Taking advantage of the digital opportunities

I would like to give my reflections concerning an article I just took part of, called “The Year of the Paywall”[1] by Edmund Lee. The article focuses on how the newspaper industry finally is figuring out how to make a profit on the world wide web-phenomenon that has become a great part of in the everyday life for all of us. For the first time since 2003 the newspaper is increasing its revenue, thanks to the so called paywalls, which prevents the internet users to get access to certain articles without paying.

Seeing this development of paywalls from my perspective as a student, of course I somehow find it sad that the newspapers finally have figured out that it is a good idea to get paid not only from the declining numbers of printed copies of the newspapers, but also the digital versions, in order to create a profitable organization. However, above all I find it favorable that journalists can gain revenue on the intangible assets they manage to create. I have myself the last year paid a couple of newspaper sites in order to gain access to all of their digitally distributed articles. As long as the money I spend is used to create more and better articles in the future I am more than happy to pay. I rather have this development in the newspaper industry than a future with fewer articles with lacking quality distributed online.

Another thought of mine on the same subject goes to the music industry, another industry with mainly intangible assets, which also have had declining sales the past 15 years related to the inability to adjust to the changed market the digital era has created. I admit that it is tricky to gain money when practically every teenager is familiar with the concept of downloading, and have knowledge of different ways to listen to the music for free over internet. There have been created laws against downloading music, however I see a possibility for the industry to raise its revenue by using internet as an asset rather than seeing it as a threat.

In recent years we have observed possibilities for the music industry to in an effective way reach the costumer by offering services that will make the music more accessible and have better quality than any other option available. An example of a company that has managed to create an opportunity for the music industry to take advantage of the web is Spotify. By making the music more accessible to the user, the costumer has been given an alternative for downloading, and thereby created a way for the music industry to increase its declining revenue. The costumer can choose to pay to get rid of advertisement or to have access to the service on their mobile devices. This way Spotify has created a need for a product that the costumer previously did not know they had, which according to me is a great way to act in the business world. Because that is, after all, what the industry is all about; business. The leading forces of the industry just need some time to develop their way to think, in order to adjust and take advantage of the new possibilities the digital era creates.

References

[1] “The Year of the Paywall” by Edmund Lee. 

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-14/2014-outlook-online-publishers-paywall-strategy

Retrieved 2014-02-05.