When consumer becomes the king, the producers may soon be becoming paupers.
Falling books - flickr
As technology advanced by leaps and bounds, many industries had tapped into it and dreamed of an assured future. When Sony won the Hi Def DVD war, little did it anticipate that same technology will undercut its own motion picture business as more and more viewers choose to relish the movies in higher end technology systems in the comfort of their home and stop paying 10 bucks to AMC Loews. With piracy and illegal internet streaming becoming a headache for movie production houses and music industry, entertainment companies have been wary of technological developments.
It is now the turn of old fashioned publishing houses – as Amazon Kindle sales shoot up and Barnes & Nobles already announcing their intent of entering the soaring e-books market, publishing companies better think of alternative business routes. The publishing industry has taken a major hit and when Amazon is providing the latest best sellers for $9.99, who is going to buy $25 hardcovers? Forget the dependency on Kindles, once Barnes and Nobles puts its collection on Google format readable on iPhones and other phones, the age of paperbacks will be probably extinct. This means lower cut for publishers and writers.
What is a bit insane though is the effect on journalism jobs. Even if publishing goes online, we need good content and articles, so why should the market for smart journalists be affected? The answer is the way in which journalism is going to be used is changing – we are talking about online articles and 24×7 updates; we are talking about instantaneous video coverage, email alerts and tweets. One can’t solely rely on the pen anymore, the readers demand real time and graphical news. With so many alternatives way to get the information, it is do-or-die for newspaper businesses to keep their online portals smartly up to date.
No wonder Apple turned out to be the winner by the way it tapped into open technologies and created its own market by inventing iPods and later iPhones. It did not stop with the hardware, it capitalized on digital music industry, phone applications etc. The key was being prepared for the future and that’s where Sony has been lacking. Despite leading the consumer electronics for a long time, you can only wince when Sony CEO expresses his hatred for internet and technology advancements. Now, look at Microsoft and why are they struggling against more innovative Google and Apple.
One can understand Media industry’s reluctance of getting too digital. After all traditionally it has been a paper and print model and has produced movies for those bigger theater screens. The only way out is innovation. Something like this startup from Colorado which is allowing users to choose the articles they want and letting them publish their own custom magazine. Sounds great to me!
In times like these, traditions are bound to be challenged since consumer has the ‘options’ to choose. So, what should movie productions do? – probably pay Brad Pitt lesser for his looks.
img: flickr