Advertising really isn’t so bad
I read a lot of Bob’s posts but this one stood out to me. I was just having a conversation with someone about this same exact subject the other night. At the root of the this issue, of making available copyrighted material on streaming sites such as YouTube and MySpace, is how to monetize it. It is really very simple. When in doubt learn from your piers in the same market. What is the simplest way to make money on the web? Advertising. Wrap up the content in pre or post roll ads. This will accomplish two vital things. One being that the majors will start seeing some income from all their material they have available and two, it will at the very least be a step forward instead a lateral step or no step at all. The music industry in particular, hasn’t made big steps in experimenting with monetization schemes. These are times of trial and error. But they don’t have to be that risky if you look around and learn from other’s mistakes. Fred has a good post on his ideas for monetizing YouTube. YouTube will look at Google for inspiration on how to make money. Other industries should do the same. The music business needs to pay very close attention to what services like YouTube and MySpace are doing because these services are the future of their content distribution. There is no question that this is how content will be served up in the coming years. All of these issues make me want to form a consulting team that would walk with music labels and other content owners as they navigate how to make money in an “everything is available all the time” world because its not going to come from the inside. I should do that.
picture originally uploaded by: me