Right now we have many disparate systems and models in the marketplace offering films and music for purchase. Each one of these online “shops” has a fraction of the complete global catalogue. Each of them has different rules & different payment systems. Sometimes the media that they sell is tied to a particular device or platform that restricts a consumer’s ability to play content wherever they want and when they want on whatever device they choose. For the consumer this is a fractured, confusing and frustrating marketplace.
Imagine if you had to download a special web browser for each website that you wanted to view and sign up for a separate subscription for each website before you could start using it. It’s like Minitel or Compuserve in the early days. But that’s pretty much what we have right now with most online shops.
This situation is not good for content owners. There is a limit to the number of shops that a consumer will sign up to. And seeing that these shops don’t contain the entire global media catalogue of music a consumer may end up with access to only 20% of what is offered (for instance). Also, after visiting two or three of these shops, most likely the consumer may not find the content they seek and may give up and turn to more convenient methods: illegal file sharing.
Wouldn’t it be better to have legal systems that work *better* than the illegal file sharing systems? Systems that enabled the consumer to browse and search (all?) online shops through its interface (device or application) of their choice. This interface would enable them to purchase content from the globally distributed collection of content catalogues via a payment system of their choice. Making it easier to buy content would mean more reach and more revenue for content owners.
Any web browser (no matter what platform, device or operating system it’s running on) can view any website (no matter what hardware or operating system it’s running on). There is technologically no reason why any device/application couldn’t browse, search and purchase content from the content cloud (globally distributed collection of content catalogues)…..or why any particular online shop couldn’t be a vendor for all digital media – syndicated from all the content owners.
What needs to happen is for device manufacturers and application developers to adopt open business protocols to enable queries and transactions to take place between any vendor and any consumer. Further, the content owners have to agree and decide that this would be a great thing to do. There are a number of ways to introduce these open business protocols and how to engineer these protocols. Each way has pluses and minuses. The adoption rate is an important factor in the choice of protocol and introduction methodology. For instance a “top down” approach may work if there are enough large players who sign on at the beginning of the adoption drive. A “bottom up” approach may be beneficial if there is a ground swell of support from many smaller players.
Once we have these open business protocols in place for rights management, metadata, payment systems, etc., we can start to experiment with various business models. Our business models SHOULD NOT be restricted by the technology we are using. More or less, an open framework allows any number of new and future business models to work too. It would be future proof. Business models could include cross-vendor subscriptions, where the consumer pays a subscription fee to an entity that then divvies out the proportionate share to the content owners depending on what that consumer has listened to or viewed. Equally, content could be passed from one consumer to another – each consumer may have a different “shop” but because they all interoperate, transactions can be routed via each service provider to the correct destination.
For such a framework to be successful – for there to be interoperability between current content distribution systems – the protocols need to be understood by all. The format of the metadata tagged to digital media files is a big issue. Bear in mind that most content owners (big and small) maintain their own proprietary databases (some in spreadsheets or paper), using their own language, formats, conventions, terminology, etc.
There are two approaches to solving the problem of non-interoperable databases. One option is to tell everyone to ditch their current systems and database schema and adopt a new set. But defining the new set can take ages and has a propensity to fail due to business politics. Up till now the accepted way of solving interoperability problems like these is to introduce a set of standards for the industry to adopt and then everything will just work itself out, assuming everyone adopts the new standards. Unfortunately, in the given marketplace people simply don’t always like to talk the same language or use the same terminology.
For example, take two music catalogues published by different record labels. One database calls the track title “song” and the other calls it “work”. How about databases published in different languages? Getting industry to adopt any one set of standard terminology is an uphill struggle given the number of people/organizations in the industry. Why not enable people to talk their own language and use their own terminology.
This is where the Semantic Web comes in. Essentially, it’s a framework that enables people to talk meaningfully on the Internet in such a way that machines can make simple logical inferences. In my example we could set up a statement like “when record label A says ‘song’ and record label B says ‘work’ they mean the same thing”. And at that point we have essentially unified the two catalogues – at least from the consumer’s point of view.
The Semantic Web is still in development. It is cutting edge. What needs to be done is to take a few ideas and incorporated them into our current framework. We should be willing to be compatible with but not reliant on the Semantic Web, creating very simple tools to enable people to publish and search distributed catalogues using this technology.
Companies, record labels included, need to keep on the ball and continue to change their business models (aka innovate) to best capitalize on available technology resources and consumer desires.
Surely though, the time between recording and releasing (the vulnerable time) is insignificant when compared to a track’s total retail life, isn’t it? Or do most music/video sales happen as soon as the as they are released?
So to the content makers what is really the problem? Surely, revenue is the problem. Lost revenue. Potential revenue but not collected. Agreed? Content owners are like any other company and need to return value to their respective share holders, right? It basically comes down to revenue.
So how do you increase revenue? One thing is for sure, we will never be rid of the “opportunity to pirate”. However, we can lessen the desirability to pirate. Lord Puttnam once said “I don’t for a moment believe that it can be in the industry’s interest to “criminalize” its own customers, as the music industry has done in America and intends to do vigorously in all countries, by suing those who trade files online.”
If we are to follow the Lord’s advice then what options are left to us? Instead of the stick shouldn’t we use the carrot? How about enticing the consumer away from illegal file sharing and providing them with an experience far more compelling than what illegal file sharing offers?
Let’s be honest here, today’s online shops are harder to use and impose more restrictions on what can be done with the content than today’s file sharing systems. Also, these same online shops often only contain a fraction of the global catalogue offered by file sharing systems. So, is it any wonder that people continue to take the “opportunity to pirate” – for it’s simpler and takes less time and does not restrict what device/application they can play the content on. And as they say “time is money” and people will do whatever they can to save it.
We have to build better systems than current file sharing systems. We have to be able to offer consumers access to *all* content via the device/application of their choice, using the payment system of their choice, if we want to win back the lost revenue for content owners. And “win” is what we all want.
How many can-pay-for-content applications (like iTunes, Real, Zune, etc) are there? Note that most (not all I’m glad to say) are end-to-end systems – vertically integrated to hardware. Now count how many can’t-pay-for-content applications (the ones built around open protocols like BitTorrent, Gnutella, eDonkey, FastTrack, Freenet, etc.) there are. Note that these are open protocols and not the applications themselves. There are hundreds of applications running these open protocols but not a single one of them has a commerce system built into it.
Why are there so many more developers building these applications that run these open protocols? I’ll tell you – it’s because the protocols are open. It’s as simple as that. These developers would jump at the opportunity to develop applications that ran an open protocol that enabled consumers to pay for their content. They’d love to earn a slice of the revenue through their applications.
The music industry should stop waiting for the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Real to come up with technological solutions that fit the music/video industry’s needs. (These software vendors will wait until the last minute before they capitulate to an open marketplace framework/protocol. And I’d be concerned if they acted in any other way – they are there to serve their shareholders and maximize profits after all. And they currently do this best by building vertically integrated systems). The whole entertainment industry needs to adopt an open marketplace framework/protocol and capitalize on developers to build systems based on such. Take a leaf out of the World Wide Web. Once HTML was defined as an open protocol look what happened.
If I was a very VERY rich man, I’d build the solution……and the rest would be history.
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