Legacy Distributors are the problem (Score 1)

ANY content-only oriented scheme for media distribution (meaning any scheme that reduces the market frictions between media content producers and media content consumers) will ultimately fall short of expectations as long as the legacy distributors (your Warner Bros., your Paramounts, etc.) are involved. Much like the airline industry, a new, more efficient and ultimately more profitable model has emerged for distributing all forms of media: the download. The problem is, the new model relies less and less upon distributors, and more and more upon any system that reduces the barriers between content producers (artists, journalists, musicians, etc.) and consumers. The legacy distributors, much like legacy air carriers, have entirely too much invested in what is an ultimately doomed infrastructure. And, like the airline industry, we will not see the "new reality" come to complete fruition until those legacy distributors begin "reorganizing" (read: going bankrupt). Their hold on power is still great, and it will be a while before they go completely tits up, but the time is coming. Web portals like Google and Yahoo are the media distributors of tomorrow. And the successful ones will be those that figure out how to monetize a smaller and more frictionless interaction between consumers and their content. Sony has too much to lose. Apple will continue to innovate, but as long as they partner with legacy distributors who are NOT aggressively pursuing the new download-based model (striving for a frictionless market for media), they will ultimately be held back. Still, I think the dismantling of the old distribution regimes are inevitable. Time and pressure... time and pressure.