A Business Model for the Digital Age – Part V

Show me the money!

Okay – so the question is – how to do this?

Strategy  - DRM content – but DRM with a difference – the user creates the DRM, which is tied to their account, which automatically verifies any Digital Online Content they contribute as well as any content they purchase from you. You get buy in from you consumer/content creator. They have a vested interest in DRM as it assigns rights to their content both ways. It is also DRM lite - the content is encrypted end-to-end to ensure data integrity - but that’s it.

Pricing – Delivering content: Digital only costs less than digital+physical which costs less than digital+physical+backup. Receiving content: Rights only is paid less for than rights+distribution which is paid less for than rights+distribution+media.

Market – Let the market decide for itself. Don’t prejudge or target. Just get your content out there and get a community involved.

Implementation – Add value. If your not adding value then you will fail. Insist on quality and enable expert involvement. Get buy in from the community and they will become both self-enforcing and protective of your product/service.

Execution – Treat your marketplace with respect and acknowledge that it’s their money, time and effort that makes your business a success. Let them know that they are the ultimate owners of the content and the responsibility is as much theirs as yours to make it a success. You will have an army of evangelists.

Regulation – Get the community on your side and they will regulate for you. Give them buy in and they will feel a sense of ownership. Then give them ownership.

Enforcement – Leave it up to the community. Just as the Free/Libre/Open Source Software community have more eyeballs looking for bugs, you will have more eyeballs then you could ever dream of looking to enforce and protect your investment in them and their investment in you.

 

A Business Model for the Digital Age – Part II

The worst thing the Entertainment industry can do is hand over the keys
to their content to the IT industry through DRM.

BT in the UK are going completely IP on their network infrastructure. So you get a double whammy when the Entertainment industry then has to have that content delivered by the Telecoms industry.

Telecoms and IT massively outweigh the Entertainment industry economically. Add in the fact that users are creating their own Digital Online Content and seeking their own methods of distribution – YouTube, Video.Google, WordPress, Blogger, Flickr, Photobucket, etc. . Triple whammy.

And then you have the likes of Craigslist and Google looking to grab the advertising revenue – the oxygen of most of the commercial Entertainment industry – then Whamomania!

What I lack is time not content. Locking the content down with DRM makes you beholden to the software industry and if it gets cracked, it’s your service that has to come off the air, not theirs. And if the consumer has to patch their playout platform then it’s you they blame, not the IT industry, if that patch breaks their platform or their content. A lose-lose scenario.

What I need is Pathfinders not Gatekeepers. Get your content out there and add value on your own site.

Make me come to you and then give me a reason to spend my money. Just because I have the content doesn’t mean I won’t want to buy a physical reproduction of it – either as a present or because I want to.

Give me a reason to come to your site and then add to my knowledge – I’ll keep coming back – cash in hand!

 

UGC=DOC?

As people have an ongoing issue with the use of the phrase User Generated Content(UGC), I would like to propose an alternative – Digital Online Content (DOC).

No one gets up in the morning and says “Today I shall create some User Generated Content!”

But it’s not beyond the bounds of possibilities to get to grips with – “Today I shall create some Digital Online Content!”

The joy of this is that you can then have derivatives such as:

DOCument – an idea, image or sound.

DOCumented – an idea, image or sound recorded in history.

DOCumentor – the author of an idea, image or sound.

DOCumenting – the act of recording an idea, image or sound.

Try it. Repeat it a couple of times and see how it feels. Then DOCument your response!