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Apps, I-tunes and digital delivery.
Hi.
I have a longtime client that I has produced solely for the DVD sell though market for a decade. They have a few hundred hours of documentary archive they are now looking to exploit ‘digitally’.
While I am more than comfortable with the encoding side of the assets, I have little real knowledge of the mechanics of getting things onto i-tunes / app-stores. I doubt I will ultimately be responsible for any of this.. but i’d love to understand the process and the kind of things to expect in the preparation of assets.
Does anyone have any recommendations as to good sources of information?
Thanks in advance.
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3 Replies
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I reckon you should get hold of itunes’ distribution and content contract and go through it carefully. If you’re trying to improve your reach in terms of selling complete programmes to the public it’s probably a good way of going about it, but I don’t know what kind of revenue you’d be able to raise that way.
With hundreds of hours of media, it might be worthwhile selling some of it as stock footage to professional users, in which case you’d need a website/app where people can search and preview clips, then a system where they get a link to download the full quality file either on a payment or by being logged into an account. Without knowing what kind of thing you’ve got or what the technical quality is, it’s hard to say whether the up front investment in time and effort would be worth doing. Perhaps you should have a look at some stock footage distributors to see how they go about it (and maybe consider putting your stuff with one of them rather than do it yourself to bypass having to market it from scratch).
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Thanks for the reply.
The assets are all Anamorphic DVCAM produced for DVD sell through. I doubt most of them would pass any kind of thorough broadcast QC. By and large they are 48-60 minute ‘inside the music’ style documentaries covering classic rock bands.
The fees for I-tunes/I-store are prohibitively high in relation to the type of returns expected. Amazon VOD looks like one avenue. however the client is determined to ‘get his stuff in the iphone/pad’
Having spoken to a few folks since posting this, I am currently looking at some kind of traditional e-commerce ‘digital download’ solution with a free iPhone/pad app as a front-end.
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Just so you understand, this really isn’t a production or even a content problem.
It’s a marketing problem. Pure and simple.
No matter how wonderful or compelling your product/content might be, the central sales challenge is ALWAYS getting it exposed to large enough audience and then getting that audience to REACT to the marketing by actually sending in money. THAT is the CENTRAL issue in selling anything.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is NOT going to be successful.
Yeah, we all hear stores about the rare few who get “lottery lucky” and it’s VERY easy to translate those stories into “if I just make my widget – lots of people will buy them just like the products I see on TV” thinking. But for every “infomercial you see on TV where you hear of people making huge sales, there are a thousand (probably TENS of thousands, of products that are nearly as good that don’t come even CLOSE to turing a profit.
The marketing plan AND the funds to drive it – that’s what usually makes the difference between sales success and sales failure.
For what it’s worth.
“Before speaking out ask yourself whether your words are true, whether they are respectful and whether they are needed in our civil discussions.”-Justice O’Conner
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