If [the conventional] model placed the artist in the role of an employee, doing their part of the job and handing it off to the next team on the assembly line, then this new model requires them to step up to being an entrepreneur and taking ownership of the end-to-end business of delivering, not just creating, their content.

Re: subscription models, you are right on as well. My only point about it being a loaded term was in the context of people who aren’t as creative in their thinking as you and tend to leap to monthly payments anytime you use any variant of the word ’subscribe.’

First of all, I think your definition of cheap ‘distribution’ is actually combining two things that I break out separately: a) distribution (i.e. availability) and b) promotion (i.e. awareness). I agree that production and distribution (my version of it) have been effectively commoditized at this point. But the nut that has yet to be cracked online IMHO (and thus where the conventional media establishment still has a huge advantage) is promotion. While the monetary costs of online promotion may be theoretically low thanks to the ‘viral’ power of social media, this is rendered moot by the fact that no one has really figured out a sustainable and reproducable way to realize its full potential. [Hint: that's a key part of the Snowball Factory's mission ]

In terms of the differences between the types of distribution channels, I’ll point you to a recent comment I made on my buddy Hooman’s blog: http://www.widgify.com/?p=231#comment-118066.

And finally, check out this post on the ‘memefication’ of bands, which I think supports your point that the type of content doesn’t really matter: http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/2009/03/the-memefication-of-your-band.html

One of the biggest mindset shifts is understanding that the entertainer as proprietor of the business. Gary V, iJustine, Felicia Day, etc. have a direct stake in building their audiences. They manage their following directly, with minimal ‘middlemen’ interference. If they deliver crap, they lose those direct subscribers. It gets harder to pass the blame to a nameless Hwood bureaucracy.

As far as the subscription models go, I actually don’t think the term is that loaded. It just comes in different forms.

In the web series world, where I spend most of my time, I think we’ve actually got that already — from Tiki Bar TV drink mugs to Pure Pwnage t-shirts — it’s essentially opt-in sub fees via margins on the merchandise that keep those shows running.

Right, but what I’m really getting at is that one of the fundamentals about the “social now web” (that is being taken for granted a lot these days) is that it lets companies (or artists) *publish* their own information very cheaply (a distinct process from distribution). It’s cheap to both create and publish a video of an interview with your execs or product demo (or of your band horsing around in the studio).

As you probably know from being around the entertainment industry, the source of disruption is *equally* distributed between cheap a) *production* and b) distribution. Cheap distro gets you high velocity WOM…but you have to give them something to talk about. Maybe that’s “a phenomenal cust svc experience” or “great product”, but it also might be an information complement.

Put another way, what are the differences between a blog post about Product X written on AcmeCo.com (the vendor of Product X), whose “earned” audience is 500k people, versus a similar post on 3rdPartyMediaChannel.com, whose “earned” audience (i.e. not a paid placement) is the exact same 500k people?

It’s tough to get to an apples/apples comparison, but I hope you see my point.

Going back to my original thought, any information complement a company/artist makes doesn’t have to be a video commercial whose total cost of production is millions and millions of dollars (plus paid placement).

In many ways, I see the media/advertising business as a middleman the same way I view the film/record industries. Company-customer and artist-fan are the same insofar as “vendor-buyer” relationships are concerned, imo.

(This point also dovetails with Jeff Jarvis’s recent piece on the “inside out” agency, which I think is directionally correct, insofar as it points to the incongruous interests between some agencies and their clients)

I’ve used this and your ‘Crystal Ball for Studio Execs‘ posts as a litmus test for the folks I know in the entertainment industry. It’s shocking how few of them get it, arguing that today’s middlemen (studios, networks, etc) are the ones in control…

The entire film industry today exists for DVD sales (over 50% of revenue). The studios are right, “content is king” – it just won’t be owned by the distributors/marketing machines moving forward – in a way, it will be owned by the fans.

i hate file based entertainment because it lends itself to a sales model not a service model

i also believe the economics of an annuity service business are far superior to a sales driven business

great post

To me, that opt-out default state is what is so important about the subscription metaphor. Just like the default state for a Netflix subscriber is to pay their subscription fee every month, the default state for an Okkervil River fan is to buy their new album every time they release one or buy tickets to their show whenever they come to town. If at any point Netflix or Okkervil River disappoint me, I can decide to change my default state — but, there’s little chance I’ll ever come back. And just like Netflix offers different subscription options, there are different tiers of fandom (it’s more like a spectrum than tiers) — as evidenced by the self-segmentation and variable pricing being explored by Trent Reznor, Josh Freese, and others.

However, I don’t think fandom is really a word let alone the right one . So, the search continues. As for the $100M movie, I entirely agree with you that the world of entertainment-as-a-service is not optimized for conventional ‘blockbusters’ and will be able to support a much smaller number of them than the legacy system. But in my mind, that is because the success of today’s blockbusters is artificially inflated by the scarcity of content in conventional distribution channels — i.e. “I guess I’ll go see the new Michael Bay movie because it’s the best thing playing at the theater by my house, not because it is the film I most want to most over all.” That’s why I don’t believe the conventional studio system can or should survive this transition.