Studios need to become fileswappers

By Televisionlight

Fileswapping has changed the way we look at TV shows, movies and music. When was the last time you bought a CD? Or bought a movie on DVD? Entertainment has changed. Acquiring it is no longer a physical transaction. Efforts to stamp out filesharing have so far failed to stem the flow of P2P traffic.

Consumers have less disposable income nowadays. Staying in is the new going out but they are less likely to splash out and buy DVDs. Even the rental market is being pinched. So what are they watching and more importantly where are they getting it from? Hello, Mr P2P.

Instead of studios and music companies trying to stamp it out, wouldn’t be interesting if they jumped aboard?

Fileswapping brings nothing but pain for content owners, by adopting its method of content delivery and hosting monetised files, studios and music companies could realise a measure of advertising revenue and promotional momentum.

Content Delivery – A Risky Proposition?

The first studio that adopts filesharing for content distribution will make a killing. Why not use the muscle of filesharing? Millions of fileswappers offer a free distribution channel for studios. Hosting and bandwidth cost – zero! There’s not a single red cent of cost to the studio.

Spending massive buckets of money upfront on building content delivery networks is a boon to hardware manufacturers, but entails massive financial risk to the studio. Studios should be adding capacity to these networks. They should, of course, host only their content. In a climate where every penny matters, piloting this now makes sense.

Smart Watermarking

So where is there money to be made? Commercials are a no-no, but how about advertising watermarking the TV show or movie with icons like channel logos. TV watchers and web users are well-used to seeing.

Of course, the Devil is in the details. Execution on tasteful watermarking would be important factor. Make the watermarks too busy and people will switch off. Next time they choose to download content it will be ripped straight from the TV. The design of advertising watermarks should be muted and add to the frame rather than attract attention away from the action.

Perhaps the studios could develop a way of watermarking frames in the file so that they dynamically change based on show and geographical location. Say I’m living in Dublin, perhaps the encoded file I download could have a payload that knows from my IP address I’m located and applies a localised advertising watermark to the file I’ve downloaded.

360• Advertising and Interactivity

Advertisers could be offered 360 deals on the portals that the studio host for indexing torrent files. Advertising banners, quality sponsored content and watermarks. Extra content in and around the making of could be offered too. Studios could encourage and/or contractually oblige cast and crew members to blog and video blog to build up a bank of exclusive content and interactivity.

An Enhanced Offering

Given that the studios have the content on tap, they could provide multiple formats for viewers to download.  Encoding aimed to optimise sound and visuals on each format ready-made for dropping on your computer, phone or tablet for viewing is an easy target for the studio to meet. The more ready-to-eat they make content, the faster users will move to their bank of torrented files.

To The Future

Instead of fighting the strengths of torrenting, studios need to adopt these principals swallow them as methods of connecting with viewers. The days of slash and sue are numbered. The studios know this. The sooner they jump ship onto serious content delivery, the sooner they realise that they are really just an advertising company.

April 9th, 2009 at 8:13 pm • Filed in Business, Geekery



Comments

2 Comments to “Studios need to become fileswappers”

  1. james Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 10:38 pm

    The first studio that adopts filesharing for content distribution will make a killing. Why not use the muscle of filesharing? Millions of fileswappers offer a free distribution channel for studios. Hosting and bandwidth cost – zero! There’s not a single red cent of cost to the studio.

    Already been done and failed – remember bittorrent.com?



  2. Alexia Says:
    April 9th, 2009 at 10:51 pm

    Sure, BT did partner up with content companies but those same companies are fighting with the downloaders. How much content have they supported online on the BT service? How open have the studios been to sharing online? Partnering without actively pushing content out is stalemate. The impetus must come from the studios, else fuckall will happen.



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