Has Streaming Music Been Sneeking Up On You?
George Howard, the former president of Rykodisc and author of the 9GiantSteps blog, has posted his first entry over at Music Think Tank. In it, Howard argues that streaming music and video has stuck up on most people. That they may have enormous collections and be loyal to physical mediums yet slowly, but surely, they have started to stream more and more. To the point where their precious artifacts of yesteryear are even collecting dust bunnies.
The thing is technological and cultural shifts are much, much more subtle than we could’ve imagined. While we as humans tend to think in terms of that moment where something profound happens and suddenly, now we’re different. That’s often not how change happens. It’s very gradual. And, for the most part, we don’t notice how our perspectives have shifted. Howard says that the move from physical mediums to streaming will be less painful than some might think:
"The transition has been relatively gradual, you probably haven’t noticed that this radical behavioral and technological change has occurred. You haven’t noticed because it hasn’t hurt; in fact it’s felt good. There are opportunities here. For content creators, the sooner you reconcile the fact most people aren’t likely going to want to own a digital copy of your music/movie/tv show/book (let alone a CD, etc.), the sooner you can devise profitable streaming models." (Read the rest.)
George Howard, the former president of Rykodisc and author of the 9GiantSteps blog, has posted his first entry over at Music Think Tank. In it, Howard argues that streaming music and video has stuck up on most people. That they may have enormous collections and be loyal to physical mediums yet slowly, but surely, they have started to stream more and more. To the point where their precious artifacts of yesteryear are even collecting dust. The thing is technological and cultural shifts are much, much more subtle than we could’ve imagined. While we as humans tend to think in terms of that moment where something profound happens and suddenly, now we’re different. That’s often not how change happens. It’s very gradual. And, for the most part, we don’t notice how our perspectives shift. Howard says that the move from physical mediums to streaming will be less painful than we think; there will be tons of opportunities too:
