Let's say there's an internet radio service that you pay $5 a month for. On this service, you are able to queue up any songs you want that're within the library available on the service, with exception to newer tracks that are located in a higher rank and require a more expensive service to be allowed to queue.
During a month, the plays of these songs is measured; let's say that for the more bandwidth conscious the service allows downloaded versions covered with DRM, and that an internet connection is still required just to submit what tracks are being played. Now the weighted 'value' of each track is measured at the end of a given service period, and commission is given from the service provider to the publishers/artists the music belongs to.
One could argue that you shouldn't have to spend $5 every month to listen to the same CD where you could buy it, but then, $5 for one CD (R35 or so here) is cheap in comparison to going out, buying that CD alone and listening to it till you're sick of it, then shelving it and never listening to it again. At the same time, if nobody needs to buy the CDs, the paper, plastic and metal used for the inserts, casing and CDs themselves no longer needs to be used, lowing environmental impact not only in manufactured materials, but also in shipping/transportation needs. It will however have an industrial and commercial impact in that the lack of need for manufacturing these goods will obviously put people out of work, if not shifting them into different departments for the same companies so that focus for those companies can shift to recordable media; but I'll not go into that right now.
So let's say that within South Africa alone, there are 100,000 people that are now making use of the $5/month service. That's $500,000/month from our country, equal to roughly R3.5mil or so before taxes. If we assume that there are 100 artists or publishers among that and that each receives, for argument's sake, an equal percentage, that means that each artist/publisher gets R35,000/month from that tiny group alone.
Our country is limited by poor bandwidth, caps and high internet costs, so the service, being a pay-to-use, won't necessarily be as attractive as in countries where wireless connections carry significantly lower costs, higher capacities where caps are in place and much higher speeds, so let's say that in America there's as many as 1mil users of the service, in Europe (all European countries included here) there's another 750k and that in far-east Asia there's another 750k users.
That's R87,500,000/month before taxes. Divided by a wider group of 1,000 artists/publishers, that's still R87,500/month per group/artist. This may not seem like a lot, but if groups of artists can publish their music without needing to rely on a publisher (independent groups), or bands can do the same thing, they're still able to yield some revenue without having to worry about a publisher raking a massive portion. Obviously, publishers such as Sony Entertainment, EMI or any number of other publishing bodies won't like the idea at all and will fight it, but then, it's a band's right to not sign under a label. Until these publishers copyright entertainment, the concept, at least.
For a more expensive model, one could say the service then costs $7.5 for access to newer tracks. $10 for one that includes music videos of older music in 720p/1080p when available and $12.5 for a service that has newer music videos available. A service like this, in a manner, already exists in cable TV, satellite TV and such, but those are generally as value additions to TV services as opposed to a dedicated service.
For TV series, one could work on the same model, though obviously with different pricing. If a full migration had to be made from using traditional broadcasting methods to using DRM and internet transmission, service costs may come down out of a change from cable having to carry both encoded TV transmissions as well as internet and/or VoIP services with a QoS layer to only having to carry a dedicated data transmission for internet use, with VoIP being phased out in favour of router-bound devices as opposed to in-line ones as used in some countries. Companies like Comcast in America would benefit from such a method of transmission, while the home-consumer would benefit even more out of getting to watch what they want, when they want, as opposed to having to wait for a specific day and broadcast time or setting up their PVR to record.
Films could do the same, which could completely forgo the need to release nearly as many printed materials (discs, inserts, boxes, etc), once again reducing publishing costs and improving environmental impact. Home consumers benefit out of getting what they want as soon as possible (connection permitting), and there is no physical media to be stolen; this which is an all-encompassing aspect of digital media. There's no physical media to steal, which can reduce street-crime globally.
I dunno, it's an extremely broad topic with a lot of things to consider, but I really think a full transition to digital multimedia is the way to go, and keeping it affordable is the best way to bring in massive amounts of users that you know aren't illegally obtaining their goods out of not needing to. Hell, think of the market research potential of knowing that nearly 100% of your consumers are in effect submitting their personal preferences for review.
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