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#GeorgeOrwellStreamingParty: Is the world ready for on-demand books? In a world of streaming services, it’s clear that society is becoming dependent on the immediate satisfaction that comes with the ability to consume whatever media they desire at the push of a button. As technology and society continue to develop, the possibility of an on-demand streaming service for literature of all kinds doesn’t seem that far-fetched. With services such as Audible, Scribd, and e-book readers, online consumption of texts is not something unbeknownst to Western civilization. But are we ready to turn the page on tangible literature for good?
Argh-piracy matey! The primary reason why on-demand streaming services exist is to curb piracy rates. There’s only so much that Digital Rights Management (DRM) can prevent. In a 2013 U.S. General Accountability Office report, the price of college textbooks in America rose 82% from 2002 to 2012. This prompted many university students to search for “lessthan-legal” ways to obtain course materials, as seen with the many Twitter threads and Tumblr posts on websites that provide online PDFs. But pirated literature doesn’t stop with educational texts. Pirated books are taking the literary world by storm and it’s not going away any time soon. The most effective way to ameliorate this situation is to turn to on-demand services.
Bookmarking on-demand. According to Lee Marshall for the Creative Industries Journal in 2015, online streaming services have been credited with lowering the instances of piracy. As described by Vonderau in Television and New Media in 2017, Spotify transformed the rampant pirated music market (made possible through software like Limewire and uTorrent) into a more manageable stream of income for artists and their work, achieved through an access-based model. According to Wlömert and Papies for the International Journal of Research in Marketing in 2016, the main reason consumers decide to pirate is due to ‘flatrate bias’ – the belief that by avoiding paying a flat rate, they’ll be better off due to the possible overestimation of the product’s future use and the reduction of fluctuation in rent-like payments. Furthermore, Marshall stated that expanding on the one-time payment plan for a movie DVD or a music album into a streaming service, allows for artists and creators to have continuous payments for their art. But how do content creators get reimbursed, and will it be less than what they currently make? According to Vonderau, Spotify pays artists a percentage agreed upon within their publishing contracts. The way Spotify reimburses rights holders is based on the percentage of Spotify’s overall revenue, determined by the percentage of
the overall streams the artists received. This is the same payment method that Apple follows for iTunes purchases, as stated by Marshall in his 2015 journal article. As Spotify’s revenue grows, so do artists’ revenue. Spotify is valued at $13 billion USD and has over 50 million subscribers. So it’s clear that on-demand services can generate huge revenue to compensate artists.
The future of Bookflix? Novelify? Literature+? A book-focused, on-demand service could bring reading to a whole new audience, providing access to individuals who don’t currently read books for a variety of reasons, access being one reason. The presence of access-based services allows for market expansion, leading to a higher demand for books and novels across the globe, according to Wlömert and Papies. It would allow users to read any desired book without having to store files on their device, much like Audible and e-book readers do. Vonderau added that it would have the capability to take data from your reading selection and cater suggestions to your reading preferences. Marshall stated that while there was once uproar in the music industry over Spotify’s use, it has since evolved to facilitate participatory and unique events such “streaming parties” conducted by the musician’s fans or even the musicians themselves. Times are changing and the era of digital books becoming the norm is approaching. But to know what’s going to happen next, the publishing industry and society at-large must collectively turn the page. Miguel Castro is a first-year undergraduate Graphic Communications Management student at Toronto’s Ryerson University. When he’s not doing assignments or walking his dogs, he’s a freelance designer focusing on logo creation and graphic design.
24 | June 2021 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
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