Many to many

A framework for thinking about today’s disaggregated media ecosystem

We live in a time of abundance. Every day, we can go on YouTube and endlessly watch videos of any genre imaginable. You can binge Netflix or scroll through Instagram endlessly. Every day, we have more content at our fingertips than ever before.

“Every 12 months we produce 8 million new songs, 2 million new books, 16,000 new films, 30 billion blog posts, 182 billion tweets, 400,000 new products.”

The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future by Kevin Kelley (2017)

What caused this explosion in content and avenues to consume? The simple explanation is smartphones and high speed internet.

But this is also the most recent chapter in a broader narrative that’s been building over the last couple of decades as we’ve moved from a Few-to-Many world to a Many-to-Many world.

Few to many (1940s until 2000s)

In the days before the internet, distribution was fixed. Like NYC Taxi cab medallions, there were only a certain number of movie theaters…