Fans of creative destruction have had a good week with HMV and Blockbuster.
As a child born in the late 60's I saw the BETA, VHS and DVD periods through may hours spent watching trashy movies and the local video store morph into the big chain and then WHAAM (apologies to Roy Lichtenstein) Blockbuster gets eviscerated by digital and piracy.
Talk to anyone under 25 (and many over it) and the idea of paying for content and waiting for release windows is a bit of a challenge. This drove a stake through the heart of the Blockbuster business model.
Possibly the only way out was for Blockbuster to realise the problem about 10 years ago (when broadband was not rolled out in the UK) and go digital. The arguments at the time centred around the fact that digital revenues are often less profitable than analog revenues.........but then again digital cents are better than dealing with administrator.
The sands of the digital desert will be blowing a storm in the content business for some time to come.
As a child born in the late 60's I saw the BETA, VHS and DVD periods through may hours spent watching trashy movies and the local video store morph into the big chain and then WHAAM (apologies to Roy Lichtenstein) Blockbuster gets eviscerated by digital and piracy.
Talk to anyone under 25 (and many over it) and the idea of paying for content and waiting for release windows is a bit of a challenge. This drove a stake through the heart of the Blockbuster business model.
Possibly the only way out was for Blockbuster to realise the problem about 10 years ago (when broadband was not rolled out in the UK) and go digital. The arguments at the time centred around the fact that digital revenues are often less profitable than analog revenues.........but then again digital cents are better than dealing with administrator.
The sands of the digital desert will be blowing a storm in the content business for some time to come.