CNBC Covers New Attempts to Create 'iTunes of Porn'

LOS ANGELES—An article published yesterday by CNBC writer Chris Morris takes an interested look at a pair of companies that are "hoping to turn things around [by] launching competing services that give fans access to a vast library of porn—at a rate they hope consumers will find palatable."  By "turn things around," Morris is referring to "porn companies [that] have seen their industry spiral, devastated by piracy," unable to convince consumers to pay for digital content as successfully as have Hollywood and the music industry through uber-popular services such as Netflix and iTunes.  Thus the reference to the latter service, which has served as a Holy Grail of sorts for aspiring adult kingpins for many years. Now, reports Morris, two companies are trying to build such a platform for porn.  "SkweezMe is scheduled to launch a video on demand service that closely follows the iTunes model at the end of this month,"writes Morris. "Meanwhile, MindGeek (formerly called Manwin), the industry's largest company, plans to unveil a similar venture this year." While MindGeek declined comment for the Morris article, Skweezeme was forthcoming with its platform, which it announced publicly earlier this month.  "In the works for over 18 months," reported Morris, "SkweezMe bypasses a recurring payment model, which is the bread and butter of most adult studios. Instead, customers can pay 99 cents to get unlimited access to the service's collection of high definition films." Morris did compare the two companies' planned models, however, writing, "While MindGeek will likely pull content from its extensive catalog, SkweezMe is affiliating with other non-Manwin owned studios."  Despite the two platforms' eventual differences or similarities, Morris added, "The challenge with both SkweezMe and MindGeek's service, of course, is getting customers to pay for porn. Because consumers can so easily download pirated versions of films from BitTorrent sites or watch free clips on the tube sites, getting them to lay down cash could be difficult. Those sites, though, are loaded with pop-up and banner ads, which often infect a user's PC with malware." Morris also spoke with SkweezeMe co-founder Mike Kulich, of Monarchy Distribution, who opined when asked why the industry had not offered a real iTunes of porn before, "I think the reason this hasn't been done before is a lot of studios feel if we're offering this content from hundreds of different producers at such a low price, that's giving away our content. As the industry has progressively lost revenue, though, these ideas are getting more and more support from the studios. In addition to the projects reported on by CNBC, however, there is a third platform embracing the same iTunes model that plans to launch this year. As AVN reported in March, an all-new iPorn, now under new management, "aims to do for porn what iTunes did for music. "If you think that's a bold proclamation," added Steve Javors for AVN, "all you have to do is check out iPorn.com. AVN was privy to an exclusive demo of the site and its game-changing technology, and we were blown away by its user-friendly design, utter ease of use and the proprietary technology 'under the hood.' "The new iPorn team is backed by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs with past successes in mobile media and content delivery along with a few familiar faces from the adult industry—including AVN Award-winning director Joshua (of skinworXXX and Rock Star Entertainment fame) and Jim Crawford of SoCal Licensing, who will exclusively be handling all content licensing," he continued.  The AVN article on iPorn can be found here.  The Morris article can be read here.