Music Industry Staggers While Film Industry Blooms 461
GLX writes "The LA Times is running an article that explores the idea that while piracy has been the (supposed) bane of the music industry, it has yet to be felt in the video industry..." "Yet to be felt" might be too strong, but DVD sales are booming, and don't seem to be much crimped by illegal copying.
Movie industry makes sale worthwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
MP3s offer the same quality (almost) as CDs and the music industry has no extra offerings on their discs except a bunch of songs that you haven't heard on the radio, usually with good reason.
Some comparisons ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Urie needs a clue-by-four. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between earning $100M in the box office, and *spending* $100M to make radio stations and Top 40 charts play music that doesn't have public appeal behind it.
"Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
And therein lies the problem.
Funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
I've bought more CDs this year than ever before, but, like most of my friends tell me "we've never heard of them"...
Ironically, they also say I have great taste in music and love it when I play my collection. Of course my taste prolly isn't yours so a statement like this one could be completely wrong if you heard the stuff I'm into.
-- Dan, who is DJing J00lz's party this weekend: Happy 21st Birthday Julie! =)
P.S. Support your locals whoever they are - see them at concerts, buy their CDs and give them your support - THIS is where we should be as music enthusiasts, not lining some corporate pocket that dictates to us what is 'Hot' and what is 'Not'
P.P.S. Sorry for the rant but I have a big thing for music...
Economics 101 (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting pricing (Score:5, Insightful)
DVD movie prices are going down, and consumers feel they have value. They don't feel the same way about overpriced CD's.
Bane (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, I'm pretty damn sure that piracy is the bane of the music industry.
It's just that they sell truck loads of absolute rubbish to 14 year old Britany Fans/N-Sync/Backstreet Boys/etc who don't go and download their music.
This is what makes up a very good proportion of the vast amount of money they make.
Ummmm....Price? (Score:5, Insightful)
If the music wasn't so shit ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Get off the "pirate" crap, the music is shit (and overpriced, esp in USA, thanks to your protective trade policies), and thats the real reason nobody is buying much of it.
Large corporations (the real pirates) making carbon copies of the latest plastic fad, trying to guide the public tastes, and mostly just getting it plain wrong.
The only guy I know who copies stuff all the time, copies movies just as much as music. And I can't imagine him with a sword cutting your legs off - some pirate.
Something needs to give (Score:1, Insightful)
For whatever reason, the music industry still doesn't understand that there is no beating a penny-pinching college student (or adult). It's not that people WANT to steal, but there is apparently enough people find the cost outrageous enough to rationalize it.
Yes, you can make the argument, it is the music industries "right" to set the price they feel appropriate. However, the record industry is a pseudo-monopoly and there is nothing to check the monopoly. There is no competition, there is no real good alternative. Something has to give: either monopoly or the copyright.
More of my critical thoughts [blogspot.com].
Re:Lies, damn lies and Slashbots (Score:1, Insightful)
On the otherhand, I guess my willingness to fork out money is mainly due to the quality of 128kbps mp3s being sufficiently poor that I am prepared to go out and buy the original music. Once the average bandwidth and storage capacity of the home user's PC starts to increase such that the quality differential between your average online music file and the original CD recording disappears, then I reckon I'll no longer bother with record stores and online music retailers.
Presumably in the future, this is going to be a much bigger problem for the movie industry. Currently, very few people have the storage capacity and bandwidth for the swapping of movie files to have a significant impact on the industry, but give it a few more years and your average net punter will have sufficient capacity and patience to wait an hour or two to download a DVD quality video file. I wonder what will happen to DVD sales then...
Simple Math (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Urie needs a clue-by-four. (Score:1, Insightful)
To which the answer always appears to be "Lets create another band! Toss a coin Julian. Heads its a Girl band."
If they didn't create such fucking, aweful, soundless CRAP, then maybe they wouldn't be in the position they are now. Of course your sales have flattened, RIAA member; all of your music sounds the same, and it is all shit! 99% of your market is now targeted at 12 to 16 year olds! Thats a tiny, tiny, tiny market segment. Everyone else can pretty much see right through you.
In conclusion, music executives have become fat, lazy and talentless bean counters. Let them all go broke!
Maybe economics, but for a different reason (Score:3, Insightful)
The costs to obtain and transfer movies (assuming end use on a home theatre) are drastically higher. You must dedicate bandwidth, a large block of your time, a DVD burner that will set you back a few hundred, plus the cost of media and/or storage.
There is no instant gratification element to sharing movies of any considerable length and quality.
So you're right when you bring up pricing. The effective cost of "sharing" a CD is extremely low, let's say $2 when you figure in blank media, bandwidth used, the value of your time, etc. So that's $2 vs. $16. The effective cost of obtaining a DVD that way is much higher at least to the point where the individual decides "it's not worth the time" when compared to the price of the retail product and heads to the local shop.
Re:Economics 101 (Score:2, Insightful)
Interesting pricing (Score:3, Insightful)
Music doesn't have that initial money from a movie theater type situation. I think that is why the record companies are more scared and more affected by piracy.
(Although, I feel that CDs are overpriced and DVDs have much more value per $)
Re:My take on it (Score:1, Insightful)
CD's are another story... media is cheap, capacity is limited, and aside from the little booklet and CD silkscreening, there are no extras, and yet they can cost about the same amount as a DVD.
That being said, I buy the product. For some reason having a real, legitimate collection feels more authentic than having a shelf full of CDR's.
Re:Some comparisons ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Beware of assuming the precedent. Your statement about the industries "losses" assumes a tie to sharing over P2P networks, which is a fallacy (or at least an unproven hypothesis)
Attn Hillary Rosen et al:
First prove to me that the losses (if indeed there are any real losses in an industry notorious for cooking its books) are caused definitively by sharing and not by a combination of crappy music and poor management.
Then prove to me that file sharing networks are illegal per se, and not just that the actions of individuals are illegal.
Then prove to me that the industry's distribution plans are not monopolistic and illegal in themselves.
Then you can cross the bridge to the Holy Grail. Until then, argue about the air speed velocity of an unladen african swallow, because it's just about as relevant.
Re:Movie industry makes sale worthwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
The enormous difference between MPAA and RIAA is that MPAA devised a new format and put it into the market and then let consumers decide whether or not to buy. People opted for DVD on their own [1]. It just so happens that DVDs won't let you make copies, but frankly few people ever make copies of movies (and the movie rental business has proven very successful).
The RIAA on the other hand does not invent a new format. Instead they just go to government and try to get copying ruled illegal, or try to quietly slip copy-resistant CDs into the market (no new features; same quality). If RIAA could come up with a new way to package music with a bunch of new features that just happened to be copy-resistant, well, maybe consumers would opt for it.
[1] The DMCA surely helped the DVD push, but it didn't require anyone to buy them. The market could have opted away from DVD.
It's called 'entertainment value' (Score:4, Insightful)
The sad fact is, the quality of main stream music has continued to fall, and yet the industry seems to continue to put greater and greater restrictions into what can enter into the market.
The quality of movies seems to fluctuate, but at the very least, one can say that every year we get quite a few movies that are highly entertaining. This is despite the fact that the market already has quite a few restrictions as to what can enter.
Simple solution? Stop making music that is'nt entertaining, start charging prices that are out of sync with the quality of the product.
Re:Interesting pricing (Score:2, Insightful)
How about concerts, festivals and movie sound tracks? In your line of thinking, shouldn't life recordings, sound tracks and "best-of collections" be far less expensive?
Freeloading movies _is_ getting easier... (Score:2, Insightful)
- The Divx format is getting better all the time - it is currently far better than VHS, for a 1 disk per movie rip. 2 Disk per movie films are generally of very high quality. Not DVD quality, but not far off.
- Broadband is slowly getting cheaper and more prevalent. Within a few years I can't really imagine more than 10% of the net using dial-up.
- Some p2p apps are VERY good. Edonkey, for example, pretty much maxes out my 1024 downstream when a new release comes out. It's relatively simple to get working - about as painless as Napster was.
- People are slowly getting DivX capability in their living room, be it through a PC connected to the TV, a DreamCast or no doubt fairly soon a ps2/xbox.
- The releases are coming thick and fast. Especially if you dont live in the US. dvd rips are often out before the film is in theatres here in the UK.
- CD burners and Blank CDs are ridiculously cheap.
Put that lot together and I'd say the movie industry should be pretty worried.
This one should have an OBVIOUS tag. (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe because (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, there are very few cds that I like completely. I listen to less than half the songs on 90% of the cds I own. I'd be willing to pay $1 per song in .wav format, but I can't do that for every song I want. And I really don't give a darn for paying $20 for a cd half full of songs I don't like, songs which I think the artist may have recorded only to fill the rest of the cd.
People Updating Their Collection (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an Historical Fact.... (Score:3, Insightful)
The reasoning is quite simple. People want to excape the harshness of reality, even if only for the break of 2 hours.
I suspect the record industry wouldn't had noticed any decline, but perhaps even a boost, had they not pissed, moaned,
and called consumers pirates in general (which doesn't help the consumer excape anything).
Re:Movie industry makes sale worthwhile (Score:5, Insightful)
The DVD was not devised by the MPAA. It was developed by technology companies like Toshiba, Philips and Sony [acusd.edu]. These companies wanted to advance digital media and home entertainment experience, while the MPAA would have been perfectly happy to sell VHS forever if the market allowed for it.
DVD Sales Booming (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd say a fair percentage will be people re-buying what they already have on VHS.
The fact that the re-released movie will often have a load of extras and 'collectable' packaging and it's the consumers choice to rebuy makes it a valuable retail adition.
Meanwhile the Music Industry trying to lock-down usage with copy-protected CDs that are incompatible with the Compact Disc standard hoping to cash in like DVD and you can't get more out of touch than that...
I'm sorry, I've forgotten what my point was...
Don't get too excited about Hollywood (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember, in many cases the record companies _are_ the movie companies (Sony, AOLTW, etc.). It's not like they've seen the light or anything. These are the people who fund the MPAA (MPAA vs. 2600, anyone?). They just got lucky with DVD and hit a consumer sweet spot. For now.
Rentals (Score:3, Insightful)
Music is different. You listen to it over and over. Most people don't watch movies dozens (or hundreds) of times.
Re:Movie industry makes sale worthwhile (Score:1, Insightful)
but say you've got a huge dvd box set... like all 7 of the robotech box sets... would you rather have the ability to watch any of the episodes off a fileserver in divx form? or go schlep out the necessary dvd to watch a particular episode? i'll vote for the former...
Extras for music disks (Score:3, Insightful)
For some albums, there could be wonderful extras. The VH1 Behind the Music show on the making of the Graceland album, for instance, was absolutely wonderful. It had Paul Simon going through the various elements of each song on the original 24-track tape, describing what each element was, where it came from, and what it was meant to convey. He also talked about the lyrics, in a wonderfully honest and reflective way. I'd be happy (ecstatic, even) to pay $20 for a CD if it came with that kind of stuff.
Unfortunately, much of the pop music today probably doesn't stand up to that kind of in-depth analysis. But these 'extras' might really help distinguish high-quality well-thought-out music from the pap. Well, one can hope.
thad
When the masses leave the mass market (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Urie needs a clue-by-four. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think GM did the same thing in the 70's, 80's and arguably well into the 90's. Maybe Urie should ask how it's working out for them -- they used to have a greater than 50% share of the automobile market.
And then they got cocky. "Those stupid consumers will buy anything we put our name on! We don't have to make better cars, we're GM! We know what they want better than they do!" Seems like a real good way to do business to me.
The RIAA is falling down the same trap. They've gotten so used to being the only outlet that they got used to telling us what we want instead of listening to what we want. You've got to focus on making the customer happy, then you can sell more product and make more money in the long run. By treating your customer like an idiot, you'll make more in the short term, but you'll lose brand loyalty, and ultimately, your customer base.
Good Grief! (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok, being out of touch is one thing. But openly saying that he doesn't care about his customers, just how much money he makes? It makes me sick that a person like this can be taken seriously. I know American business is all screwed up, but when people can actively ignore the desires of the customers and expect to prosper, ugh, something needs to be fixed.
And for that matter, how can anybody not realize that satisfying customers IS a way of making more money?
I hate dvd "features" (Score:3, Insightful)
What "features" are you talking about? The FBI warnings and other crap you are not allowed to fast forward through? The menu systems that freeze if you click the wrong sequence of buttons? The Foreign language soundracks I don't understand? "Special" features that are not compatable with my machine?
I specifically remember the moment I knew I would have problems with DVDs. I wanted to watch the DVD of "office space", but when I put it in my machine, I saw a screen that looked exactly like a computer desktop with a download progress-bar.
Annoyed, I tried to fast-forward, but I couldn't. The bar inched across the screen, making disk-drive noises, but just before it was finished the computer "crashed" and displayed a message that said "press enter to continue". After freaking out for a minute, I realized there was actually an enter button on my remote, so I pushed it. That took me to the main menu.
A harmless joke, right? Well, in this case, yes. But it made me realize that when I put a DVD in my machine, I am giving up control to the author of the DVD. He can tell me when I can fast forward or not, and he can put any other arbitrary barriers to watching the movie he wants. Once I became sensitive to the issue, I have noticed hundreds of little examples of this phenomenon. The possibilities are endless, and I shudder to think what will happen when the big corporations really start taking advantage of them.
When I rip a DVD, I am taking back control. I choose the track, I rip it, and then I can do anything the hell I want with it, just like I could with VHS. If the makers of DVDs were not so fixated on taking control of my "viewing experience", maybe I would just go with the flow... but they have already gone too far, and they are only planning on going farther.
Message to RIAA: It's the price, stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
The movie is 2 hours of audio + video, with production costs running into the millions. The CD is maybe 1 hour of audio (15 minutes of good stuff diluted with 45 minutes of filler), with a production budget that is a tiny fraction of what the movie costs to produce. The blank media & burning cost of the DVD is probably 5x the cost of the CD. I'm ignoring the promotional costs of both because the hype machine runs at full blast for both anyway.
There is at least 10x the amount of data on a DVD compared the CD. At $22, it's just not worth finding a way to download & store all those gigabytes. If you can rent the movie for $5 at Blockbuster, it's not even worth considering the piracy alternatives. On the other hand, saving $14 by waiting 10 minutes to download & store 30 megabytes (for 15 minutes of audio)is a much more attractive proposition.
In my unscientific little survey, the CD price is roughly 65% of the DVD price. For 15 usable minutes of audio??? Which can be easily ripped, burned, and shared??? This would be like the bicycle industry pricing the average bike at $5000 and then wondering why (a) nobody is buying bikes, (b) motorcycles are selling just fine at $8000, and (c) there are these patent-infringing criminals who copy our designs and make bikes for themselves with parts from Home Depot. We must stop the criminals because they are killing our business!
Emulate the orignal (uncrippled) Napster. Collect $5/month from every customer for unlimited MP3 transfers. Watch the piracy problem disappear. It's that simple. My current budget for CDs is $0, which would increase to $60/year under this arrangement. RIAA, it's your choice: do you want me to pay you $60 or $0 per year? Hint: If you choose $0 you will have a revenue problem.
The audio piracy problem exists only beause the recording industry's business model encourages it. The DVD industry survives because the prices are not so high as to encourage the pirates, and there are low-cost rentals to make sure they get some money from all potential customers. On the other hand, the audio industry sells only complete albums at inflated prices, without meaningful low-cost options for those who pass up the chance to buy the whole enchilada at full list price. These idiots will soon be getting 100% of nothing, which is precisely what they deserve. If there was an economic category for the Darwin awards, the RIAA would get my nomination.
Unit price? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here's the RIAA's problem (Score:4, Insightful)
See these quotes from the article made by Jim Urie, president of Universal Music and Video Distribution:
Urie says his company doesn't heavily research consumer attitude, noting, "We tend to ask how can we make more money and sell more product, not deal with consumer gripes."
(Actually, if they dealt with consumer gripes you'd probably sell more product and make more money.)
Urie argues that lowered prices won't make a dent in downloading, saying, "The fact that consumers can steal music sort of trumps anything else we can do."
The article makes the very good point that most people have a certain amount they'll spend on entertainment. If CD's and DVD's cost about the same, then the consumer is going to look at how much "bang for the buck" they're getting with each. A DVD is typically packed with extras. A CD, if you're lucky, might have some tiny pictures and lyrics on the insert. No wonder consumers would rather buy the DVD than the CD.
head in the sand (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you talked to people recently? Do you know anyone except for audiophiles who still buys a significant number of CDs? Of the people I know, I and one of my friends are the only ones who still buy more than a few CDs per year -- everyone else downloads mp3s and burns them to audio CDs. Most people I know haven't bought a single CD in the past two years. And it's not because they don't like the music that's coming out -- it's because they already burnt their own CDs. "Why should I pay $12 for something I can get for free?"
Certainly the music industry is pretty crappy, and most of its solutions to the problem are unworkable and hurt legitimate customers, but I don't think you can blame everything on them. People's tendancy to not pay for anything unless they absolutely have to (or are forced to) is the cause of a lot of the problems.
unlikely (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Some comparisons ... (Score:2, Insightful)
"griping" customers.... (Score:3, Insightful)
On the flip side, if there were an audio format packaged in a way that was analagous to DVD's, you'd have CD's with just the one or two good tracks on them, the video for the song and maybe even an interview with the artist, and they'd cost maybe $3, I suspect consumers would nab them up in droves. The funny thing is that we almost have this, they're called CD singles, only they don't cost $3, they cost often $7-8, and the available selection primarily corresponds to the mindless dribble that gets programmed on most FM radio stations by the corporate drones at Clearchannel and their ilk.
Any industry that doesn't listen to the "gripes" (as Mr. Urie stated) of its customers ought to consider a) how long it will be before it simply has no customers, griping or otherwise and b) Why it would, in turn, expect its customers to give darn about its own gripes - after all, who needs whom more?
Now, granted, no one can blame Urie for being upset - while he and his cohorts were busy ignoring customer "gripes", others who have paid attention (read: Shawn Fanning etc.) have empowered Urie's customers to do something about it since he himself was unwilling to do so.
More ominously for Mr. Urie, I think, is that at the same time an unintended side effect has been that all his competition has been empowered - by this I mean the small unsigned bands (who, until now, have been forced to adopt a "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" attitude towards the record labels and their dubious policies) are now achieving previously unheard of levels of promotion and public awareness.
In fact, I would not be at all suprised if the next Napster or AudioGalaxy is created by a group of artists who are willingly providing their own works for free or for a small fee - the only thing they'll need to achieve critical mass is enough artists, who, by all rights, should eventually figure out who they're better off with, each other or the record labels.
Re:Some comparisons ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it hurt the music industry? The question is irrelevant.
Does the music industry use monopolistic practices? The question is irrelevant.
Are file sharing networks illegal per se? The question is irrelevant.
If you don't like the copyright laws then work to change them.
Stealing music is illegal. Period. End of story.
Yes, they will prove it all to you - then what? (Score:3, Insightful)
The law is on their side and no matter how much we scream about "fair use" or "...but I wanna!" the facts remain that the U.S. is run by industrialists who have a sympathetic administration in power.
Feel free to take the high moral ground, but in this country you have no rights to ask the things you ask. Period. Sure I want to know the answers too, but you should really spend your time fighting the fight on the same field of play where the battle is actually occuring as opposed to in some theoretical sandbox where everybody plays by the rules of a gentleman.
In the power struggles of corporations perception=reality. No contest. Look, all hackers are Kevin Mitnick and he is evil. CNN said it so it must be true.
If Hillary says the music industry will collapse unless the U.S. Congress enacts a bill that denys Common Carrier status to ISPs then it will happen. You can hold your breath waiting for that to happen because you won't be going blue in the face waiting.
As soon as the trial runs of "we're doing what the consumer asked and selling our music on the Internet" fail that will be all the proof your elected official needs to roll over. Now he'll have some tangible evidence that people want to steal and won't buy at any price. Then it's all over.
So fight the fight on the terms on the table or be prepared to be a casualty.
You're going to be reamed out and cross-threaded by Big Brother and don't even know why.
As always YMMV.