Yesterday’s
stunning announcement that Apple hit the 1 billion mark for iTunes downloads
was greeted with fascination by the media. There were articles in the blogosphere and the trades, and even stories
on the national evening news broadcasts. It’s not surprising that they’re interested. It’s one of the single greatest indicators
that media is shifting from its artist-label-channel-package legacy to the new
on-demand model. While the technical
formats and audience demographics of music made that industry a logical
candidate to begin this shift, video and print aren’t far behind.
Jeff Jarvis
wrote a post earlier this week on Edgeio , which he describes as “the classified
system for the distributed future”. Jarvis makes the points that the future of media is distributed, that
control will shift from the content producers to the attention and transaction
owners, and that all of this will be enabled by tagging. “They [tags] help organize the world and its
relationships.”
That might
appear to be a bold claim, but when you look at Apple’s share of total music
sales (top ten, just behind WalMart) and its dominance in the download market
(70%), it doesn’t seem like such a stretch. Last month’s simultaneous theatrical/direct-to-DVD release of “Bubble”,
and the cable-channel-disaggregation hearings on Capital Hill were portents of
changes to come for film and television.
While Seth
Goldstein and others focus on the concept of attention and the “Attention
Economy”, I would argue that we’re moving to an “On-Demand Economy”. Greater availability of broadband combined
with cheap storage and memory gives us the ability to purchase nearly every digital item on
a by-the-drink basis. This is happening in
the consumer market with music and video, and in the enterprise market with
on-demand CRM and ERP software.
The
interesting question is how old-line companies, which still account for the
vast majority of GDP in this country, will adapt to the new model. Newspapers and cable companies are hurling
towards it, kicking and screaming all the way. To date, signs of innovation are scarce.
With all
due respect to the unique talents of Mr. Jobs, let’s hope that there are a hundred innovative leaders like him, to guide us through this period of market
transformation.
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