Media companies know Digital Rights Management is the key to protecting digital content from illegal use, distribution, or re-distribution. Fewer people realize DRM technologies also help content owners choose who may use their copyrighted media, or simply get better insight into the viewing and purchasing patterns of their customers.

DRM requires a comprehensive software platform to first encrypt digital files, limit access to only those people who have acquired a valid license, and report on the usage. Only DRM enables truly secure promotion, sale, and distribution of digital media on the Internet.

Fifty Ways to Make Good Money

You may wish to jump ahead to see some of the business models and DRM tools we offer:

The point is: when used most effectively, DRM allows you to sell the same content multiple ways―helping you make more money from the same content by letting users consume it in the ways that appeal to them.

NAS in Rack

Today’s buzzword is “monetize” …

With DRM, content owners determine the business models or rule set governing the security and management of their content. Some DRM systems have a limited set of rules, but the more powerful systems offer a nearly infinite combination of rules to categorize both content and end-users. With the right DRM tools, your rules can even be modified on the fly, adapting to your latest business models. This flexibility allows you to deliver viewers the content they want, when they want it, at the price they are willing pay.

At any point in time, you can:

  • Set different licensing terms for the same digital content
  • Change licensing terms at will
  • Set license start, stop and duration times
  • Create rental or preview licenses
  • Develop individualized pay-per-view or pay-per-download models
  • Create variably priced subscription bundles

This is only the beginning. We have helped many of our customers make their content more secure and more profitable through innovative techniques based on years of streaming and DRM experience.

Membership/Subscription

Monthly subscriptions are the bread-and-butter DRM model that will most likely earn you the most money. If you already operate a membership site, we can help you enable DRM practically overnight.

We know many other companies charge a lot to provide this type of DRM. Amazingly, Advection.NET offers you monthly membership DRM services at no additional cost to you. Thanks to the high volume of monthly user licensing we deliver, our technologies to support monthly subscription models are extremely efficient and reliable, allowing us to include this service in the cost of streaming media delivery.

Let us know what web server software you are running and what technology you use for your membership database. We’ll provide you a simple server-side API or pre-built modules to enable content subscription licensing for your active members. If you don’t have in-house developers to integrate these tools, our engineers can provide the installation services you need.

Sales/Ownership

DVD sales hit $15.5 billion in 2004 and are headed for an estimated $18 billion in 2005. People like to own their favorite content, so they can watch it whenever they wish without hassle. Most PCs now happily output to regular and widescreen TVs, so this model is becoming more important online.

Thanks to our pre-built media store platform, which works from the latest web browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer, Windows Media Center computers, and even inside Windows Media Player itself just like iTunes™, you can launch your own content sales as quickly as you can provide the inventory.

Rentals

Although DVD sales generated more revenue in 2004, DVD rentals weren’t far behind, earning $5.7 billion. We already support all the most common rental plans such as daily rentals, two day or three day rentals, and weekly rentals. If you’ve seen a plan offered at a local video store, most likely we have already implemented it for one of our customers.

Pay-Per-View

With over $2 billion in sales in 2004, this is another market you can’t ignore. And why should you? Once you’ve encoded your content and protected it with DRM, each additional licensing model adds very little to your investment but opens a whole new market of consumers anxious to buy your content.

Pay-Per-Minute

Entertainment content may be suited to this model, which works much like pre-paid long distance phone cards or cell phone plans. The user purchases a batch of minutes, and then can use those minutes across any video or audio in your chosen library of content.

Although this model works extremely well―users tend to use a lot of minutes and you get paid for all of them―it is the most difficult to implement. Pay-per-minute enabled streaming servers must track usage for each user while they’re viewing and accurately update your e-commerce servers about that usage. If a user runs out of minutes, the streaming server should redirect them to your site so they can purchase more. If the user tries to avoid payments by unplugging their internet connection or rebooting their machine, the media servers need to detect and handle that too.

Our international Windows Media streaming network is pay-per-minute enabled, and has been in use by top pay-per-minute brands since May of 2004. With Advection.NET, you can count on the scalability, reliability, and experience needed to support this challenging but profitable model.

Hotlink or Deep Link Authorization

Even when you provide content for free, you usually prefer users to view that content through your site. To protect your brand and maintain control over your marketing, you may not want people “deep linking” to your video or audio from their own sites. When people use your content in their own pages, you may no longer be getting the web site traffic or advertising revenues you need to grow your business.

Every piece of content hosted on Advection.NET can help prevent hotlink bandwidth theft by supporting “deep link protection” at no additional cost.