Is It The End For Content Business?

Mar 22, 2007

I was just now reading this interesting post titled Is Content Still A Business where the author refers to the dropping CD sales to claim that the business of content production is increasingly becoming less profitable. I think it depends on what you call content and how you market/sell it.

Content is not what you write, or what you publish and produce. Content is what people absorb, what they assimilate, what sort of pleasure or philosophy they derive. That’s content. And as long as you have this content and the will to legitimately sell it, content is always going to remain good business. How you sell content is very crucial, and the above-mentioned post has a valid point:

You could argue that the most striking consequence of digitizing media and distributing it online is that all content is now available in a discrete, granual form. Music file. Article page. Video clip. Podcast. Photo. There are very few places on the web that require you to buy a whole package in order to get one item.

And this is followed by

How many CDs have you bought for just one song? How many magazines have you bought just to read one article? How many cable channels do you subscribe to in order to watch just one channel? How many radio stations have you kept on in the car because you heard one song that you liked? How many newspapers have you bought just to read one section?

The media business has always been about selling you content that you don’t really want by stapling it (literally or figuratively) to the content that you do want. The digitization of media on the network has obliterated this model. What if music is just the canary in the coal mine?

This represents the overall problem of companies and individuals trying to sell content. There is no personalization. You have to buy a package of say, 20 items, even if you like just one item in there. So the problem is not about the content, it’s about packaging, it’s about the needless expense. Give people what they want and they’ll buy it even if they have to pay extra. Why not let people create their own CDs and their on packages of cable channels? I think it’s much better with books. If you want to buy a certain author or a title, you can straightaway do it and that is why, although many books are available online for free downloads, people prefer to buy the paper books (personally I prefer digital books because trees are not cut to produce them).

As more and more devices get connected to the Internet or the cable grids, consumers will have to pay a lot less because they won’t be paying for things they don’t want.

Having said that, going by the amount of work I’m getting these days, the business of written content should be flourishing. There has been an increase of I think 200%-300% as more and more businesses understand the need to get professional content written for their websites.

As long as there is choice, and as long as there is quality, content is always going to be good business.

Technorati Tags: content publishing, content business, content writing

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Is It The End For Content Business?”

Chris Webb
March 22nd, 2007 at 3:12 pm
Good points. This is very much inline with a post I made recently on my publishing blog concering “bite-sized” content. We publishers need to start looking at how to provide this type of content to the new “snack culture.”

http://www.ckwebb.com/books/snack-culture-in-wired-magazine/
Kian Ann
March 22nd, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Hey Amrit,

I think so too - the amount of content in this world will just keep increasing and increasing and definitely content is a good business.

Actually, it is not “content” in the sense, that is good business, but what the content does - whether is it entertain, inform, or inspire.
Amrit
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:36 am
Hi Kian. It is unfortunate that people these days put more emphasis on producing content rather than taking care that it is good. Whenever I see old movies, listen to old songs or even when I read the classical literature I feel so overwhelmed by the kind of effort those guys and girls used to put in. That passion is lacking these days and that’s why sometimes it seems people don’t want to pay for content.
Amrit
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:42 am
Hi Chris. Thanks for sharing the link. Personally I don’t enjoy bite-sized content — my life, no matter how busy I remain, slows down when I read or view content. I like reading thick books and watching long movies :-).
tyroblogworm
March 24th, 2007 at 1:51 am
Amrit, there is so much content today that when i search for a topic i get 100s of articles on it. mostly similar but striking opinions, i guess this is what blogging is about. good content aggregation is the need of the hour….
Amrit
March 24th, 2007 at 6:11 am
Hi Tyro. Yes, I agree, if you look around you can find lots of stuff, and often repetitive, that’s where there can be value for uniqueness.