Tobias Regner, Javier Barria, Jeremy Pitt and Brendan Neville

This paper surveys and categorizes emerging digital media business models. We apply
the customer activity cycle of Vandermerwe (2000) to the consumption of digital media, taking three
phases into account: pre-consumption, consumption and post-consumption. Our analysis of the
business models focuses on their social costs and benefits. We derive the parameters as follows:
convenience of use, exposure, ease of compliance and administration.
We distinguish two polar environments for digital media: the Dark Web with content created by the masses, and the Light
Web with content created by big media. We develop an artist life cycle model in which different
business models appear to be op-timal at different stages of an artist's career. Voluntary payment based
models seem to be ideal for newcomers in the Dark Web, while digital rights management based
and complementary product and service-based models are the likely choice of established
artists in the Light Web. Established artists might change their approach again, using voluntary
payment-based or complementary product and service-based models when they retire.

An Artist Life-Cycle Model for Digital Media Content: Strategies for the Light Web and the Dark Web