Thursday, September 9, 2010

The Future of Digital Media: The Piracy Revolution

In lieu of writing of technological advancements today (due to the lack of news) This post will be a discussion on the future of digital media and how its will be shaped by the ever increasing thrall of pirates. Feel free to post your ideas on the future course of digital media, in all its forms: Music, movies, television shows, e-books, and video games. (also porn)

My theory is as follows:

Music will become free to download from corporate sponsorship, It doesn't provided that the corporation releasing the music has the facilities to record the music itself its possible to cut out a whopping 90% of the cost of producing music. Artists themselves will receive somewhere in the range of 5-10C per song downloaded, This system will also allow for easier discovery of music by allowing users to download as much music as they want at no cost other then ADs on the site / possibly on the CD cover art just a simple "Brought to you by * *" or by integrating ads into the media client used to play the songs. ADs will target users tastes on a personal level and users will be able to choose what ADs they want to see, be it concert tickets, new food products, or new tech etc. Such a system would possibly increase the profits seen by artists who can now bring their music to the whole world with a built in matchmaking system to help users find new artists similar to their tastes.

Want to listen to a song before you spend that precious hard drive space? No problem, listen to the whole song streaming, say goodbye to crappy 30 second previews. No hard drive space at all? still want to listen to your music? Stream it : Radio style much like last.fm or Pandora, choose between random songs or a library of your choosing, Ads will be in the form of 15-30 second messages after every 5-10 songs, and each song play will generate 1/4-1/2c toward the artist. People who want to skip ads in streamed content, or to remove whatever ads come with downloads will have the choice of subscribing to a monthly fee or paying 1.1x what the distributor pays for the music.

Movies: Outside of Theaters we will we the rise of subscription and pay-per-download services, although It is likely that the prices will drop. I think the ideal model currently is probably netflix who offers both the service of DVDs/Blu-Rays and the convenience of streaming content.
 I however have no idea what will happen to the theater system, other then hopefully reduced salaries for the highest paid actors/actresses/directors/producers which will hopefully lead to lower box office ticket prices. although I recognize that this is probably just wishful thinking.

As for television I believe we will soon move away from the schedule system. There is no longer any need for sending generic content to every house, we will start to see a more personalized approach, with TV shows "becoming available to view" instead of coming on the air at certain times, there will be a greater deal of library footage of TV shows and TV movies, in short we will move towards an "On-demand" oriented network.

e-books will probably go a similar way to music, and will be paid for by ad content.

Video games will probably become free on release, but will require payment for online use and additional down-loadable content that will be released in small more affordable packages, Steam will probably become THE source for computer games, and the various consoles will all have both online and offline disc distribution, (although you can be sure that getting the disc version will cost $)

Porn: well porn is just advertising for other porn isn't it? and its not like people are going to stop making it even if it is no longer profitable. I mean to a certain extend it can just be relatively expensive legal prostitution, and there is always going to be demand for the worlds oldest profession. My prediction is that most porn will become free and user generated, although a series of pay-sites will continue to exist, many sharing customers through multi-key systems.


Anyone have any Ideas on any of the categories?

15 comments:

  1. I don't know about e-books. With something like that, it's easy to hook someone in a couple of chapters and then make them pay for the rest.

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  2. I disagree with the music. adding commercials to music would totally ruin things for a lot of people. If it had commercials thrown in it I for one would not be able to listen because I listen to songs for an emotional response. I don't want to hear "free bird is brought to you by [insert penis enlargement ad here]"

    that is just my opinion though :D

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  3. somet needs to change for sure.

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  4. Pretty good insight but whatever happens epople will always find a way to procure free stuff on the internet.

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  5. i luv TPB but it will be a shame brought to the pirates by not having shit to rip or copy if the movie companies go down

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  6. well written text^^

    Supporting and following :) Hope you do the same for me! ;)

    http://ray-thefail.blogspot.com/

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  7. I don't know... They're interesting ideas, but I don't really see many of them coming to fruition.

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  8. Nah man, as much as it sucks I think cloud computing will erase digital piracy
    anyway just my opinion
    hopefully it won't happen and we will still have our delicious torrents
    ;D

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  9. interesting point, verify. I think RM... Something... Something that ends in D, anyway, that piracy thang, is a lot of rubbish on the whole :(

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  10. I like most of the ideas, except the music one. I would rather pay for the music rather than have commercials in-between them. Then it just feels like listening to the radio or something of that manner. I personally never like Pandora or Last FM either but that's just me.

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