Remonetizing Media

Kevin Kelly's recent incisive post on how sharing can be preferable to owning is the most direct reflection of what my own view of the subject of file sharing has been. Though this has been one of my pet peeve issues for years, I've been thinking more and more about what my actual actions are irrespective of my ideology. 

Here it is in 2009, and I still will absolutely not purchase digital downloads from services such as iTunes, or Amazon. Though the later is DRM free, and the former is moving towards that, it still does not make sense to throw my money away on these downloads. Digital information is ephemeral, that's the whole point. When I buy a CD I pay a defined monetary amount for a defined physical object (even if that physicality is mostly an illusion), but if I buy an MP3 all I get is the 'right' to arrange the bits on my storage into a certain configuration. If the MP3 has DRM it's even worse. Under the DRM model, this right is only a temporary allowance until the provider goes out of business or changes its distribution model. If the price was massively lower, say 10 cents per song, I might download simply for convenience sake, but it's absurd to pay full price for such a dodgy product.  

So what DO I pay money for in the brave new world of the 21st century? Services, services, services. I pay for internet access, for mobile phone service (the infrastructure), and I gladly pay a monthly fee for media services. Netflix is the best example of this, and it's nearly perfect. It started with a model where for a small monthly fee, you could access almost any movie or television show that you could want, as long as you're willing to wait a couple days to have the disc mailed. Of course, I don't want to wait that long! Youtube is instantaneous, and Pirate Bay only requires a few hours of download time, so why would you chose the inferior wait of the postal service? It is only when Netflix started introducing their instant access feature that it made sense to me to sign up. 

This is what I want, and I think most people want the same whether they know it or not: instant access to any piece of media at any time. This model is worth money, lots of money. Providing streaming, always on access requires massive storage, massive bandwidth, and a degree of maintenance. This can not be pirated, it can only be competed with. As long as the fee is reasonable, $10-$20 per month or so, it makes sense to pay for the convenience of not having to seek out, download, store, and maintain every piece of media that you want to consume. Pirates can't provide that service currently without some kind of compensation to keep the bandwidth and electricity flowing. P2P is an option, but it can't compete with a well maintained commercial network. 

So here's what I'm waiting for: a digital music player (iPod, etc) with always on internet access, and the ability to play any song that I want at any time, for a small monthly service fee in the $10-$20 range. This might make the most sense as a software update for the smartphones that already exist, but it could also be extended to standalone devices. 

That's the solution to the question of how to make money from media that has been distributed via tape and disc for the last several decades. This can eventually work for other forms of media as well, though special cases (like the traditional physicality of paper books) might require some tweaking.