The future of Content Sharing

So the government have once again proved they are about five years out of date with Peter Mandelson's recent proposal to disconnect the broadband of those who are found to be file sharing. Hey, Pete! The horse is already half way to China, I wouldn't bother bolting the stable door if I were you, but welcome to the 21st century anyway.

It's impossible to enforce a ban on file sharing, so we should stop trying. That's not to say that it's now legal. Making copies of music has changed a lot since the days when kids swapped cassettes and crappy recordings deteriorated with each replication, copying MP3s is super easy and while it may not be stealing in the sense that you are depriving an owner of a piece of his or her property, what's being stolen is that owner's right to copy and distribute their work.

To the music industry in general, and small labels and independent artists specifically, digital has long equalled 'bad' and 'to be avoided'. So far the response in the drum & bass scene has been to adopt a defensive stance of aggression and denial – to everyone's detriment. Instead of standing on the beach like Cnuts (yes, Cnuts – look it up), trying to hold back the tides, the music industry needs to adapt to the new market.

Speaking of China, over there Google has displayed impressive foresight, sadly lacking in our own Secretary of State for Business and 'Innovation', by purchasing a blanket license to distribute music in that territory for free. Their rationale? That the content sharing landscape is changing so rapidly it's impossible to police, so might as well at least control the access to it as a loss-leader and wait for a money-making business model to emerge once it all settles down.

As Google have accepted, the record label 'command and control' model is becoming rapidly outdated, now the culture is all about cooperation and cultivation. Sharing is the key driver for listeners and so attention has become the new currency. While content providers and hosts are still figuring out how to handle the transition from disconnected to connected consumers, the opportunities for identifying new revenue streams are abundant.

Access to a format which holds that content is the most obvious place to start charging – licensing, internet tax, micro payments – all rich territories for growth. The majority of internet usage will be mobile in next five years and so interface is key – something iPhone and Spotify have very smartly delivered. London Elektricity's own iPhone app. is another great example of hooking attention by trading in access and then banking that attention in revenue once the listener is further into the London Elektricity 'brand'.

That's what services like apps do so well and what labels like Hospital are so good at doing, which is to treat content as an experience first, a product second.

URL to orginal article on Knowledge's site here: http://www.kmag.co.uk/editorial/blogs/rinse_and_repeat/the-future-of-content-charing