Editor’s Corner:
Online Distribution Strategies Redefine the Business Core
When e-mail and the web first arrived most of us became
enthralled with instant messaging and global access. You could e-mail anyone
for relatively little or no cost and any page you put up on the Web could be
seen around the world. For the last few years the race to be on the Web
prevailed. Then we all grew weary and suffered from brochuritis – most of
the sites were just plain boring. More tools and applications arrived:
search engines, banner ads, hot java, audio and video files. More people
went online and the Web has become a commonplace word in almost every home.
We’re entering a new phrase now. It’s about high speed
access and distribution of products such as music, photography, books,
video. If high speed networks like Internet2, allowing for transfers as fast
as 2 meg per second become available to the user at large, hang on to your
mouse! The cyber landscape is about to change. You wouldn’t use super
highways for promenades and leisurely strolls – that will be the case with
the Internet.
Even with the low bandwidth we have now, the music industry
is experiencing a shakedown in its whole traditional business model. At some
music sites consumers pay monthly fees to gain access to vast collections of
recorded music. Revenue streams that once depended on amassing scores of
individual purchases shift to recurring revenue streams garnered from
"renting access" to a record label’s entire repertoire.
Physically owning a finite number of CD’s is not the name of the game
anymore.
Your personal video recorder will make subscriptions to TV
Guide obsolete and leave watching live broadcasts for the gravely uninformed
or underequipped.
As this new wave of technologies swirls its way around us,
changing how we use telephones, watch TV, do our shopping and listen to
music we must be mindful of another major shift – that we don’t turn
into "house potatoes" by never leaving our homes! Next thing you
know, with video phones and large screen TV’s there’ll be no need to go
out and meet real people.
