What’s the future of … ?
The Freakonomics blog recently ran an interesting debate on the future of the music industry. The consensus seems to be that the “industry” is resisting rather than embracing the long tail, and that independent artists are exploiting it to good effect.
Proposed solutions have ranged form advertising supported services, to subscriptions, to low cost highly efficient transactional services (my favourite) as the means of perpetuating the biz. Well worth a read for all of us in the e-media world.
Advertising-supported professional reference makes a serious debut
Its not surprising that the first major foray in advertising-supported professional information portals comes from inside the medical world www.OncologySTAT.com, aimed squarely at the oncologist, blends professional content from the Elsevier stable with paid-for advertising from the pharmaceutical industry.
It’s a brave move from Elsevier given its large stable of professional content and existing paid-for relationships with many of the audience they may be targeting with the product.
Now, if it works for Elsevier Health Sciences, there is a large group of other professionals out there already familiar with the (Reed) Elsevier brand that can be targeted on the same way, it depends on the results.
One to watch.