By Ash Mann in business models — Feb 9, 2024

This week's best things

Reports into 'the business of digital art' and 'community innovation', the first reviews of Apple's Vision Pro, the 'death of subscriptions', an interview with Sydney Opera House's Head of Screen, and Tracy Chapman at the Grammies.

Photo by Photoholgic / Unsplash

The business of digital art: Economics models and insights into the future

A report from the EU-funded Digital Inter/Section, which aims to "foster resilient, sustainable, ethical and inclusive economic development that aligns with European values".

"At the core of this publication are business models, also called economic mo-
dels - conceptual frameworks which describe how an organisation creates,
delivers, and captures value for its stakeholders."

Features "193 contributors, 18 interviews gathering ideas and recommendations from 25 countries around the world".

The Year the Millennials Handed the Internet Over to Zoomers

An op-ed in the New York Times from Max Read.

As he cites, there have been numerous pieces written over the past year that are all variations on the topic of 'the internet isn't as fun/good as it used to be'.

Rather than being objective descriptions, he suggests that they are instead perhaps symptomatic of one generation's preferences simply no longer being the main priority.

"The heaviest users and most engaged American audience on the internet are no longer millennials but our successors in Generation Z. If the internet is no longer fun for millennials, it may simply be because it’s not our internet anymore. It belongs to zoomers now."

It does certainly feel like we are in a transitional moment, which is interesting, and for many people will feel difficult and annoying. But for many others will be exciting and full of promise and opportunity.

Interview with Sydney Opera House's Head of Screen, Stuart Buchanan

I interviewed Stu for the Digital Works Podcast. It was really interesting to catch up with him, 2 years after our last podcast conversation, and to hear the direction his work has gone in at SOH.

The first Reddit reviews of the Vision Pro are in

Apple making a move into a new type of technology (in this case mixed-reality headsets) is always worth paying attention to. They generally don't make hasty decisions and the Vision Pro has been a long time in gestation.

Although I'm probably with Scott Galloway on this one at the moment in thinking that this isn't something that is going to catch on quickly (for reasons of aesthetics, social norms, and cost - the Vision Pro, at $3,499, is about 3-6x more expensive than Meta's Quest headset).

But it'll be interesting to see how this works out and I suspect it may well nudge consumer behaviour into a slightly new and different direction if it is even a little bit successful.

Where Are We In The Subscription Death Cycle?

This week's edition of Ryan Broderick's Garbage Day was (as usual) an interesting read.

The main article was reflecting on the (many) recent articles that have been written about the state of subscriptions at the start of 2024.

"Every 4.5 months since 2019, I’ve read that the subscription age will soon be over, if it’s not already. Sometimes it’s just email newsletter subscriptions, sometimes it’s just subscriptions for news content, and sometimes it’s all subscriptions everywhere. We are currently in the midst of another one of these cycles and, yeah, things look pretty grim."

He hits the nail on the head (in my opinion) with this point "the real existential crisis for the media business since the turn of the millennium has been a pathological inability to imagine more than one kind of business model at a time. Once a little money starts coming in — venture capital, branded advertising, platform rev share, licensing, subscriptions — news organizations decide it’s the only way to make money. And then they all start moaning about how it “can’t save news” if it doesn’t universally apply to every outlet."

We have seen versions of this panic/argument in the cultural sector too. The reality is that no one digital model is going to solve anyone's problems all on its own, in just the same way as most cultural organisations don't get all their revenue from central funding, or individual donations, or sponsorship, or ticket sales, it's a mix.

Tech for Today - and for Tomorrow

The folks at Careful Trouble have released a new report which looks at "why Britain can't rely on technology to create trickledown benefits, and make[s] 5 recommendations for practical steps to make sure innovation, ownership structures, skills, data, and connectivity work for everyone, everywhere".

Dominique Barron from Careful Industries will be part of a panel session on digital ethics at the Digital Works Conference in April.

Tracy Chapman at the Grammies

Tracy Chapman rarely plays live these days, but she performed 'Fast Car' with Luke Combs at the Grammies last weekend and the performance was just so wonderful.

She looked so happy (the first 20 seconds are particular joyous), and, if you needed reminding, what a song.

I particularly enjoyed Taylor Swift dancing and singing along, and the thunderous standing ovation.

An observation: the fact it took the Recording Academy until Wednesday to get a full video of this up online has been interesting to watch. This is way too slow when the effusive news coverage was on Sunday evening and Monday morning and the internet has a goldfish-like attention span. There's a lesson here.