
Content isn't king - mooreds
http://ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2017/7/13/content-isnt-king
======
vxxzy
I think the author misses the point. He references TV, Music, eBooks, and
Movies. Those are not the only forms of content. What about user generated
content (Facebook posts, etc...)? Any _data_ that can be consumed, and of
interest to an individual is content. An individual's desire to consume
content is the lever used by technology to generate a profit.

~~~
SCAQTony
He also missed that content (per MIT) is the most profitable business model of
all. Case in point how much engineering and R&D dollars had to go into the
"Harry Potter novels" or creating a Marvel Super Hero?

Even content from one's garage that users put up on eBay or the paint
splatters up for auction at Sothebys New York?

~~~
wmf
Most profitable by margin or absolute dollars? IIRC the tech industry is far
bigger than any one "content" industry and maybe bigger than all of them
combined.

~~~
emodendroket
How do you even tease out such a thing when you have companies like Comcast or
Netflix which clearly fit in both categories?

~~~
SCAQTony
A movie is like real estate... You make it and you can keep "renting" or
selling it. Movies like 'Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, Snow White" are still
making studios mad money on different delivery systems from the original
theater showing on through to VHS, DVD, Blu Ray, 4000-pixels and streaming.'

These movies came out in the 1930s. They are almost 100-years old.

NetFlix got that fact pretty quickly when the studios wanted to renegotiate
contracts and that is where the bulk of their money is coming from. [They are
_] the creator and the distributor.

_ edit to fix typo.

------
misterbowfinger
I'm genuinely surprised that Facebook hasn't capitalized on the social aspect
of watching TV. The prevalence of "watching parties", immediate episode
reviews, and instant commentary on the released episodes/shows should point to
the large opportunity here. I've wanted to create a startup around this - the
ability to "watch a show with your friends" remotely. The problem is that the
content is often locked down via Netflix or something, so you'd need an in
there. But the opportunities are huge! Imagine watching the presidential
debates, or sporting events, in tandem with other people. That would be
amazing. Unfortunately, locking down the content is still in the way.

~~~
jabv
Just to offer counter-perspective on your estimation that there's a "large"
opportunity as you describe - I have never heard of any of my friends or
family holding or attending a "watch party" for anything other than a few
American football games each year.

It seems to me that this does happen, but for all I know, maybe FB considered
your idea, and the idea failed market validation.

Or maybe you're dead on! (shruggie emoticon)

~~~
dkarl
In the last year I've been invited to watch parties for the presidential
election, a G.L.O.W. binge, the Game of Thrones season premier, and the first
couple of Twin Peaks episodes. FWIW, the physical constraints are big aspects
preventing people organizing more. The hosts have to make sure their house is
clean, people have to stay up later to travel and/or clean up, they don't get
to watch in their boxers. Making it virtual on Facebook would relieve all of
those practical constraints, not to mention that lots of people have an itch
to check Facebook while they watch anyway (which is not a positive thing, but
there it is.)

On the downside, it punishes people who can't start exactly on time and
prevents people pausing to grab a drink or go to the bathroom, so it isn't
purely a no-brainer. People who "fall out of sync" would need to disconnect to
avoid spoilers.

~~~
gpawl
> FWIW, the physical constraints are big aspects preventing people organizing
> more.

They are also big aspects of the value!

When someone says "it sure is hard to get my friends together for a party",
it's not completely helpful to answer "so don't get together"

------
coldtea
> _Since music no longer stops people from switching between platforms, it’s
> gone from being a moat (especially for Apple, the one platform company that
> actually had a strong position)_

The author might or might not be right on his general position, but this is a
bizarro argument. Apple had in fact kickstarted the whole no-DRM thing.

Neither DRM nor their (meagre, since most just pirated and ripped stuff
anyway) iTunes collections is what kept people to iOS / the Mac.

~~~
mooreds
I think music was far more important in the early/mid 2000s in terms of
getting people to buy Macs and iPods. Just anecdotal experience, plus
remembering when iTunes wasn't available for Windows.

~~~
coldtea
Well, when iTunes wasn't available for Windows there wasn't an Apple iTunes
Music Store either though.

~~~
kirykl
Actually iTunes Store existed April 2003 as Mac only before iTunes for Windows
was available Oct the same year.

This was I think why at the time BuyMusic.com made a huge deal of launching
its store as Windows only

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_iTunes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_iTunes)

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tehabe
"Netflix, of course, is a TV company, in the context of this conversation - it
isn’t using content for leverage for some other platform (Spotify is the same,
without the commissioning). But Amazon clearly is using content for platform
leverage - as something else to speed up the Prime flywheel."

I don't get this part, Netflix is producing original or buying exclusive
content which it tries to distribute globally. The same is true for Amazon.
Who is this not competing with the best content for its service?

~~~
jdminhbg
He's saying that Netflix is producing content in order to sell Netflix, but
Amazon is producing content as an enticement to get people to sign up for
Amazon Prime and spend more money on Amazon generally.

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xiaoma
This piece has a lot of assertions and predictions but nothing clearly
quantified or falsifiable. Somehow, I doubt he's shorting Disney or any other
major content company but if he were (even in a fake money portfolio) it would
make for a much more interesting argument.

~~~
pinaceae
he works for a16z, you'll see it reflected in their investments - or not.

overall this is content marketing for a16z, right along their great podcasts,
etc. attracting start-ups and good candidates to work for them.

being a visible, renowned think tank is not a bad place to be, if you have the
money and patience to execute along that line. it is amazingly hard work to
churn out quality content throughout the year.

~~~
xiaoma
I know he works for a16z. They will ultimately be subject to judgement based
on their investments, though the time horizon is long. And yes, it's clear
that this is content marketing.

> _" it is amazingly hard work to churn out quality content throughout the
> year."_

One of the best examples I've seen of this was David Gardener's _Rule Breaker_
portfolio in the 90s. He publicly wrote up analysis after analysis on
technologies and companies, along with the occasional announcement he was
buying or selling a stock. There were a few whiffs, but he got AOL in '94,
Amazon in '97, and Amgen, eBay and Starbucks in '98\. He was highly visible,
forward predicting and _right_ in a way that was quantifiable. I'm not a fan
of the direction his business (fool.com) has gone in the past 10 years, but
throughout the first dotcom boom, he made some great contrarian picks despite
extreme push-back, particularly for Amazon.

The same can be said, on the whole, of the predictions of Ray Kurzweil. Even
though he wasn't talking about individual companies, there were specific
predictions and timelines that could be compared to predictions of his peer
and what actually happened (e.g. a chess AI beating the top human player, the
mapping of the human genome by 2000, etc) [http://bigthink.com/endless-
innovation/why-ray-kurzweils-pre...](http://bigthink.com/endless-
innovation/why-ray-kurzweils-predictions-are-right-86-of-the-time)

------
blakesterz
"The tech industry has been trying to get onto the TV and into the living room
since before the consumer internet - the ‘information superhighway’ of the
early 1990s was really about interactive TV, not the web."

How was the early 90s about Interactive TV and not the web?

~~~
jordanlev
Because the "web" as we know it today did not exist until the mid-90's. Before
then, there were a bunch of companies trying to sell their own Interactive TV
offerings.

If you're interested in learning more about this era of internet history, I
highly recommend this podcast:
[http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/](http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/)

~~~
jacobush
Yep. "Set top box" was the buzz word at the time and an Amiga chipset based
one as the "next big thing" was an entirely plausible thing to consider.

~~~
sah2ed
It was also called WebTV (later renamed to MSN TV).

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_TV](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_TV)

~~~
ryandrake
Probably everyone working in the WebTV / streaming video space back in the
late '90s remembers that The Onion article:

[http://www.theonion.com/article/new-5000-multimedia-
computer...](http://www.theonion.com/article/new-5000-multimedia-computer-
system-downloads-real-1618)

~~~
ashark
It still kinda rings true. Looking at CRT TVs the other day at a thrift shop,
the picture wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered. Light static/snow was a much
better degradation mode than with digital OTA TV, and if I were a heavy
channel-surfer I'd probably be willing to trade HD picture quality for near-
instant channel switching—delays on the modern digital tuners really suck. Not
that you can anymore since the analog broadcasts are gone, but still.

Between all that and stupid pwnable "smart" TVs that take half a minute to
boot up while adding no value, things are _sort of worse_ than they used to
be, in TV land. Thanks, computers!

------
colept
I highly recommend a quick read of Marshall McLuhan's "The medium is the
message":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message)

Netflix, Amazon, et all - are not redefining content. They're redefining the
medium.

------
emodendroket
> Something similar applies to ebooks. Like Spotify, the Kindle app is on any
> platform, so it doesn’t stop you switching devices. Unlike music, your books
> are still bought (mostly: there are some subscription services but they
> don’t cover mainstream titles), and locked with DRM, so it’s harder to
> switch away from Kindle than from Spotify, but that only locks you into
> Kindle, not any other part of Amazon’s platform: using a Kindle app or
> physical Kindle e-ink device doesn’t compel you to use any other Amazon
> products.

This seems confused. Ultimately Amazon's primary purpose is probably not to
sell the devices and the lock-in works in the sense that you have your Kindle
library (even if you strip the DRM you can't keep all your notes and
highlights), your recommendations, and your more or less automatic impulse to
go to the Kindle store for books.

------
cluenerf
The 2001-era paper by the same name and a different author (Andrew Odlyzko --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Odlyzko](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Odlyzko))
is a compelling read:
[http://firstmonday.org/article/view/833/742](http://firstmonday.org/article/view/833/742)

~~~
dmoy
And I would posit that the odlyzko article is much more well backed up with
facts...

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cupcakestand
> People in tech and media have been saying that ‘content is king’ for a long
> time

This first sentence is just wrong. The phrase 'content is king' came up more
than a decade ago, in a time when major media outlets struggled with the first
wave of online tech. It was a desparate statement to play down the upcoming
threat (and the media knew it). Tech never thought of content as king and
media stopped saying this for a very long time.

~~~
deburo
You're missing the point of the article.

This is about the important of access to content in the broad strategy of
online content distribution platforms. Once the major platforms have access to
roughly the same content, the importance of content diminishes.

However, before getting to that state, access to content was a key strategic
point for those platforms.

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j_s
If we have to king something, I will say "Marketing is king". It is a little
more nuanced than that but not much more.

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lucideer
Is it just me and my biases, or does the author seems to have a consistently
misguided view of each individual area and example described.

Perhaps this could be taken as interesting from some kind of "10th man rule"
perspective? Otherwise it just seems like a lot of assertions based on
causality I can't quite logically wrap my head around.

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fjdlwlv
Canistream.it exists. Most popular content is part or totally exclusive.
Content is still king.

~~~
j_s
It is an interesting coincidence that this hits the front page the day after
Game of Thrones opens their new season, with the associated HBO Go crash, etc.

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=HBO%20Go%20crash...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&q=HBO%20Go%20crash&tbm=nws)

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bsclifton
Content IS king... but the author has a different definition apparently. He
should have named it "Vendor lock-in isn't king". People have choice now. The
content is what matters, not the platform.

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buro9
Content has never been king - even though the content companies have been
trying to convince everyone it is.

Distribution is king.

The company that controls the access to content via distribution controls
pricing.

~~~
deburo
That's what the article is about, however. That access to content isn't a key
strategic lever anymore for online content distribution platforms.

Most music streaming platforms share roughly the same library, so exclusive
music is not a lever these days, but merely a marketing strategy.

I did not get his point of view on ebooks however. Do most online ebook
distributors share roughly the same library of titles? Or is it even important
to discuss, since Amazon seemingly has a monopoly on ebook distribution? What
he mentions, instead, is that DRM in ebooks lock you into the app, but not the
platform, so ebook exclusivity aren't a key strategic lever for that platform.
If you cancel your subscription, you get to keep your content.

And then he's wondering how the effect of on-demand distribution will affect
TV/Movies. Will the major tech distribution platforms transform the TV
industry and render irrelevant content exclusivity?

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pryelluw
Content is king in niche markets. One blog post can drive thousands of dollars
in revenue. Its all about your market.

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amelius
The gatekeeper is king, as they have control over all the eyeballs.

The content is just a means.

