Can Silicon Valley Repeal The Laws Of Economics?

from the not-paying-attention dept

The changes we've been seeing in the content industries is driven by some very basic economic forces: competition pushes the price of goods and services toward their marginal cost. There's now lots of competition in markets for information goods, and the marginal cost of producing those items (i.e. distributing a copy of an already-produced song or article) is very close to zero. Therefore, we should expect that over time, the prices of those products would also fall, to the point where the price becomes zero and producers use those information goods as a way to sell other goods. And that's exactly what we've been seeing over the last few years. Newspapers are dropping their paywalls and selling ads. Bloggers are giving away news and commentary as a way of building up their reputations. And we're starting to see musicians give away more of their music as a way to build up a fan base for their concerts. These trends are driven by some pretty fundamental economic forces, and there's not much any one person or industry can do to change them.

But some people are very confused about this. For example, writing in the New York Times, Jaron Lanier tries to blame Silicon Valley for setting the Internet up wrong. He claims that "we" could "design information systems so that people can pay for content." Apparently, Lanier hasn't been paying attention over the last decade. What Lanier is alluding to is micropayments, and micropayments have been tried over and over again. Silicon Valley was only too happy to offer consumers opportunities to pay small amounts of money for content. But it turns out that customers hate micropayments. They're a headache to deal with and they produce very little revenue for content creators. After years of trying to get customers to sign up for micropayments, websites finally discovered that it just works a lot better to give the content away and sell ads.

The other thing Lanier apparently hasn't noticed is that there's already a massive industry devoted to producing content and giving it away in order to sell ads. Last time I checked, a ton of people make a living in the television industry, despite the fact that virtually all the content they produce is given away free of charge. Yet inexplicably, Lanier seems to believe that giving away content and selling ads won't be a viable business model in the Internet age. The problem isn't that ad-supported content isn't viable. The problem is that a lot of incumbent media companies have executed their Internet strategies so ineptly that hardly anyone is visiting their sites. You can't sell very many ads if you've got a tiny audience. The solution is for them to come up with more appealing products (hint: dropping DRM is a good first step), not to once again bang their heads against the brick wall of micropayments.

Filed Under: business models, content, economics, free, jaron lanier, silicon valley

EA Boss Recognizes The Economic Trends Of Infinite Goods

from the don't-hear-that-every-day dept

At this point, we're so used to execs from big entertainment firms denying the existence of the inevitable trends impacting their industry, that it's truly a surprise when someone appears to clearly understand what's happening. Slashdot points us to the shocking news that EA's CEO knows that the business model for his industry is changing, and that the current one is becoming obsolete:

"In the next five years, we're all going to have to deal with this. In China, they're giving games away for free. People who benefit from the current model will need to embrace a new revenue model, or wait for others to disrupt."

Can you imagine hearing the same thing from the head of a movie studio or record label? It's nice to finally see a CEO who recognizes the economics at hand -- even if it means his former cash cow will be obsolete and his company will need to embrace entirely new business models.

Filed Under: business model, economics, free, infinite goods, video games
Companies: ea

Universities Figuring Out The Value Of Giving Away Content For Free

from the economics-lessons dept

It started with universities giving away all their courseware online for free, but recently some universities have started posting videos of all lectures for free on YouTube as well. This has some folks wondering what that means about the value of a university education. Andy Kessler does a nice job breaking down the details of what he calls "YouTube U.", noting that it plays directly into the economics of free content. The content itself, once recorded, is the infinite good -- but the scarce good remains the actual diploma of having successfully made it through the courses and the tests to prove that you had an acceptable level of understanding. While he then jokingly (right, Andy?) suggests that a more conspiratorial answer is that it's a professor's way of being lazy and focusing on the parts of being a professor that bring in money (research, consulting) he may not be that far off. Professors will embrace such things because if they really are good professors it does help build their own brand, which can help them in many ways, from getting grant money to getting better grad student researchers to many other things. And the fact that it can do all that while also helping many people who aren't attending the school learn about whatever topic is being taught seems like a pretty good deal.

Filed Under: economics, free, infinite good, universities
Companies: berkeley, mit

Another Nobel Laureate Points Out How The Patent System Holds Back Innovation

from the the-economics-are-clear... dept

It always amuses us when supporters of the patent system attack our views on patents as being somehow uninformed. Over the years, we've pointed to plenty of rather detailed research on how the patent system tends to hold back innovation -- and how there's no correlation between stronger patent systems and innovation. Usually, when we point this out, the response is to insult us, rather than respond to the research. Fortunately, though, those doing this kind of research keep getting plenty of validation for their work. We've already pointed out that at least one Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joe Stiglitz, has been speaking out on how patents harm innovation. Now comes the news that one of the latest economics Nobel winners has also done research in the space. Evan R.S. writes in to point out that the NY Times article on the winners notes that Nobel winner Eric S. Maskin recent research is on how patents can hold back innovation. The good folks over at Against Monopoly (who include some economists who have been leading the charge in studying this topic) point us to Maskin's paper on this topic. The paper argues that patents tend to harm innovation in high tech fields, mainly because so much innovation is sequential and complementary -- at which point handing out monopolies is guaranteed to slow down the innovation process, because the innovation gets more expensive (need to license any time you do anything), more limiting (because you have to get approval before innovating) and much more time consuming (especially if you have to keep going to court). This isn't a new idea or even new research -- but it's yet another reminder that the economic research continually shows how patents will often hold back innovation, rather than help it.

Filed Under: economics, nobel laureates, patents

Forget Carrying Around 40,000 Songs; Think Infinite Music Storage

from the it's-in-the-cloud dept

Last month we wrote about how the economics of music were changing so rapidly that it highlighted how out of touch the record labels are when they still think charging $1 per song makes sense, just as Apple is releasing an iPod that can hold 40,000 songs. Of course, that's only looking at the present. We all know technology is rapidly changing, and Princeton computer science professor Ed Felten notes that it won't be long until anybody can carry all music ever recorded in their pocket. In fact, everyone will be able to do that. At that point, the economics of the industry are totally out of whack with what the recording industry still believes. Felten notes that if anyone can buy a bit of storage that contains all music ever recorded, just think how impossible it will be to shut down file trading operations. All of the music will be out there available to everyone. As long as one of your friends has access to all that music, you just need to create a private sharing network with them -- and the RIAA's goons will never know about it. Felten suggests this leads to a world where the industry is finally going to need to accept some kind of universal licensing plan -- or they might just realize that letting the music go free has plenty of benefits elsewhere in the music business model ecosystem. Of course, that would take more forward thinking record industry execs... and we may be waiting a long, long time for that to happen.

Filed Under: business models, economics, ed felten, music

RIAA And The Definition Of Insanity... With Just A Hint Of Sanity From EMI

from the banging-your-head-on-the-wall dept

Someone (the internet credits both Benjamin Franklin and Albert Einstein) once said that "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again -- and expecting different results." At some point, can we simply declare the RIAA insane and be done with it? At the very least, they're causing me to bang my head against the wall. For years we've been pointing out business models involving free music that don't need require the RIAA to sue everyone. For years, we've been highlighting the very basic economics for why these business models will almost certainly take over the industry. And, now that we're starting to see some serious traction among bands adopting these models (without RIAA help), we've even explained why the RIAA should still have an important place within this model. Even when the RIAA scores a minor courtroom victory (after many, many losses), and the result is that more people are feeling sorry for the woman found guilty, due to the insanely high fees the court put on her. In other words, nearly everything the industry has done has backfired and made things worse. And how does the RIAA respond? By saying it needs to keep doing the same thing over and over again. The spokesman for the RIAA calls their activities "tough love" but hasn't anyone pointed out to them that what they're doing has not worked and has only made the situation worse? For all of their suing activities, more file sharing than ever is going on... and more and more musicians are opting out of the RIAA mill to craft much more consumer friendly business models. Yet, the RIAA insists that suing people, creating more sympathetic martyrs, and pissing off legitimate customers left and right is the strategy they need to take? It's insanity.

But... wait. Just as I was finishing this post, reader Eric Samson writes in to let us know that EMI's new bosses may finally be adding some sanity back to the process. EMI was bought out by a private equity firm recently, and the CEO of that firm apparently took the Radiohead story as a reason to email the folks at EMI and tell them to pay attention. Specifically, he said that it's "a wake-up call which we should all welcome and respond to with creativity and energy" and that the industry "has for too long been dependent on how many CDs can be sold" and finally, that the industry has screwed up: "rather than embracing digitalisation and the opportunities it brings for promotion of product and distribution through multiple channels, the industry has stuck its head in the sand." Amazing. It only took someone from totally outside the industry to buy one of the major labels and tell its executives the obvious for them to hear it. Now, let's see if EMI can convince the RIAA, who supposedly represents EMI (among many others) that perhaps suing everyone and fighting the inevitable tide isn't such a great idea.

Filed Under: business models, economics, music industry
Companies: riaa

Bands Rushing To Ditch Labels And Embrace Free; Are The Floodgates Opening?

from the tipping-point dept

We've only been predicting that music would eventually go free for about a dozen years, but it feels like we may be nearing a tipping point among musicians recognizing this simple truth as well, kicked off by last week's Radiohead announcement. Suddenly, similar announcements seem to be coming fast and furious. Apparently both Oasis and Jamiroquai are interested in following Radiohead's lead and the Charlatan's (managed by a member of Oasis) is already doing the same. On top of that, Trent Reznor proudly announced today that Nine Inch Nails is now free from its record label contract. Will.i.am, from the band The Black Eyed Peas, announced "the new distributor is your niece" in discussing how he plans to promote his new solo album.

There are two key things to note in all of this. First, all these bands feel the need to ditch big record labels to do this (and, no, that doesn't mean that small bands without recording contracts can't succeed this way too). This is a sad state of affairs for the record labels -- because there still should be a place for them in helping to promote and market a band, even if they're giving away the music for free. It's just that they're not venture capitalists any more and bands don't need help in distributing content -- two businesses the record labels insist they're in. What's really sad here is how clueless the record labels remain to this reality. In a Reuters article about the Radiohead move, a record industry insider mistakenly claims that this trend is going to hurt the music business because bands will rush out singles instead of albums. Apparently that insider only read the first half of the details of what Radiohead is doing (as well as what others are doing). They're doing exactly the opposite. They've put together a whole "discbox" with lots of extras to make it more compelling to buy. Will.i.am specifically made his latest album a "cohesive story" to encourage people to buy the whole album. Reznor purposely tried to make his CD as cool as possible (it changes colors when you play it in a CD player) to encourage people to buy it -- even as he tells people at concerts to download his songs.

That brings up the second key point. For all the whining about "free" music, the complainers keep missing the fact that free is only a part of the business model. This seems to be the thing that people get most confused about when we discuss business models around free music. They get stuck on free and assume that if something's free, there's no way to make money. But, all of these bands are showing exactly the opposite is true. The Times Online has a story incorrectly headlined "The day the music industry died" discussing these exact changes, but as you read the details, the music industry is doing just fine -- it's just the folks in the recording industry who are in trouble. Musicians are raking in record revenue from concerts -- and the artists are realizing that the free music only helps generate more interest in those concerts. Listen to Alan McGee from Oasis and the Charlatans, saying that giving away the music for free was a can't miss proposition: "We increase our fan base, we sell more merchandise, more fans talk about the band and we get more advertising and more films (soundtracks). More people will get into the the Charlatans and will probably pay the money to see the show. I presume it will double the gig traffic, maybe even treble it."

In other words, more bands are recognizing exactly what a bunch of folks knew was inevitable at least a decade ago. Unshackle the music, give it away free, and use it to make a lot of other stuff a lot more valuable, and there's plenty of money to be made. The only sad part in all of this is that the record labels have been not just blind to the idea -- they've actively tried to discredit anyone who pointed it out to them.

Filed Under: business models, economics, music, oasis, radiohead, trent reznor

A Few More Music Business Model Suggestions

from the keep-'em-coming dept

Every time we talk about the economics of the entertainment industry, someone accuses us of not suggesting any alternative business models. However, we actually have suggested other business models all the time, while showing how other musicians have succeeded in embracing new models to make money while giving fans reasons to pay. Of course, part of the confusion is that many musicians are using slightly different business models to make this work -- which is exactly how it should be. No one is saying that all musicians are going to find that any particular business model works, but there are a number of different business models that all involve using the music to make other (scarce) things more valuable and worth paying for. Reader alex points us to a column from Pitchfork Media that has a bunch of other business model suggestions, mostly focused on giving people a reason to pay, rather than just complaining that they won't pay. Once again, it's important to remember that "free" isn't the business model -- but it's an important part of any business model involving infinite goods.

Filed Under: business models, economics, music industry

Musicians Don't Need Venture Capitalists Any More

from the do-it-yourself dept

I just heard Tyler Cowen, one of my favorite econobloggers, on the public radio program On the Media discussing Radiohead's name-your-own-price model for its latest album. (The segment starts around 38:20 in this MP3) He makes a number of good points, but I think he overestimates the importance of the recording industry in the coming years. He says: "When you go back to this core function of discovering new music, lending the money to the people who produce that music, taking the chance, and then getting the product out there and publicizing it, the labels offer very important value, and the Internet is not a substitute." In the pre-Internet world, this was a reasonable description of the recording industry's role. Publishing a new album was a risky endeavor because you had to cover the fixed costs of recording the album, pressing several thousand copies, shipping them to retail stores, and undertaking an expensive nationwide promotional campaign. If an album fell short, the label risked losing tens of thousands of dollars.

Filed Under: business models, economics, music, venture capital

Chalk One Up For The Armchair Economists

from the getting-it-right dept

Mike Arrington, over at TechCrunch, has written up a post about "The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free" which will sound mighty familiar if you're a Techdirt reader. It's pretty much the same thing I've been saying for almost a dozen years at this point, pointing out the economics and inevitable trends facing the music industry -- and also noting why that isn't necessarily a bad thing. While he's dealing with emotional responses in the comments (again, that'll sound familiar...), it's more interesting to watch an "industry analyst" trash Arrington as an "armchair economist" without backing it up... and then getting his own economics totally screwed up. In this case, we need to chalk one up for the "armchair economists."

The analyst, David Card of Jupiter Research (the same analyst who incorrectly said that Radiohead's new offering would only work because the band was well known), dismisses Arrington's economics as "oversimplified analysis," but doesn't explain why it's actually wrong -- and that's because it's not. Card goes on to say that based on Arrington's analysis "software, filmed entertainment, soda at McDonalds, and the classic example, high-end perfume, should all be free," using that statement as a reason to dismiss the economics. But it's actually Card who's way off on the economics here. Like many of the folks who respond emotionally, Card seems to be confusing what he thinks Arrington is saying with what Arrington is actually saying. Specifically, he's confused "should" and "will." Neither Arrington nor I have been saying that music should be free -- but that it will be free based on the economics at play. People who read the "will" as "should" then get bogged down in moral arguments over "should" or "should not" that don't matter. You can say that companies "shouldn't" pollute, but it doesn't change the fact that they "will" pollute. At that point, whining that they shouldn't is meaningless -- you simply have to figure out how to deal with the reality that they will. If you can then take that reality and figure out ways for musicians to make even more money (as the economic research and history suggests is likely) than the whole moral issue goes away.

It's not worth going through each of Card's "examples," but if you look at the economic trends in play for each situation, you can see that Arrington is a lot closer to the mark than Card is. For software and filmed entertainment, the inevitable shift is to a service model rather than a product model (which is the same as music). A services model recognizes that the creation (not the distribution) of content is where the marginal costs are. In reality, they've always been services models -- just disguised as product models. In other words, the trends in both cases support Arrington, not Card. As for soda at McDonald's and high-end perfume, neither is a zero marginal cost good -- and both have a number of different economic factors dealing with them. For example, soda at McDonald's is a complementary good that people drastically overpay for as a convenience. There's value in convenience -- and since customers in McDonald's are a "captive market" for soda, there isn't the competitive market to drive the price down. It's too bad that a supposed industry expert would accuse Arrington of getting his economics wrong, and then clearly show both that he didn't understand Arrington's statements -- nor does he understand the economics of other products and trends. It reflects a lot better on the "armchair" economists than the supposed expert.

Disclosure: some might say that my company, Techdirt, competes with Card's employer with our Techdirt Insight Community. Then again, others might say that this blog competes with TechCrunch. Neither is directly true, but I might as well disclose rather than have to deal with it in the comments.

Filed Under: business models, economics, music industry