It’s no secret that business revenue models employed by industries across the board have had to drastically evolve in recent years to keep up with advances in technology, and adult entertainment is no different.
Oddly, however, the adult industry has lagged behind, in its recognition of consumer demand for ala carte-type pricing models employed by other facets of the entertainment industry. But “better late than never” must be the new mantra for Pink Visual, as the adult entertainment megacorp unveiled its latest venture earlier this month.
PVLocker.com is a cloud-based distribution site promising to provide your porn on your terms. PVLocker utilizes an open source browser providing the customer with an app store-esque environment to purchase the desired content on a per file basis. Upon purchase, the user may then access the files, which are stored on Pink Visual’s server cloud, anywhere and anytime via PC or mobile device. Use of PVLocker.com will initially be limited to storing Pink Visual content only; however, the company plans to eventually offer storage of any user-owned content.
Now before your Infringement Radar starts buzzing off the charts, have no fear, Pink Visual has no plans to allow content sharing on the site. Hence, allowing PVLocker to fill a very noticeable gap in the adult website marketplace, while still keeping happy the almighty copyright holder. Even though Pink Visual obviously understands the necessity of business model evolution, it intends to continue distributing content through the traditional subscription basis as well, as long as it makes fiscal sense to do so.
How long will that be? No one can be certain what kind of effect this model will have on the traditional monthly membership business model. But one thing is for sure, when you have the immediate gratification of one-click payment at your finger tips versus the hassle of recurring billing, obsolescence is a much more real possibility than ever before.
Much like the experiences of the recording industry a few years back, adult content distributors are finally taking notice of the fact that they have been fighting a losing battle and that the marketplace will always win.
The recording industry fought these battles for years — litigating against Napster, Grokster, and others, in the attempt to beat back rampant audio file piracy. The recording labels then dipped their collective toe in the waters of end user infringement litigation, only to suffer a tremendous public backlash, causing a quick 180 reversal on that strategy.
One would think that this trial and error would have provided an early roadmap for the adult industry, when it began struggling with its own piracy headaches. Instead, many companies appear wedded to the concept of replacing lost revenues with legal judgments against infringers. While every copyright holder is entitled to enforce its rights and bring infringers to justice, that effort should be tempered with a recognition that less infringement might be occurring, if a realistic alternative to the $29.99/month recurring membership model were routinely offered to adult content consumers.
Flexibility is key and nostalgia breeds irrelevance — Pink Visual is embracing the future of adult content distribution by providing its customers with their entertainment “when they want it, where they want it, and how they want it.” [Cue Queen’s “I Want It All.”] Continued inventiveness like this will always be preferable to reliance on litigation as a revenue line item.
