The Death of Commerce?
Everywhere you turn there are articles proclaiming the death of this or that. Print media, handwriting, fiction, the author, history, etc. These articles or pundits always declare that a new technology (most often the Internet) will be the answer. While this hasn't proven to be true among mass audiences, I'm beginning to wonder if there is a generational shift a foot. In terms of content (reading, watching, listening) it seems that new devices and apps are promising to revolutionize the world. While I think that's an exaggeration, there is something going on.
- My parents (older boomers) use their TiVo to record shows like they did with a VCR. While they time shift, they're just pulling what they want out of the stream. Netflix (which they signed up for in the past year) offers them a wrinkle on the video store. Sirius is like cable for the car. Nothing too revolutionary.
- In my household (Gen X) we use TiVo to record shows and time shift. We're also using Netflix through our Internet enabled television and doing some streaming. I'll use Pandora on my phone to stream when I can't get to Sirius. In addition to convenience, our household is starting to cut out commercials. Increasingly, none of the services we use force us to watch commercials.
- Some of my co-workers (Millenials) are bypassing everything. They're maybe renting music through Rhapsody, but none of them watch television over the air, instead choosing to stream content from the internet. Additionally, they're bypassing printed media for online links (and avoiding the pay sites like the plague) and steering well clear of commercial radio. While they're paying for Netflix or Rhapsody, the old passive model of someone else programming content and offering with commercials is not part of their worldview.
What's with the shift? Is it technology, is it theft, is it something else? I'd argue that a few factors are at play here. Let's start with technology. The younger you get on this spectrum, the more accustomed and comfortable the cohort is with technology. It's not frightening. It's an enabling force in their lives. But technology alone wouldn't explain the desire to select and curate your own content.
The desire to control content has grown among consumers as radio and television became all about corporate entities making money. Remember when networks showed quality (or at least entertaining) programming? Now the bottom line dictates what is put on the air (think reality shows, cheap and easy to control). Remember when local DJs selected music? Now corporate consultants program from a central location. While these moves generated short-term profit they hurt the product. As a result, consumers looked to new technology to democratize their entertainment.
So where is this leading? I suspect that the old commerce models are going to die. That doesn't mean that consumers will never passively receive content from providers. I think the problem is that those providers are going to see large declines in revenue year after year. That means they'll squeeze more money out of the process, sending more people in search of the content they want the way they want it. I don't believe this will result in an explosion of self-produced television (music is another matter), but I do think that consumers will stop waiting for content to find them.
The other thing it will do is chase consumers to premium services (HBO, Sirius, etc.). People will pay for what they want. The old models of content production and broadcast are likely on their way out. Twenty years ago we had three networks, Fox starting out, and a lot of bad cable channels showing Patrick Swayze movies all the time. Twenty years from now we're likely to have no network news, no locally generated radio, and viable decentralized publishing and music industries. The bad news is we'll lose convenience, the good news is that as we move away from big companies and profit we may actually get innovation again.
