Sep 09
26
There are now several hundred “watch on line for free” video
sites. These online sites make the point about file-sharing almost moot except
for countries like Australia
that have an artificial monopoly stranglehold on the internet bandwidth and
monthly Caps.
So Koltai, people in Australia
are using P2P because they cant afford the cost of streaming legal video?
Yep. When every Gigabyte on your iPhone can cost you $15,000
then you certainly can’t afford to watch streaming legal videos.
Well how else do we get our content?
Good question, Australia,
New Zealand, South
America, India,
China, South Africa and
everywhere else that 50 MB per second Internet access with no Caps is not available.
Chris blogged the other day about the Telcos pitching
content companies for their content.
It’s like going to the races and taking a bet an each way on
the top four favourites.
The odds are that in your favour out of a field of ten
horses that at least one of your four will come in first with a strong
likelihood of a place for at least another.
Unfortunately the bookmakers know this also and have adjusted
the odds that if you bet on the four top favourite horses, your win and place
is unlikely to return you much more than the original bet.
The only ones that win are the bookies.
In the content business, the only ones that win are the deal
makers (ummm that would be the lawyers). They get fees from the Telcos
obtaining the content and from the Hollywood Studios “selling” the content.
Unfortunately, people that want content these days, don’t actually buy
outdated media types anymore.
Blog reader user comment:
Buying CD’s is becoming strange, they’re like floppies
now. Where do I insert them? In my netbook? In my touchscreen phone? My next
laptop won’t have CD-ROM either. It’s an obsolete format of digital storage.
But if you want to support the artist you like you have to buy this garbage.
You know what, media distributing companies? Shove it.
The Media Companies know this and are looking to find
answers.
Universities are doing their bit to help and professor Jonathan Taplin from USC Annenberg put together a panel
with “leading media architects” Peter Chernin and Gordon
Crawford about the long view of the future of Media distribution.
In this video you are going to hear the history of
Technology and how it disrupted the older technology.
You will understand that the industry consider their “D” (“d”
for Destruction/Destiny?) day was August
6 1995. the day that Jerry Garcia died and Netscape launched their IPO.
You will understand that industry thought their business was
safe and protected – as it was BI (Before Internet) – and how the media figured
their business was like shooting fish in a barrel.
OK, so here’s the video… An interesting watch, even if it is
a put-up job for our elected Governments.
So if you watched the video, you now know that it will take
the industry about eight years to work out how to alter their distribution
contracts and actually provide digital content as per the consumers wishes.
Advice to Hollywood:
Well, I’m here to tell you guys, that the consumers haven’t
spent the last eight years waiting for you guys, and they’re certainly not
going to spend the next eight waiting either.
By my calculations – based on the rate of
growth of file sharing software, and the increasing rate of adoption – if you
want to deliver a catalogue model digital delivery to the users before everyone
gets the entire catalogue free…. Then you
have less than three years.
After which everyone will have the catalogue and you will
only have the new content.
And as we all know – deep catalogue in the hands of every
internet user in the world means zero income for the content industry.
OK, well it means the opening weekend numbers because the
rest will be file-shared.
So guys – stop talking about it – stop telling us how
difficult it is. Get in a couple of slash and burn, entrepreneurs and for Pete’s
sake – just “bite the bullet” and do it NOW.
Don’t make the mistake of waiting for the lawyers. Your
business model will have vanished by the time they have finished billing you
for whatever they can squeeze out of you.
In closing I would like just like to say…
The days when you could protect unbelievable business
models have now largely gone and the power has moved to the consumer.
Oh yeah, that was in the video… so basically you already
know.
Postscript:
Hey Koltai – The title said something about Media Companies
buying Universities… you didn’t talk about that.
Oh yes I did. Just don’t really want to be sued by spelling
it out. If you watched the video and understand whom the participants represent,
the rest should come easy. However, don’t panic, we’ll be talking about these
guys again in the future.