It never fails: Someone comes up with a nifty new technology that takes the world by storm and before anyone realizes it, bam! Adult entertainment weasels its way onto the medium…and there goes the neighborhood.
Take Apple Computer Inc.’s iPod, for example: The original model debuted in 2003. The portable media player – then primarily just for music files – quickly was embraced by amateur broadcasters, called “webjays” in the vernacular, and a new forum developed: podcasting. Podcasts initially were audio files created on home computers with minimal equipment and then placed on the Web for downloading. Though named after the ubiquitous iPod, podcasts can be enjoyed on any MP3 player (including Sony's new PSP). Despite this inherent portability, the home computer remains the playback device of choice with less than 20% of podcast devotees listening to their downloads on an MP3 player or other digital device, according to a November 2005 report from Bridge Ratings.
Among the earliest podcasts – sprinkled between webjays’ bold opinions about technology, politics, music, electronic games, and literature – were frank, uncensored discussions about sex. From brief tutorials about blowjobs (“deep-throat combined with prostate massage”) and anal sex (“be sure to use a lube—and a condom’s not a bad idea, either”) to advice about BDSM play, interviews with adult industry notables, and recreations of seminal sexual encounters that would make the editors of Penthouse Variations blush, pros, amateurs, and even shy, demure housewives began to discover a market for their unique voices.
While not exactly explosive, the “porncasting” movement nevertheless garnered a loyal following. In just 15 months, more than 25,000 porncasters sprung up worldwide. The majority of podcasts in the mainstream remain exclusively for audio, but that is not expected to be the pattern in adult now that Apple has released a video version of its mighty medium. The adult entertainment industry began to prepare for the iPod G5 before it was released.
Riding the wave
Also known as audiblogging or blogcasting, podcasting began as a natural outgrowth of blogging. In August 2004, software developer Dave Winer and former MTV VJ Adam Curry unleashed iPodder on the world, a collaborative project that allowed everyday people not only to add audio components to their blogs, but also to make those audio files portable. What resulted was on-demand radio (and later video).
The phenomenon has been compared to TiVo: The technology allows users to find and listen to or watch only what they want to hear or see, instead of sitting through lengthy broadcasts about multiple topics they hope will include something that interests them. So far, audio podcasts are blissfully free of overt advertising, although many video podcasts are stamped conspicuously with the URL of the site that hosts or sponsors them.
In the mainstream, podcasting makes media moguls nervous. Some pundits believe it’s a very real threat to the stranglehold that broadcast conglomerates currently have on information dissemination. In the adult realm, porncasting has content owners salivating while at the same time searching their crystal balls for ways to turn a profit. No one seems to be able to encode content fast enough to meet the overwhelming (though possibly faddish) demand, but no one seems to have found the definitive raison d’etre for the medium yet, either.
Take CECash, for example. Traditionally one of the big players in adult entertainment online, the company’s first portable-porn endeavor, SexOnThePod.com, debuted in October and is still trying to find its way. In January, SexOnThePod was offering five- to 15-minute video clips at prices starting at $2.99 per clip, but that structure may change if the company can find a better one.
Although response so far has been good, SexOnThePod is not setting the world on fire, according to CECash’s veteran traffic guru, Mike B. “The iPod program has huge potential,” he says, “but we’re just at the beginning stages right now. We’re planning for it to be big in two years. Our philosophy is ‘You want to get in on it before the music starts, not after the dance.’”
That’s much the same attitude adopted by Kick Ass Pictures. Kick Ass launched a video porncast website on Dec. 20, and on opening day Porno4Portables.com received 474 visitors who viewed 2,233 pages, accounted for 11,377 hits, and downloaded 52.4 gigabytes of content. Within a week, the company had 50 scenes from its catalog available as video porncasts that run about 10 to 15 minutes. As it encodes new video content for KickAss.com, the company also encodes the same content in MPEG4 format for Porno4Portables.
Based on the figures Kick Ass has seen so far, the company hopes Porno4Portables.com will play a prominent role in the Kick Ass network of websites, a $24.95 monthly membership to any one of which grants access to all of them. Although it’s much too early to tell how well Porno4Portables will perform as a membership generator in relation to its brethren, webmaster Kick Ass Vic says he thinks the new $1.99-per-scene a la carte menu at Porno4Portables may prove to be the way consumers prefer to obtain their portable-porn fixes.
The really important thing about Porno4Portables, according to Vic, is that it’s allowing Kick Ass to “leap frog” some of the other big boys in the adult video industry who migrated onto the Web well before Kick Ass did in 2003 but have been slow to adapt to the iPod craze. “When the video iPod rolled along, we saw the chance to really step out of the cloud of porn dust and distinguish ourselves as a member of the ‘A-list,’ on the cutting edge and among the pioneers,” Vic says. “So we dove in."
Ahead of the curve
Being the first to jump into new technology is more important to some companies than to others. It’s imperative for Hellhouse Media, which is essentially a two-person operation that specializes in bondage, fetish, and lesbian content. In late 2005, Hellhouse abandoned all brick-and-mortar product distribution in favor of Internet Video-on-Demand, and within two months, sales of digital content surpassed the company’s previous brick-and-mortar revenues. Now co-owner Ty Gonty sees porncasts formatted for iPods and PSPs becoming a significant new revenue stream—though he’s not quite sure how.
“We were the first on the PSP bandwagon and our content was the first on the video iPod,” Gonty says. “I don’t think the video iPods were even in stores yet when we started [planning an assault on the medium]. About two hours after I got the press release saying Apple was coming out with a video iPod, I had content ready to go. I could just see millions of people waking up on Christmas morning to new video iPods under the tree, and I didn’t want to miss that rush.”
Right now Hellhouse markets its iPod, PSP, and cell phone content at PlayByYourself.com, where users can download any full-length Hellhouse video for $8.99, regardless of format. Streaming and downloadable content, handled by AEBN on Hellhouse’s behalf, currently bring in the most revenue, but Gonty’s not doubting his ability to gauge trends and strike while the iron is hot. He completely expects the portable revenue eventually to outdo that which was garnered from other distribution channels.
“It’s kind of like what MP3s did for digital music,” he says of porncasting. “iPods and PSPs are doing that for amateur porn. This distribution channel really gives a chance for talent to shine without having to have some insane production and marketing budget.”
Marketing magic
Regardless of the high hopes some early adopters have that porncasting can fatten their wallets, another contingent within the industry sees the medium being more useful as a marketing tool. Although Jules Nelson, director of sales for Crush Video, admits he’d like to see some revenue from his company’s porncasting initiative, he says he plans to use the medium primarily for marketing. “VoD, mobile, the iPod ... all of those are major marketing focuses for us,” Nelson says. “If that turns out to be 10 to 20 percent of my overall revenue, I’ll be ecstatic, but it’s not going to revolutionize the way I do business.”
One company for which porncasting may revolutionize business is LGI Digital, parent of Sex Z Pictures. LGI began as an Internet-based company in 1997. It has since added a video production company and 12 brick-and-mortar stores to its portfolio. Bridging the gap between the three worlds has proved challenging, according to Chief Executive Officer Bo Kenney, but porncasting may hold an important key. “As soon as the video iPods came out, everyone was asking us ‘Where can I buy an iPod already loaded with porn?’” he says. That was all it took to set Kenney, who describes himself as the creative force behind LGI, searching for a best-price source for the portable player so his retail outlets could begin offering just such a device. After all, every full-length Sex Z feature has been available for the iPod and the PSP since December. Moving from there toward offering iPods and PSPs preloaded with 50 Sex Z movies at a retail price of about $700 to $800 was an easy step, Kenney says. The biggest challenge was in figuring out how to market the devices most effectively, and he’s still fine-tuning that.
“As an industry, we have got to recapture the 18-to-30 demographic,” which has been slipping lately, he says. Pairing hot technology with hot content and making the package easy to acquire could do exactly that, he adds.
Porncasting as a distribution model has other benefits, as well, Kenney notes. “As a production company, the thing that slows us down is pressing the discs, artwork, packaging, and shipping,” he says. “This will shave 60 days off our turnaround time—and at a significant savings in expense.
“iPod is the threat to the way this industry does business right now,” Kenney continues. “I don’t think any of us really get the full potential of the device yet.”
Future prognostications
Bart Myers, vice president of operations at content aggregator and search engine GUBA, agrees with Kenney. Myers, who began his own podcasting adventures “back in the old days when it was only audio,” is completely smitten with portables and thinks they very well may take over the planet. “We’re just now touching the tip of the iceberg in the opportunities [porncasting] will present to the adult industry and others,” he says.
That’s why GUBA is actively seeking distribution relationships with adult content owners who don’t want to take on the task themselves. Every piece of content on GUBA – adult and mainstream – is available for downloading to iPods, and GUBA has the ability to make the technology work for almost anyone, Myers says. “Adult content is a significant driver of value and significant interest for our users,” he notes. “Because it offers the opportunity to get only the content you want – any content, any time, anywhere – podcasting is going to be one of the really important enabling technologies for information delivery.”
Tom Hymes, communications director for the Free Speech Coalition, worries, however, that the very touchstone nature of porncasting could engender storm clouds on the horizon. “It ups the ante because everyone is buying iPods for their kids and there are no parental controls built into those things,” he says. “As far as I know, there are no inhibiting controls at all, and once you have [porncast content], you can share it at-will. There’s no chokepoint either legally or technologically for iPods.”
Chokepoints and other, more auspicious goodies may be built into future versions, according to people who track such things. Some pundits are saying Apple already is considering adding wireless connectivity to the next-generation iPod, which would reveal a whole new dimension to its utility as a porn-dissemination tool. The iPod already connects to a host of peripheral devices – like high-end speaker systems, car stereos, and televisions – thanks to the ingenuity of after-market accessory manufacturers.
However, none of those things is incredibly helpful to adult entertainment honchos who are trying to figure out how to incorporate iPod mania into their revenue models.
“The route to monetizing podcasting is not entirely clear,” says Sam Sugar, who, among other things, operates the website Podnography.com. Podnography mixes wry wit, sex, technology, politics, and a couple of other topics together and cleverly delivers them in – you guessed it – podcasts. “What podcasters are selling is the convenience: easy and reliable access. Quality has to be there, too. You have to have something people want to buy.” Although compelling content – the more exclusive the better – is a necessity, the best podcasts sometimes incorporate a certain train-wreck quality. “To keep people coming back, it’s got to be something they can’t not listen to or watch,” Sugar says.
Sugar says he does believe there is money in podcasting, but it’s going to take a bit of creativity to wring it out of the content-hungry masses. “I think [podcasting] can be a revenue generator,” he opines. “The most obvious, simplest way is to sell your archives. Give original content away during the week it’s new, and then charge for access to the archives. Of course, that means you’re creating new content all the time, possibly at breakneck pace, in order to keep subscribers’ attention.”
Outtakes, bloopers, and “DVD extras” material are other areas in which porncasters might find money. “Outtakes—that’s content that people will flock to see and flock to download,” Sugar says. Because behind-the-scenes clips, on-the-set happenings, and stars discussing films in which they’ve just appeared are by their very nature “exclusive,” many content producers may be sitting on porncasting goldmines and not even realize it.
Whether podcasting continues to grow and evolve depends largely on how Apple reacts to the success of the iPod and what the company decides to do next. It’s rumored that Microsoft will release a Windows-based challenger to the iPod this year, so apparently consumer electronics giants think the trend is here to stay.
In the near term, the adult industry, as it always does, will push the envelope as far as it can and will keep searching until it finds the quintessential way to make portable porn pay. At least that’s Kick Ass Vic’s perspective. He doesn’t have much patience for those who say “it’ll never amount to anything.” Says Vic: “To the naysayers I say, ‘It already took off. Go get a late pass.”
