The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated a number of trends that were already underway before the health crisis.
We are seeing physical retail stores buckle under the economic pressure, while we continue to see e-commerce giants accelerate.
The idea of remote work has gone from a niche approach by a small number of companies to something that is being considered as a potential long-term strategy in almost every company.
Higher education was already under pressure for the high level of debt that students were leaving with, but now the conversation has shifted to question the importance of higher education more broadly and/or the ability to deliver that experience at a much lower cost.
Many businesses that previously were stuck in antiquated models are now exploring how they can digitize their businesses — should restaurants become ghost kitchens? Should retailers move to online only?
This new normal has not only affected traditional businesses.
One area that I have been paying attention to is the content business. This industry has been around since the beginning of time, but the legacy players have refrained from innovating in a material way for awhile.
There are plenty of upstarts foaming at the mouth to disrupt those who have fallen asleep at the wheel.
Take Substack for example — the platform I use to send this email every day.
They are allowing any journalist to quit their job, continue doing the same work, and build a more sustainable income stream.
Rather than asking an individual customer to subscribe to a publication that has various types of content, a journalist can now curate their own audience and have that audience fund their work.
This sounds simple in theory, but it is incredibly hard to execute on.
Luckily, Substack has had a ton of success in recruiting writers to move to the platform and we are now seeing many journalists making more money working for themselves than they were at their previous employers.
Not all of the innovation in the space is technology-related though.
The big news yesterday was that Joe Rogan, the host of The Joe Rogan Experience, signed an exclusive licensing deal with Spotify for over $100 million per year.
For those of you that are not familiar with Joe and his show, he runs the number one podcast in the world.
It is a one-on-one interview style with guests across disciplines, including sports, music, technology, science, and lifestyle. Joe is currently doing about 190 million downloads per month. This makes him more popular than any television show or traditional media organization.
The interesting part about this news is that Joe’s team is less than 5 people.
He has been able to use new technology and new platforms to completely disrupt the legacy media structure. He owns 100% of the business and has never taken an outside investment. This is what the future, digital world will look like. The upstarts will need less capital and less headcount to disrupt the monolithic organizations of yesteryear.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see more content creators follow this model.
Just as traditional businesses are being forced to question their business models, legacy media organizations are going to be faced with the same.
At what point will we see a media organization give up their traditional distribution channels to pursue digital only? When do we see the legacy talent leave for digital only companies? How will the monetization efforts change as attention shifts and distribution channels evolve?
There are definitely more questions than answers right now.
The one known truth is that every business, regardless of industry, is having a mid-life crisis right now.
Whether you are a restaurant or a large media company, you have to ask yourself “does our model make sense in the new world?”
My guess is that many people are going to conclude that their model is unsustainable.
This uncertainty will cripple some companies, but serve as opportunity for others. Now is the time to be long disruptors and short the disrupted. There are always beneficiaries of change.
They tend to be the forward looking individuals or companies that have the courage to try something new. They aren’t scared of failure. And they have the confidence to swiftly act once they realize that the goalposts have moved.
The media industry is going to undergo immense change over the next few years.
They won’t be alone.
I would love to hear what industries you’re watching, including any companies that you think will be the disruptors or the disrupted.
This article was published here: https://pomp.substack.com/p/the-disruptors-and-the-disrupted
