All three of the major media channels (audio, print, video) for public consumption have evolved in a major way in the last decade. This rapid evolution has been accelerated by a paradigm shift to digital distribution technology. In turn, the market share has in some cases shifted to companies that weren’t even previously in the industry they now find themselves leaders in.
While Apple did not pioneer the digital distribution of music (real networks did, remember them?) they perfected it. They also threw their substantial weight behind the technology needed to legitimize it, and make the RIAA take notice and realign its internal strategies.
Clearly the digital format for music is superior in every way over its predecessors – almost. For audiophiles this technology is not the same sound quality as the original recording due to compression. Other “lossless” algorithms (FLAC) have surfaced that true audiophiles primarily utilize. For consumers however, the portability, lack of physical media, and cost savings associated with digital distribution far outweigh the compression setback.
Given how widespread music is listened to, traditional mediums have not been totally over run. People still purchase CD’s and collectors still trade and purchase vinyl. Nor has it supplanted the live experience. Fans all over the world still flock to concerts. Even given those facts, you are still much more likely to see someone with an iPod than a Walkman walking down the street. In fact, Apple’s marketshare is 66% of all digital music.
Like digital music, the concept of digital books was thrown around and experimented with for a long time before the general public adopted it. This adoption can be accredited to Amazon’s Kindle E-Reader. This slim, lightweight device is smaller and lighter than a book, with the bonus that it can store many books on it, and download new ones on the fly. Its passive display doesn’t irritate the eyes like a normal display, and can be viewed from any angle, even in direct sunlight.
This technology is much newer than digital music, and has not yet replaced books and periodicals as the primary means of reading. When travelling or at the beach you do see a fair amount of people (early-adopters) using a Kindle rather than picking up a paperback, but it is certainly not a majority of the people reading. That being said, Amazon maintains that it sold 8 million in 2010 – not a small number by any means. With the addition of the iPad and other tablets to the eReader marketplace, eBooks are rapidly rising in popularity.
There was Beta vs. VHS, then DVD vs. Laserdisc, followed by HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray. That battle was barely won when Netflix introduced its streaming service and ousted Blockbuster in the video “rental” market retaining 20 million subscribers at the end of 2010. The advantages with streaming video are similar to the advantages digital music provides the consumers. Your ceiling high rack of DVDs? Unnecessary. A giant hard drive to store all your digital movies? Superfluous. Particularly as Netflix expands its library of material, the consumer simply needs to sit down in front of their TV and select anything out of the library to watch instantly – in high definition when available. The one rub is if you don’t have good broadband service in your house, then this technology becomes less applicable.
This technology is so new that it has not even come close to replacing Blu-Ray. In fact, Blu-Ray was still so new it hadn’t replaced DVD’s when streaming video came to market. Collectors will not be happy about the streaming arrangement, but this technology has legs. Soon you may even see iTunes adopt this streaming model for music (Amazon just announced a similar technology).
All three of these technologies revolutionized their respective markets, but they did not really drastically change the way each product is marketed. For the large part, movies, music, and books are still marketed through traditional means. The shift to digital (at least for music and books) does allow a company to send consumers a link straight to download or purchase the product immediately. Additionally all three shifts allow the consumer to control the product without ever having to go to a brick-and-mortar establishment.
At the outset of each of these initiatives the main challenge facing marketers was convincing consumers of the viability of their digital product. Once the early adopters scrutinized and adopted the technology, and most importantly – gave it the thumbs-up, sales skyrocketed as it was more widely adopted by the general public.
