danwtmoon

I recall hearing the phrase "content is king" many a time in the past few years, especially when I was in heavy with mobile world.

Nearly always in context of Sales & Marketing I never paid too much attention at the time.

In recent years though I've got more involved / exposed by that side of things and have had hands in experience of delivering IPTV to consumers.

From this and other experiences I believe actually that the value of content which is at the heart of many heated debates such as online piracy, is in the context of it's consumption.

What I mean is, there is more value to me in having the nice box and artwork for my Godfather DVD set than if I just had the files.

With the latter the context of the content is that I am on a computer and have the opportunity to spend time watching something.

With the former it's an event. Likely planned. I get to have the box out. Feel the texture, review the artwork and sit back and enjoy the content.

Another example is music. I have no issues in volunteering I am a *massive* U2 fan. I have entire back catalogue, backed up on DVD, on iTunes. This is so that I can listen wherever, whenever through my iPhone / Mac.

However, these days I mainly listen through Spotify. The context of Spotify for me is that I get to have *my* radio station playing. That's of value to me so I'm a premium subscriber.

This is a whole different context to why I pay for individual music (which sums far more than I spend on Spotify) on iTunes.

A hot off the press example is my enjoyment of news content. A fan of the economist I used to be a print subscriber. Somehow that went as I largely read online.

In context of reading online, I felt the economist was analogous to reading BBC (although of a different editorial quality).

Now they have a pay wall. I won't be subscribing online. However I'm tempted to go back to print subscription as the content in context of me having the paper, seeing Kals cartoons in a different quality etc has a value to it.

The content is the same. The context of it's consumption is quite different.

This is also highlights the point about the future of TV etc.. As I said, I've worked with IPTV as part of a triple play operator.

In this area again it's the context of consumpion that sets the value. A video on YouTube is only different to a TV programme because of the context given to it. It's all video at the end of the day.

TV, IPTV, Satellite, iPlayer, YouTube, Vimeo etc it's all video. But the context given to it creates the value.

Vimeo vs YouTube is a great example of creating value out of the context of it's content.

So that's my rambling two cents on why context not content is king.

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