Originally shared by Fraser Cain
Online media pricing is broken
With old media’s business models coming apart at the seams, companies are stampeding to online distribution channels: iTunes, Google Play, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.
But look at the pricing options: $.99 for a song. $2.99 for a TV show, $4.99 for a movie, $9.99 for a book.
If you’re watching a terrible movie from the 80s, or the latest Hollywood release, the price is the same. The stores set the prices. In the case of Netflix or Hulu, there’s just no selection.
Let me make three suggestions for any of the companies looking to make a fortune in online media distribution:
1. Let the content producers decide on their price.
Instead of a flat rate, let a publisher, movie studio or individual musician decide how much their work should be sold for. From free to infinity.
If a new artist wants to break in, they can offer their songs for free. If Lady Gaga thinks she can get away with $1.99 per track, she can try.
Don’t make any minimum price, don’t define the intervals. If someone wants to sell a song for $.66, let them do it.
Let them change prices at a whim.
This creates an open marketplace, allows any content creator to compete on an open playing field.
iTunes has figured this out for apps (but not music, tv or movies). Amazon has figured this out for books (but not music, tv or movies).
2. Allow content producers to distribute “free with ads”.
Instead of charging a fee for distributing content, let the content owners distribute “free with ads”. The content owner can select the number and total amount of ads in the media, and then the publishing system will construct a version of the show, podcast, book etc with the right amount of ads.
In a perfect world, the publishing system will tailor build the media for the demographics of the buyer. In fact, let the buyer define a bunch of their interests in the system before they download media.
“I like historical fantasy novels, german sports cars and traveling to Japan. Go ahead and put related ads in my media.”
Then a person could download songs, shows, books, etc with ads embedded right in.
Obviously people could extract out the ads and release the media on the torrent networks, but seriously, that’s already happening. MOST people would be glad to download a show, even if they have to suffer through a few ads.
3. Allow anyone to create bundles of media, with a set price for the whole pack.
This is the most extreme proposal. It would be very interesting if anyone in the system could build a bundle of media. For example: “100 fantasy novels you’re sure to love”, or “the best tearjerker movies”, “Swedish death metal”. Anyone in the system could make this list, sort of like they do on Amazon.com, and then people could buy the whole set with one click, even if they come from different publishers.
It would be even more interesting if the content producers could define bulk pricing, or somehow negotiate together to offer a discount rate for the whole set of media.
Steam and the Humble Indy Bundles have encouraged many people to buy games they never would have bought because the price is so low.
There should be a real marketplace for media.
What do you think?
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