Jeffrey Cole is giving a presentation that should be similar to this one about the future of television. He is arguing that people are moving away from illegal downloading services into iTunes, and other legal services. I don´t agree as probably over 95% of what is in most people´s ipods is free content. He has a point when he says that Sony should have invented the iPod but they didn´t because they actually owned a music rights company. How much money does the ave American family spend in digital services that did not exist a decade ago? $260 a month made of mobile, satelite tv, satellite radio, etc. And the poorest households in America pay as much as $180. The poorest people in America spend an enormous proportion of their income in digital services. But they pay more for delivery than the actual content. New York Times was unable to sell any unique info online and cancelled their program. Only Bloomberg makes a killing selling information and that is cause he says ultratimely info to people who are (were) loaded. So for everyone else the only hope for producing content in advertising.

Follow Martin Varsavsky on Twitter: twitter.com/martinvars

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Javier Saiz on November 13, 2008  · 

Something like that happened to “El PAIS”, is the leading printed newspaper un spain, but they lost a big internet marketshare when trying the subscription charge. “El MUndo” took advantage and now it’s the leading web newspaper in Spain.

really interesting

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Antoin O Lachtnain on November 14, 2008  · 

I think he has it wrong about the relationship between the music industry and the gadget industry. In brief: Sony (and Philips) bought and developed a record label because it believed it was necessary in order to introduce (or foist) a new medium (in Sony’s case, minidisc, in Philips’ case, CD and then Digital Compact Cassette). In fact, within months of abandoning DCC, Philips decided to sell Polygram.

Gadgets (including music players) are a good business to be in. Music is not.

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