On-demand Media

Content, downloading and experience (3)

More thoughts in reaction to Jeff Jarvis' post about mine and the comments that followed it, this time from a more philosophical angle.

The more I think about it, the more I think that content is chiefly a legal construct. By this I mean no moral--lots of 'constructed' things exist, or at least survive, thanks to laws--including countries, marriage, etc. Social institutions like these fade into the background as we learn to take them for granted, becoming part of our common sense. There is no point in criticising institutions simply because they are 'constructed' (what isn't?); but when their underpinnings become vulnerable (in this case, the difficulty of copying content) interesting things happen. Again, I claim no originality in this.

The key thing to keep in mind, I think, is that what is important about institutions is the practices that they enable; without these the institutions are meaningless (you could even say that they are the same thing). The practices enabled by content are at least two: it allows content owners to make deals with consumers and with each other; and it allows consumers to play back content they 'own' whenever they want (provided the content and the devices are handy).

Recent technological changes mean that content owners have less control over what consumers can do. But they don't mean that the consumer practices are going away (although they will change). The challenge for content owners is to reinterpret their consumer propositions not in terms of content units but in terms of the consumer practices that they enable. And (see my previous post) I propose that there is still a market for that.

Content, downloading and experience (2)

Many thanks to Jeff Jarvis for his comments about my previous post, and to all the people who followed  up on his blog. Lots of food for thought.

The (alleged) strategy by Apple that Tim Windsor mentions, if true, is very interesting. The model sounds similar to those of Streamload and the original mp3.com, but Apple may be able to pull it off. If does take off, there is no reason why others couldn't adopt similar models--i.e. different ways of allowing users to play the content they 'own' over the net. Nothing says that these services need to be offered by the same people who sell content to consumers (any lawyers out there who could confirm this?)

If I can prove to you that I own a piece of content (i.e. that I have a perpetual licence to play it back) then you could offer to play it to me at my leisure for a small fee, or in exchange for a bit of attention. I might even appreciate a bit of advertising: if for every 20 songs I play from my collection you add one that I like, we both win: you might get to sell me some content (I might want to 'own' what I just heard, so I can play it whenever I want), and I get to learn about new music.

There's only one snag: how do I prove to you (so that you can prove to content owners) that I own all the content I claim to have? Maybe I could ship you all my CDs, but that is cumbersome and few people will do it. If satisfactory ways of doing this are developed, then legally certifiable lists of content owned by consumers will become an essential commodity. If no such means are developed, these lists will be strategic differentiators. Thanks to iTunes, Apple will have some good lists. They are by no means exhaustive, but they are a good start.

Content, downloading and experience

Bill Gates says that CDs and DVDs will be the last physical form of media. I'll go further and say: soon consumers won't even be caring about owning files.

Owning files is a way of owning content, and sure we like to feel we own things. But what we really care about is experiences and practices; and as I've hinted before, things only serve us (indeed, they only exist) inasmuch as they let us engage in practices, i.e. do things. (I claim no originality in this).

What does owning media let you do? It lets you play what you 'own' whenever you want, provided you have the right devices, the media is handy, etc.

Now what if someone came and offered you a way to carry on with your practice, i.e. to be able to play what you 'own' whenever you want, in perpetuity, without having to worry about downloading, synching, or copying files (or worrying about physical media, of course)?

The strength of the iPod/iTunes combination is not that it lets you download the files you want -- it is that it lets you purchase the right to engage in a practice (that of listening to a CD you 'own') easily and conveniently.

But of course there are a myriad other ways of doing that. Bandwidth is cheap. Broadband is ubiquitous. What counts is the practice, not the thing.

Content unbundling

A few weeks ago I discovered Terry Heaton's deeply insightful Pomo Blog, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the subjects I discuss here. Through occasional essays and frequent examples, Terry provides what to my knowledge is the best articulation of a notion that has been haunting media executives for some time.

Terry's notion is that of content 'unbundling', which in a nutshell refers to the ways in which consumers are accessing individual units of content (movies, songs, music clips, news clips, etc) in isolation, without caring for --or without even being aware of-- the contexts in which media owners have published them. His key point is that users consume what they want, when and where they want it; and that those whose business models (e.g. television) rely on dictating what should be consumed, or when, or where, are fighting a loosing battle. This is just a poor summary of Terry's arguments; interested readers should read this essay.

There is much that is true and useful in this view, and media executives would be well advised to take it seriously. But, as those who are familiar with my blog will expect, I see some problems with this account. These are, first, that it treats the notion of 'what consumers want' uncritically; and second, that it treats 'content' in an abstract way, without consideration for the overall experiences that content enables.

To begin with the first point: I can accept that, armed with new technologies, consumers are becoming less patient with media that won't give them what they want, when they want it. But this assumes that there is something that consumers want in the first place, which leads to the question of how they first learn that a given piece of content exists. As I argued in my (admittedly obscure) first post, this initial awareness is generally triggered by the consumption of 'aggregates': trusted, authored, always-changing forms of content whose main role is to link to further content; they act as destinations and are consumed with an open mind, without any desire other than to know 'what's on'. Examples include newspapers, TV channels, web portals, and, yes, RSS feeds. More diluted (but no less important) cases include all the links (whether 'hyper' or not) by which a piece of content refers to another: advertisements on web pages or TV channels, links in essays, references in articles, albums or books in critics' reviews, etc. Mentions in informal conversations are also examples, but these are usually preceded by a media-based aggregate. Aggregates, unlike linear content like movies or songs, rely on habit: users go to them as a matter of routine. (There are, admittedly, some cases that this account has trouble dealing with, including search and purely viral marketing--if the latter exists at all).

Aggregates have a social role. They are not just handy ways of getting to desirable content; they are also social currency. We read newspapers not just to know about events, but also to know what everybody else is reading (i.e. to be 'an informed member of society'); we read trade publications not only to know useful facts but also to be 'in the loop' about an industry; teenage girls read Seventeen largely because their friends do. Terry's argument sees the role of community as limited to buzz--e.g. sending URLs to friends--which is an important but limited account of the social aspects of content consumption.

As to the second point: In the web at least, consumers rarely start their journey with a clear notion of what they want (although that is certainly the case when they search for something they saw on TV or heard from a friend, which are important scenarios). Often, they 'surf' through aggregates before arriving at any form of linear content (i.e. content whose primary purpose it not to link to more content). And when they eventually do get to some linear content, this tends to be short; successful text and video formats on the web only take a few minutes to consume, after which users move on. Terry mentions Comedy Central's Motherload as a case of unbundled content, which is actually the opposite: it, just like MTV's Overdrive, Nickelodeon's Turbonick, and the video players by CNN and CBS (to name just a few) is just a new form of aggregate.

What users consume, and what is the real content, is the overall experience, one that includes some clips, some menus, some text pages, etc. It is this fact that content owners need to acknowledge (and are acknowledging). Content is just part of the media experience; it is an enabler. Nobody will want an experience devoid of good content; but, conversely, good content without a satisfying, habitual experience won't do either. I may be able to go to BitTorrent, download the latest episode of Lost, wait a few hours and watch it in my laptop, alone--but that is hardly good television.

Terry is right when he says that today's consumers have more of a say in the overall experience they consume (because the experience is an interactive one, and because nobody can force a consumer to stay in one web property); that when consumers know what they want (and want it badly enough) they will just get it; and that in a world of extreme fragmentation the loud voices of mainstream media will become softer.

But none of this is to say that the broadcast model of giving audiences a short list of recommended options within a compelling social experience will disappear. It is to say that media will have to adapt: linear, non-inteactive media will have to focus on what it does best, which is providing socially-shared compelling experiences, and not just delivering content--which audiences can get in other ways. On-demand media will need to learn (and is learning) that their audiences are not just search-engine addicts in search of content or information, but social beings in search of identity and a good time.

Content precedes media

In the latest Supernova report Kevin Werbach makes some interesting points about Internet TV:

The Internet won't completely replace television as we know it. Instead, it will mutate and extend it. [...] At some point, thanks to VOIP, most of the voice conversations we engage in across the network won't be phone calls. (That's at least part of what eBay/Skype is about.) Similarly, most of the video content we watch won't be television. Those traditional forms will still be around, but they will become specialized, much like radio after the emergence of television.

In an earlier post I argued that what we know today as content won't be around in the future, because new media will reshape what we know as content. But I also argued, in agreement with Kevin, that much of Internet TV's content will be a mutation of today's, simply because we like what we have today--i.e. that content will precede the medium.

In their deeply insightful book Remediation, David Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin argue that all successful media (which at some point have all been 'new') have started by repackaging existing content that was made for older media; i.e., they start as humble 'delivery mechanisms' for content which they don't question, and only later do new forms emerge. Their claim is more powerful than mine, as it applies to all media and not just television and the internet.

Bolter and Grusin's claim dovetails nicely with an argument I made in an earlier post: products are practices, which we learn socially; and all we ever do in life is engage in practices that we have learned before (the latter is of course a view which I have borrowed from a venerable philosophical tradition). Of course new practices can emerge--otherwise there will never be any new products--but they can do this only by relying on, and then mutating, existing practices.

I thoroughly recommend Remediation to anyone with an interest in these matters.

Media precede content

Ever since Chris Anderson's seminal Long Tail article, the media industry has been slowly developing an anxiety about a future in which the pillars of today's status quo will disappear. Although the concern is justified, much of that is being said needs to be tempered.

The buzz

The thinking doing the rounds (which is not wholly due to the Long Tail article) is more or less as follows:

At the base of the edifice that is television there is a technological basis. The two basic pillars of (i) limited spectrum and (ii) liveness mean that (a) there is a limited number of channels; (b) only twenty-four hours of content can be published per day in each channel; (c) content without broad appeal is a misuse of scarce resources; and (d) consumers can only watch content at the times it is scheduled by channels. The rest of the edifice (i.e. the industry, the genres, the audiences) is fundamentally shaped by this technological basis.

Now, the main characteristic of Internet TV (at least in the long term, once issues of bandwidth have disappeared) is that it does away with the two pillars (i) and (ii) above: there is no limit to the number of live 'channels' there can be, and on-demand makes the concept of a live channel just one of many ways of consuming content.

A limited view

The argument so far is simply a statement of fact and is one that I've echoed before. Where the common view falls down is on the steps it takes after this, and on the assumptions that they involve. According to it:

• Television is primarily a way of delivering content

• What TV audiences do is consume content

• Consumers know what content they want; give them what they want at a time of their choice and they will prefer that any day to the archaic practice of watching television

This being so, the future, it is claimed, will be one in which audiences will watch 'whatever they like': if I want to watch Desperate Housewives I'll be able to watch as much of it as I like; if I want to watch niche content there'll be that too. Gatekeepers will disappear in the face of an 'empowered' audience that is not prepared to be told what to watch, or when, or where.

Although strictly speaking the claims above may well be true, they have only limited value because at bottom they treat the concept of 'content' in an unsophisticated, unproblematic way.

Content presupposes media

'Content' as we know it presupposes a media industry based on certain technologies. Desperate housewives is made of 45-minute episodes partly because it needs to be placed on a prime-time schedule which it needs to share with other programmes that go before and after it. Further, the show is designed to appeal to a certain demographic, which it seeks to monopolise while the show is on air (i.e. it seeks to 'maximise audience share'); and because it airs at a time of shared viewing (a practice that relies on the physical shape and placement of TV sets in households), it needs to be of interest to both men and women.

If you take away the institution of television (schedules, channels, mass reach, etc), content as we know it disappears. But because we like our content, there will always be a demand for it. So it will always be around, at least in some form.

But it is not so simple. As channels multiply into their millions and content becomes available on-demand, audience share will be difficult to guarantee and it will become hard to secure funding for high-quality productions. And without the constraints of schedules there will be no hard reason for maintaining today's formats such as the 45-minute sitcom.

The future is not just about more ways of accesing content. It is also about a reinvention of content. At one end there will be high-quality, expensive productions with massive reach; these will rely on a new breed of gatekeepers who won't rely on a monopoly of attention control (see my earlier post about this). At the other end there will be niche, low-cost productions aimed at tiny audiences. Nowhere will content be what it is today. Our dream of unlimited access to the content we like today will never come true, because content will be something else.

Update 26/10: Of course many content producers are fullly aware of this. See here and here.

More on 'content'

Last week I wrote a post about the concept of 'content': I argued that while the concept has its uses (especially within the media industry), it is not always useful when designing consumer propositions. After some more thought, some reading and some good conversations, here is a different take on the same idea:

• First: We never want things (e.g. a burger); we want to do things (e.g. eat a burger). Products are not things, they are practices.

• Second: We rarely want to do something we've never done before--because, without the experience, we can't imagine the satisfaction. We want to do things we've done before, or which in some sense are of the same kind as something we've done before.

• Third: On the rare occarions when we do something that is entirely new (and this is never completely so) we are distracted by the oddity of the situation and have trouble noticing anything else.

• Fourth: Because our desires are for actions and not for things, they are always specific and rooted in some context. I don't just want to eat a burger: I want to eat a nice greasy burger in Barbella, or at home watching TV, with my girlfriend. This is desirable because I've done it before, or I've done something similar which makes this prospect desirable.

• Fifth: our desired actions always involve a desired mood, and this is never just a generic sense of 'happiness' or 'satisfaction': it is based on a mood we've experienced before.

Now apply this to media consumption:

I never want a movie: I want to watch something exciting, over a beer, because I'll be on my own. I don't want to watch it on my mobile phone, commuting, or at a desk.

I never want 'information': I want to read the Independent, on my way to work, while sipping coffee. I have the habit of doing this, and more generally I have the practice of reading newspapers. As a child I didn't; I learned it from others (all tastes are 'acquired').

As consumers we sometimes forget all this and think that the 'content' is what we want. Thus we find ourselves watching movies on mobile phones, or reading newspapers on PDAs. But once the novelty wears off, we realise that the experience is not the same. The new way of 'accesing' content is a whole new practice which we may or may not learn to enjoy; and even if we do, it may or may not replace the old one.

Addmittedly, this applies better to some types of content than to others. 'Informational' content is generally less sensitive to moods. A stock trader just needs his information delivered in a timely and convenient fashion so he can do his work; how this delivery happens is secondary there. But experience and mood is important for some informational genres: news consumption, for example, is largely about mood: feeling 'in the loop', 'connected' to a live presenter, not being 'in the dark', etc.

To say that the challenge in the on-demand world is to make content available anywhere and anytime, --without regard for the experiences in which consumption takes place, or the traditions within which these experiences exist-- is akin to saying that in the future food will be delivered via intravenous injection and tablets. To be sure, some people do need intravenous injection, and vitamin tablets are widely used as a supplement to meals. Likewise, chemically pure, disembodied information will always have some role (e.g. a breaking-news alert on a mobile phone, or a stock-market ticker), but to say that this will be the character of media consumption would be to extrapolate wildly.

The design challenge in the on-demand world is not to devise new ways of delivering or finding content. It is to design new practices that are not possible in linear media. These will involve old-style linear content, new types of content, and new ways of putting it all together (i.e. aggregates) that will themselves be forms of content.

Is 'content' a useful concept?

An interesting meme has been doing the rounds in the blogosphere over the last two weeks. It was started by Jeff Jarvis, and at its core is the idea that controlling (i.e. producing or distributing) content is not as important as the media industry likes to think. Jarvis' argument is about the emergence of user-generated content, citizen journalism, the demise of old mainstream media, and the importance of what many call the 'conversation' among readers who are also writers.

This discussion gives me a context to write about something I've been pondering for some time. I should confess at the outset that this is not something I've thought through; it is admittedly half-baked. However, rather than thinking about it on my own, a friend advised me to post about it and hopefully start a conversation that will help me get my thoughts in order.

I will start with some claims, some of which I can substantiate, and some of which are no more than intuitions. Some of them may sound outlandish. I ask readers to give me the benefit of the doubt, fill in the blanks, avoid picking obvious holes, and see if what I have to say resonates with their experience.

***

Perhaps what is happening with content is not that it is becoming less important. Perhaps the problem is that the concept of content is nearing the end of its useful lifetime.

I am not claiming that 'content' does not exist. 'Content' is a case of what John Searle calls a 'social fact': laws and contracts are written in terms of it, and anybody who refuses to acknowledge that something has been 'transmitted' when, say, a song is downloaded does so at her peril. Content is an objective reality.

The concept begins to break down, however, when the media industry assumes that what audiences do is consume content, and build new-media products accordingly. With exceptions (and admittedly there are many), audiences don't operate in terms of content.

Audiences don't 'seek' something that they eventually 'find'.  They engage in media practices, jumping from one to the next in a seamless dance, a dance that is enabled by what the media call 'content' but whose basic distinctions are not those of content units. I turn on the television, find something I want to watch (which is not the same as saying 'something I like', like a cat that likes Whiskas), then flow on to something else, perhaps after using my remote control. I open the newspaper, browse the headlines, find myself reading something in some depth, then browse again.

The idea that what audiences do is consume content is rooted in theories of consumer behavior according to which consumers make choices that maximize their utility. The idea is one of individuals engaged in  purposeful action: a process that starts with the desire for a satisfaction (i.e. utility), is then followed by actions intended to attain it, and (ideally) culminates with the desired satisfaction itself.

All of this is certainly involved in media experiences. It is, e.g., a fair description of what happens when I decide to go to the local video shop to get a movie. It may also be what happens when, after browsing the headlines, I decide to read a newspaper article. But does it fully describe my experience of going over the newspaper as a whole as part of my commute? I think not.

You could argue that, in the newpaper case, the undirected browsing is part of the satisfaction I seek when I decide to buy the paper on my way to work. Again this is true, but accepting it and stopping here would miss the point.

My point is that much of our satisfaction comes not from the transactions themselves, but from the moments in between transactions: from the headline-browsing before reading, or from the channel-flicking before settling on a programme.

But this is not very well put. It is not simply that media experiences are composed of an alternating series of moments, some of which are about choosing and some about consuming. It is the entire experience as a whole, with its several transactions, satisfactions and frustrations, that is itself satisfactory (or not). As consumers we are rarely aware of this, and we tend to think that all that matters are the transactions we engage in.

***

To describe the media experience as consumers who start with a want (even if only a vague desire) that they then set out to fulful misses out the crucial question of where media wants come from. Taken to its naive extreme, the view assumes that wants are formed in a vacuum, possibly outside media. But this is not the case. Media wants are not basic psychological givens; they are formed within socially learned practices, in which media play a large role.

You could say that wants are formed through promotion, which, although relying on media, happens in moments and contexts (e.g. advertisements) that are different from those in which consumers make choices in an on-demand-media experience. While this is a fair point about some types of media (e.g. blockbuster movies), it applies much less clearly to the serendipitous, casual choices of miscellaneous content that consumers make when reading the news, surfing the web, flicking channels on the TV, or reading an advertisement.

Up to a point, on-demand media could be indifferent to this, relying on factors outside it to condition audiences' wants. But in a world where recommendation and consumption are only a click away this is not a sustainable proposition.

***

In summary: audiences don't consume content: they dance through media, stepping on various pieces of content, but their main concern is to have a dance that is satisfactory overall. It is this that audiences pay for, not the content it relies on.

It is those who can enable this dance that will be handsomely rewarded, not only by users, but also through the power that comes from having a say in the serendipitous choices that consumers are presented (e.g. advertisements, promotions, and generally being able to set the agenda). Delivering this is not easy: users who know what they want should not be detained, and the dance's key rule --relevance-- must be observed at all costs, even if this means loosing out on a transaction or two. But, as is increasingly becoming clear, these are not insurmountable obstacles.

[I've written about related subjects in a somewhat different context. See this.]