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Free Ride

Melden Sie sich bei getAbstract an, um die Zusammenfassung zu erhalten.

Free Ride

How Digital Parasites are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back

Doubleday,

15 Minuten Lesezeit
10 Take-aways
Text verfügbar

Was ist drin?

How did you help destroy culture today?

Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Innovative

Recommendation

Journalist Robert Levine knowledgeably argues that ideology, inaction, misunderstanding and self-interest have created a dangerous situation in which technology is destroying culture. Fortunately, the culture industry can survive if it takes action. In this factually grounded report, Levine passionately urges the culture community – from big publishers to guitar players – to act in its own best interests and to protect its products. getAbstract recommends his treatise to those involved in culture, futurists and anyone interested in a healthy economy where creativity pays.

Summary

The Problem with the Online World

Once upon a time, TV, radio, film and music were highly profitable businesses, fertile with cultural innovation. During the 1980s and 1990s, for example, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) produced numerous hit shows – including Friends, Seinfeld and Miami Vice – that shaped popular culture. In 2003 alone, NBC generated $800 million in profit. Yet by 2010, it was on track “to lose more than $100 million.” When Comcast bought a controlling share in NBC, its broadcast properties listed “an on-paper value of zero.”

What happened in those seven intervening years? The Internet. The lawless online world is wrecking traditional media companies. Online distribution often occurs outside the market: People copy songs, TV shows, movies and books, and swap them for free. “File-sharing services” provide access to an infinite number of copyrighted songs. Legal services, like YouTube, depend on professional content: Seven of its most popular videos of all time are by major-label artists.

The rhetoric critics use to frame this problem exacerbates it: This is a battle of faceless, clueless corporations fighting...

About the Author

Robert Levine, a former executive editor of Billboard, is a features editor at Wired. He has written numerous articles for The New York Times, Fortune, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone.

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