|
In
my last article, written in response to the pirate bay verdict, I
suggested that the traditional business models of the music and film
industries had passed their best and that if such firms wanted to
survive, they would have to come up with something new and better.
It's easy to look at their models from outside and point out that
they have failed, it's much harder to come up with suggestions for
what they should do to fix them.
The
starting point has to be what consumers want from the market. The
defeatist answer is that they want unlimited free music and films and
that whilst this is available they will always choose this over
things they have to pay for. As well as being defeatist I think it
completely misses the reason people download their music and films
rather than going out and buying them, of course cost is an element,
but it's by no means the deciding factor.
The
deciding factor is convenience. The great thing about The Pirate Bay,
or any other torrent site, is that everything is there. Pretty much
whatever the tastes of the user, be it pop music, actions films or
anime, the odds are that if you type it into the pirate bay, it will
be there. But one stop shopping isn't where the convenience ends, a
lot of it will also be on Amazon. If you've got a fairly quick
internet connection, the TV show you want to watch will there, ready
to watch, in less than an hour and a film in less than two. And once
it is there, it's there whenever you want to watch it and in a format
free from any poorly conceived DRM limitations.
Yes
it is also free, and everyone likes getting something for nothing,
but people also know at the back of their minds that what they're
doing is illegal. I'd be willing to bet that people would be willing
to pay – I'll discuss amounts later on – to get the same service
along with the peace of mind that they were doing it legally and
supporting the artists.
The
other big attraction of downloading for free from the internet is
that you can watch or listen to new things without the risk of buying
something you later find that you don't like. This is one of the
points the industry completely misses with their “1 download
equates to 1 lost sale” nonsense, a huge proportion of downloads
are just people downloading something to see if they like it.
Somebody might download every episode of a television series as a
torrent because a friend has recommended it to them but the odds are
that if it was not available as a torrent, that person wouldn't have
gone out and bought the box set, they'd have watched someone else's
copy or just never watched it at all.
If
the companies in question want to remain competitive they need to
come up with a service that can match this. They need to provide a
central place consumers can download content of the same quality and
they need to allow people to 'pay as they go' or to pay a flat
monthly fee which allows them to download as much as they want.
Sadly
for them that means both co-operating and accepting a dramatically
different way of generating revenue from individual products. Instead
of one product giving one revenue stream, the popularity of their
pool of content will define how much they will be able to charge for
access to it.
It
may be difficult and risky making such fundamental changes to an
established model but given that their options are a risk of failure
if they change and guaranteed failure if they don't, I know which one
I'd choose.
Please folow me on twitter (http://twitter.com/bdixon_dxnx ) for updates on this and similar topics
For an excellant analysis of the problems with the situation as is from a more technical economic analysis see here (http://copyrightflop.blogspot.com/2009/04/pirate-bay-not-king-kong-defense.html )
|
