

The Internet has all but destroyed the market for films, music and newspapers - cageface
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/aug/14/robert-levine-digital-free-ride

======
dredmorbius
What's happened isn't a destruction of a market.

There's a high interest in various forms of information and entertainment.
This is going nowhere.

What's been removed are the tollgates we've grown accustomed to over the past
20 - 600 years.

Market econmics are predicated on producers, consumers, goods, utility derived
from those goods, _and a pricing and revenue collection model._

Market failures occur where any of these elements can't be satisfied: where
production isn't possible, where consumers are disenfranchised (through
poverty, discrimination, or other means), where large positive or negative
externalities exist (an externality is a consequence of production or
consumption whose cost or benefit isn't fully captured: pollution, traffic
congestion, and free-riders are all externalities). Or where a price or
revenue collection scheme can't be created.

Traditional tollgates include, well, toll gates, box offices, storefronts,
circulation departments, service subscriptions, and the like.

If a good is deemed significantly important to produced by individuals,
governments, or groups, it may be provided on other bases: public goods (paid
through taxation), charities (paid through voluntary donations), patronage
works (bought for prestige or other purposes by the wealthy but not for their
exclusive consumption).

The existing "information economy" is very much a creature of technology and
society since the printing press, prior to which mass production of
informational works wasn't posisble. _All_ information and music was bespoke.

Absent mass production, we had: town criers, wandering minstrels and acting
troupes, church and court-sponsored works of art (much of classical music and
art). Most information was scarce. Libraries were (by modern standards) small
and highly valued. A given person, if literate, might have access to a iven
book once in a lifetime.

The printing press, phonograph, telegraphy, film, broadcast radio, broadcast
television, electrically amplified instruments, telephony, cable, and the
Internet not only changed the _market_ for information and entertainment
works, but _changed the works themselves._

Broadsheet newspapers were a function of early printing presses. Film
displaced live theater performance, as did recorded music (Sydney Australia
saw a rise in "discos" vs. live-music venues along with gaming due in part to
tax and cost structures). Big-band gave way to 3 and 4 piece quartets with
amplification. "Singer-songwriters" and "recording artists" are two different
responses to copyright laws and payment requirements (songwriters receive
mechanical royalties, RAs are much cheaper for recording labels to produce and
promote). Weekly "magazines" were an answer to the news, information, and
distribution technologies of the time.

Broadcast media necessitated a radical revisiting of previous revenue models,
which ultimately resulted in a royalty collection scheem largely based on
mechanical means (there are few restrictions on public performance of a work,
but a set fee must be paid), with compliance based on a mix of audits and
recordkeeping (small live-performance venues work roughly similarly). The
system is hardly perfect (payola has been a huge problem for over half a
century), but monies get paid, if not always to the artists.

The Internet, its distribution mechanisms, cost structures, and the priority
on lifting restrictions on most forms of mass media, make traditional
"paywalls" problematic at best.

At the same time, there have been very strong tendencies to consolidation in
the basic backbone and search spaces particularly. There is a service and
revenue relationship generally at the ISP / service-provider level. A
sampling/audit based mechanical system tied to this with revenues being
distributed to artists and publsihers is likely the ultimate outcome, for the
large case, with smaller one-off solutions attempted elsewhere (specific
subscriptions). One benefit of such an Internet Royalty Audit Syndicate (IRAS)
would be that the _online source_ of a work wouldn't matter so long as
attribution of authorship/ownership could be reasonably established, and such
an element should be a design goal of any such system.

"Pirate sites" would simply become additional legitimate distribution
channels. As well they should be.

It's also highly probable that the price point of works created will shift
down the cost curve. When distribution channels are few, outlets are many, and
marketing/promotion costs are high, it makes sense to focus on a small number
of blockbuster works. When channels are many, control is diffuse, and entry
barriers are low, individual works can and will be produced at lower costs.
Marketing will remain a major expense, though community/viral methods can
compete with more conventional institutional/mass means.

------
technoslut
Looking at the iOS App Store & Netflix model I can't help but feel that Apple
has found the way for both the consumer and content creators to be happy.
Price it low and go for volume. Yes, there will always be pirates but I get
the impression it is a very small minority that would continue to do so.

Content creators are going to have to get over the fear that reducing the
price of your content doesn't devalue it.

