Music industry watch
Pixar and Disney: The breakthrough we've been waiting for?
The music industry has been in a death-spiral for the last 10 years and we all know it. Every day it gets more painful to watch -- to the point where I hardly muse about the demise of the music industry anymore.
But, with talk of Pixar being sold to Disney the entertainment industry may be just around the corner from a revolution that's been needed for... about 10 years now. The current stalemate of the RIAA/MPAA constantly suing their customers and trying to ram-rod more DRM down our throats is only going to open the door for an open music industry to spring up and take its place.
The only other hope I have is that one company gets wise and opens up their content and starts licensing it to anyone who comes along. This one company is going to make money hand over fist and put the other companies into a serious bind. The other companies will then have two choices -- open up and compete, or stay closed and perish.
If Steve Jobs ends up on the board of Disney, there is a real possibility that this will happen:
"Jobs would bring a great addition to the Disney board that is not very tech savvy ... but the Disney guys are thinking about this (digital distribution) already."
(I'd almost say that already is already too late, but thats another topic)
Jobs has the strength of character to get the board of Disney to realize their mistakes -- either he will destroy Disney if they don't go along, or he'll turn them around and lead the company into licensing their catalog to everyone. Of course, this won't happen overnight, but I think there is now a very real chance that we'll see a significant change in the industry in the next 5 years.
Technorati Tags: disney, pixar
Posted by Mayhem at January 20, 2006 08:04 PM
You think having Jobs at the helm will help openness? Sure, it would increase electronic distribution of paid-for content, but ask yourself this: How many companies have been able to license Apple's Fair Play DRM model?
Zero. And not for lack of trying...
Apple doesn't want anyone else to play their game. I bet Disney wouldn't either.
Well, there are two layers of open-ness:
1. The actual content going out to consumers -- FairPlay limits this.
2. Opening content archives for non-idiotic licensing.
I think Jobs being on the board of Disney has the power to do #2. As far as #1 is concerned -- that's almost another issue entirely. Jobs will need to have the dominiant iTunes/iPod position threatened before something will happen on that front. I think its only a matter of time, but I think we may see #2 pushing #1 in the future.
