I was thinking about strategies for online media dissemination and devised a means of organizing them by colour: green, white, grey and black.
Green is the colour of money — these outlets charge viewers to watch. Think of everything from the VOD pay-per-view titles on your cable provider to iTunes to Vimeo on Demand, Reelhouse and many others. Can I Stream.it makes it easy to find any movie your want to stream and pay for, in the U.S.
White, on the other hand, is the absence of green and in this case represents free access to media. Think Youtube, Crackle, Open Culture, the Internet Archive and many others. (Let’s ignore user-generated video on Facebook or Vine or Periscope or Instagram.)
Grey is a mixture of white and green or white and black and stands for three things:
- Free behind a pay wall. Think SVOD like Netflix and Fandor and CraveTV and showmi in Canada. Yes, hopefully there’s a bit of money heading your way here, so, greenish grey, perhaps?
- Apps for IP TV, perhaps using Chromecast.
- API hacks that create meta-versions of otherwise free but hidden media. Think VineViewer.co and OnPeriscope.com.
Black represents illegal offerings. I avoid these so I can’t speak to them but we’ve all heard the industry’s warnings about the vast revenue they lose to pirates. Think torrents.
So what’s your strategy?
Give it all away on white sites? Mirror the old world traditional media model and stick to green and grey sites?
You won’t be able to make money on all these platforms but independent media producers should be able to approach some of these outlets directly. The larger ones will require an aggregator.
Try to avoid the black sites, unless that figures into your strategy. Give away all your BTS material and point viewers to your pay site?
My take: I think it would be great to create an infographic on this topic! Suggestions for other outlets appreciated.