TINSTAAFL

There, ostensibly, is no such thing as a free lunch. Unfortunately for media companies, this seems to often be the case with many forms of new media. People steal video games, music, and movies every day. Its easier on the conscience too because you're not taking something physically tangible. However, media costs money to make and without revenue, we'd be surrounded by junk and forced to resort amateurish hacks with Sony HandiCams, garage band records, and flash based games on sites like Newgrounds.

With the shift to digital, its become easier than ever before to get media for free which has made 'paid media' a harder sell. Why buy the newest album when you can download it for free? Die Antwoord, a South African hip hop band popular with hipsters, released all of its music for free until it went viral. Only then did they switch to iTunes and play sold out shows worldwide.

I've worked in the music industry for several years before moving onto the newspaper industry. The majority of bands make pithy sums from their record sales through labels. The main function of getting signed to a big label was free promotion, national distribution, and (hopefully) an increased production budget.
With the increase in cheaper in-house production, people can get a nice sounding recording of their band and promote it for free online and reach a global audience. We're now inundated with media.
Little Suzy Q with her Macbook, a copy of garage band, and a thriftstore guitar can put together a decent sounding album within hours, promote it online, and then print out her own copies to sell at shows. The hard fact of playing music, is that you make most of your money playing shows while selling tickets and merchandise. You might even get lucky and some TV show will license one of your tracks for an episode.
If you're popular enough where you can garner a substantial income from record sales you'll fall under the Jay-Z mentality. He was quoted as saying that his last album sold 300,000 copies. With the prevalence of illegal download, he lost sales, but he still sold 300,000 albums. Cue scandalous ohs and ahs from the media industry after several of his big name colleagues supported his remarks in support of illegal downloading.

When it comes to gaming, its surprising that most developers haven't given consumers the middle finger. I personally downloaded, installed, and played Call of Duty MW3 nearly a week before it was released. I played online mode. I played single player. There was no impetus for me to actually buy the physical game. I downloaded both MW3 and Battlefield 3 to decide which game I was going to fork over $60 for. The answer was neither due to more of the same gameplay in a new package, and the fact that every 'premium' feature, such as multiplayer, being perfectly accessible on the pirated versions.
The trend for PC gaming is now half-assed console ports, horrible client verifiers (such as EA's Orion which has been giving hundreds of legitimate Battlefield 3 users more than one headache), or freeware. Conversely the quality of freeware has gone up as developers script in advertisements, allow users to purchase items, or offer a subscription fee. However, the true focus of gaming now, unforuntately for me, is that companies are geared towards console releases because of its low piracy rate.

Print media is also coming under fire. The past decade has seen more newspapers fold and shrink than if the rain forest caught fire. Many papers have switched to a free format and exist solely on advertisers dollars. Indeed, the paper that I work for is a free paper. We have a daily readership of 30,000 (or so I'm told.) We value the cost of our adspace based on our readership to reach solvency and (eventual) profit.

The future of media, as I see it, isn't in paying out money to studios. The media industries in this country are so big that they're collapsing upon themselves. Several have chosen to fight against free content. Afterawhile, they've given given up the RCAA did when confronted with tens of millions of music pirateers. Others have chosen to go with the flow.

However, we're inundated on a constant basis with media. Overtime, people will seek new media, which unfortunately many larger firms cannot provide-with so much monetary capital on the line, they're forced to follow their formulas for success which prevent them from branching out into new forms of entertainment. Then its time for the user to open their handy torrent client and click 'download.'