Spearhead wrote:
It'd be interesting to see a study on digital age piracy and it's effect on the actual content of media.
Hmm...
Looking back the past decade, I have a feeling that Web 2.0 and the rise of all the social networks killed the music industry.
In the past, people listened to the billboard charts and watched MTV to see what's hip and new to go and buy, bundled with tons of advertisements in those media.
Later, all this was transferred to the internet with new media like MySpace, YouTube and Facebook, were you (semi-)actively look what hip and new.
Only this time, with much, much less advertisement opportunities for big companies to force-feed you the newest hip stuff.
(Personally, I haven't seen any advertisements at all since 2006 and AdBlock for Firefox.)
The old marketing schemes simply don't work on the internet anymore. (Or quite differently and much more difficult to prospect.)
The most important thing though, is, that people broadened their interests, they found much more variety, thus the market shares of the big companies started to drastically spread all around.
Piracy is only a minor factor in this calculation, although one that you can relatively easy sue with ridiculous law suits.
It's much harder to sue YouTube and Facebook for becoming the new hip thing.
