Video a la carte

Even the FCC knows that video customers want video a la carte.

But satelite and cable companies don’t want to do that (don’t believe me? call yours and ask for some random channel a la carte…good luck).

The funny thing to me about this is that we’ve been here before. Remember 1998? CDs were so expensive that there was an anti-trust investigation and class-action lawsuits claiming that the price was being fixed. People wanted individual songs and they wanted them cheaper. So…we had Napster piracy and the RIAA suing customers (suing customers, there’s a great strategy) and everybody mad and then we had iTunes and the 10 other copycats who offered music online in cheap, digestible chunks. And the people rejoiced!

We already have bittorrent and tivo and iPod-video are just going to promote online trading of songs even more. How much longer will it be until Robert Cringeley’s prediction comes true and Google takes over video and does to the MPAA/networks what iTunes and others did to the RIAA and the music industry?

Look at how much better our music ecosystem is now than in the late 90s. In the late 90s, indie musicians barely survived and occasionally even just made their own labels to survive. Now, according to All Things Considered, all it takes is a blog or two, an indie music website, your own band’s web site, and there you freaking go.

And what, exactly did the digital music folks do that was so amazing? They offered what the customers had been asking for for years. And they are making tons of money for everyone involved in the process. Duh.