|
|
|
|
|
|
by snowwrestler
2074 days ago
|
|
|
There's a lot of judging in this comment that makes me uncomfortable ("think of them as a different species" has a very nasty history in human society). But what you're talking about is essentially the innovator's dilemma. Following the available data can lead to short-term optimizations, but also getting caught in a local minima. The silver lining is that this creates room for new competitors who can skip around that neighborhood in the business model and find a new kind of success. So my question is the same whenever this sort of criticism comes up: if the current companies are screwing up so badly, who are the innovators that will go around those mistakes and out-compete them? |
|
|
> If the current companies are screwing up so badly, who are the innovators that will go around those mistakes and out-compete them?
I mentioned this upthread, but in a nutshell: Amazon turned the book industry on its head by offering 70% royalties directly to indie authors, cutting out middlemen (i.e. traditional publishers and literary agencies). That happened in late 2009, and it unleashed a gold rush which is still in full swing. Traditional publishers still exist, and they still dominate the print industry (due to the huge expenses involved in print runs and print retail shelf space), but they have lost a lot of control over ebooks and audiobooks.
70% is more than artists get from art galleries, and it's more than musicians get from record labels. It's unheard of in the arts. And it was a very savvy move by Jeff Bezos. It changed the dynamics of that whole industry.
If Google/YouTube or some other major distributor of film (such as Netflix, or some new start-up) offers a large platform of viewers, plus that royalty rate for an incentive, then we are guaranteed to see a film Renaissance.
I hope it happens.
I think that socioeconomic forces being what they are, it is unlikely to happen any time soon. These days, awesome startups are likely to be bought by mega-conglomerates, and any visionary ideas they have will die beneath the weight of committee thinking.