When will the media licensing industry “Burn The Boats”?

Mark Andreesen, the multimiljonair entrepreneur and co-founder of netscape  gave a stern message to the publishing industry in a recent interview. He said they should take the example of explorer Cortes who told his crew to “burn the boats” when landing  on new land. This would force the team to move forward, find solutions and explore new ground.

Yesterday, Andreessen was in New York City and we met up. We got to talking about how media companies are handling the digital disruption of the Internet when he brought up the Cortes analogy. In particular, he was talking about print media such as newspapers and magazines, and his longstanding recommendation that they should shut down their print editions and embrace the Web wholeheartedly. “You gotta burn the boats,” he told me, “you gotta commit.” His point is that if traditional media companies don’t burn their own. via Andreessen’s Advice To Old Media: “Burn The Boats”.

Andreeesen recognises that publishers are still making significant revenues from print publications and perhaps dropping it altogether is a bit drastic. What he is saying though is applicable for media licensing as well. What if there was no Rights Managed or Royalty Free photography? What would happen if the current ways to buy digital media like photography, music and video would cease to exist? This would force change and new thinking rapidly.

Do media licensing companies need to “burn the boats”?

Picture: Stock Exchange | Matches | Miguel-Saavedra