Entertainment is evolving, keep up!
This post started out as a comment on a post about some of the BBC’s offerings being made available on iTunes. Unfortunately the blog’s commenting system kept giving me errors when I was trying to comment, I suspect because my comment was rather lengthy, so I decided to post it here.
I noticed the “BBC Worldwide - programmes just added” link in the iTunes store just yesterday and immediately started buying episodes of Spooks as I had missed the series when it was on TV. Combined the episodes of season 4 of Lost available the day after they’ve aired on Sky One on a Sunday, this is the first time I’ve actually felt like buying any TV content via the iTunes store since the selection of shows available to us in the UK is, quite frankly, dismal. This has also stayed my hand when considering buying myself an Apple TV unit. There’s just not enough viable content available on our poor, neglected island to make me bite at that hook.
It is the first time the BBC has asked UK viewers to pay to download content, and it will be interesting to see how they react. Millions have been happy to pay for DVDs of series like Little Britain - but will they react differently when they are asked to shell out for something they can’t stick on a shelf?
I think the entertainment industry really underestimates their consumers and their willingness to pass over their hard earned cash for entertainment, even when it’s not packaged in a way that lets you hold it in your hands. A DVD is simply a means of transporting the data contained therein, with today’s online society why would you need a DVD when the internet is beginning to be a perfectly good transportation medium? The reason people are still buying DVD’s and CD’s more than buying media online is because buying online is difficult due to the myriad of DRM issues in the industry. Only when there is no DRM do things improve. At the moment, the majority of media without DRM is pirated though.
Yes, you can see all these BBC offerings on TV. Yes, you could hear your favourite music on the radio. The problem is, you’re not able to watch them when or where you want to. You’re bound by the broadcaster’s schedule that may or may not mesh with your own, and you’re forced to use a specific piece of equipment to do so.
I would (and frequently do) pay a reasonable price for my entertainment if it means I can enjoy it as often as I want, on whichever platform I want, without any restrictions. And that, right there, seems to be the painful bit for the entertainment industry: Without Restrictions
If I’m paying for my entertainment directly, I don’t want to be told that it won’t work on platform_01 or player_03 because “we, the publishers, don’t want it to”. Real, documented technical reasons are fine, if not slightly annoying, but they’re excusable.
DRM is, in my opinion, driving piracy as people simply do not want to have artificial restrictions placed on their media. The problem is that the industry is seeing the issue in reverse. They see the fact that media can be copied and distributed at a fantastic rate as a downside. They see people transferring pirated copies and think “these guys are cutting into our margins”! This is entirely the wrong way of looking at it, and the industry needs to catch up. Using current technology you can distribute your media at a small price to an unreasonably large audience across the world with sinfully minimal overheads in the grand scheme of things. Small price - smaller overhead + large audience = large profits.
Obviously I’m putting a lot of faith in humanity here, but there will always be people who will just share their media and allow people who want to spend time looking for it to download it. To treat every single one of your consumers as if they are potential thieves does not make consumers. Perhaps, instead of warnings about piracy, notes of thanks for supporting artists should be displayed.
Maybe I’m being far too optimistic here, dreaming of a utopian society where the majority are honest and don’t want their entertainment to stop, paying fair dues for a good product; I don’t think that the world is that bad though. I still believe there’s a legitimate profit to be made from the honest individuals without resorting to excluding them based on the platform they choose to consume their media.
Current technology allows people to pirate material easier than ever before but the majority of the population would, I think, rather pay to get their media directly from the source to get their entertainment fix. Anyone I know who has downloaded media has done it because they couldn’t get hold of it from the publishing source, the publishing source penalised them for not being on a particular platform or the price of the media was far too high to make them get out their wallet.
The quicker the big media companies realise this, and I think they are starting to with a new generation of high level management starting to filter through the rank and file, the better.