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May 15, 2006
Download Wars
By Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief
Now that MTV has decided it will compete with iTunes by offering downloads of music and eventually videos, one wonders how many potential competitors there will be in this space. How many can the market bear? Will content providers ever say enough is enough and stop new outlets from getting a hold of their songs and videos?
From where I stand, this competition for the consumer will put content providers in a better position to negotiate lucrative deals. Then again, do content providers even need a service like iTunes or Google ( News - Alert)? They can just stream their content themselves if they like.
To some degree, partnering with Google means that Google will do some of the marketing for you. You, in essence, are hiring Google as a marketing partner.
If you were to bypass Google altogether, then you would have to market your content by yourself. This isn’t totally impossible though. We could likely see advertising campaigns all over the Internet for this studio or that program. In fact, to some extent, we already do.
As the market grows, expect affiliate programs to pop up like they have done with VoIP services. Studios and other content providers will start paying websites per sign up, offering more for the competition.
We will eventually see bundles of content everywhere. Studios with content attracting similar demographics will work together to get at consumers by offering a package of stations and music titles.
The Internet is democratizing content distribution and in the process the consumers of the future will have more choices than ever. It may become a bewildering array of options, but this is much better than having the current choice of only satellite or cable for television.
(source: http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2006/05/15/1649494.htm)
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