Considering you’re only paying for indexing and access to other people’s computers which do all the actual hosting, paying for anything less than a membership that allows unlimited downloads is a rip off. I’m talking, of course, to people who don’t currently survive on the pirate’s budget. You probably have friends, family or even a booty call that still relies on paying for individual downloads. For whatever their reason, they don’t want to download content the easy way, but what if there was a way that they could pay for membership access that allowed them unlimited, secure, fast downloads, even if they are a total computer newb! Now, what if I told you that there there is a way!
Instant death will be the rule for any service that relies heavily upon it’s community to operate and does not offer unlimited access! (Yes, I have to quote myself because I don’t see anybody else saying these things yet, but please do!)
That’s right! There has been a very cost effective way of providing access to digital media just laying around waiting to be turned into a legitimate, profiting business model and nobody has done it yet! Hard to believe, I know. Most of us have heard that GGF has it’s sights set on acquiring thepiratebay.org, but we don’t really know for sure whether even (should they close the deal) they will offer an unlimited access type of business model. Instant death will be the rule for any service that relies heavily upon it’s community to operate and does not offer unlimited access!
Fact: Pricing per content, as if it is a retail product is, bogus because digital content is not a retail product. Data is not a product. Access to data can be sold as long as the customer either must rely on you to access that data OR you offer better quality, speed, convenience, protocol, sense of security for newbs, organization, up time, selection, support, advertising, artist incentives & compensation, uploader incentives & compensation, guaranteed seeding, etc. than the competition.
Protip: Keeping people reliant on the industry for access is rarely an option anymore. It is a waste of time and finances to attempt this time and again, only to fail. In this scenario, you would do best to harness your customer as a more efficient distribution resource and adjust pricing to reflect the actual service you offer the customer vs. the service your customer is now offering you and the other customers.
Industry, if you are trying to sway people from the pirate community to use your service, then your biggest competitors are free torrent sites. Yes, yes… we all know how you’re going to shut down all the torrent sites
and the entire world will be owned by an evil empire of mom suing rights holders *snickers*. In the meantime, you may want to begin asking your (I’m sure very expensive) idea people “what can be offered that is so much better than torrent sites that some would prefer to buy membership access to our torrent site instead?”
If you’re fishing for the non-pirate market, however, then you may be pleased the competition is hardly relevant right now. It’s wide open because the biggest players in the industry are scared of digital sales. Either because they still believe they are selling retail products or because they’re crapping their pants petrified while more people continue to realize that this isn’t the case. People can now have, and want, more for less. Industry, it’s time to clinch that sphincter and serve them something other than crap. Strap on those Depends and get to it!
It is a community based service which relies on the community, so you had better keep the community satisfied, because businesses only exist as long as they can fill their customers needs. You may want to take special note in the fact that the customer can and will survive without filling your needs. But there’s nothing wrong with a bit of entrepreneurial incentive to keep the industry innovative and evolving (and ultimately, living), hey ol’ chap?
Bottom line: The first company to establish themselves as a site that allows unlimited access to up to date content is going to instantly take over the digital media market by having a huge advantages over business competitors.
It is cheaper for an online business to have P2P/customer based distribution than rely solely on dedicated servers (although, some would be needed. You can’t allow zero seeds if people are paying).Fact: Cost of distribution went down significantly, thanks to P2P. If that cost deduction is not being passed down to the customers, then service rates are being kept artificially higher than they need to be and this will only push customers away as the market becomes aware of this. How long do you have until the market becomes aware of this? I suppose it’s safe to say that you have until average every day normal guys start complaining about in in their blogs- OH MY GOD IT’S TIME!!!
Anyone in the USA should be able to tell you first hand that industries and economies based on artificial value will eventually bust. I don’t care if it’s comics, housing, tulip bulbs, Enron stocks or digital media. That will only fly for so long before someone *ahem* calls bullshit and the whole thing folds like a stack of cards.
Allow me to break the situation down into utmost simplicity:1. Consumers may now have (and want) low cost, unlimited access to any media ever put into digital form offered as a legitimate and reliable business service.2. Consumers don’t have it yet, despite the technology being readily available for years. Any consumer can see that unlimited access to data blows pay per download out of the water. It is fully a possibility. What are you waiting for? Someone else to do it? Someone will.3. The only reason this model isn’t available is because digital media companies currently only offer old or limited access to a limited variety of content (usually pay per DL). That’s fine, if a business wants to use that old model, but tell me what kind of United States of America isn’t going to allow another business to compete by offering better service if it is well within their means to do so. All on the basis that it is not fair for an outdated business model? Oh, digital media industry… Capitalism is set dead against you here. You only swim against the current for so long until you drown.
Speaking of what is “not fair” (a term I’m not a huge fan of btw), allowing artificial economies to continue blowing up until they collapse and once again the common person with good intentions who only wanted to “support the artist” will end up paying for it. Guess what? Unlimited access services can be made to benefit artists and rights holders too. Perhaps even beyond what the current services have to offer them. All potential for doing this is being wasted for as long as these services aren’t allowed to conceptualize and gestate. Years of progress and development in the digital market have already been lost. Time waits for no man! Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. O_O
For the digital industry’s sake, I hope they have such services in place because the pirate movement is their greatest competitor now and they currently have no legitimate competition. The longer the industry waits to compete, the more people are going to join the pirate movement because what is available for free is currently far superior to what is for sale. Laws are not enough to quell hundreds of millions of voters/consumers (and growing) from using the free competition. The more attempts made to block people or prevent access, the greater the amount of people seeking to bypass this censorship will be.
The number of pirates grows out of a demand and the necessity to meet those demands that is not being offered by the legitimate market. We are not a dwindling community. We are taking over your governments. Your customers continue to join our ranks. Soon your governments will be us. Soon your customers will be us. Get on board or eat our dust!
For those consumers who are sick of waiting for the industry to pull their thumbs out of each others asses and offer fair service, well, all I have say to you is welcome aboard.
Have you seen our
uTorrent tutorial btw?Disclaimer: This tut is intended to be used only for educating yourself about legitimately supplementing what the industry does not currently offer you!
