Content – Liberated
The recent rise-and-rise of Spotify indicates one thing to me: the liberation of content. What do I mean by that? I mean owning digital stuff on “hard” physical media that we can reach out and touch, and put in our bags, is on the way out.
Actually owning the hard drive that the data is stored on, or the DVD/Blue-Ray/CD/SD will be very early2000′s. A friend of mine, not long out of college, has never, and will probably never, buy a CD or a DVD. I still buy DVDs, but only because the alternative (movies-on-demand) doesn’t always offer the movies I actually want to see. When I get home and unpack the disc, it’s a pain to actually get it up and running (made worse by having lost the DVD remote control). I hate it, and the moment someone releases a competent iTunes for movies (aside from Sky, which I can’t get where I am), I’ll buy it.
So, my predictions are:
- Spotify will do well until iTunes “liberates” their music
- Music, Movies and Images will (and are) be the first content to be stored remotely to the user
- Blue-Ray was a (very expensive and late) last-step in circular spinning discs
- Cloud computing WILL take off, although storage for some time will be with “trusted” providers rather than just “out there somewhere”
- The change will take longer than we hope, but less time than we expect (answers on a postcard if that makes sense)
