Disruptive technology - we've all heard the term before. It shakes up industries and forces companies to toss out their old business models and strategies. The music biz knows this well. The move to digital has totally transformed the industry. Fans have ditched CDs for downloads and streams. They connect with artists online, not in record stores. It's a whole new ballgame for record labels and musicians alike. Everything's changed, from artist contracts to how we listeners get our tunes. Disruption at its finest. The digital shift has remade the music industry top to bottom. Old rules? Out the window. New formats and channels are calling the shots now.
So, what about video? All of us are aware of how this industry is under a huge transformation. Distribution is moving online, and even traditional cable providers are moving their programming in an effort to compete, but lurking in the background is a growing movement resembling the years of Napster, where the world’s entertainment library is moving to streaming services which are free (meaning they aren’t really legal) and no matter how hard a Network or Movie Production company tries, it’s a losing battle because as soon as they remove a link, it's back up again. Sure, many people also use legitimate services and pay to rent a movie online or subscribe to a monthly service, but more and more people are migrating and finding what they want online – for free.
That got me thinking, when you consider of how much effort is spent fighting this losing battle, can you use it to your advantage? Can you think of these streaming and indexing sites and apps that consumers are already using on their smartphones, android boxes, tablets, PCs, and laptops as your extended distribution channel? What if each time a TV show aired, networks provided a commercial-free copy available? What if this commercial-free copy had a watermark of both the network and a commercial sponsor? What if you had a different sponsor watermark every fifteen minutes? Think of what would happen to the effort spent on fighting the losing battle of trying to take down all of these files (which are all over the world) when you change the dialogue from piracy to distribution.
Think of the agreement across ISPs if the "ask" from networks becomes “you simply have to post the free version with the sponsor and network watermarks.” In this new model, sponsors pay to advertise and reach new consumers who have already migrated to this new channel (one which is now free of commercial advertising), and everyone's happy, right? We’ll not entirely because there are other channels that you have to consider, like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc., but they shouldn’t dictate how people watch entertainment and how networks should engage their audiences as we collectively transform the industry.
In the age of digital, the audience should dictate this transformation as it did with the music industry. My view of the future is one where entertainment is free, no subscription, no monthly fee, and your entertainment experience and sponsor dollars are woven into each other in a way that does not interrupt the user experience.
I see all streaming sites going the way of the “blockbuster store” unless these networks and entertainment companies continue to transform into production channels rather than the re-seller model in which they are grounded today. After all, online entertainment is data, and we all know that we can learn from that data that already exists to make business decisions in this ever-changing world we live in – but that’s just my view.
