How Nintendo Music Potentially Outlines the Future of Media

Part of the reason I’m drawn to Nintendo Music as a potentially precious product is because, in many ways, it represents the future. Media companies will increasingly have to choose what to own and what to co-pilot. Not every new venture needs to exist as an O&O product, nor does it have to exist within a centralized environment. Licensing out ... See more

An interesting question to ask is: what does the 21st-century Nintendo look like? And how does the next era of iconic IP take shape?

And so what you've ended up with, not surprisingly, is a few key players that happen to own the majority of the IP that is kind of a must have in this industry to have a product offering and a handful of distributors that have gotten scale on distribution of great user experiences like a Spotify, Amazon, a YouTube, whoever you might want to think a... See more

So when anyone frames Nintendo to be “the next X” or “will one day be like Y” it completely misses the point. Connecting to the company’s core values, Nintendo is flexible in its approach and sincere in its intentions, but it will never compromise on being its unique self. And if the company’s central mission is to put smiles on the faces of everyo... See more

Because I'm going to have the hottest new songs. The problem is the consumer wants more than that. They want the old stuff to. So all of a sudden the power in that relationship moves from the distributor who can create new content and also has the consumer relationship to who owns the IP that the consumer wants, the IP that consumer wants a lot of ... See more

So let's use video because I just think it's a great example. If you think about music and how you consume music, you actually consume catalog product a lot. I certainly do. And I think most consumers do. Songs that I've listened to once, I will listen to again and again, and again, at some point. With video, that's less the case. Once I watch seas... See more

But we could create a better deal: These organizations could invest in artists rather than owning them outright.

Music studios could invest in musicians and Spotify could invest in podcasts, giving those artists the capital they need to distribute their work on a grand scale, but the artist could retain majority ownership and creative control over ... See more