The Future Of Content: Protection Is In The Business Model — Not In Technology
If I received a dollar every time I get a question along the lines of "how can the content industries compete with FREE?" — I would be traveling first class everywhere I go. Underneath this question I often find my favorite toxic assumption: "less control over distribution means less money."
This belief is as tired as it is poisonous: enforcing control (when trust is really what’s needed) will yield instant disengagement, which swiftly and surely will translate into dwindling revenues — as the music industry keeps proving again and again. If you believe in control rather than value and trust, the content business of the future is not a good hunting ground for you.
Take eBooks: despite clear and present proof that DRM has proven disastrous in selling digital music (and now is pretty much history), technical protection measures are still being looked at to ‘secure distribution’. When will they ever learn?
The thinking that the digital distribution of content must be controlled to achieve any kind of reasonable payment is fundamentally flawed because of this not-so-futuristic realization: in our open, mobile, social and digitally networked economy, content publishers need to offer their goods in a way that no longer centers on the distribution of units (digital or physical) as the key revenue factor. The idea of just selling copies is toast – selling (i.e. offering) access is where the money is. Kevin Kelly said it years ago: we must sell what can't be copied, what’s scarce, not what is ubiquitous.
The irrefutable trend is that the window of opportunity of 'selling copies' (be it iTunes, eMusic, the Kindle or the iPad) is rapidly closing. The real opportunity, the TeleMedia Future, is in selling access and presenting a constant stream of up-sells (i.e. added values and offering content-related experiences). Remember, as Mark McLaughlin so righly pointed out in the HuffingtonPost recently, consumers have never really paid for content – they paid for distribution! And now, distribution means Attention and Access.
Imagine when buying access to eBooks, you wouldn’t just pay for the authorized enjoyment of the authors’ words, but you would also gain instant access to highly curated and socially-networked commentary, a fire-hose of meta-content provided by your most important peers and friends that may also be reading these books, and their ratings, explanations, slide-shows, images, links, videos, cross-references — and maybe even some direct connections with the author or the publisher. In an access-based, bundled and cloud-centric content ecology, being a legitimate and authorized user enables engagement, conversation, relevance, personalization, meaning… i.e. it unlocks really valuable benefits for the user. Connect with Fans + Reasons to Buy (as has been mentioned on this blog a few times, before, I believe) – that’s where the money is.
In music, streaming-on-demand will without a doubt be available ‘for free' (i.e. bundled and packaged by 3rd parties) or advertising supported, while many added values above and beyond the mere reproduction of music will not – no matter whether WMG’s CEO Edgar Bronfman thinks it’s a good idea ‘for the industry’ or not.
Just imagine where an access-to-the-cloud model could go next: if I want a high-definition version of my favorite opera or that Blue Note Jazz Club concert from last night I could buy a premium package that provides it. If I want to share my personal play-lists, ratings and comments with my Facebook friends, and get access to their content, as well, I can add the 'social network option' to my package. If the price is right (micro-transactions, anyone…?), I'll buy – because I am already hooked on the music.
The music industry needs to ask itself this question: if a permanent, unprotected download of a song would cost only $0.10, or if an ad-supported version of a on-demand, all-you-can-eat music service would be seamlessly bundled into your mobile phone subscription – would anyone still bother to scour the web to find badly ripped, virus-laced tracks for free? Would we need 3-Strikes or HADOPI or Digital Economy Bills?
Yes, I know, that price point sounds ridiculous for those record label CEOs that used to sell CDs for 15-25 Euros a piece, but hang on a second: if they can get 95% of the users to buy access at a much lower price (and almost zero cost of duplication and distribution!), and in that process really engage with them, the fans would also do the marketing for them – i.e. share the links. Sounds like a great model to me. But of course: selling access at a much lower (or feels-like-free) price to quite literally everyone only makes sense if it actually connects directly and smoothly to a multitude of up-selling possibilities, such as interactive versions of eBooks, high-definition versions of online radio shows, albums or concerts, in-depth analysis and audio/video commentary for news, etc.
Now, content storage is starting to move from my own computer or my hard-drives into the cloud – and I think this is very good news for content creators, publishers and rights-holders because it makes it even easier to engage and up-sell to those new generatives. Crucially, the answer to the constant quest of monetization is also in the cloud: I believe most people will soon stop sharing the actual media files (since they are getting increasingly larger and larger, and therefore more unwieldy) and will share only the links, the bookmarks, the metadata or the tags, and that should be a boon for the content industries.
The perfect test bed for ‘Media as a Service’ (MaaS) may unfold soon, with Apple's new iPad or Google’s Tablet (hopefully). Extending the concepts mentioned above, rather than blocking my wife or my kids from sharing an eBook with me it would be much more logical if I could easily read her book, as well; but beyond the ‘copy of the words’ all else would not be available without a micro-transaction on my part, i.e. I would not have instant access to the cool video clips, the updated links, the footnotes, the ratings, etc; i.e. all that valuable context that will make eBooks so much more powerful would be out of my reach until I validate my own access.
The bottom line: content sharing isn't the real problem: high price points, outmoded, pre-web toll-booth concepts, broken relationships and processes, low values for high prices, bad technology and service, and utter lack of conversation and engagement are.
Here is my message to publishers and content owners: lower the prices for access to your content to the point of unanimous excitement, use open standards and technology platforms that work for everyone, everywhere; bundle and package as attractively as you can (then: repeat). Team up with ISPs, mobile operators, advertisers and device makers.
Remove all the reasons that your users may have to avoid your new toll-booths and skip the desired conversion to 'paid' – the lower the hurdle for legitimate usage and paid engagement, the higher the added values, the less you will have to worry about 'competing with free'.
Media as a Service
as to comment 42 I don't think the concept of having media in the cloud is laughable, at all. Just because I would store my books, movies, and music in the cloud does not mean I wouldn't be able to download it when / where I need it, for one. Why do I need TB drives if I have access to what I want anytime anywhere and just draw down what I need? How many times do you watch a movie over and over again? For music, your argument is nil already, btw.
As to comment 41: Nathaniel is dead wrong when pointing to the NYT and others saying the are dying because people are not willing to pay for the content. That's not why (and the NYT is NOT dying, anyway): they are in trouble because they offer an expensive, printed product when everyone is switching to low-cost digital access. It's a mismatch of formats - again, people are willing to pay when they see value and the price is right. That must be the misison
media as a servive
More resources from the author
great discussion, thanks for all the feedback, I shall reply later today or tomorrow as I am at a conference right now. In the meantime I thought I could share some more resources that could clarify the points I tried to make in this post. First I have 73 free and downloadable slideshows on this and similar topics at http://www.slideshare.net/gleonhard/presentations Check out The New Generatives: Selling Music in a Connected World http://gerd.fm/cfklFv and Making money with music when the copy is 'free at http://gerd.fm/cGw3Vw in particular. Second, I have bunch of videos on this topic, at www.gerdtube.net (Blip.tv), look at this one first: Compensation not Control. http://gleonhard.blip.tv/file/1765987/ Hope this helps!!! Cheers, Gerd www.twitter.com/gleonhard
your comments (above)
Jon and Dean: comments, ratings, footnotes etc cannot be copied in the same way as a simple download because they need to always refer to the legitimate source to matter, they are not linear (i.e. the grow, change, get adapted). As to microtransaction if something like Flattr is widely adopted I think it could work -- I would certainly use it to spread my support around.