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Pirates are everywhere -- in the theatre, in stores...and still on campus with student downloading
Pirates are hot right now. $132 million at the opening weekend box office for the new Johnny Depp movie. Walk into any Borders book store and you'll see an entire section of Pirates of the Caribbean stuff, including PofC Monopoly and many more Pirates-related things. Amazon, too. Even last night's baseball All-Star games was held in the Pittsburgh Pirates home stadium. There are entire lines of jewelry and fashion devoted to the pirate look.Pirates, pirates, pirates. Enough to make the RIAA, MPAA and other digital copyright execs pull their hair out!
So, if you pirate a pirate movie, are you really a pirate or are you just a fan?
Last week, the Wall Street Journal wrote that free music download services for on campus college students -- designed to combat illegal downloading -- were being ignored. Campus administrators across the country at major universities just haven't been able to persuade many students to use such digital download services as Napster, Rhapsody, Ruckus and Cdigix. Why? Too many strings attached, too little control...and ultimately, no ownership.College students preferring illegal downloading over free legal downloads got Joint Communications' CEO John Parikhal thinking. Says John:
Wall Street article here (may require subscriber log-on)|||> I never thought I'd see the day when you couldn't give music away free.
But the Wall Street Journal says that Napster is being tossed out of some college programs because students don't want their music - even if it's free.
The reason - they don't want to lose their music libraries when they graduate and they don't like all the restrictions on downloading.
And, even worse - these free songs won't play on iPods - even though 42% of all college students own an iPod!
Talk about a disconnect.It didn't make sense to me until I remembered an old line from media guru, Marshall McLuhan.
He once told me, "too many people navigate by looking in the rearview mirror".
What a concept - driving while looking backward. Yet, it explained why you can't even give music away for free.
The rear view mirror is the old business model. Business controlled the customer whenever possible.
The new model - where you can't give music away for free - is all about 3 things - giving the customer more convenience, more connection and more control.
Look at the winners right now.
iTunes gives convenience. MySpace gives connection. And Google gives control.
So this got me thinking ...
Some of the "old" media must be making the transition successfully.
Which ones are doing a good job on improving customer convenience, connection and control?
I'm interested in your thoughts. <|||
"The Rise and Fall of the Hit" from Wired.com here
Engadget posting here
posted by Unknown @ Wednesday, July 12, 2006,
