Hulu v. YouTube: Which Content is King?
There is little doubt that the media landscape will move toward more and more streaming media, but what will the landscape look like? Roughly two years ago, with Google’s purchase of YouTube for nearly $2bn, many observers predicted the downfall of major media providers and a move to user generated content. Soon we would all be actors, producers, DJs, VJs and so on. Along with YouTube, sites like Vimeo for video and Last.Fm and Pandora for music, user generated, streaming content seemed on the rise. Maybe people predicted the death of the movie studio, or record label. Not surprising, rumors of the death of corporate media has been greatly exaggerated. But by late 2007 Last.Fm has signed a deal with all the major content distributors, Pandora may potentially be sued out of existence over copyright infringement, and Analyst from Screen Digest predict that Hulu’s revenue will surpass YouTube’s as soon as next year. What I think we are experiencing is the classic model of creative destruction. A creative and entrepreneurial people in the edge economies constantly innovate and push technology and media further ahead. While slow moving, but highly capitalized corporate media companies have no choice but to adapt. Certainly there has been a great deal of rent-seeking the behalf of media companies, with DRM files and restrictive deals with various providers, but it seems like every day more and more professional created content is appearing (legally) on the web for streaming access. Companies like Universal, Sony, CBS, Fox, NBC are slowly realizing that their interests are best served by becoming an indispensable part of the conversation, as opposed to a miserly guardian of their content.
Prassel has already posted a guide on how to get streaming content, like that provided by Hulu and CBS, up on to the big screen. Streaming content is the future, and just as CDs gave way to digital means of distribution, so will DRM-laden download based files soon give way to freely streaming content. 
While new Last.Fms and YouTubes will continue to emerge and push limits, I think that the popular content landscape will continue to be increasingly dominated by corporate content providers such as Hulu. And as long as the forces of creative destruction are continued to be supported and served, the evolution of this landscape will continue to be remarkably exciting to watch, enjoy and participate in.
