Technology and media: married for better or worse!

I am always amazed at the number of articles online where media corporations seems to blame new technology for loss of revenues.

The reason that I am amazed is that without technology, and especially digital technologies, the media industry would certainly not be what it is, and without an healthy media industry the technology industry would not be what it is either.

As a first example lets take the movie industry in the 90'. movies were making some money during their theatrical releases, then a very little bit of money from tapes sales and finally some money when the movie was shown on television. Sales of recorded media couldn't really matter because the duplication costs where high, meaning the media had to be expensive, and the machines to read them were expensive and bulky. Then came the DVD revolution: one digital standard for video distribution, on a media that can be duplicated for a few cents, the possibility of video consumption on laptops, portable players and iPods (after ripping). Nowadays is not only much more media sold (to the point that a movie's DVD sale are now as important as the theatrical sales) but much more is available. Whole shops now specialize in DVD. The movie and video industry grew tremendously out of the digital revolution.

Let's take another example: the music industry. Since the arrival of downloadable music and the rise of the iPod, the general population has access to and listen to more music than ever. Apple became a mighty consumer electronic company and music distributor. And the music industry? It actually lost out on the short term, but will most probably benefit greatly on the longer term. The reason it didn't work for the media industry in this case is resistance: the music industry didn't want to see the iPod revolution succeed! Why? this a very good question for which I don't really have a good answer, but i suppose that for some industries it is difficult to abandon a known business model for a new, uncertain one.

The problem for the music industry was that Technology and media are married: if one moves forward the other has to follow, or it will be left behind to whiter and die, replace by a new companion. In the case of the music industry the new ones where Emusic, iTunes and the P2P networks. As long as these were supported by the technology industry the music industry had no chances of going back to the CD: it had to evolve or die.

The future:

The future of both media and technology are more linked together more than ever by they new child: the internet, the ultimate mix of technology and media. Because of the internet the technology industry sell computers, netbooks, ADSL connection and iPods. Thanks to the internet new media can flourish better than ever: practically anyone can now be part of the media or media production: independent filmmakers and musicians, bloggers, short story writers and podcasters. Everything is up in the air again and the CBS of yesterday may be replaced by revision3, for the greater benefit of us, the watching public.

In a future post I will describe how the main media resistance to interned distribution and insistence on DRM is playing in the hand of the independent and new media publishers. Don't hesitate to subscribe to this blog to be sure not to miss it.

Welcome to a bright new future!