My experiences in the Mac software world have taught me a lot about word-of-mouth: if you can get somebody “cool” to talk about how good your application is, people will buy it. End of story. No advertising necessary, just a blog with an RSS feed and lots of people who think you’re cool.

You won’t find someone who hates Hollywood MORE I think than me. Their stupidity and venality are both in plain evidence. And the Big Media’s strategy towards DRM and such (and that includes Apple and iTunes, incidentally) is abominable.

But having said all that, I just find my compadres in the so-called “Web 2.0″ space ridiculous many times with their seeming faith that as long as some VC funds it, and the site is “cool” in some way, that they’ll be billionaires. I’ve sat through far too many meetings where people talk on and on about “changing the paradigm” and “inventing new business models” and such without ever answering the question: Who Pays?

Having said all that, personally, I think the biggest threat to Big Media is social-networking sites and Big Blogs. If an alternative to the marketing power of Big Media is firmly established — and as a marketer, I know the most important marketing is word-of-mouth — and influencers of Big Blogs (e.g., think Engadget) take off… then studio executives should start worrying in a big way.

-TS

I absolutely agree with you that the “who pays” question is important and is, truly, missing from Andreessen’s original post.

I guess when I mentioned iTunes as being the store where I get most of my content (I don’t even really like the word “content”, it’s a little too much of a euphemism for me) but ideally there should be an ecosystem of iTunes-like stores (like the Amazon store, and other ones currently not extant) competing with one another.

I’ll be the first to admit that my ideas of a new business model for the entertainment industry are entirely half-baked, but I do think that there’s got to be a better way forward for the industry than increasing DRM and restrictions on the ways people can, well, be entertained. I don’t know what it will take for that shift to happen, but I don’t think playing hardball with writers when shows like the Office and Grey’s Anatomy are the crown jewels of the fall lineup is such a good idea for television.

Anyway, just my $0.02, again. This is definitely an interesting topic of discussion.