<
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/01/22/the-sky-is-rising-2024-edition-rather-than-destroying-culture-the-internet-has-saved-the-content-industries/>
"Twelve years ago, we released our very first research report, the
Sky is
Rising. Back then, in 2012, the commonly accepted wisdom was that the internet
was killing various creative industries, from the music industry (especially!)
to movies, TV, and books among other things. This didn’t seem to match with the
world that we were seeing, so we dug into all the data (and, wherever possible,
sought to use the industry’s own numbers) and found that while some industries
were struggling to adapt to the internet, the data actually showed that the sky
was rising, not falling.
We found that more content than ever before was being created (though not all
through traditional channels). We found that people were engaging with more
content than ever before. And, contrary to the narrative spun by some legacy
industries, we saw that people were more than willing to spend money on
content. They were just focused on having it be convenient and accessible where
they wanted it to be.
Over the years with support from CCIA, we released additional editions of the
Sky is Rising report via our think tank The Copia Institute, but our last one
was five years ago in 2019, before the COVID pandemic. Last year we set out to
revisit not just the data, but the structure of the whole report. The process
took almost the entire year, but we’re excited to release our latest edition of
The Sky is Rising.
In the original report, a decade ago, we were focused just on countering the
misleading narrative that the internet was killing the creative industries. Not
only is that myth dead and buried, the latest report suggests quite the
opposite: that the internet has saved those industries and basically become the
lifeblood of all creative industries.
Throughout the report what we saw time and time again is that the growth in
these industries is happening because of the internet. It’s making it easier
than ever to create, to share, to distribute, to promote, to sell, and to
engage. Creativity is thriving, and much of it is entirely due to the internet.
Indeed, we saw this most directly in industries most heavily impacted by COVID.
One of our concerns going into this report was looking at how the pandemic
impacted things, and the data certainly confirmed that some industries had huge
problems: namely live music and movie theaters. But, in both cases, the amazing
thing that the data showed was how the internet rushed in to fill the void,
providing new ways to experience content that traditionally had required
performance spaces, helping to tide things over during the periods of
lockdowns, and then easing the rebound after lockdowns loosened.
The internet helped spare those industries, and helped billions of people
around the globe continue to engage with and experience wonderful art, even in
the midst of a global pandemic."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
