Content is power in today's world, and if you can own that content, create it and make interaction more of an experience than a transaction, you create a different kind of loyalty.
Let's face it; people are doing everything online these days. So if they are going to watch my movies, I'm happy as long as it's being bought legally and being exhibited legally, as long as they are paying even a small fee for it. I'm just anti-piracy. If it's a legitimate way of watching film online, then I'm very happy.
We're a content company. And if we create the best content, every distributor will want what we have.
I think the networks, in general, have to evaluate what's happening around them. I'm sure they're scared about a lot of things: Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and all these places that allow people to watch shows in chunks.
As soon as I was getting YouTube comments and hit 100 subscribers, I was thinking 'maybe there's something to this. I could keep going. I don't know how far I can really push it just reviewing random indie bands on YouTube, but it seems to have more gas in the tank.'
Netflix, Amazon, iTunes - whatever platforms emerge - we are looking at as having the same potential that home video had for the movie business. Which means there are entirely new opportunities to monetize our capital investment in content and do so in ways that work for distributors, for consumers and for creators.
Am I the next Bill Simmons? I don't think so. I haven't built a media property. He's the best at finding voices he likes and paying people money to work for him.
Premium content matters.
Think of it: television producers joining with newspapers to tell stories. It's journalism of the future. Advertising will follow the crowd - the 'crowd' being viewers and readers, of course, which could bring revenue back into journalism.
There was a time and a place when a pure content start-up had a chance, and that time has passed.
People say that making money in the content-media game is hard, and that is just, like, not my experience. It's super-confusing, 'cause everyone's like, 'Oh, how are you going to monetize?' It's easy: just start talking, and then money rolls in.
We make our profits through content and services.
Working with lots of old media clients, I've had a front-row seat on the ascension of new social players and the decline of traditional news outlets. And it's clear to me that old media has an awful lot to learn from social media, in particular in five key areas: relevance, distribution, velocity, monetization, and user experience.
It's hard to sell merchandise off YouTube.
I think if you're constantly reinvesting into your content and giving the fans stuff, then you can continue to tour. You can continue to sell the merch and monetize the popularity of the brand.
Google can say they are not in the content business, but if they are paying people and distributing and archiving their work, it is getting harder to make that case.
'Content is King,' and with more screens needing entertaining content now than at any time in history, that statement is truer than ever.
We've got to lift our game tremendously. We'll sell our business news and information in print, we'll sell it to anyone who's got a cable system, and we'll sell it on the Web.
It's a good time to be in the content business though, the branded content business.
A lot of YouTubers get that mainstream celebrity, they get these big deals, maybe a book deal or a TV deal or whatever it is they aspired to do, and they kind of abandon ship on what got them to that point.
YouTube is a problem. It has very big traffic, but it refuses to contribute to the weight of that traffic.
I think we need editorial oversight now more than ever. Anything we can do to help newspapers find new ways of expression that will help them get paid, I am all for.
The television business is actually going through a tremendous transition, but I think at the end of the day, television is still paramount.
We were the first people to do advertising on the Web. I actually saw in 1993 that the ad could be the content, the destination.
The growing demand for content across our platform delivers bigger payouts to our contributor base and encourages them to upload fresh content to Shutterstock, further facilitating the network effect of our business.
