The end of the VCR generation

January 27, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Don’t worry, I haven’t slipped back 10 years to the launch of the DVD.

I’m just thinking about the speed of change in technology and business – inspired by an incredibly depressing trip to my local Blockbuster rental store on Saturday.

Two rows of rentals, a few racks of bargain-priced pre-owned DVDs and games and a few new releases for sale.

And while I’m a huge advocate of making content downloadable online, and services which mail DVDs to your door (like Blockbuster, Lovefilm and Netflix), so that you can forage in the Long Tail, I couldn’t help feeling sad at how the rental store has declined.

It’s probably showing my age, but I remember a time before Blockbuster showed up. The first local video store was a real ‘mom and pop’ type shop, and had a tiny selection, but for a young film fan whose family had just got their first video recorder, it was amazing.

Then I experienced Blockbusters. So many films under one roof that my first trip was almost accompanied by the kind of golden glow you’d see in TV adverts as I wandered down every row, checking out every possible title vying for my attention (Something I’ve never quite kicked, which is why I tend to get left to browse in record shops, video stores and computer games emporiums – few friends and family members have to make sure that they’ve checked every possible option for entertainment).

Sadly, the decline has been noticeable for a while, probably demonstrated by the fact I hadn’t paid a visit to my local store in at least a year.

I’ve got films on Freeview (whoever first put adverts in the middle of films and live sporting events should be shot, by the way), I’ve got films on demand via my Xbox 360, and I’ve been a happy subscriber to Lovefilm. And that’s despite UK broadband speed and data limits meaning I’ve been a latecomer to downloading films via PC or Xbox (TV via iPlayer is another matter!).

I’m not saying that DVD rental shops should be saved for any reason – the only possible solution I could envisage keeping them going for a while would be a Print-on-Demand service to burn a DVD of any catalogued film for those who don’t yet have the bandwith – but that’s a stopgap on the way to extinction.

It’s just rare sometimes to hear anyone advocating a digital revolution/evolution admit that they might feel bad about the end of a dying medium, and without a rational explanation!

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Entropy 2.0

November 15, 2008 By 3 Comments

Steve Rubel posted a risky bet on his personal blog, Micro Persuasion, yesterday, that ‘By January 2014 I will wager that in the US almost all forms of tangible media will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct. I am not just talking about print, but all tangible forms of media – newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, boxed software and video games.’

While I don’t doubt he’s right that all forms of tangible media will have experienced a sharp decline, I’d differ slightly in my belief that most will continue as niche products – in the same way that vinyl exists for some DJs and collectors. And I’m not sure about the timescale.

Although he makes a compelling point with many great examples of how digital content is becoming increasingly mainstream, I think there’s a tendency to almost imagine one day when suddenly all the printing presses stop, and we all ‘go digital’.

This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper. The Hollow Men, T.S Eliot.

Physical products won’t go out like that, despite the predictions I’ve heard since I started in online publishing almost a decade ago. Think of the concept of Entropy, the natural decay of all things – or the erosion of land by the force of the sea. Both are gradual, and yet completely unstoppable physical forces like the changing habits of consumers and the constant innovations in technology.

Yes, many companies, products and industries are in sharp decline, which is likely to be accentuated by the current global economy collapse, and there’s a desperate need for most to innovate new revenue streams. But there are still isolated cases of success in traditional media, and there are still sizeable profits being made, even by declining titles. Will these have been eradicated to the point on non-existence in 6 years? I think that depends on the age of the consumers of those titles, and the likelihood of them continuing to buy physical products from habit or affection.

The End is Nigh - pic by Jason Cartwright on Flickr (CC Licence)

The End is Nigh - pic by Jason Cartwright on Flickr (CC Licence)

The era of physical content distribution domination for print, audio, film and videogames is coming to an end, but there are still barriers to overcome. Rather than the UK increasing broadband speeds and bandwith caps, for example, the U.S. is instead seeing them introduced. That’s a major barrier to film and videogame downloads, which can be a hefty size to acquire.

But the item for me which is most likely to drive this transformation is missing from Steve’s otherwise comprehensive list. And that’s the smart phone (the iPhone for the sake of argument). For the first time there’s a consumer device which combines digital music, photography, telephony, communication, blogging, applications and almost everything else, and which is easily able to feed Flickr, download from iTunes etc, etc, etc. It provides an attractive and increasingly familiar conduit for digital content which isn’t as imposing as a PC for the non-geeky, and reaches those who don’t spend their working days on a keyboard. On my recent holiday, I cursed my lack of a smart phone when I had to constantly remove the memory card from an old digital camera to upload to Flickr. And when we lacked a GPS, or mobile internet access to look for a location. And the fact I couldn’t access Twitter or my blogs without using a PC old enough to have a floppy disc drive!

Personally I think the physical content carthorse will continue to plod along for a fair while longer – if I had to pick a date out of the air, I’d probably pick 2020 as the cut off point for physical products reaching the very margin of content delivery – but don’t make the mistake of thinking I wouldn’t advise any company to be investigating every alternative opportunity as if they’re life depended on it, because it certainly does.

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How TV companies 2.0 can make money

August 2, 2008 By 7 Comments

This all came from two articles by two of my Twitter connections, starting with Charles Arthur writing on the Guardian website about the need for television companies to come to terms with filesharing. In it, he suggested TV media firms could make low quality versions of their shows available as they are broadcast as a way to encourage people to download a high resolution version.

Peeebeee (Peter Bowyer) examined the link Charles had made between music and TV companies and the effect downloads are having, and suggested that the way the music industry can monetise is not necessarily applicable (low quality freebie for driving high quality purchases), mainly because music will be replayed over and over.. .

It’s taken me a while to respond because I wanted to add something to the conversation, and try to hypothesize how I’d monetise online television. (If you think it’s taking me a while, try asking Google about Youtube!) And although I don’t work in television (Aside from the sadly discontinued MCN Daily…*shudders*), my day job consists of working out how it can be possible to fund a large magazine and website company from engaging community.

My theory is that the answer is more obvious than you’d think, because it’s something that film companies have already done, when they sold us on DVDs. Aside from allowing us to posture about the quality on our widescreen television, and pause without burning through a tape, DVDs convinced many people to part with money for the value of the extras which were included – even for films they might already own on video.

So expand the same theory to online. I may already be able to watch a film or TV programme via filesharing or a legitimate streaming channel, but what could be added to a package which would make it worth parting with a small amount of money? Could you include DVD-style extras and outtakes? Could you also include background information? How about putting complete series together online, or the works of a particular writer, director or actor. Which could then be sold on DVD, and as a complete download?

And what about also including all the related links, reading material, and even User Created Content?

Now I could find a lot of this via a fair bit of web searching, but that takes time and effort – and increasingly the exponential growth of material online means people are looking for ways to filter content, and aggregate it efficiently, and are willing to pay for it. As Steve Jobs once pointed out, finding a copy of a song via filesharing can translate into working for less than minimum wage – fine for time-rich teenagers, but not for anyone feeling time-starved.

And providing best-of reading material for certain content would be a incredibly useful for information rich shows. Ironically, while my partner has been watching Hollywood films on DVD over the last two weekends, I’ve had the time to watch the inspirational ‘Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams’ by Randy Pausch, and also ‘An anthropological introduction to Youtube‘ by Michael Wesch.

Both times the Youtube video was an hour or more long, which is fine for me, but would be better in DVD format for the non ‘digital natives’ I’d love to shave them with. They both refer to people, places, and reference works which might be useful to have in digital and print form. Both lecturers have previous work which would be useful to have included (not just videos, but written articles and academic works etc). And neither of those works is likely to even appear on a mainstream (Say Freeview for the sake of argument) TV channel in the UK, where we have to make do with a short internet show once a week on the BBC, and the occasional programme discussing the risks of online networks.

Essentially, any content which doesn’t require high budgets and production values is already legally uploaded and available on Youtube. Anything that does incur a huge cost is losing part of it’s audience to filesharing, or is being served online in ways that can be frustrating (You can’t watch a show on BBC iPlayer after seven days, and that’s about the best of the bunch). None of it is giving me a reason to pay a couple of pounds to get extra value, as opposed to the imported DVD boxsets I own, signed by the director, and containing material I wouldn’t have otherwise seen at the time without a lot of hunting around.

It’s not about criminalizing fans who fileshare and promote your product. It’s about making use of the advantages of being large scale content creators and giving those fans reasons why it makes sense for them to spend an amount to invest. iTunes isn’t the best music store in the history of the world, but if you’ve got an iPod it’s easy to go there and spend a few pounds/dollars, rather than sorting out filesharing software and downloads. Despite access to films online, and the Xbox film service permanently attached to my HDTV, I still subscribe to Lovefilm, because it’s easier to get films delivered than order them online legally, due to the shocking state of broadband speeds outside major cities in the UK. And that’s what has cut my DVD purchasing, way more than availability online.

Give me a reason to pay for TV and film which justifies itself in terms of making my life easier, and giving me more than enough value to justify it to myself, and it won’t just be me who will be tempted…

NB: And actually, artists are already pioneering this in the music industry. Just look at the $1619420 Trent Reznor made from the recent Ghosts album.

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