Beware Those Who Say New Media Model Has Fully Emerged

I wouldn't go so far as to label iTunes as the preferred method of digital music procurement. Certainly it has been a success, but to compare it to free models is a bit disingenuous. iTunes success is without a doubt due to the wildly successful device it syncs with. Take the iPod out of the picture and iTunes loses its edge instantly. Essentially what people are paying that $.99 for is not the song itself, but the convenience of getting it to their mobile device. So - your sentence which reads like this: "Who would have thought, five or six years ago, that when presented with the option of downloading a song for free on a file-sharing service versus paying $1 for it on iTunes, over time, people would see iTunes as the preferred method?" Would probably be more accurate reading like this:"Who would have thought, five or six years ago, that when presented with the option of downloading a song for free on a file-sharing service and having to manually ad that song to their music library versus paying $1 so it would automatically sync with the rest of their library on iTunes and their iPod, over time, people would see iTunes as the preferred method? - I would."

Thanks, Michael--Your comment got me thinking about iTunes. Let's go with your premise. iTunes doesn't exist, but MP3 files do, and a variety of players are out there with no single one dominant. And you can buy songs from Amazon and a half-dozen other sites for 99 cents. Would people be buying or downloading music for free? I say they'd still buy. I don't use iTunes primarily because it syncs with an iPod. In fact, I hate that iTunes limits the number of computers you can store your songs on. Once you buy a song, as far as I'm concerned, you own it and should be able to do what you want with it. I use iTunes because of the vast selection, because of the reviews and user recommendations, and because of its trustworthiness. When I buy a song on iTunes, I know I'm getting a quality audio file--plus the nice bells and whistles, like album-cover images. With the file-sharing services, you get what you pay for. So if an iTunes-like service (say, Amazon) existed and iTunes did not, I would probably figure out the syncing part. I used to do that with MusicMatch Jukebox.

It seems to me that whenever I see a comment about the "next big thing in media" or the "the place where media is headed...", it is made by someone that has a vested interest in seeing that slice of media succeed. Either because they have a financial interest in the segment, work in the segment or both...

more like, "who'd of thought, 10 years ago, as Napster ruled the MP3 scene with illegal downloads, that the most popular model would be a legal, $1.05 per download system from a company previously on it's way out (back in '99) known for it's locked down, proprietary systems in this day of Open Source".

Tony: under your premise I would venture to say that free P2P downloading activity would be equal to (and for many genres greater than) paid downloading. In fact I would go as far as to say that the free P2P activity would be significant enough to put a serious dent in the paid service model and would most likely cause a suppression of available pay-for sites. Bottom line - paid music downloading was nowhere until Apple created the model - the device - that made it acceptable to pay for tunes rather than download them for free. Until Apple refined the experience and added all "the nice bells and whistles" Limewire, Napster, and the like ruled digital music distribution. If we are going to even think about using pay-for music distribution as a template for our industry we need to understand that.

Michael--What would your framework be for applying a micropayments approach in this business. I saw the proposals from Steve Brill and Walter Isaacson. Can it work? Or is the free exchange of links and references so ingrained that it has changed journalism forever? And if so, is the business model that sustained journalism for 200 years dead?

I will point you to my blog (http://mturro.com) where I have written a few posts in reaction to both Brill and Isaacson as well as Michael Hirschorn's Atlantic piece on the New York Times -- Reaction to Brill: http://bit.ly/9Hrs -- Reaction to Isaacson: http://bit.ly/ASOG -- Reaction to Hirschorn: http://bit.ly/7xwJ -- To answer your last question: Yes, the business model that sustained journalism for 200 years IS dead (In fact, the business models that have sustained many industries for the past 200 years are dead and dying - see the writings of Umair Haque - among others - for more on that). However, journalism is about to enter into a period of tremendous growth and spectacular enlightenment. It's becoming de-specialized, democratized, ubiquitous - the steady march of many-to-many technologies is making the change inevitable. This scares the the folks making a living off the old model - but it shouldn't. If you simply apply and adjust your core skills to work within the new technological context you will be fine. If you deny that the new context is indeed real or try to ignore what technology wants (borrowing from Kevin Kelly with that phrase)and instead try to build something more agreeable to what you want - you will be dog food.

Tony, I thought you'd never ask... ;-) (And sorry I never managed to return that friendly call!) Yes to those bullet points, except maybe the last one. Here's what's actually going on: New media are in current caught in the classic "crossing the chasm" situation of technology product introductions. However, there are a couple of key differences from the classic form of that model. First, the "technology product" aught in the chasm is the whole approach to interacting with information media online, instead of on paper - not just a single product line. Second, the split between early adopters and conservatives has played out to the point where readers or end-users of media are rapidly making the move to new media - taking the relative role of early adopters - while the advertising community are dragging their feet, in the relative role of the conservatives. In other words, the readers are moving to new media much faster than the advertisers. The bulk phenomenon of fear of change on the part of the advertising community (amply supported by most print publishers, who remain caught in the middle like deer in headlights) has the whole industry in a state of severe distortion: advertisers are overpaying for dwindling print audiences, and under-paying for burgeoning online audiences. That standoff of the last couple of years is of course now radically intensified by the economic crisis. Like those headlights for the deer, the light at the end of our tunnel is ultimately big and bright. In the long run, the amount of money going into marketing overall isn't likely to change all that much - not by the current 10x+ differential between print ad spending and online ad spending. Companies still need brands and branding to differentiate products in the marketplace. Once the agency/client complex finally drags its sorry ass over the chasm (or perhaps is pushed by economic desperation) that will largely shift the majority flow of marketing dollars. Online will see 5x increases in overall spending. At that point, print will experience its "final lurch", needing its own new models to survive, but the new media will at last see the realistic funding levels that can sustain ongoing well-layered professional/participatory publishing. Across the chasm, where we're slowly headed, the hills are green and the skies are blue. Stay hungry, stay innovative, to survive and get there.

I think it's something like wishful thinking to say that what we're facing is simply a sluggish and awkward transition of print ad dollars to the digital world. The fact is that the explosion of competition for those dollars in the digital world is a dramatic game changer. While the overall amount of money going into marketing isn't changing that much the available inventory to which that money can be applied is spreading at an exponential rate. It's that explosion of new competition that is the real threat to the traditional model.

Hey, does anybody here know how to use these devices? It'd make reading this stuff a lot easier. I'm just sayin'...

I'm going to try a test... but based on past efforts here it doesn't seem to me that the comments field will let the commenter do much formatting. I know it ignores simple returns, but what about the paragraph tag? did it work? or the break tag did it work? • bullet points? • do they work? • if the answer to any of these questions is no, then FOLIO please work to make it so - formatting is crucial to productive commenting and conversation. Reading everything in just one big block of text is not fun.