I always thought the horse and car analogy does not quite work with what is happening in the content space.
Maybe a better example is what happened to the radio industry when television came along. Radio is still around but has greatly morphed into niches and has had a long history of struggling. (I may suffer from nostalgia but the shift has not made radio better).
The Internet made the entertainment space more crowed with other options for consumers. Instead of sitting around listing to the latest Pink Floyd album, we can surf the net (play hours upon hours of video games) or many other options.
In terms of music ? there are many factors that would cause sales to drop:
* Other forms of entertainment (many free)
* Ability to buy one song instead of a whole album
* Less volatile music collection (I don?t need to keep replacing scratch CDs anymore)
* Easy access to other music. It is now so easy to find older albums that new artist are really competing against a much bigger playing field.
* Piracy ? A greatly inflated problem but still a problem
I think with a much more crowded entertainment space and people being suckers for free, other established content provides are going to see contracting markets.
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Better Analogy - Radio to Television
I always thought the horse and car analogy does not quite work with what is happening in the content space.
Maybe a better example is what happened to the radio industry when television came along. Radio is still around but has greatly morphed into niches and has had a long history of struggling. (I may suffer from nostalgia but the shift has not made radio better).
The Internet made the entertainment space more crowed with other options for consumers. Instead of sitting around listing to the latest Pink Floyd album, we can surf the net (play hours upon hours of video games) or many other options.
In terms of music ? there are many factors that would cause sales to drop:
* Other forms of entertainment (many free)
* Ability to buy one song instead of a whole album
* Less volatile music collection (I don?t need to keep replacing scratch CDs anymore)
* Easy access to other music. It is now so easy to find older albums that new artist are really competing against a much bigger playing field.
* Piracy ? A greatly inflated problem but still a problem
I think with a much more crowded entertainment space and people being suckers for free, other established content provides are going to see contracting markets.