Two years ago I wrote an article about my personal daily media consumption which was in response to a meme that Jeremiah Owyang began three years prior. So much has changed in the past two years that I thought I’d revisit the discussion, talk about my own morphing media consumption patterns, and ask you about your daily media consumption. It’s a topic that’s near and dear to Intertainment Media, because they distribute a communications and content application, KNCTR, which pushes content daily to your desktop.

Since my last article, I believe there have been three significant changes in my media consumption:

I’m forcing myself to go paperless

I made it a plan for 2012 to go paperless. The obvious thing to change with a paperless strategy is to scan all your receipts and then throw them away. But paperless also has to do with removing all the other paper junk in your life such as manuals, books, newspapers, and magazines. I now trash manuals and download the PDFs. I only purchase eBooks to read on my iPad. And I read newspapers on digital devices and my favorite magazine, Wired, cover-to-cover on my iPad. Oddly, Wired doesn’t have a way to turn off the paper magazine subscription, and just get the digital subscription. Every time that magazine shows up, I just throw it in recycling. An unfortunate and unnecessary waste.

By going paperless, and consuming my media in that manner, it’s forcing me to better organize my digital media. That means I have to have a system for bookmarks, storing digital files, and finding the media.

Reading a lot on my mobile phone

I can now actually read text, and lots of it, on my Android phone. The screen size is large enough and my favorite media sites either have a mobile application or a mobile optimized web site. The latest news in the areas I’m most interested is always with me. I don’t have to wait for it to be mailed to me or go pick it up at the newsstand, nor do I need to deal with the physical disposal of the media, which is a pain in itself.

The downside to all this media consumption on the mobile device is that batteries die quickly, rendering their primary use, communications, useless. Luckily, Android phones have removable batteries and you can purchase plenty of extras. I always have three extras charged in my bag at all times. This isn’t true with the iPhone, but there are plenty of portable iPhone chargers.

Reading everything on my iPad

I’ve become a huge fan of my iPad for reading PDFs, newspapers, blogs, magazines, and purchasing and reading eBooks. It’s a fantastic media consumption device. I don’t ever plan to purchase another physical book again. I’m so tired of packing them up in boxes and moving them to just adorn a shelf like it’s artwork in my home. Yes, there is something very comfortable about a physical book, but in quantity they’re a sheer pain in the ass to manage. Also, when I want to read something new, I can just select it and have it on my device within seconds.

The next obvious stage is textbooks to go digital. It’s no surprise that Apple is targeting the education market and will be making an announcement in NYC next week. I wish I had all my textbooks on an iPad when I was in school. My son is going to have it so easy.

How has/will your daily media consumption changed in 2012?

How has your media consumption changed over the past five years, or even just last year? What are you doing now that you’ve never done before and what have you given up?

Creative Commons photo attribution to leondel, zandwacht, and BenSpark.

As many media industries, such as music and newspapers, were having difficulty making a go of their cash cow revenue streams, such as CD sales and classifieds, respectively, the press was spelling doom and gloom. For example, both the NY Times and the San Francisco Chronicle were hemorrhaging money.

And then all this media, that at one time cost a lot of money to consume, becomes free. So many articles started to tout, “People online won’t pay for content.”

For a period of time that did seem true. Yet today we appear to be consuming more media than we ever have. If that’s true, why can’t enough people make enough money selling media?

We’re going through a media industry correction

Like the public had to be trained as to what the cost of a print newspaper was, we’re going to have to be trained to understand what the new digital media costs. For example:

• The varying cost of a newspaper on a tablet, PC, phone, or in print.
• The varying cost of a movie in a theater, on DVD, on-demand over the Internet, on cable, or over-the-air TV.
• The varying cost of a song on a CD, streamed, or purchased digitally.

There are some clear cut answers to these issues, but only a few. Many others still need to be hashed out. Understandably, many in the media industry are frustrated. They’ve got bills to pay and they don’t have time to wait for this “correction” to work itself out.

Software can convert a device into a marketplace

I’ve become a huge fan of the iPad. It’s a perfect media consumption device for all kinds of media. Not just because of the device itself, but because of the marketplace for the media and how one can actually access and consume the media. That last part is the part for which all other media consumption devices have tried and failed.

The iPod succeeded, not just because it was a great device, but because it had iTunes. The competitors were all a distant second. I remember many years ago at CES when the first wave of portable video players were coming out, the selling points were always on the display size, resolution, and disk space or how many movies it could hold. When I asked the basic question, “How do I get movies onto the device?” I always received the answer of “We have software for that.” As if “software” was as universal and standardized as purchasing a nut for a screw. Any one will do.

I remember when I purchased my first iPod. All I did was connect it to my computer and it automatically found all my MP3 files (I had previously ripped my entire CD collection) which were then loaded onto my iPod. It truly was the best experience I ever had with the installation of an electronic device. I was all prepared to fight the troublesome nature that was so common with installation of devices. But this truly was phenomenal. I plugged it in, found my music, and I was done. That was it.

iTunes proved to us that “software” was integral to the sale of the hardware, for both short term and for building an ongoing marketplace. Not only was iTunes good software for initializing the iPod, it also enticed great content producers to produce for the platform and the device.

The iPad: Next great hope for all?

I believe the iPad, because of both the device and marketplace, has great hope again for the media industry. I’m not alone. According to a survey, AllThingsD reports that 63 percent of tablet users (predominantly iPad users) want more digital content to  read. Yet for some reason magazine publishers aren’t biting. I don’t know why. I also don’t know why many, like Wired, don’t allow me to end my print subscription and only get the digital version of the magazine on the iPad. I love reading Wired on the iPad. Since it’s begun coming in that format, I’ve stopped reading the print version. Yet I still pay my yearly subscription.

I do receive free magazines on my iPad such as AOL Editions and Flipboard, but those aren’t fully edit publications and to improve the quality of the publication I have to keep giving it information. I find that frustrating. I don’t want to work that hard to curate my own content. I’d like the publication to curate for me. I trust the editors.

I used to subscribe and pay for many magazines. But currently, the only one I have a paid subscription for is Wired. I’m sold on the new iPad reading experience. A call out to all magazine publishers for which I stopped my subscription. Create an iPad version that’s natural to use and I’ll happily renew my subscription.

For more, please read:

• Seven Ways You Can and Should Start Charging for Your Content
• How to Increase the Value of Your Content Without Changing Your Content

Creative Commons photo attribution to Sigalakos, gordonr, and Steve Rhodes.

With Microsoft set to unveil Windows 8 next week, pockets of the web are whispering that this cross-platform & touch-screen enabled OS has the potential to be the iPad killer.

I am skeptical, to say the least.

As of late, Microsoft has developed a reputation for stumbling late to the party. Remember Zune? And how about that Windows Phone? Vista?

You can’t blame me for not being optimistic about Windows 8…

That being said, deep down, I do sincerely want Windows 8 to succeed. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that Microsoft continues to dominate PC market share and remains a force to be reckoned with in the console wars. They’ve got what the know-how to be innovative and the resources to be competitive – there’s no reason they can’t go toe-to-toe with Apple.

However, in the end, it will come down to execution.

What do you think? Will Windows 8 be DOA?

This means all of those DVDs and CDs you used to buy. Last year in the U.S. DVD sales dropped by 7%, while in the same period CD sales in the U.K. fell 12.4%. It’s happening all over.

UltraViolet

The media industry has been responding with announcements like the one surrounding “UltraViolet” from CES in Las Vegas this week.

It’s aims are simple: people are not buying DVDs from a retail outlets anymore, so let’s give them an online alternative to buy from that works across numerous platforms.

UltraViolet is basically a content management system from an alliance of studios and technology providers who are looking to expand digital rights for the end consumer.

It aims to enable the technology behind buying content from one channel – IE: through iTunes – yet being able to access that same content again through other channels – IE: on a Home Theatre, at no extra cost.

This idea has floated around before, yet has never been developed in such a concrete form. In this example, the consumer will first have to register each purchase with the UltraViolet online database to enable cross-channel sharing. As their slogan states, you can then “Watch Wherever”.

Concern with platforms is one of the key problems for declining artifact sales. If I buy a DVD, I’m limited. I can only watch it on a system with an optical drive. That means a home theatre or computer. But what about my mobile phone, or iPad? A digital video disc doesn’t exactly fit into those…

Plus, it’s obvious that the “artifact as visual collection” sentiment – IE: decoration for the living room – is quickly disappearing, lost to fears of being labeled as the next plastic furniture covering.

Clean and tidy is the new packed CD rack. Files stored on a media server and accessible via the cloud from any platform: the big tv, the little tv, your phone, your tablet. Take your pick.

Hollywood is also addressing it’s elephant in the room: a lot of Internet bandwidth is being taken up by people downloading torrents, and most of the torrents are video files.

Just like the music side in theory continues to test digital distribution models to save it’s slump (but can’t stop hating on Spotify in the U.S.) Hollywood needs to keep moving forward as well, although don’t expect word of an all-you-can-eat model.

That’s likely because the music folks can’t help but feeling cheated by their all-you-can-eat arrangements, and industry folks everywhere are observing. Unlimited access doesn’t allow for massive hits to push a decent year into the stratosphere like in the past.

Yet sales are also not driven when 70% of consumers who are listening to a song downloaded it illegally. So keep the innovation coming media industry, you’ve got some large “illegal” shoes to fill.

It’s no surprise that none of those media players are around today.

Apple at that time had already proven the successful marriage of device (iPod) and application (iTunes). It was truly simplicity. I remember when I installed my iPod for the first time, I was blown away at the simplicity. It just found all my MP3s and sucked it into the device without any difficulty. It was the best consumer product experience I had ever had. Many competing products claimed, “Oh, you can just bring all your music into our device,” but it was far from simple.

Hey tablet PC makers, don’t let software be an afterthought

Lenovo Ideapad U1 Hybrid

While I’m still suspect of whether the iPad will be successful given how we’ve become so accustomed to inputting information through keyboards (see Will the iPad Follow the Failure of Voice Dictation Software?), I am buoyed by the fact that they’re continuing on their tradition of simply acquiring and managing media. Their online bookstore is just an extension of the iTunes experience. While Amazon has successfully simplified the content gathering experience with the Kindle, I’m not seeing the same with other tablet computers.

If everyone knows what it takes to be successful against Apple, why do manufacturers of media consumption devices continue to ignore the content input experience? We saw it with MP3 devices, then video devices, and now we’re going to see it again with iPad competitive tablet devices. Take a look at PC World’s round up of Tablet PCs from this year’s CES. The obsession over the mechanics under the hood and not the actual experience using the device just points to the impending failure of all these competitors.

Yes, the current version of the iPad is hamstringed severely and I’m not going to jump out and get version 1.0. But they’re definitely creating a new type of media consumption (to a lesser extent media creation) experience. And while I was down on it in my Technologizer article, I want to be proven wrong. I want to see people adapt to a new experience of consumption and computing in somewhat the same way they’ve done with the iPhone.

MSI Tablet PC

Except for the Kindle, the competitors are just trying to slam technology into a device. They’re not focused on creating an experience. Yes, these tablet PC manufacturers will sell a few units, but they won’t capture grand mind share like Apple can.

Prior to the release of the iPhone, I received a competitive handheld computing device from Nokia, the Nokia 810. It was a painful computing experience. After toying around with it for a few hours, I gave up and it sits in my drawer. If I could recognize how annoying it was to use, why did they release the device? Don’t you sometimes think the manufacturers don’t use their products first?

If you don’t love the experience, guess what? We won’t either.

Creative Commons photo attribution: ndevilTV / CC BY 2.0