Drum and Drumming

Okay, so Kevin Drum is still talking about the Grokster decision, and it's got me thinking.

In the comments, somebody made an important distinction between the content industry and the content distribution industry. That's certainly part of it, with some deliberate vagueness about what "it" is. The problem? The solution? The past? The future?

Yes, pretty much on all accounts.

The more interesting dichotomy springing from all of this, to me, is that of the individual versus the shared experience. One of the reasons that the "no one will go to movies anymore" argument doesn't really wash with me is that, despite the cellphones and crying babies and ten dollar tubs of popcorn, there's something qualititatively different about seeing a movie in a theater that makes it more appealing than watching at home.

Obviously, the same holds true for concerts. Pre-TiVo, the same held true for first-run television. This is where the real schism is taking place. A holistic approach of content consumption, that includes CDs, downloads and performances on the music side, and movie theaters, DVD rentals and DVD sales on the other, may not be the right way to look at the entertainment ecosystem. The individual and the shared experience have distinctly different needs, and different strategies to be successful.

That said, I have no idea what those needs and strategies are, exactly. That old Chinese curse ("May you live in interesting times.") again.

From an individual consumer's point of view on the music side, it may all come back to that very Internet-boom idea of the celestial jukebox, enabled by CD-quality streaming and ubquitous wireless broadband. Then there will be gatekeepers grafted on top of that platform, and that's where the value (i.e., the money) will likely be. But I've been a sucker for this particular vision for quite some time now, so this could be just my own pet theory bubbling to the surface again.