SXSW: Distributing Ideas on Distribution
Digital content distribution was a recurring topic among many of the panels at this year’s SXSW Interactive conference. Content distribution models have been steadily evolving across the film, television, music, news and gaming industries, leading to a tremendous amount of analysis and debate, but in many cases very little progress for increased revenue. One of the key issues for most digital content mediums has been the role of piracy. Dealing with how easily content can be shared and stolen online has been a truly painful experience for almost any industry that produces original content, but how companies have attempted to solve piracy problems has varied dramatically.
“Online Content: Transforming Piracy into Profit,” a panel at this year’s SXSW conference examined ways that companies have built business models and technological solutions that create legitimate revenue opportunities from the ways that people already share and even steal online content. A key takeaway from the discussion was that for content creators and distributors to effectively make progress against the problems caused by piracy they need to facilitate new ways to make the transition from piracy to syndication. The panelists Jameson Hsu CEO/Cofounder, Mochi Media, Matt Robinson VP BD/Partnerships, Attributor, Joyce Kim Fortis General Counsel, Roy Schwartz VP of Business Dev, Politico, Jason Oberfest Senior Vice President of Business Development, MySpace each provided examples of new strategies that their companies have employed to leverage the viral capacity of the Internet to create revenue opportunities. Some great soundbites were recorded by Daisy Whitney in her article on the panel for TV Week.
As the music portion of the SXSW panel gets underway, one has to wonder when the music industry will be able to accomplish this transformation of piracy into profit. With overall music sales continuing to plummet, it is generally being questioned whether selling music will actually be a viable busines model in the future. Clearly there is still a massive appetite for new music, but there has debatably been less progress in monetizing the way people share musical content online than in any other content medium. The SXSW panel Policy Trainwreck: How Copyright Law Failed the Digital Age touched on some of these issues, though as the title suggests, the observations were somewhat gloomy. While the discussion at this panel was often disconcerting for someone who wants to see the music industry find its way out of its current problems, there was also a strong sense that while the distribution solutions and the new music industry that will be born out of them are still not yet upon us, they will come.