Democratisation of media
A while back, I subscribed to the Lefsetz Letter. Bob Lefsetz is some dude that's somehow involved in the music industry - I really can't tell you much more than that, 'cos I really can't be bothered to find out (tho I suspect if you're really curious, Google can probably help you out).
Anyhow.
Every day, I get an email - or five - from this guy, wherein he talks about all kinda stuff. The state of the music industry is generally at the crux of it, but sometimes it's about TicketRaper, sometimes it's about how artists can get ahead, sometimes it's about why artists are transcendent experiences to see live, sometimes it's about how the industry should make the music more accessible.
In one of the recent letters, there was this bit of insight:
"Everyone deals with their customers or they pay the price... This business is upside down. It believes it's in business with itself, when truly it's in business with its customers!"
And I was pulled up short, because this is exactly what I have been thinking about the industry I float around the fringes of. It seems endemic in the thought processes of much of the porn world.
All too often, in various discussions, I get a remarkably similar response to that Lefstez mentions in Friday's letter: we often forget who we are in business for.
Interesting.
When I talk to porn folk, there is all too often an idea that the customer is wrong - because we [read: the industry] are doing it are doing it
this way, and the user wants to get it
that way.
I know I'm still pretty new to this game, but... While I appreciate our job is to train the consumer to behave in certain ways, there are certain behaviours that have been ingrained in the user at this point. We won't be able to reverse that tide completely, but we can hope to perhaps divert them into profitable methodologies.
The end-user/ client/ customer ultimately has a lot more say in how things grow now than they did 10 years ago - much less 30 years ago. So why continue to try to use a mode of business that hasn't been working and has been outdated for years, just because it's what you used to know worked? Build new paradigms and create a new business model that gives users what they want. The ways we used to monetise content doesn't work - a user can get free content pretty much any day and from a multitude of sources. So let's figure out a way to create a reason to buy. They are out there. Where is the unique angle that makes it worth while for the user to open his/her wallet? Amanda Palmer - say what you will about her music, the woman's a helluva free thinker - has done this by giving her fans straight up personal interaction, holding late night webcam chats and auctions of her random stuff. Filmed smut clearly can't do the same thing, but there has to be an accounting somewhere for the idea that the fans are people too, and just 'cos they like to beat their meat or jill off doesn't make them shitty people.
And right now our industry, by and large, seems to believe our customers are out to rip us off. They're not. But they ARE consumers - and the consumer's job is to get the best price available. We do it when we shop - why do we expect our customers to be any different?
The music industry has fucked its fans for years by holding back blocks of tickets and jacking the prices of live shows to the stratosphere and selling $0.30 CDs for $15 that the artist never sees. Pr0n does a lot of the same stuff by holding DVD prices at a ridiculously inflated price for years (used to go into the store, and a smut flick was gonna run me $50 on DVD. What is that about?).
There are all too many similarities between the various branches of the entertainment complex - music, movies, smut - and every one is hurting. Why not learn from the mistakes we see in other sectors and improve our [read: the industry] product, our [read: the industry] delivery, and avoid coming to a place in the road like the RIAA has?
"... but you do have to respond to people's problems."
Yeh, exactly, Mr. Lefsetz. That's what I keep saying. Wouldn't it be nice if they would listen sometimes? There are hundreds of ways we could make entertainment across the spectrum better for all involved.
Profits always make it hard to think rationally though, I suppose. I kinda wish more people would realise that when you do a thing the right way, the profits follow - instead, we as a whole go for profit first, and then realise that the way we went about it cuts a lot of future growth out from under us all.
Doesn't anyone else remember the story about the golden eggs anymore?