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pwalker8 · 09-10-2016, 07:45 AM

I'm going to split this post off because I'm going to start talking less about what the book says and more about what I think.

One of the reasons that they give for the entertainment industry tending towards a group of 4 to 6 controlling companies (movies, books, music all had this structure for a long, long time) is that those companies where able to control things from beginning to end. Right now, in the music industry, we are seeing some very interesting things that I suspect will translate over into books and movies/TV.

The music industry is being fragmented. When iTunes and youTube (which is where a lot of people get their music) came about, that destroyed the old model. The music companies controlled the price and promotion, but they no longer controlled the place, the platform if you will. For a long time, we wondered what would break iTunes lock on downloadable music (there are of course, a lot of small niche players, but iTunes has most of the market).

I think that now we are seeing a plethora of streaming services that is taking the place of downloading music. I think that people will always want to download their favorite songs and artists, but the market is starting to shift towards streaming. I use Apple music and Pandora, but there are a number of companies out there. Part of what unlocked this is that musicians no longer need the record companies to produce records, so record companies no longer controlled content and were forced to accept streaming services.

That leaves promotion. In my personal opinion, that's the big frontier with regards to the entertainment industry, but rather than promotion, I would call it discover-ability. How do you find new content, be it music, books or video? To a great extent, that is the problem that Apple's curated playlist tries to solve. It is a mixture of the pure data driven "people who bought what you just bought, also buy" approach that Amazon uses and some human interaction. I think that the market is wide open for multiple approaches. I do think that a pure data driven solution won't work. I also think that a pure marketing approach of trying to push what they want you to buy, kind of like Amazon has been doing recently, won't work either.

I like the idea of a curated list, but then the question becomes how do you monetize that. It almost has to be paid for by the platforms to be effective. It also has to be driven by what the customer wants rather than what is perceived as most profitable by the content provider or platform company.

09-10-2016, 07:45 AM	#29
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,196 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	I'm going to split this post off because I'm going to start talking less about what the book says and more about what I think. One of the reasons that they give for the entertainment industry tending towards a group of 4 to 6 controlling companies (movies, books, music all had this structure for a long, long time) is that those companies where able to control things from beginning to end. Right now, in the music industry, we are seeing some very interesting things that I suspect will translate over into books and movies/TV. The music industry is being fragmented. When iTunes and youTube (which is where a lot of people get their music) came about, that destroyed the old model. The music companies controlled the price and promotion, but they no longer controlled the place, the platform if you will. For a long time, we wondered what would break iTunes lock on downloadable music (there are of course, a lot of small niche players, but iTunes has most of the market). I think that now we are seeing a plethora of streaming services that is taking the place of downloading music. I think that people will always want to download their favorite songs and artists, but the market is starting to shift towards streaming. I use Apple music and Pandora, but there are a number of companies out there. Part of what unlocked this is that musicians no longer need the record companies to produce records, so record companies no longer controlled content and were forced to accept streaming services. That leaves promotion. In my personal opinion, that's the big frontier with regards to the entertainment industry, but rather than promotion, I would call it discover-ability. How do you find new content, be it music, books or video? To a great extent, that is the problem that Apple's curated playlist tries to solve. It is a mixture of the pure data driven "people who bought what you just bought, also buy" approach that Amazon uses and some human interaction. I think that the market is wide open for multiple approaches. I do think that a pure data driven solution won't work. I also think that a pure marketing approach of trying to push what they want you to buy, kind of like Amazon has been doing recently, won't work either. I like the idea of a curated list, but then the question becomes how do you monetize that. It almost has to be paid for by the platforms to be effective. It also has to be driven by what the customer wants rather than what is perceived as most profitable by the content provider or platform company.