The Democratization – and Danger – of Content

Talk about confluence. On Friday night, I had a conversation with a music producer/engineer about lowering the entry price for musicians and filmmakers. It’s what is fashionably called the “democratization of media.” Just Google that phrase. I did and got 875 hits without even looking for alternative spellings or phrasings.

Let’s couple that with another, though less momentous, fact. When I look at the tags for this blog’s postings, aside from the obvious tag of “Editing,” the largest number of entries fit under the tags “Business,” “The Future” and “Distribution.”

This points to the obvious conclusion that, at least in my mind, the future is going to be less about the creation of media but about its selling and distribution. I’ve said for years (including right here on this blog) that the majors are getting increasingly inept at creating media on their own. Big, bloated record albums that used to be shoved down our throats are now attracting 10% of the audience than they did ten years ago. At the same time, it’s possible for your average music fan to record a song for under $100 (the cost of labor being free in these cases). But you try and find something you like on MySpace. You might as well go trolling at the Rose Bowl Flea Market.

In movies and television, that trend is just beginning. Movie studios will still turn out their $150 million dollar tent pole films, and people will still go to see it. But attendance is going to start taking a hit — especially now that it costs more for a family of four to see a film than it does to stay home and order in really good Chinese food and watch something on television or a Netflix film.

But go try and find something on YouTube. Try and sift through that hulking mass of short films to find anything worth viewing for fun (I do enjoy finding tutorials — Avid, Final Cut, other Pro Apps, et al, but I don’t think that those short films are ever going to become mass audience pleasers).

So where does that leave us?

That leaves us with the reality that, as it gets easier to create content, it gets much much harder to distribute it successfully. The key to that sentence is the final word – “successfully.” It will be very easy to get our products out there into the world. But attracting eyeballs is going to be another thing entirely. If you take a look at the crowded marketplace for books, music and studio films right now, you can see the danger of putting too many Easter eggs into too few baskets (and now, finally, you understand the graphic at the top of this post). It gets much harder to find just the right colored egg when it’s buried under 500,000 other eggs.What we’re going to see happen here is exactly what is happening in theatrical film distribution today. We’re getting more gaudily colored eggs, preceded by large and expensive signs pointing to that egg. Translation — we’ll get more gimmicky media with much more advertising and marketing support.But only for a select few. The rest of us will have to figure out how to get our word out with less.

On one hand, that’s pretty frightening. How can we compete with the Warner Bros of the world when it comes to raising the awareness for our media? The answer isn’t solely going to be “make better media”. Not in a world where the weekly box office reports are more cause for sobbing in my house than happiness. But, on the other hand, it’s also incredibly exciting to think of how we, as media creators, can use niche marketing, targeted advertising, and social networking, to build the awareness for our music, podcasting, films, books and more. We’re going to get savvier about how to find an audience, and much smarter about why smaller is better. We’ll also have to accept the fact that the age of paychecks with many, many zeroes at the end of the number, is going to get further and further away.

That’s my hope, actually.