s car and say “drive me to another city” "

With his sentence, he shows that not all of these sharing economies are easy to implement.  

This sharing economy tends to change our behaviour in a sense where we have more confidence, and we are more trustworthy.

Some are more unpredictable than others. Here are some examples of companies from different fields.

In most of the fields, we can find several companies, who don’t offer exactly the same service. For example, in the automobile, we can find : Uber, blablacar, and even more.

Uber is a platform for people who need a ride in a city, it is a short ride. While, for Blablacar, it’s a longer ride, it’s more between different cities.

The offeror can be a professional (as in Popmyday), or a non professional (as in Blablacar or Airbnb).

These start-ups are spreading in the whole world.          

But this concept isn't always as perfect as it seems  to be ...

The sharing economy creates debates in some countries about the legislation and social question. For example, in France, when Uber began, there was lots of controversies and tensions between the original taxis and the Uber’s drivers. There were debates about the right of these new drivers, and of their social protection and tax obligation.

Overhall we think that this concept is a good way to preserve our planet, but lots of the transactions made by these start-ups wouldn’t have been done if these start-ups didn’t exist. For example, lots of people say that they would never have bought new the goods they buy on eBay, because they buy these goods as extra. 

Another fact is that this economy isn’t just about the sharing, but more about the money that peoples can earn. For example, some people buy goods just to resell them in eBay. We can also explain that with Uber, where lots of drivers do that just to earn money.