Customers not Copies
The entertainment industry has been sighting pirates on the horizon for many years. People who work in this industry sincerely believe this is happening. Many other people do not. I believe that there are concerted forces at work to copy material and sell it without paying the creators, but I think that there are a few large cartels doing this in a systematic way, which makes the series of little-guy lawsuits by the studios not only grotesque and unfair, but largely ineffective.
I believe that part of the problem comes from the way that Hollywood looks at their product--they see themselves as selling "copies" of a physical product. They perceive their goods as taking up physical space, competing for shelf space and costing money to duplicate, ship and arrange for returns.
I believe that they should think about customers, not copies. If they can collect $20 from everyone who listens to a new album (is that still a meaningful word?), then they will make money. Trying to get the second $20 if the original buyer wants to copy the music onto an iPod or onto a satellite radio system is what's causing all of this grief. Most consumers intuitively feel that they have the right to do so anyway. The business model should reward music and movie producers for the number of consumers familiar with the work, not the number of units shipped.
How do they make money? They already are. You can't look at a musical album as a shipped piece of plastic in a cardboard sleeve. It's the sum product of road shows, music sales, ringtones, online music, pay-per-view concerts and the like. If normal people are not aware of the album, if there are not enough fans, they won't make any bucks for the music anyway. It's all about customer awareness.
Posted on August 04, 2006
