As discussions around monetization through distribution seem to be met with increasing obstacles, many within the industry have begun looking at media content as a way to build up an audience that they can obtain revenue from through other means.  Amongst these are the increased importance of merchandising, as well as the popularity of transmedia platforms, which Jenkins (2010) describes as the telling of a single story over multiple platforms using current digital technologies. Such methods are believed to be effective due to the difficulty of pirating other forms of media, such as video games, live events and physical products.In this section, we will look at some case studies and attempt to understand how their choice of merchandising/transmedia platform allowed them to gain profit.

The first example we will look at is the Star Wars franchise. Star Wars is amongst one of the most famous cultural presences in modern day. In an article by Brown, Gordon, Kaplan and Rodgers (1999), they looked at the major success of Star Wars and how it brought in revenue from various sources, as well as the marketing and distribution of the brand itself.

“When Ballantine's $25 hardcover novelization of the movie (Star Wars: Episode I, The Phantom Menace) went on sale last week, the book was already at the top of some best-seller lists due to advance orders. One estimate has it that 2 million employees will skip work to see the movie on opening day, May 19, thereby costing U.S. employers $293 million--which is about what you'd have to spend to get every object Lucasfilm is licensing.”

According to them, while the original trilogy had made approximately US$ 1.5 billion at the box office, the merchandise, in the form of toys, video games and clothing, made three times as much. In addition, the writers highlight how brands, such as Pepsi, paid large amounts of money to have Star Wars imagery on their products. In 1997, Pepsi paid $2.5 billion to essentially, advertise the Star Wars franchise.

In the case of Star Wars, there are many things we need to consider. In many ways it is a best case scenario. It started becoming a cultural phenomenon before the rise of the digital domain as a platform for the distribution of media content. If anything, we’d argue that Star Wars is a brand that has adapted well to the shift to the digital domain. By having an established fan culture, they adapted to relying on physical products, and interactive entertainment content; which has managed to prevent piracy in their own way, the brand has been able to draw revenue from sources outside of traditional forms of media and distribution platforms. As a side note, the gaming industry, in general, has been very successful with combatting piracy, due to their ability to include anti piracy functions, such as online verification, into their software. Currently, media content, such as the animated series for Star Wars serves to promote the brand to younger audiences. Rather than functioning as the final product, it serves a marketing role for the brand.

The next example I will look at is the case of Glee. Unlike Star Wars, was a new brand that had to establish itself recently, when online piracy had already become a major factor. The show; a television series about a high school singing club, has found ways to make money off albums, live events and merchandise. Trust (2010) mentions that just one soundtrack album; Glee: The Music, The Christmas Album, debuted selling 161, 198 copies, a number combining digital and physical sales, in the first week. Goldberg (2012) interviewed Glen Brunman, of Columbia Records, where he revealed that they had generated sales of thirty-two million digital copies. The interview then went on to highlight that ‘Glee’ has sold forty-two million songs and twelve million albums worldwide. At the time of this writing, in June 2013, there are 15 soundtrack albums, 5 compilation albums, 7 extended plays (EPs), and a multitude of singles.

Aside from the albums, which are still subject to the usual piracy concerns, Glee has also obtained significant revenue by organizing live concerts, where the actors from the series perform the songs from the show. Live events, obviously, cannot be pirated, and are an ideal source of revenue. Billboard (2011) tabulated the concert grosses of a variety of events including the revenue by some of the ‘Glee! Live in Concert’ concerts while on tour. Over a five day period, ‘Glee! Live in Concert’ made US$ 8,488,444 in London, performing at the O2 Arena, which has a capacity of twenty thousand. Tickets were sold at US$ 45 and US$ 55. In a day, the tour made US$ 4,452,129 in Toronto, performing at the Air Canada Centre, which has a capacity of nineteen thousand and eight hundred. Tickets were sold at US$ 29.50 and US$ 89.50. These are just some of the statistics. The tour had 40 shows, and almost every show sold out.

This is all not inclusive of legal purchases of individual episodes, whole series and special edition box sets. This is also not inclusive of selling the rights to use the ‘Glee’ brand on other merchandise. As such, Glee does appear to have found an ideal way to increase monetization. However, their model is only viable due to the emphasis on music in their series.
Another good example of reducing the emphasis on initial distribution for monetization and shifting the focus to monetization of fan cultures was noted by Chesbrough (2010) when he analysed Radiohead's 2007 album 'In Rainbows', and the business model that they used. The band had uploaded the entire album online and gave consumers the option to pay for the tracks, as well as purchase other merchandise.

The band’s website registered over 3 million visits during the first 60 days after the release and while about a third of the downloaders chose to pay nothing, the remaining downloaders paid an average of £4. The net revenue to the band thus came in at around £2.67 pounds on average, far more than the band’s share would have been under their normal business agreement. However, it gets more interesting. ‘In Rainbows’ was then taken off the website, licensed to a publisher for sale in the US, UK and elsewhere and released through the regular commercial distribution channels. Even though it had been available for downloaded for over 60 days at low prices (even for free), the CD debuted at #1 in both the US and the UK, and sold over 1.7 million CDs through com- mercial channels in the subsequent 21 months, 5 to 6 times more than Radiohead’s earlier CDs. More than 100,000 collector box sets also were sold.

The 'In Rainbows' case contrasts the initial two very well. Like the other two, the producers did not rely on initial distribution as its primary source of information. In regards to music, it is much more feasible for producers to enter the industry by emulating this model, compared to the other two. However, this is due to the production costs of music, which tend to be generally lower than that of visual media content. However, Radiohead's are a well established brand, just like Star Wars. New artistes already have platforms, such as Soundcloud, to emulate this model but there have been few cases of any making significant profits.

With these three cases in mind, it is clear that fan cultures, enable alternative monetization models where the series is not the central source of income through distribution. It is not possible to suggest a method for all producers to use, when creating content, to enable transmedia monetization. However, assuming that it is possible, there are other challenges that would be faced.

For starters, such models would require huge capitals and teams to allow for quality content on various platforms. This would mean that only a large company, or a team backed up by investors, who would be taking a huge risk, would be able to fully utilize such a model. Even in the case of the music industry, if the artist cannot rely on their album to generate revenue, they need to be able to afford the production of merchandise and the cost of traveling to perform live. This would suggest that the market would move towards an even larger monopoly. This model would also indicate a long period of time of not seeing any returns that the company would need to tide over, attempting to survive on the returns from legal distribution of the original media content. However, there is still potential for profit if companies can aim to allow for high quality content to be distributed at low or no cost, with a viable monetization plan to capitalize on audiences that are invested in the product.