I can't do any better than recommend to everyone the article by Chris Anderson in the latest edition of Wired.
Chris is famously the creator (or populiser if you prefer) of The Long Tail theory and this new contribution takes things one step further, looking at free distribution as the basis of business models.
Free ! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business.
From an archive and content perspective it has long been a common concept.
Getty makes certain material available to students knowing that they are the art directors of the future. And free television has always made money from merchandising and other activities, though sadly many producers didn't see past the commission cheques.
That's not to say there aren't issues around it. If it costs you money to make things free (through nasty things like rights and digitisation) then you have to think carefully, but it's a problem to be solved not an immovable barrier.
Tuesday 26 February 2008
Saturday 8 December 2007
Rights.. again
In recent weeks I've spent a lot of time on a project abroad, which has taken up much time.
It's also got me thinking about rights again.
A lot of people in this industry spend a lot of time analysing technologies and platforms and alliances but rights rarely gets a look-in. And as for boring stuff like metadata well...
I'm very much a believer in getting content out there. It's not that I don't care about rights - every content owner should be able to protect their intellectual property and take appropriate value from it.
But when the attempt to protect property runs head-first into consumer behaviour then it's the rights that have to change.
I say this because on one of several flights and facing long hotel stays I picked up a box-set of James Bond DVDs. It wasn't until I tried to watch it on my laptop that I realised it was a Region 1 (North Am) DVD and both me and my laptop are Region 2 (Europe).
I was graciously granted the right to switch between regions but only four times... gee thanks. I might not even make my way through the box set if I watched Region 2 DVDs in between. Clearly this causes a problem, not least of which is choosing between Goldfinger and The Man With the Golden Gun.
But the main problem is that I am now being penalised for apparently reasonable consumer behaviour. In this day and age of frequent travel and movement, let alone digital access, the idea of geographical restriction is outrageous. I've paid a substantial amount for the DVDs and even more for my laptop, software licences etc. So the owners have made their money but I will be left holding a useless DVD.
So what am I going to do ? Obviously find some way to crack the encoding software or download the movies illegally instead. There's only one pirate in this scenario.
It's also got me thinking about rights again.
A lot of people in this industry spend a lot of time analysing technologies and platforms and alliances but rights rarely gets a look-in. And as for boring stuff like metadata well...
I'm very much a believer in getting content out there. It's not that I don't care about rights - every content owner should be able to protect their intellectual property and take appropriate value from it.
But when the attempt to protect property runs head-first into consumer behaviour then it's the rights that have to change.
I say this because on one of several flights and facing long hotel stays I picked up a box-set of James Bond DVDs. It wasn't until I tried to watch it on my laptop that I realised it was a Region 1 (North Am) DVD and both me and my laptop are Region 2 (Europe).
I was graciously granted the right to switch between regions but only four times... gee thanks. I might not even make my way through the box set if I watched Region 2 DVDs in between. Clearly this causes a problem, not least of which is choosing between Goldfinger and The Man With the Golden Gun.
But the main problem is that I am now being penalised for apparently reasonable consumer behaviour. In this day and age of frequent travel and movement, let alone digital access, the idea of geographical restriction is outrageous. I've paid a substantial amount for the DVDs and even more for my laptop, software licences etc. So the owners have made their money but I will be left holding a useless DVD.
So what am I going to do ? Obviously find some way to crack the encoding software or download the movies illegally instead. There's only one pirate in this scenario.
Saturday 13 October 2007
Radiohead
Having written just a few weeks ago that there is little value in anything which can be digitally reproduced and copied it was very kind of Radiohead to illustrate the point by releasing their new album free for digital download.
They are relying on a voluntary payment system, which recognises that there is no intrinsic value in the file other than what the user places on it.
Value lies in the brand and the advertising and community opportunities it generates and no doubt Radiohead will benefit hugely from continued fan support and concert attendance. A large number of fans have even paid for a special box set including other non-digital material.
However I don't get too carried away with this. I'm a great believer that it's pretty hard to invent something really new.
What Radiohead and other musicians who follow are doing is adopting the model on which television has been successfully based for 50 years. The content creator and broadcaster has to take some risk that people will want the content, and then they rely on advertising to recoup their risk. Digital delivery of music issimply an imitation of free-to-air television so it is hardly surprising that it should follow similar business models.
It is of course a very welcome development and hopefully will help chip away at the Vinyl Curtain of rights and distribution which the music industry has built to keep its content behind walls.
They are relying on a voluntary payment system, which recognises that there is no intrinsic value in the file other than what the user places on it.
Value lies in the brand and the advertising and community opportunities it generates and no doubt Radiohead will benefit hugely from continued fan support and concert attendance. A large number of fans have even paid for a special box set including other non-digital material.
However I don't get too carried away with this. I'm a great believer that it's pretty hard to invent something really new.
What Radiohead and other musicians who follow are doing is adopting the model on which television has been successfully based for 50 years. The content creator and broadcaster has to take some risk that people will want the content, and then they rely on advertising to recoup their risk. Digital delivery of music issimply an imitation of free-to-air television so it is hardly surprising that it should follow similar business models.
It is of course a very welcome development and hopefully will help chip away at the Vinyl Curtain of rights and distribution which the music industry has built to keep its content behind walls.
Friday 28 September 2007
Rights and wrongs
At first glance it would seem to me that a service which allows you to set up an audio feed through your phone (or VOIP) would not be something that should cause too many rights issues.
I was alerted to Gabcast by Jonathan Marks on his Critical Distance blog and signed up with the idea that as I will be spending quite a bit of time on the road over the next few months it would be nice to record some book chapters for my kids to listen to. My son Gabriel loves being read classics like Treasure Island and King Solomon's Mines.
But in signing up to Gabcast's T&Cs I agreed that anything I record will have all rights cleared and that I grant the use of the material to Gabcast in a worldwide licence.
Now I don't for a moment imagine that Gabcast is going to take my audio books recorded for limited private use and release them as a worldwide podcast. My reading voice charms my children but that's about it. Nor do I think that publishing houses are going to start chucking War and Peace through my front window.
I know the platform has to pretend that they have no control over rights and it's all my fault if something goes wrong, and I know I have to pretend that I know all about the rights and have a file of waivers and clearances somewhere and I know that publishers have to pretend they really care about people reading their editions as if it would stop them buying books.
It's just a bit silly.
Anything which can be digitally reproduced and copied is essentially valueless, in so far as value lies in the actual product. The value lies in the brand and the advertising and community opportunities it generates. And maybe it would get people to buy some analogue versions, better known as books.
I was alerted to Gabcast by Jonathan Marks on his Critical Distance blog and signed up with the idea that as I will be spending quite a bit of time on the road over the next few months it would be nice to record some book chapters for my kids to listen to. My son Gabriel loves being read classics like Treasure Island and King Solomon's Mines.
But in signing up to Gabcast's T&Cs I agreed that anything I record will have all rights cleared and that I grant the use of the material to Gabcast in a worldwide licence.
Now I don't for a moment imagine that Gabcast is going to take my audio books recorded for limited private use and release them as a worldwide podcast. My reading voice charms my children but that's about it. Nor do I think that publishing houses are going to start chucking War and Peace through my front window.
I know the platform has to pretend that they have no control over rights and it's all my fault if something goes wrong, and I know I have to pretend that I know all about the rights and have a file of waivers and clearances somewhere and I know that publishers have to pretend they really care about people reading their editions as if it would stop them buying books.
It's just a bit silly.
Anything which can be digitally reproduced and copied is essentially valueless, in so far as value lies in the actual product. The value lies in the brand and the advertising and community opportunities it generates. And maybe it would get people to buy some analogue versions, better known as books.
Thursday 6 September 2007
Application Wars
Fans of sci-fi will be familiar with the genre that starts in a post-apocalyptic scenario sometime in the future. Terminator and the Rise of the Machines for example, or take your pick of various nuclear meltdown aftermaths.
In my brave attempts to look at the future of content I would base my hit screenplay after the Application Wars.
It seems that there's a new platform - application - client - service every week at the moment. Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, Zattoo, Hulu, iPlayer, 4OD and I'm sure there'll be another by the time I finish this blog.
OK you could download them all and not miss a few gigabytes but experience suggests that people - as in the mass audience everyone is chasing - are not going to download and install more than one or two applications designed to do the same thing.
So there are two scenarios.
Either one application is dominant - the iTunes scenario. That looks unlikely. Major video content owners like NBC, Fox, BBC and others show willingness to distribute widely but also seem keen to avoid a situation where they are dependent on a dominant platform. They are developing their own and supporting others.
The other scenario is that there is a proliferation for some time but eventually the whole idea of a proprietary platform goes the way of the Cold War. Let's call that the MP3 scenario. The barriers to this scenario are that proprietary systems have better control and security but if someone can address those problems then it is undoubtedly the best solution for both content owners and users.
In my brave attempts to look at the future of content I would base my hit screenplay after the Application Wars.
It seems that there's a new platform - application - client - service every week at the moment. Joost, Babelgum, Veoh, Zattoo, Hulu, iPlayer, 4OD and I'm sure there'll be another by the time I finish this blog.
OK you could download them all and not miss a few gigabytes but experience suggests that people - as in the mass audience everyone is chasing - are not going to download and install more than one or two applications designed to do the same thing.
So there are two scenarios.
Either one application is dominant - the iTunes scenario. That looks unlikely. Major video content owners like NBC, Fox, BBC and others show willingness to distribute widely but also seem keen to avoid a situation where they are dependent on a dominant platform. They are developing their own and supporting others.
The other scenario is that there is a proliferation for some time but eventually the whole idea of a proprietary platform goes the way of the Cold War. Let's call that the MP3 scenario. The barriers to this scenario are that proprietary systems have better control and security but if someone can address those problems then it is undoubtedly the best solution for both content owners and users.
Monday 13 August 2007
Cycling TV - a niche model ?
Everyone has their own niche, or several, and Cycling is one of mine.
So I have mixed feelings about Cycling.tv which has just been sold to JumpTV for more than US$4 million, as reported on DTG.
On the one hand it is a model niche play. A strong and loyal interest group, poorly served in traditional media (outside Europe anyway) and a large industry of potential advertisers. It is often held up as a great success story for Narrowstep, the distribution platform.
But I've never subscribed to it, and nor have all but a tiny handful of my cycling friends - people who seem to spend most of their time either on-bike or on-line.
It's the subscription model that I have trouble with. I know it is nice to have a reliable income, especially as they have to acquire rights from sports organisers. But I'm just not going to part with $30 on the off chance I might have time to watch a live stream of Paris-Roubaix next summer. On the other hand I can think of half a dozen times I might have watched a report or a race and been exposed to advertising.
On some rough calculations Cycling.tv would have needed 40 million views in a year at a CPM of $40 to cover their costs, and that's not easy. On the subscription model they would have needed nearly 50,000 subscribers, and they had just under 20,000, so that wasn't a no-brainer either.
Maybe there's room for a mixture of subscriber and open content as there is in traditional television but I hope the steady increase in online advertising revenue will see more niche players able to support free access.
So I have mixed feelings about Cycling.tv which has just been sold to JumpTV for more than US$4 million, as reported on DTG.
On the one hand it is a model niche play. A strong and loyal interest group, poorly served in traditional media (outside Europe anyway) and a large industry of potential advertisers. It is often held up as a great success story for Narrowstep, the distribution platform.
But I've never subscribed to it, and nor have all but a tiny handful of my cycling friends - people who seem to spend most of their time either on-bike or on-line.
It's the subscription model that I have trouble with. I know it is nice to have a reliable income, especially as they have to acquire rights from sports organisers. But I'm just not going to part with $30 on the off chance I might have time to watch a live stream of Paris-Roubaix next summer. On the other hand I can think of half a dozen times I might have watched a report or a race and been exposed to advertising.
On some rough calculations Cycling.tv would have needed 40 million views in a year at a CPM of $40 to cover their costs, and that's not easy. On the subscription model they would have needed nearly 50,000 subscribers, and they had just under 20,000, so that wasn't a no-brainer either.
Maybe there's room for a mixture of subscriber and open content as there is in traditional television but I hope the steady increase in online advertising revenue will see more niche players able to support free access.
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