April 17th, 2012



A Thought on Television Pricing, Featuring Gumroad

People use the phrase “MY SHOW” for a reason, and have this weird possessive relationship with television shows that as far as I can tell doesn’t really exist with movies. Yet the potential of this sort of possessive/obsessive behavior isn’t fully realized with existing digital distribution strategies.

Let’s take the hypothetical situation of a not-super-popular network television show on the night it airs (unlike Archer mentioned above, which is super popular). Sometimes shows like this aren’t on Hulu or Netflix and the network certainly isn’t giving it away for free on YouTube as a promotional giveaway because the upside isn’t really there. But for someone, this is their show. It usually takes time to get it on iTunes (very hit or miss) and sometimes it’s not available there either, or the entire season is dumped at the end of the season’s run.

At this point, people will turn to torrent sites (torrenting sites?) or streaming sites, who have somehow grasped that the desire to watch/catch-up is highest in the 30 seconds after the show airs and falls precipitously afterward. This is based on entirely anecdotal gut-feelings, though surely there have been studies have been done on this topic. DVR wonderfully took advantage of the behavior described above, but in this new digital universe even DVR just isn’t quite the answer any more.

What I really want is a site like Gumroad to power this instantaneous knee-jerk desire to see my show ASAP. Gumroad is an interesting new platform that allows people an easy way to sell digital goods and collect payments, and it would be nice to know that everything is there and available for immediate purchase.

If Gumroad doesn’t do it, another option is that anyone can easily build a site powered by Gumroad that sells digital content instantaneously (where GR acts as the platform). People might even pay a premium. Night it comes out? Then it’s $2.50, and goes down to $1.99 the next day.

Pricing and monetizing digital content is one of the most fascinating future-of-the-web topics to me right now because the world of digital content is maturing. I think Gumroad has come up with a very compelling product that could contribute in a meaningful way if properly embraced, and I am excited to watch their progress.

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  • http://www.lindventures.com/blog Brad Lindenberg

    Amanda, I am building exactly this. Gumroad is a feature of my platform, maybe 1% of it. Reach out @bradlind:disqus 

  • http://www.lindventures.com/blog Brad Lindenberg

    Amanda, I am building exactly this. Gumroad is a feature of my platform, maybe 1% of it. Reach out @bradlind:disqus