Democracy of Information

Were you listening to Music in 2000? If so, one would remember Napster. It was born back of the then newly discovered MP3 Technology – the compressing of digital files allowing them to travel over the net easily. As a result, young people were ripping songs from compact discs and sharing those. Unable to take the weight of sustained litigation, Napster collapsed but so did the music industry – before bouncing back 13 years later. Therein lies the whole story of what the media industry newspapers, radio, TV Films, has been going through over the past 15 years.

This democratization, the ability of consumers to reject, redo, choose what they want to read, listen, watch, whenever they want it is the first big change that the past 15 years have forced on the information industry. Everything from the Nirbhaya documentary to Aamir Khan Comments becomes a trending topic. The blurring of lines between the Armchair Amateur and the trained professional creates all kinds of disruptions – socially, economically, and creatively.

The blurring also has some nice implications – notice the amount of talent coming out because of YouTube. Everybody from a cook in Noida to your Cat can become an online sensation, forcing mainstream media to drop its snooty. From Star’s Hotstar, Zee’s Ditto TV and Eros’s ErosNow, mainstream media firms are trying hard to get the 100 Million people watching online video in India. In the process, they are joining hands with names they wouldn’t have considered earlier. For Example, Star has signed on AIB, an online video creator popular for its spoofs.

The second is the havoc this democratization has wrecked on business models. But while, disaggregation is good for consumers, it has not yet translated into solid benefits for Media companies. In the US, for example, the newspaper industry has seen one-third of its revenues wiped out over the past 15 years, even as the number of people reading news has increased. One could call this evolution if the third thing about this democratization wasn’t true.

Those offline revenues of newspapers, film studios and television firms are funding the thirst for this disaggregated content online. Note that the bulk of traffic on search engines, social media and on a host of news sources comes from professionally generated content. More than three fifths of YouTube traffic comes from the videos put up by the large studios. Building shows with big stars, aggregating mass audiences for advertisers online does exactly what other media platforms do. That begs the question what really is democratic about a medium and a business where revenues and audience power are so heavily concentrated.