Monetizing Media Through Digital Rights Management
The Internet has increased the number of options to deliver and consume digital media assets for both content owners and consumers. We are in an age where more and more content is being converted into, or stored in digital format. Today, consumers have increased flexibility in selecting from a variety of content service providers, a multitude of devices, and a variety of ‘purchase and download’ payment options and subscription models.
For example, if a consumer prefers to pay for only one song instead of the entire album, content providers need to offer flexibility to consumers while implementing the appropriate payment and billing methods. Also, content owners and delivery channels need to gather more insight about their consumers to create more efficient marketing strategies leveraging delivery data and Web analytics technologies. With the usage of digital media over the Internet becoming increasingly popular, the need to develop efficient mechanisms for its management and distribution is becoming critical to ensuring a successful online business.
Sales processes for digital media content are also changing. For example, if a content owner wants to grow sales of online movies to consumers, they have increased options enabled by technology to monetize their assets. They can enable a consumer to download a movie and watch it once for $2, or as many times as possible in two days for $4, or provide unlimited access for $10.
Making the processes and underlying technology transparent to the consumer is critical to ensuring a successful business model. This means that an integrated and easy to use digital delivery and protection system needs to be in place for content owners.
In response to this need, Digital Rights Management (DRM) has emerged as a major approach to ensure flexibility and enforcement of digital licenses. DRM secures digital media and defines the rights to determine its usage. The licenses served to consumers enable the digital media playback while upholding the associated rights. Making sense of the variety of DRM options out there and choosing the right approach is a critical business challenge for content owners today.
This document outlines various DRM options for controlling and monetizing digital media assets to help content owners generate maximum revenue from their content. The document will cover the topics of proprietary hardware based solutions, software based solutions and service-based solutions such as Akamai’s License Delivery service. Akamai’s License Delivery service provides security for digital audio and video content for smooth, scalable distribution of digital media over the Internet using various delivery methods.
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