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May 11, 2005
Digital delivery is about to hit for real
If I made my money in DVD rentals, I'd be terrified right now. Same goes for CDs.
I was walking by HMV in the mall on the weekend and realized that ever since I signed up for Napster and Napster to Go, I haven't set foot in a music store.
The infrastructure to deliver the content online makes it unnecessary for me to go to a store. Digital delivery makes acquiring a physical CD virtually redundant.
Bandwidth is the only technical constraint to doing the same with DVDs. (I won't comment on the matter of cooperation with the content producers). Fortunately for them, they have some more time before the technical obstacles are overcome. The immiment move to high definition output will drive bandwidth requirements (even standard definition is a problem today with existing compression and bandwidth) and consumer adoption of hardware with storage capabilities has to happen so playback devices can participate in network delivery.
The second part of the equation is content development. This is a much easier proposition for musicians than filmmakers, but it's going to really interesting to see how that turns out.
At one time, the content creation and the delivery of music was all but out of reach for the vast majority of musicians. Now quality content creation is within reach and digital delivery is a reality. Marketing is the next problem to solve.
It's going to take some time for filmmaking to catch up to this, but the content creation process isn't so different. A lot of it can be done fairly inexpensive on desktop workstations.
Content creation and delivery aside, I think the biggest challenge facing the independant entertainment industry is marketing and breaking free from the notion that we can consume independant content en masse without having to wait for the summer blockbuster from the big studios or from the next big release from a platinum selling artist.
So far, very little has changed as to where the content is created, just the method of delivery has changed.
Even that has signalled quite a change already. Think about how much has changed in the last five years in the music business and that just relates to how the delivery works. Wait until you don't buy it from the same people you always have.
Posted by Derek Leverington at May 11, 2005 12:05 AM
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