Get Over Ownership?

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Here’s a bit of a hackneyed argument made in light of some interesting moves from Sony.

Music subscription services, film subscription services, movie subscription services, and now, Sony has launched a gaming subscription service. For a marginal existence in the media industries, base your business model around ownership, because the idea of owning content relates to the idea of owning miniaturized technological infrastructure, a need which only existed in the first place because the precursors to networked resources – cloud computing – were missing.

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As you may have guessed, the folks behind and associated with the Radar are avid musos with vinyl record collections and all the rest of it. This argument is geared toward the mainstream. People (generally speaking) don’t generate their own electricity. Of course not, the average person, historically, couldn’t front the cost – the state did. Does it make sense now to go off-grid? For a few out in the sticks yes, but for the majority of the population no. It involves working with cumbersome, expensive, unreliable equipment, which requires maintenance i.e. specialist skills most of us don’t have (as a side, you must have seen the videos of kids trying to figure out Walkmans? Specialist skills…). You can touch and enjoy the presence of a generator, and listen to it hum. You can control it. But the mainstream has and always will want convenient access. Music scores and sound carriers enabled access for those who were restricted by geography or price and unable to attend live shows, and they still do to a diminishing degree. That’s the economic model, that’s where value accumulates in art – exclusion. Art and creations themselves are priceless. The starting point is and always has been access.

Why would future generations want to own content? To own computing power? To own anything beside the interface that enables them to experience what they want? We aren’t sure. Content fidelity is rising – HQ video is freely available online. HQ audio is going to become a big thing. People will still say they like to touch and feel, but there are only so many people who want to hole themselves up in apartments cluttered with records, DVDs and books. Luckily for the music industry that cross-section of the population is rising, and vinyl is looking good abroad.

It’s not just media – it’s banking, currencies, car ownership, household appliance ownership, online education. It’s all becoming subscription/rent based. It’s all based on access, not ownership. And it’ll do the environment some good, at the very least.

It’s not a done topic and we hope some readers will share their own views!

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