Abstract
Time for a New Approach
- Linear and Non-linear Distribution
- DRM and DRM-free: Limitations
- Other Considerations
- New Distribution Paradigm: DMM
- Technological Approach
- Enabled Business Models
The music industry is at a strategic crossroads and desperately needs a
long-term solution to the problem of digital distribution. It is becoming
increasingly clear that the industry' s current implementation of DRM is
causing at least as many problems as it solves while the alternative approach
of supplying raw, unprotected MP3s, could severely damage the industry' s
commercial potential in the long term.
This report proposes a radically different approach which is based on
harnessing the desire that ordinary users have to copy and share music in an
unpredictable way on a mass scale.
This new approach would be based on a new category of technology, Digital
Media Management (DMM), that would convert user-driven copying and sharing
into a new, zero-cost distribution channel for digital content. Individual
items of content and the subsequent copies could be easily associated with an
arbitrary range of business models based on Web 2.0 concepts.
DMM technology would allow an arbitrary webservice to be delivered using the
media file as the delivery vehicle. Because the files themselves, or links to
them, could be freely shared between users, digital content files would
represent a new and powerful distribution channel for webservices.
DMM is different to Digital Rights Management (DRM). While DRM technology
enables content monetisation through protection and enforcement, DMM
technology would enable content monetisation through sharing and copying.
The report contains a detailed explanation of the technological approach that
would be required to implement DMM. The report also contains numerous examples
of the business models that would be enabled by DMM, as well as completely new
categories of business model that are currently impossible, but would be
enabled by DMM.
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