Scott Karp is worried about the possibility that media companies will not be as profitable in the new digital era as they have been in the past (well, not the entirety of the past — just since the commercialization of mechanical reproduction technology and establishment of limited-access physical distribution systems and gatekept consumer outlets for media; a 19th/20th century set of phenomena). I’m not worried. I think it’s great news. I can easily get by with annual profits in the, um, low-to-mid five figures. And I’m not the only one. I’m guessing you can, too. Disney, obviously, can’t. It won’t go that far, of course, and Disney will always do better than I’m doing, and better than you’re doing, but the profit scenario for media companies large and small, even if it’s lower than it has been for a company like Disney, is still more than I (or you) have made at, you know, most of our day-jobs. Where we made media. Profit potential for a Disney is lower precisely because you and I, and hundreds of thousands of others, get to play the game now, and are nibbling at the pie. It will always take a lot more pie to fill up a Disney than it does the rest of us — and Disney will always get a much bigger part of that pie — but they (and their big media cousins) won’t get nearly as much of it as they did before. And we will get a little bit more of it than we ever had a chance to. So, yeah, that’s a good thing, from where I’m sitting.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 19th, 2006 at 10:23 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.