A little while ago Alphamonkey and I got in a conversation about the future of media distribution here on the blog. I argued that a ‘rental’ or ‘pay per view’ model is the most likely to emerge as the future, since DRM is so universally recognized as a flawed system, and becomes mostly moot under a streaming scenario. Alphamonkey raised the perfectly valid argument that such a model would threaten those works which are best enjoyed as a whole, such as a well made album wherein the songs are meant to be enjoyed as a complete piece. I do not argue that some works are best enjoyed this way, but I also don’t think that the rental system eliminates this method of enjoyment, but I will concede that it will perhaps discourage it, or at the very least make it harder for an artist to get people to listen to the album as they want them to. But isn’t that what the current revolution in media is all about? Allowing people to enjoy things the way they want to? If I want to watch your movie out of order, isn’t that my prerogative? If I think one of your songs is great, but the rest of the album is crap, who are you to tell me that I need to listen to the whole album?

I just stumbled upon this post on Loadedpun about the increasing number of video producers who are taking their work over to sites like Revver, where they get paid a share of the advertising revenue. There are a few interesting things he talks about in the entry, as well as a few interesting posts in the comments, if you have a second check it out. I just thought it was somewhat pertinent to that earlier discussion, so I wanted to pass it along. We occasionally put our videos on Revver btw .