i@m.fm

This was written yesterday during my flight back home:
So I am in the plane on my way home… The pilot is celebrating his last flight after 32 years of service for Air Canada, congrats to him. Some of the stewardesses show attitude again – no surprise here on an Air Canada flight, who’d expect good service.
I have to say though that the food has improved since my last non-upgraded overseas flight earlier this year: They actually serve a nice size salad together with the meal now. However (to return to the service bit), service has not really improved. As always, not everyone is unfriendly, but at least one stewardess is making sure to let everyone know that she’s having a bad day…
Well maybe she misses the pilot who’s leaving today… He even came around the plane for a full round shaking hands and stuff
Getting kinda bumpy now… In any case I came across this audio program (Investor Canada) here on the plane talking to someone at Forrester’s (from Boston, couldn’t get the name). Apparently Forrester’s did another study on the future of the audio and movie industry – gotta look that one up when I get home.
So here’s two points the researcher brought up:
- Video on demand will make it easier on the movie industry since they are embracing it early compared to the music industry
- Universal is apparently cutting retail prices to get more people into the stores.
So I have been thinking about this again and again, and have just not bothered to write down my thoughts on this topic, since most people I discuss this with actually share my point of view. But I guess now it’s time to make it a bit more public.
The music industry still does not get it and I am afraid that it looks like the movie industry doesn’t either.
Switching to an on-demand model, would that relly be the way to do? Well I personally just don’t think so, but I guess only the future will show.
Basically we already have moved from being able to buy music and listen to it in any shape or form you feel like, to actually buying a license to listen to the music – similar thing with movies. Where did the right for personal copies go, why is everything getting stricter? Is it really just because of copies, peer to peer filesharing networks?
I believe that there’s more to it, and I also believe that we are repeating history. Remember back in the late 80s when the hot topic were illegal copies of games, in Europe especially on the c64? Well basically nothing happened. In any case, here’s what I believe in, considering the past:
1) The c64 would have never been the most sold computer ever (see Guiness Book of Records) had it not been for the humongous amount of pirated software.
2) Without the pirated software, there would have been fewer games sold that there actually were.
3) Without the success of the homecomputers, the success of the PCs would have possibly happened much later.
4) The estimate damage for the software industry was (and still is) based on the estimated amount of copies that are in circulation. The numbers seem to be calculated about the same way in the music industry. There’s a few important facts left out in those calculations:
- Most of the people who own copies of programs/music would have never bought the actual CD/Software.
- Quite a few people do not actually use the software or listen to the movies. Remember, the human being can be a collector species.
Those are the facts that we’ve omitted in the past with regards to the software, those are the ones left out when it comes to music and it will be the same for movies. So it makes the numbers worthless. As a matter of fact, I think the behaviour of the industry is playing against them.
Back in 2000 or 2001 when I still lived in Ottawa, I visited IdeasOnTap, a networking meeting organized with a venture capital company, including elevator pitches. Well, there was a small Ottawa company enabling people who downloaded music to voluntarily pay the musicians whose music they had downloaded. Unfortunately I do not
remember the name of the project and also I doubt that it worked out, because it would be against the pride of the music industry to accept any of those payments, which would almost be endorsing the copies.
We’ll I’d almost say that this is one of the biggest mistake. Of course not everybody in our world is honest, but isn’t the majority? So how about using this chance to create a “a software worth using is a software worth buying” type of mentally. It would not really matter if everyone was following this policy if the majority was… but of course this would change the industry.
But let’s face it. The music industry is already losing money and scrambling hard to figure out a way to preserve themselves in a state as close as possible to the current one – at least for the upper management. I also read an interview with the German CEO of BMG on the train on this trip. He also is only looking for new ways of selling
and new target audiences. As examples he’s mentioning selling CDs at McD’s and shows like “American Idol”. I think this is kind of shortsighted.
We are moving into a world, where there’s going to be a lot of more information available to the connected world. It is going to be easier for everyone to become a publisher – for any type of media. Of course this scares big media cooperations and goverments – they might eventually lose control of the people. Right now it seems that the media industry things that downsizing and merging is the solution, which might actually lead to a temporary lack of publicly available varierty.
I see the whole thing as more of a chance. With more publishers, we have more choice as to what we see. Of course we will need better ways of finding what we are interested in, and possible the ‘old’ media could still end up doing part of the guidance. However this is a big chance. With more availble information, we will also run into more false information – so in turn, there’s a need for more education with regards to judging, evaluating and comparing information – maybe also something that the media could be doing again, which would be more objective than the current state.
But I guess I am sort of drifting off into an illusion of an utopian society of people who are interested in the world around them – but I also think this is our chance, so maybe we can get there sometime.
Maybe it would have all been different if some of the major record labels had recognized this early enough and had they embraced this idea from the start – it certainly would have speed things up. I am willing to pay for shareware that someone produces at home, I am willing to pay a certain amount of money for music I listen to. I would just like it there was a better way of doing it.