Consumers Revolt

It used to be the case that people would provide a service, do a performance and pay for the privilege of having it. People buy a ticket to see a movie, purchase a car to drive in it, a record to play it at home.

But I've come to realize this is less and less the case. Consumers do not pay for their content or service anymore. Consumers want the service first, and pay only if it proves its worth.

Maybe it's a trust thing, getting bad service once too many. It may be the economy, so that you are saving your dollar more in anticipation of a rainy day. Even so consumers have reversed the roles with the content provider, the publisher, the artist, the supplier. Consumers are providers themselves of Time.

It's up to the content provider to entice the consumer to give some of that precious Time to him. His content has to be solid, sound, fill a need and a want. To achieve a lower threshold he might give away samples for free. He might use social media to spread the good word about his content. He might make it easier to use the content in a variety of ways. But no longer is the content provider the stronger party in the demand-supply relationship. The content provider is more dependent now on the demand, than the consumer is of the supply. The consumer's Time can be spent a variety of ways, legitimately or otherwise. And if not spent on the content the provider offers, it is spent somewhere else.

So it's best that publishers, artists come to realize that the old ways don't work anymore. It doesn't pay off anymore to hold your content hostage, with DRM, patents, high prizes, region locking and the like. Consumers will find alternative ways to spend their dollar, spend their time. And you can't blame the economy for that.