Category: Distribution

Digital Distribution issues

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Distribution Item of Interest

YouTube testing hybrid HTML5/Flash Embeds

YouTube testing hybrid HTML5/Flash embeds http://bit.ly/9Gxsdr

Just another data point along the way but it does seem Flash is slowly falling out of favor. Vimeo added HTML 5 support in January and pretty much every content distribution network now has support for HTML5 as well as Flash. YouTube’s owner, Google, is one of the major HTML5 proponents.

Since launching its HTML5 player, YouTube has offered a similar viewing experience on its own site, though the convenience was not carried out to embedded videos. Instead, these linked to the clip in an Adobe Flash wrapper, which mobile devices like the iPhone and Android could identify and re-route to the source clip, but browsers without that logic built-in would see nothing at all. The new code fixes that.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Media Consumption

What is my beef with advertising?

Yesterday’s post about $10 being the “magical figure” for video-on-the-web from prime sources, and I basically said that there’s no way I’d pay for a service that included advertising. I hate advertising: it’s intrusive and about 99.9976% irrelevant to my needs or interests.

I also hate advertising for another reason: it’s an economic intrusion on my life. It costs me far, far more than the benefit that Hulu – or a network – gets from advertising even though they’re charging more than they would normally get from advertising.

Here’s why. Typically a major network TV show will garner 25-65c per viewer per show. Very occasionally a top-rating, network-leading show might crack 85c per viewer per show.

Now, an “hour” long TV is is 42 – 44 minutes, not 60. The other 16-18 minutes are advertising. My time to watch those ads has a finite value and it’s not an equitable one at all.

Hulu does not have anywhere near the ad load of a Network but there’s less inventory so the same ads keep repeating in a very annoying fashion. Let’s say that there are 5 x 20 second spots in each 45 minute show. At best Hulu will be getting 65c from those five ads, more likely they’ll be getting a fraction of that, but let’s be generous.

At my charge-out hourly rate, that 2.5 minutes costs me $6.25!!! At my nominal salary rather than charge-out rate that’s still $2.79!! An average plumber would have a $3.33 opportunity cost from the advertising!

So, Hulu Plus wants to charge me $10 a month and then cost me $2.79 for every show to cover my attention to the show. Every single show I watch. Since we watch very little TV, way under 2 hours a day, that’s an additional (using the extremely generous 65c per hour show figure) $78 in revenue to Hulu Plus, although given the size of Hulu’s audience I doubt they get even 20c per viewer per hour show making that closer to $24 in advertising revenue.

But that time has cost me $334.80 for the month in attention.

And that, Hulu, is why you can’t have it both ways.

And before you all start in the comments, watching any TV is an opportunity cost. I choose to do that but I choose not to watch advertising because watching the advertising adds an additional $335 in opportunity cost to watch the advertising.

The cost to me is 4.3 to 16.5 times higher than the benefit to Hulu. I guess I’ve just convinced myself that a Hulu-like service, that I can watch on my TV and covers all programming ever made, will be worth $20 a month to me. Without advertising. With advertising it’s just too expensive.

PS, the numbers supporting advertising still don’t make sense at even more modest salaries. AT $20 an hour, the five Hulu ads still “cost” 83c up against a maximum revenue at Hulu of 65c (and more likely 20c). Monthly opportunity cost at $20 an hour is $59.40 for Hulu’s $79 down to $24 in revenue.

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Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest

Author Puts Novel Online For Free… And gets a book deal.

Author Puts Novel Online For Free… And Gets A Book Deal http://bit.ly/aS6DpH And sometimes self-publishing can lead to a deal with a major book publisher as has happened to Mac Video’s Rick Young who now publishes his Easy Guide to Final Cut Pro.

In this example, the author put her “young adult vampire novel” on document distribution site Scribd for free and the resulting publicity helped land a traditional book deal.

Now, just giving your content away for free and praying for a return isn’t going to work, but there are – according to my How to Grow and Monetize and Audience for your Independent Project seminar – 13 or 14 ways to use free distribution of content as a way of selling something else.

The rationale is that digital content is not scarce – it’s very easily reproducible for virtually nothing – then it’s hard to sell, because classic economics is based on scarcity. There are those who have tried to create artificial scarcity for digital goods, but those have generally failed badly. Where there has been success is where the infinite digital good is distributed free in order to promote something scarce: like concert tickets, merchandise and so on.

This is not that removed from traditional Record Label deals where the band makes nothing from their music but does from touring.

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Distribution Item of Interest

4K video comes to YouTube

4K video comes to YouTube http://bit.ly/bJsre3

From the Google blog:

Today at the VidCon 2010 conference, we announced support for videos shot in 4K (a reference resolution of 4096 x 3072), meaning that now we support original video resolution from 360p all the way up to 4096p. To give some perspective on the size of 4K, the ideal screen size for a 4K video is 25 feet; IMAX movies are projected through two 2k resolution projectors.

Now there’s somewhere to distribute all those RED-shot movies 🙂

Needless to say, watching 4K from YouTube is going to require a darned fast Internet connection.

Oh, and here’s the backstory from the guy who made the showcase 4K movie for YouTube’s launch today.

Categories
Business & Marketing Distribution Item of Interest Media Consumption New Media

The Lack Of A ‘Golden Ticket’ doesn’t mean you give up and go home.

The Lack Of A ‘Golden Ticket’ Business Model Doesn’t Mean You Give Up And Go Home http://bit.ly/axLkMF

Kara Swisher goes to meet with Hollywood Executives who are all looking for a Golden Ticket (Willy Wonka reference) so that they can charge the same monopoly rents they did when they (used to be) a monopoly.

Michael Masnick deconstructs Swisher’s reporting and parses it for us. This is a worthwhile read, even if a little long.

From music to movies to television, the biggest minds here still sound perplexed as to what will finally be the golden ticket to carry them through to the inevitable next era of digital distribution.

That single sentence basically describes the problem. These guys are sitting back and waiting for someone to hand them a golden ticket that replicates the old ways of doing things. That’s not how it works. No one gave the buggy whip makers a golden ticket that let them keep their old lines of business going.

The unnamed executives even ask why the customer always gets to be right. Yep, that’s how far removed they are from any sense of commercial reality. The customer is always right because there’s always someone else that will meet the customer need if you don’t. (Where is my “any program, any time, any device for a fair price” service again? There’s a customer demand for it but the old guard won’t deliver.)

Final words:

The role of the disruptor is not to make life easy for the disrupted. Swisher and these execs seem to be confusing the role of certain folks in the legacy industry with the overall entertainment industry itself. As noted, the entertainment industry is thriving. More movies, music and books are being created. More money is being spent. It’s just that it’s going to different players. There’s no reason to “figure out a way to keep talent from being dragged into the future.” The opportunities and wide open path are there. The problem isn’t that tech leaders haven’t made it easy for them. They have. It’s that these guys are so myopically focused on the way they used to make money they don’t realize that the new opportunities are already there and have been embraced widely by others.

Categories
Distribution HTML5 Item of Interest

YouTube: HTML5 Video Is No Match for Flash (Yet)

YouTube: HTML5 Video Is No Match for Flash (Yet) http://bit.ly/d48tWW

Although YouTube has been encoding to H.264 since early 2007, most distribution is via their Flash player, although they do have an HTML5 player as well. The advantages of Flash for YouTube at the moment are:

  • Live Streaming (although almost nothing on YouTube is live streaming in that sense – it’s all progressive download). What Google means is control over buffering and dynamic quality of the files it serves up.
  • Content protection for the “Premium Content” demanded by the content owners, despite all kinds of DRM being pointless (don’t work) and annoy the legitimate user.
  • Encapsulation and Embedding. Flash is definitely easier for that and has better security.
  • Fullscreen Video. Tick. HTML5 players (mostly MP4 players) do not do Fullscreen video. Not that I use it often, but it’s an important feature to have.
  • Access to Camera and Microphone for interactive experiences, something not yet possible in HTML5

On the other hand, Hulu Plus kicks Hulu’s dependence on Flash for it’s iPad/iPhone application. (In fairness, you can do pretty much all of the above when you move from plug-in or native browser support to a custom application.)

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

YouTube wins copyright case over Viacom

YouTube wins copyright case over Viacom http://tcrn.ch/aAOKqE

While i had expected Google/YouTube to prevail because the DMCA “Safe Harbor” provisions protect YouTube, I hadn’t expected a Judge to understand well enough to send the case to summary judgement before trial: no trial necessary this is really obvious.

TechCrunch summarizes well:

The fact that the judge granted YouTube’s summary motion to dismiss the case sends a clear message to media companies: live by the Millium Copyright Act, Die by the Millenium Copyright Act. The “safe harbor” provision in that Act is what protects YouTube and other Websites from being sued for the copyright infringement of their users as long as they take down infringing material.

Of course the fact that Viacom was uploading content that other parts of Viacom were having pulled down shows that not ever Viacom knows what is infringing and what is there deliberately on YouTube. And yet they expected Google to magically work it out. Even content not uploaded by Viacom could still be Fair Use and there’s no way to know that except to sort it out in the Courts.

And that’s why the Safe Harbor provisions were put in place: as long as the hosting site does not contribute directly to the infringement (nor knows about it precisely) then it’s not the hosting site’s problem.

Techdirt’s take: Huge Victory: Court rules for YouTube Against Viacom.

Categories
Apple Business & Marketing Distribution New Media Studio 2.0

How do you get Disney to fund your next production?

It seems like an odd idea at first: could you fund a production – film or ongoing series – using iAds? After all, Apple have lined up $60 million in ad spend for the second half of 2010 and that would fund a lot of independent production! But how would it work?

First off iAds go in Apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad – or they will from early next month – and are an integral part of iOS 4. Any developer can add ads to their App simply and 60% of the revenue from ads goes to the App developer (or owner). That’s $36 million that’s going to be paid out to someone, why not your independent project?

I’ve long thought that the future of programming was Apps. An App, like a website, gives a single place for everything about your project: blog, previews, special content, upcoming events, merchandising etc. The advantage of not only having a website, but wrapping it an App is that the App will be a better fan experience, and it’s easy to add in-App purchasing of digital goods.

So, create an App for your project. This App will have:

  • An area where you can read the production blog;
  • Forums and chat around your project;
  • The Twitter feed from your project;
  • Connection into your Facebook presence;
  • Previews of scenes or trailers of movies;
  • The full project, with a little in-App purchasing (or not).
  • Calendar for screenings, parties and other events around your project, including signup (filtered for just the geography of the fan if they want, thanks to GPS on most of the devices)

Having everything to do with your project in a mobile app on iPhone or iPad makes it much easier for your fans, friends and followers to stay involved and participate. Involvement will improve. (Connecting with Fans and giving them a reason to buy is a basic tenet of independent production in the digital era.) Plus fans will likely be clicking on some of those ads if they’re well targeted, bringing revenue to the project.

Plus, there a minor security advantage. There’s no download function in Mobile Safari and Apps can’t download very much. Plus there’s no way to actually get anything downloaded within an App out of the App to a computer. That means your finished, high quality version could be viewed in the iDevices without much risk of it being distributed without authorization. (Recognizing though, that it will get distributed unless you project just plain sucks!)

Who’s going to be the first to give it a try?

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest The Business of Production

Bittorrent only full of leechers?

Bittorrent only full of leeches? http://bit.ly/amlT3X Peer-to-Peer (P2P) users of bittorrent are often thought of as only leeching on honest content creators but this group have organized funding for a seven episode series. Or at least the first episode.

Interesting turn: financed, released and distributed via P2P networks.

VODO’s newest release is titled Pioneer One, a brand new 7-part TV-series that raised enough funds to film the first episode through donations from TorrentFreak readersand other supporters. Unlike traditional television, the sci-fi-ish series will debut on the Internet, on BitTorrent.

Pioneer One is an ambitious project from Josh Bernhard and Bracey Smith who have collaborated before on ‘The Lionshare’, a BitTorrent-exclusive film which was released on VODO earlier this year. With support from even more big names than before, Bernhard, who wrote the script for the TV-series, hopes that today’s release will set a new record.

Categories
Distribution Item of Interest

Scott Kirsner share his notes from Day 1 of the PGA ‘Produced By’ conference

Scott Kirsner share his notes from Day 1 of the PGA Produce By conference http://bit.ly/b0kDIH You should be following @ScottKirsner on Twitter (if  you do that) or his CinemaTech blog.

Scott’s takeaway points from the day are diverse but I’ve grabbed a couple of points that hit home to me. Go to the site and read the lot if you’re interested in distribution (and earning money) from media production in the future.

The subtext of most of the sessions I went to was this: we acknowledge that new stuff is happening and new technologies are emerging…and we know audiences want to interact with content in new ways…but it’s unclear how we’ll make anything approaching decent money in this new world.

Then follows an interesting discussion on Transmedia, particularly interesting was The Lion King:

But [Cary Granat of Bedrock Studios]mentioned an interesting transmedia example toward the end: Disney’s decision to create a Broadway version of “The Lion King.” The studio took a risk in hiring Julie Taymor to reinterpret the film, and wound up creating a stage franchise that has since surpassed the movie in revenues by playing for years in theaters the world over (at a much higher ticket price than the film, of course.)

On 3D Television:

On 3-D television broadcasts, Fox Sports exec Jerry Steinberg said, “It is still a technology in search of a business model. People will have to pay extra at home, or for theater tickets.” But Steinberg is a believer that it’ll happen: “What 3-D does for sports is recreate the experience of being in the premium seats, and we as an industry haven’t sold that yet.” He said his expectation is that 3-D TV, just like high-def, will be an 8 to 10 year transition. “We’re two years into it,” he said.

And from Scott’s own panel:

In our panel on “DIY and Hybrid Distribution,” I tossed out what I’ve found to be four essential truths of the new media world producers are living in: “Distribution is free. Choice is infinite. Demand is instant. Noise is unprecedented.” You can either develop strategies to address those shifts, or you can try to ignore them. (I’ve found that many studios and more established producers are doing the latter.)

If that latter content is of interest you’ll want to buy Scott’s Book Fans, Friends and Followers in either PDF or paperback. (I have both versions: the paperback came from the Distribution U conference, but I purchased the PDF so I cold search the printed book!)