Thursday, June 26, 2008

What do you pay for when you use ITunes?

I was on a panel at Digital Asset Management in London yesterday and threw into the ring that perhaps the 'assets' that we aim to manage don't have value (at least not in and of themselves).
I was talking, of course, about the Because Effect. You might not make money with content but you're likely to because of it.
In other words Prince understands that his music is freely shared so he gives it away for free. That which was scarce has become abundant.
The because effect is that more people hear his music and he creates more demand for the thing that he does have that is still in limited supply - live concert tickets/ merchandise/limited edition this and that...

Someone asked, but what about ITunes? People pay for content there - and the success appears to continue to grow.

I don't think its the content we are paying for on Itunes - it is the service (with the experience intertwined in this).
You could go and find the same music freely shared somewhere else. You could. It might take you a while. You could find ways to get it on to your ipod. You could.
But it's all time consuming and clunky.
You pay itunes to take all that hassle away and make the download quick, easy and beautifully done.

Services around the effective delivery of the right content? Now there's a thought for media.

By the way, I've posted this from an I-google gadget (in other words without leaving my google homepage).

Cool little widget. A service I have taken with me on my journey - one which treats the user as the destination. Neat.

2 comments:

  1. i guess with itunes you can also be fairly certain of the integrity of the file - with torrents, limewire etc theres always that doubt.

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  2. It's about the pain of discovery, as usual. iTunes makes it very easy to find and get the content you want and stuff around it. I no longer the time, energy or inclination to go sniffing about for music from other sources, even walking the 5 minutes down to our local Virzavvigin or HMV.

    I would content that content does have value when it serves a purpose, but the problem is that content often doesn't - it's a luxury or whim. And over pricing makes it uninteresting. Whether it is £15 CDs or £2500 VisionGain reports, they are priced beyond their value.

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