Goodbye Media, Hello Media

The recording industry has been dying a slow and painful death for years. The NY Times recently published a piece that showed some staggering and thought provoking numbers. Almost all fingers pointed to piracy as the culprit. However piracy is just a symptom -- it was digital distribution that allowed piracy to happen. Digital distribution is Pandora's Box because it doesn't just affect music. It affects a whole bunch of digitally distributed content with a cascade effect reverberating into traditionally distributed content.

In this age of near-infinite digital content a NY Times op-ed writer could quite easily be confused with just another blogger with a well respected blog (Huffpo anyone?). It's becoming very easy to confuse opinion with news -- similar information, similar presentation, and in some cases, similar credibility. And on the web both are free. That leaves the average consumer wondering how important that information is that it was worth paying a buck twenty-five for at the news stand. Meanwhile the newspaper is giving it away on the web just to keep doing what they do, all the while trying to figure out how to make a buck off it.

At risk of sounding like a ten year old Wired article, I'll get to the point. Now that pretty much anything that can be digitized has been, the curtain has been pulled away and consumers are starting to perceive the value of the things they're seeing and using the way they want to, rather than how they're told to. The consumer is now helping decide what is worth paying for and how much it's worth. Why buy a whole album when you just like the one song? Why buy a newspaper when you can just graze through your favorite blogs? Which leads to questions about whether the medium itself has much value either.

Vast printing empires were built by newspapers and magazines. Incredibly powerful television networks were built to distribute entertainment. This is real infrastructure, with giant presses and studios and editing suites. And now digital distribution is stripping away a lot of the purpose and value that infrastructure once had.

Newspaper is dying, like the recording industry. But when you look closely content isn't dying (it's getting beat up a bit), but many methods of distribution appear to be mortally wounded. Think of the recording industry and the movie industry. Sure, the movie industry isn't losing money like the newspapers or record companies, but it started changing way back in the VCR age and that transformation keeps gaining momentum. The movie industry just has content that people are actually willing to pay for, unlike news or music.

Things start to become clear when you break apart media into content and distribution channel. Traditional distribution channels are being pecked at, and in some cases totally devoured by digital distribution. And this leaves content standing alone, cold and naked for everyone to see in the light of day. This is pretty dreary stuff.

The flip side is the fresh new digital distribution channels that are doing the pecking. Put in that context, a blog is content and twitter is the medium. The new newspaper -- story and source. You can do this with any number of combinations of other new digital media. A corporate website and Digg. Youtube and Google. And it's just going to grow as we discover new tools and new ways of connecting with each other. This doesn't bode well for traditional media, especially since web advertising doesn't pay nearly as well as print and TV advertising do. Maybe the value of advertising is tied to perceived value of content. Will all newspapers die? I doubt it, but some definitely will. And until they find ways to create valuable content and connect it with a convenient method of distribution they'll all be living in a very shaky world.