More Diller via Udell

Looks like Jon Udell picked up on the same comment from Barry Diller about the scarcity of talent that I mentioned in the previous post. Jon Says

Doc's not yet willing to concede, and neither am I, but it wasn't until I heard Diller's remarkable statement that I finally got to the crux of the issue. Is talent scarce or abundant? If you believe that talent is scarce, as Diller does, then it's going to have to be metered, and we're headed down the DRM path for sure. If you believe that talent is relatively abundant, as Doc and I do, then you imagine a very different future where technology favors use over control.

I don't often disagree with either of those guys, but in this case I do. Here's the news.

Once upon a time, what Barry Diller thought and said, made a difference in the media landscape. He is used to controlling access to the channel and he uses the metaphor of "talent" plus his right to define and control that talent, as the field of discourse.

But it doesn't matter what Diller, or Udell, or me, or anyone says about that any more. Either he is right or he is wrong, but the experiment will be conducted without his permission or interference. If he sticks his idea of "talent" behind a DRM wall he may, probably not, but may, be able to control access to it sufficiently to make a profit.

But it is equally likely, and here I agree with Udell and the Doc, that he is wrong. His thinking is scarcity thinking, the net is about abundant production, he doesn't have the tools to think about abundance. And the risk he runs is that, in hiding his talents under a DRM bushel, we will forget they are there because we will find plenty of alternatives that are in plain sight.

But what really matters is that the experiment is under way and we will see a result.

Jon also quotes this comment by Lloyd Shepherd:

At some level, there has to be an appropriate level of control over content to make it economically feasible for people to produce it at anything like an industrial level.

I can't think of anything more irrelevant. Industrial content production only matters when the model for content production is industrial. For the greatest part of human history, content production has been communal and artisanal.

The Lascaux cave paintings and Australian Aboriginal rock paintings were were not at all industrial but totally culturally appropriate and necessary. The song and dance rituals of the Kalahari Bushmen are not ":industrial" The only point in industrial production of content is to achieve economies of scale that allow some people to profit from said production and, by forcibly excluding the rest of us from producing anything, to force us into the role of consumers of content.

The net has demonstrated in spades that we find no redeeming value in being couch potatoes and a great deal of value in producing our own damned content. Some of that content may be very attractive and many people will want to experience it, like the Chevy Tahoe ads, or Numa Numa or whatever. But there is no, repeat NO, financial value to be gained from the production.

There is a great deal of social capital generated that can become economic value in may ways. If you want the crudest measure of that, when I stay with a blogging mate in my travels I gain some economic value in not having to pay for a hotel, and vice versa.

But the industrial production of anything has no inherent value at all. None.

Meanwhile back in the industrial content production world comes this little gem.

James Blunt and Robbie Williams' albums have gone five-times platinum, say the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI). Blunt's debut album Back to Bedlam passed the five million mark across Europe and continues to sell well. Williams also gained a fifth platinum level for European sales for his latest album Intensive Care.

Plainly the BBC is lying through its teeth. As we all know, the Internet and illegal file sharing is killing the music business. Could it be that artists who produce attractive, enjoyable music and develop string fan bases can still sell many albums? Surely not, they are all being ripped off.

Or is it that the industrial production of content mostly generates crap that is not worth paying for?

Comments

[Fazal Majid]

It's not industrial production of content that produces junk, it's publishers' conviction that any crap will sell if marketed deftly enough. If you look at the commercial success of Britnet Spears, who could blame them for entertaining such a belief?

Of course, that situation is not sustainable, as is becoming abundantly clear, fatigue eventually sets in. Independent labels that actually respect their customers have no problems finding genuine talent and making profits, if not on the grandiose scale needed to support a Diller.

[Fazal Majid]

BTW, the star system is nothing new. If this article is to be believed, contrary to popular conceptions, Mozart raked in the dough, and only died broke because he had a gambling problem:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Arts/mozart/story/0,,1747041,00.html?gusrc=rss

[Earl Mardle]

Completely agree, but Mozart was a prolific artisan, not an industrial producer.

And lets face it, stars live on the very edge at the best of times, sometimes for all the wrong reasons.

How he blew it isn't to the point, how he made it is and Mozart made it the straight way as far as I can see.

Salieri notwithstanding.