Byron_tha_gr8Well there are still music stars, there's just not nearly as many coming out as there used to be. As soon as at home beatmakers/artists had the technology to record comparable quality music to what big time labels could, the entire scene was flooded. Big labels no longer had the monopoly on music worth listening to, and therefore no longer had a captive audience to their websites, radio etc. People could just go find shit they actually wanted to consume. Camera quality improvements SEEM to have had a similar effect on skiing. Why go watch and pay for a 1.5 hr movie with pros and sponsors when you can get on Instagram and see the same tricks for free? and realize you too can post there and be just as popular? Why consume content when you can create it? I mean 90% of people who think this are delusional, and what they're filming sucks, but with things like gopro's you are the star of your own show, the ultimate fantasy.
I started lurking hard on NS in about 2009, it wasn't until i went to college that i made an account and really started posting in 2012, and by 2014 it felt like the start of the current decline. I aged out of browsing NS daily; full time job, real responsibilities, etc. But there wasn't the influx of new young skiers like there was when i started.
Fair point on the music thing, I do agree that its gotten crazy with how many mediocre artists there are in the world, and I think that there's a major signal to noise ratio issue happening there. I think its why you're really seeing things like Spotify / Apple Music / etc. take off, where you can actually listen to curated lists of music once again. Having someone help you find what is good in an ever busy world is a very convenient thing. I for one don't have the time to sort through endless amounts of music to find something I like, and I will gladly pay a service to do so.
In my mind, that is going to be the next stage of evolution in ski media as well. Maybe not exactly like that, but the flood of content is certainly overwhelming, and as you said 90% (probably more like 99%) of people who think they're going to "make it" with just social media are delusional. That is where the opportunity lies around the corner, something to help people cut through that mess, and systems in place which actually help elevate exceptional skiing vs. just tonnes of mediocre shit.
People eventually come to the realization that even though they can get tonnes of content for free, all they want is good content... and what is happening in a lot of other industries is not only are people turning to curation services, they're actually paying for it.
I don't know where the next opportunities lies for us exactly, but what I do know is that its time for another major evolution of Newschoolers. When I started in 2000 as a lurker, it was just a super shitty messy forum with a group of east coast guys. One of maybe 12 other sites exactly like it. From that point until about 2004 or so, it was all forums. Competition News crept up as a source of entertainment in 2004-2009 or so, and the idea of putting out edits blew up from roughly 2004-2012/2013. Edits have taken the biggest hit, because anyone can post an edit which led to the site being full of mediocre to bad park edits, and people seeking something new.
So yes, the newschoolers as you know it won't be the same between 2017 and 2021... it will have to evolve. Just like pro skiers and what it means to get content out will be evolving. As you age out of Browsing NS daily, there will be a new group of kids who are looking to fill their day with skiing stuff vs. doing homework. This group is predominantly mobile for the first time ever, and we're in the process of a massive re-factoring of everything we do to become a mobile community vs. a desktop one.
Only thing I can tell you for sure, is that I find the future extremely exciting. I always love a good challenge, and I think we have some cool stuff in the hopper for you guys to check out. We'll just have to see how the next few years play out, because the only way to predict the future with 100% accuracy is to live through the journey.
