How Music and Movie Bigs Can Thrive

This column was originally published on RealMoney on Nov. 17 at 11:35 a.m. EST.

Over the past two years, I've devoted a lot of words to the problems that the content owners are running into, including piracy, the death of broadcast and the end of interstitial commercials.

But all is not lost. There are lots of opportunities for the content owners to not just survive but find new avenues of explosive growth. Put simply, they need to leverage the ongoing expansion of distribution channels.

Ten years ago, music labels such as Sony BMG and Warner Music Group (WMG Quote) had but one major consumer distribution outlet: music retailers such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and K-Tel (remember them?!). They also had subscription companies such as Columbia House, which mail CDs to customers. And, of course, radio stations -- the terrestrial kind -- would play an endless loop of the same ol' tired top-40 hits from today, yesterday and on back to the 1950s. ...