Piracy drives innovation.
Every single market that is subject to the risk of piracy improves because of it.
We have international shipping lanes today because of piracy. (The British Royal Navy found it easier to combat piracy if all the merchant ships were sailing the same routes.)
We have CDs because of audio cassette piracy. We have DVDs because of video piracy. We have hulu because of piracy.
On the macroeconomic level, the existence of piracy is wholly good for market development. The consumer always wins when there are pirates about.
Things may look a little different on the micro level. ie if you are the copyright holder for an information product that is easily pirated. (And almost all information products are easily pirated.)
I know a whole lot about this. I have worked in digital media for some of the world’s leading broadcasters (Discovery Channel, BBC, etc).
So here are some tips for navigating pirate infested waters.
1. No one cares what you want
Do you want me to buy your horse shoes just because you feel like selling them?
What you want to sell doesn’t matter in the slightest. It’s what your customer wants to buy that matters.
They don’t want to pay for your book? Have you tried selling them a webinar?
Don’t go blaming pirates because you really, really, really just want to be a blacksmith but no one is buying your horse shoes. The world has moved on.
You may have been lucky enough to read the amazing interview with Lady GaGa in the Times of London the other week. (I’d link to it but it’s behind a paywall now. Ironic, given the subject of this post.)
Basically, she explains that musicians are lazy. You can make $30 -$50 million dollars doing a world tour. Quit complaining that people aren’t buying your CDs because that’s never going to change. Get your music out to as wide an audience and then sell something that people actually want to buy… Like an awesome concert.
2. Don’t blame it just because it’s new
Let’s talk music.
For almost a hundred years consumers have had continuous access to free music which they use to determine what artists they like before they spent any money.
It’s called radio. Except now we’re the ones in control of the discovery mechanism. Which is all torrents are – a discovery mechanism. Music pirates spend more on professional music than regular consumers who do not.
Think about that in the context of pirated occult books. Over the last few days we have had a number of bloggers put their hand up and say “I have a bunch of pirate pdfs.”
But magicians are also what we refer to in marketing as ‘superconsumers’. Do you know anyone who spends more on books than you do?
So why in Jebus’s name would you leave your discovery mechanism in the hands of the software Borders uses to automatically select its occult range?
Back to music: There is no need to pirate music anymore. Because there is spotify. And yet I still spend the same amount on music. (Which is about thrice the national average per year.)
It’s all about the discovery mechanism.
3. Find your fans
The truly incomparable Seth Godin makes the following point:
If you have five thousand fans, how much money do you need to extract from them per year to live comfortably? Twelve bucks?
What if you had fifty thousand fans. Two bucks?
The wider you cast your net, the more consumers you can turn into fans, the easier it is to monetize your information product.
Conclusion
People are still making money.
Newspapers might be making less but app developers are doing just fine. Metallica might be making less but Lady GaGa is doing just fine.
It doesn’t stand to reason that people aren’t buying anything just because they’re not buying what you want to sell them.
So the next time a pirate ship runs up the colours and fires grappling hooks at your tea clipper (I’m a pirate nerd) try and view it as an opportunity.
And if you’re a blacksmith it’s time to re-train.
Yo ho ho, me hearties.
Related Posts:
- Frater AIT kicked this off with a thoughtful post on the impact of digimob.
- Jack followed up with a detailed exploration of occult piracy and its pros and cons.
- Be sure to read Jason’s comment on either of the above posts.
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Well put G.
Very cyberpunk anarchy of you, but you’re absolutely right.
.-= Argent´s last blog ..What is the "Truth"? =-.
Posted by Argent | June 4, 2010, 3:01 pmIt’s something I have been grappling with for the last ten years.
You would hope I had picked up an observation or two in that time.
Posted by Gordon | June 4, 2010, 4:28 pmIf you’re a blacksmith, and no-one wants to buy your horseshoes, they don’t have to.
If people simply don’t want to PAY for your horseshoes, but want to take them anyway, that’s an entirely different matter.
The fact is, refusing to pay for someone for their work is the same whether it’s you refusing to pay for one of Lon’s books (despite the fact that you’re keeping a copy) or whether your boss is getting a day’s work out of you and deciding not to pay you at the end.
Yes, there may be valid social policy reasons for allowing a more open version of copyright — fortunately, we both live in democracies, and we can at least try to influence the rules. But breking the rules just so you can get free stuff, then masking it behind some social policy stuff? That’s not cool.
Posted by Alex | June 4, 2010, 10:25 pm@Alex
I’m not advocating theft…
I’m defending those that get blamed when someone with a truly antiquated business model gets all upset when he or she doesn’t make the money they feel they somehow deserve.
Unfortunately this stretches the ‘blacksmith’ metaphor to breaking point and instead I would have to resort to almost five centuries of historical examples (including Shakespeare himself) of how you make money in a market that either doesn’t have or cannot regulate copyright for some reason.
This makes for an unwieldy post.
But again, as I’ve mentioned before, and as I have presented to some of the leading lights of international digital media:
“business is the art of the possible, not the preferable.”
It’s a cognitive error to mistake my description of the situation (and it’s potential solution) for approval.
Posted by Gordon | June 4, 2010, 10:39 pmHi Gordon,
I had a loo
Posted by LeMat | June 4, 2010, 10:48 pmTo finish my comment. Spotify seems fine, but did you hear about grooveshark.com?
Posted by LeMat | June 4, 2010, 10:50 pmI’m aware of Grooveshark, but I have been so completely satisfied with Spotify that I haven’t felt the need to look elsewhere.
Satisfied to the point of becoming a premium member.
I know it’s only recently arrived in the US but we’ve had it in Europe for well over a year. In digital media that’s quite a track record.
Posted by Gordon | June 4, 2010, 10:55 pmDude. We totally need to chat outside the blog world at some point.
If you should ever feel inclined, I’d love an email at dionysianatavism(at)gmail(dot)com sometime!
.-= Jack Faust´s last blog ..Minus a tooth, and with a head full o’ nothin’. =-.
Posted by Jack Faust | June 5, 2010, 2:43 am@ Gordon,
Ah, OK then, my mistake. You’re right — any businessperson who doesn’t take the reality of the market into account is a bad businessperson. That’s why, frankly, we need lots of law reform.
Posted by Alex | June 5, 2010, 6:19 amHey, I didn’t take it as a wholesale endorsement of piracy, I was expressing my own issues with piracy in general. I thought the general conversation about piracy was all polite and friendly and nice, and that’s all good, but someone needed to be the hardass and express the diamond-hard truth that it’s still stealing, imo.
It’s a given that many authors don’t endorse it, but without it being stated blatantly, some people will miss that fact, and take the acceptance of the evil piracy as consent and endorsement.
.-= RO´s last blog ..On Piracy =-.
Posted by RO | June 6, 2010, 10:41 pmYes, you’re quite right.
I was mostly referring to Alex with the ‘wholesale endorsement of piracy’ thing. Which, on re-reading my post, is a perfectly viable conclusion to reach.
Unfortunately, and this is down to my posting skills, it was not the conclusion I wanted people to reach.
As far as I am concerned, your current setup is a model example: You’re selling a product into a market that is prone to piracy and have taken steps accordingly. And this is only a short term product strategy because you’ve got other things going on at the moment.
The medium term is going to be wider and sees you selling ‘non-pirateable’ information products like classes, etc.
It’s absolutely the way to do it:
- eyes wide open
- with a medium term business strategy
- NOT being okay with theft
Posted by Gordon | June 6, 2010, 11:24 pmYou’re fer sure my fave chaos mage. Jack’s in a close second, but you’re … cleaner. Not in terms of cussery or whatever, just more pure and out for good clean fun. While Jack’s a Sith Lord.
.-= RO´s last blog ..On Piracy =-.
Posted by RO | June 7, 2010, 4:23 pm*blush*
Jack is totally a Sith Lord. Good call.
Posted by Gordon | June 7, 2010, 11:32 pmDamn the Man! Fight the power! Get a better business model!
That’s what I took away from it!
.-= Deborah´s last blog ..Etiquette Lesson: How to Conduct Yourself When Someone Dies =-.
Posted by Deborah | June 8, 2010, 7:41 pmI’m sure what you’re saying about theft of intellectual property is mainly true, accurate, fair, etc.
But, um, there’s also quite a lot being written these days about Piracy on the high seas — you know, thieves with guns who roar out in fast boats to attack slower-moving ships and private vessels that can’t outrun them. You know, people who actually kidnap humans and hold them for ransom, and occasionally kill some of them when they don’t get what they want.
Your lighthearted defense of internet thieves, music thieves and book thieves was very disconcerting for this international sailor (you know, on boats that are powered by the wind, and run about 7 miles an hour).
Posted by Maggie | March 17, 2011, 12:39 pm