...one point I raised briefly (which got a laugh from the audience) was the crazy idea that some of Reznor's actions made him "seem human," and how rare that was in the music industry.
It is rare. Having spent a lot of time with a number of musicians over the years, there are very few of them I've met that have better social skills than a 2 year old, or could handle a business as complex as a paper route. Managing them is like herding cats. To expect them to be responsible for their own success is about as realistic as expecting a child to fix your car. It's possible, but unlikely.
That's why a music "industry" exists. If it were left up to the artists, all the world would have is a bunch of extremely localized chanting drum circles.
Not that I condone the "industry" abusing the artists the way they do - far from it. But, we have to realize they do serve a purpose. Not everyone is a Trent Reznor or Paul McCartney.
I agree that putting up a paywall is going to fail, but that's not what will be blamed. Google, Yahoo!, MS Live, et al will charged with it.
What will be funny is the search engines and aggregators will send him a great deal of traffic, but people will be turned away at the gate, and eventually stop hitting his site(s). If those helpful services are smart, they'll keep track of how many hits are passed his way, so they can compare that to how many subscribers he actually signs. Then we'll see who's doing what and how successfully.
"advertisers don't care if you have readers. they don't need people to read your stuff they need people to read theirs."
Sure they do. If there's nobody reading your stuff, nobody sees their ads.
That's how ad prices are set - by how many eyes/ears are exposed to your presentation. That's why newspapers care about circulation, and why radio/TV stations care about ratings. Those numbers are directly proportional to the amount of attention you're getting. The higher those numbers are, the more you can charge for adspace/airtime.
"...the theaters will have to cave in, and focus on what's always worked for theaters: making the overall experience better."
That's a good idea, but I'm not sure what more they can do. As it is, the theater-going experience has become miserable, time-consuming, restrictive, and expensive. There isn't space here to go into all the reasons I say that, but it should be considered that it's not that difficult to have a good theater experience in the home these days.
For what a "night at the movies" can cost these days, it doesn't take long to justify some pretty nice home theater audio/video equipment. Then you don't have to deal with driving, parking, crowds, noise, social and behavioral restrictions, and exorbitant costs.
What can theaters do to improve that whole situation? They can't remove travel time/cost. They can't (effectively) control the crowds or noise, except through social and behavioral restrictions that make you uncomfortable yourself. Their costs are sky-high because Hollywood wants so much for licensing and the theater still has to light, heat, and equip the place, so they have to charge $5 for $.05 worth of popcorn.
I think the theater may be a dying breed. Outside the truly unique experience like IMAX, how can anyone justify seeing a standard movie at a theater? I know I can't. It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever go to a theater to see something again.
"...the truth is subscribers usually barely (if at all) covered the costs of printing/delivering the physical paper, but not for the reporting itself."
This is absolutely true, although it's rarely brought up. My family was involved in The Detroit News both printing and delivering it for many years, and it was common knowledge that the price of the paper was purely to support labor and materials to print the paper and deliver it. In fact, the delivery boys made the most money per issue, at roughly 20%.
It's always been advertisement that paid for the news gathering and the business itself. The problem with going online is that they can't sell as much adspace as they could in the paper. In the paper version, they could easily sell 20 or more pages of ads for each page of content. Online, if you have more than a couple/few ads per webpage, people will either ignore the site and find greener pastures or be driven to install ad blocking software.
If physical newspapers were limited in adspace as much as online news sites are, the Sunday paper would only be 20 or 30 pages, tops. There's no way they could support themselves on so few ads, and so would go out of business, just like we're seeing.
While I'm glad to see a print outlet at least try, I think that media has run its course. I think I've also finally figured out why those providers are crying. In print, they could sell adspace at 100:1 (or more) ratios to content. Some magazines, you had to go through 10 pages of ads before you ever even got to the table of contents. Some of those same magazine's content wasn't much more than thinly disguised ads itself.
I wondered for a while why print media didn't just sell ads online to pay for content the same way they sold ads in print, but I'm sure that's why.
Can you imagine following a link online and ending up on a page of nothing but ads with a link at the bottom to yet another page, and so on 10 times before you ever got to the content? It would be the last time you ever went to that site.
Did anyone see the last presidential election? If that wasn't a glaring example of journalistic capture, then one doesn't exist. By embracing the internet and allowing a certain amount of access and participation in the whole charade, Obama's campaign effectively cast a drift net the size of the eastern seaboard and snagged just about every journalist extant. To this day, the love fest is almost embarrassing to watch.
"A whopping $129 euros for a huggable guitar pedal?"
It does seem a bit stiff, doesn't it? Especially when you consider the real thing is only about $80. But, if you could see what's inside the real thing, you'd wonder how they charge as much as they do for that. It's a remarkably simple device. At least the pillow has some real labor involved.
I'm glad to see these guys behave like adults, though. I'm sure many guitar players my age had one of these back in the '70s so we could emulate the big stage sound of the rockers of the day on our little cheapo amplifiers. The ability to almost sound badass carved out a special place in our hearts for Electro-Harmonix.
I'm beginning to wonder if the proliferation and/or persistence of DRM isn't due to the profound stupidity of the media and software executives so much as it's just a numbers game the DRM solution providers find easy to play.
If an ISV believes their product can bring them $5M if everyone who wants it buys it, and they're convinced that once it's out 30% of the users will "steal" it, that means they can afford to spend $1.5M on DRM in the hope that those "criminals" will be thwarted.
Now, if I'm a DRM provider, I can say I'll sell them a license to use my unbreakable disk condom for $500K. That means Mr. Media Executive will make $1M more than he otherwise would have, and would be a fool to not buy and use it.
Do it, before Microsoft does. Somebody at MIT patented the doubly-linked list not too long ago. Those have been around since memory was addressable.
It should also be noted that part of the latest "patent reform" legislation that is up for review has a clause to allow "first to patent", rather than "first to invent". If that's made into law, prior art will no longer be an infringement defense or be useful for invalidation of currently issued junk patents.
Once that happens, and chances are it will, there will be a gold rush where everything ever done in software with a computer will have a patent applied for. The USPTO's backlog will run out to 100+ years.
Hell, you may be able to patent variable assignments such as:
10 let MyRetirementFund=0
20 let MyImagination=50,000,000,000
30 let MyRetirementFund=MyImagination
Local police often issue tickets or make arrests on things they don't care much about in order to make a point or get custody of someone they'd like to talk to but can't arrest for the real reason. A broken tail light, spitting on the sidewalk, jaywalking, etc. are all against the law, and justify attention. Maybe they strongly suspect this guy of something else and just wanted to get his fingerprints on file where they could be "discovered" and linked to the crime the FBI is really interested in.
I can see why some artists might be sensitive. Anybody who's spent any time in the studio will tell you that it's often amazing how bad our "heroes" are at what they do. The engineers repair a great deal of it with multiple takes, technology, and stand-ins.
For instance, if it weren't for vocalizers, pitch shifters, key straighteners, dubbing, chorus effects, patching, etc. we wouldn't have a lot of the manufactured chick singers we have now. I mean, does anybody really think Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, or Jennifer Lopez can sing? I'd bet dollars to donut holes that the raw tracks sound like nightmares.
On the post: The Key To Being A Successful Musician: Focus On Fan Relationships... Not Industry Relationships
Human Artists
It is rare. Having spent a lot of time with a number of musicians over the years, there are very few of them I've met that have better social skills than a 2 year old, or could handle a business as complex as a paper route. Managing them is like herding cats. To expect them to be responsible for their own success is about as realistic as expecting a child to fix your car. It's possible, but unlikely.
That's why a music "industry" exists. If it were left up to the artists, all the world would have is a bunch of extremely localized chanting drum circles.
Not that I condone the "industry" abusing the artists the way they do - far from it. But, we have to realize they do serve a purpose. Not everyone is a Trent Reznor or Paul McCartney.
On the post: Notice That Murdoch Is Only Talking About Charging For Content... Not Giving People A Reason To Buy
Watch out for the charging scapegoat
I agree that putting up a paywall is going to fail, but that's not what will be blamed. Google, Yahoo!, MS Live, et al will charged with it.
What will be funny is the search engines and aggregators will send him a great deal of traffic, but people will be turned away at the gate, and eventually stop hitting his site(s). If those helpful services are smart, they'll keep track of how many hits are passed his way, so they can compare that to how many subscribers he actually signs. Then we'll see who's doing what and how successfully.
On the post: You Can't Raise The Price For News If You Don't Actually Add Value
Re: Re: Re: You pay for Advertising
Sure they do. If there's nobody reading your stuff, nobody sees their ads.
That's how ad prices are set - by how many eyes/ears are exposed to your presentation. That's why newspapers care about circulation, and why radio/TV stations care about ratings. Those numbers are directly proportional to the amount of attention you're getting. The higher those numbers are, the more you can charge for adspace/airtime.
On the post: Movie Critic To Movie Industry: Wake Up, Start Giving Consumers What They Want
Theaters have little room to improve
That's a good idea, but I'm not sure what more they can do. As it is, the theater-going experience has become miserable, time-consuming, restrictive, and expensive. There isn't space here to go into all the reasons I say that, but it should be considered that it's not that difficult to have a good theater experience in the home these days.
For what a "night at the movies" can cost these days, it doesn't take long to justify some pretty nice home theater audio/video equipment. Then you don't have to deal with driving, parking, crowds, noise, social and behavioral restrictions, and exorbitant costs.
What can theaters do to improve that whole situation? They can't remove travel time/cost. They can't (effectively) control the crowds or noise, except through social and behavioral restrictions that make you uncomfortable yourself. Their costs are sky-high because Hollywood wants so much for licensing and the theater still has to light, heat, and equip the place, so they have to charge $5 for $.05 worth of popcorn.
I think the theater may be a dying breed. Outside the truly unique experience like IMAX, how can anyone justify seeing a standard movie at a theater? I know I can't. It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever go to a theater to see something again.
On the post: You Can't Raise The Price For News If You Don't Actually Add Value
Limited adspace online
This is absolutely true, although it's rarely brought up. My family was involved in The Detroit News both printing and delivering it for many years, and it was common knowledge that the price of the paper was purely to support labor and materials to print the paper and deliver it. In fact, the delivery boys made the most money per issue, at roughly 20%.
It's always been advertisement that paid for the news gathering and the business itself. The problem with going online is that they can't sell as much adspace as they could in the paper. In the paper version, they could easily sell 20 or more pages of ads for each page of content. Online, if you have more than a couple/few ads per webpage, people will either ignore the site and find greener pastures or be driven to install ad blocking software.
If physical newspapers were limited in adspace as much as online news sites are, the Sunday paper would only be 20 or 30 pages, tops. There's no way they could support themselves on so few ads, and so would go out of business, just like we're seeing.
On the post: Time Discovers That Customizing Print Magazines Is Hard
Bad Ratios
I wondered for a while why print media didn't just sell ads online to pay for content the same way they sold ads in print, but I'm sure that's why.
Can you imagine following a link online and ending up on a page of nothing but ads with a link at the bottom to yet another page, and so on 10 times before you ever got to the content? It would be the last time you ever went to that site.
On the post: Journalistic Regulatory Capture
Journalistic Capture?
On the post: Electro-Harmonix Shows You Can Handle Trademark Infringement Without The Legal Nastygrams
Re: looks great but ...
It does seem a bit stiff, doesn't it? Especially when you consider the real thing is only about $80. But, if you could see what's inside the real thing, you'd wonder how they charge as much as they do for that. It's a remarkably simple device. At least the pillow has some real labor involved.
I'm glad to see these guys behave like adults, though. I'm sure many guitar players my age had one of these back in the '70s so we could emulate the big stage sound of the rockers of the day on our little cheapo amplifiers. The ability to almost sound badass carved out a special place in our hearts for Electro-Harmonix.
On the post: Sleight Of Hand: If We Don't Call It DRM, We Can Pretend That DRM Is Gone
Real Culprits
If an ISV believes their product can bring them $5M if everyone who wants it buys it, and they're convinced that once it's out 30% of the users will "steal" it, that means they can afford to spend $1.5M on DRM in the hope that those "criminals" will be thwarted.
Now, if I'm a DRM provider, I can say I'll sell them a license to use my unbreakable disk condom for $500K. That means Mr. Media Executive will make $1M more than he otherwise would have, and would be a fool to not buy and use it.
On the post: Want To Create A Simple App To Tell You Where Someone Is Calling From? You Can't, It's Patented
@TW Burger
Do it, before Microsoft does. Somebody at MIT patented the doubly-linked list not too long ago. Those have been around since memory was addressable.
It should also be noted that part of the latest "patent reform" legislation that is up for review has a clause to allow "first to patent", rather than "first to invent". If that's made into law, prior art will no longer be an infringement defense or be useful for invalidation of currently issued junk patents.
Once that happens, and chances are it will, there will be a gold rush where everything ever done in software with a computer will have a patent applied for. The USPTO's backlog will run out to 100+ years.
Hell, you may be able to patent variable assignments such as:
10 let MyRetirementFund=0
20 let MyImagination=50,000,000,000
30 let MyRetirementFund=MyImagination
On the post: FBI Apparently Has Nothing Better To Do Than Arrest GNR Album Leaker
Could just be a red herring, or harrassment
On the post: Humorless Guitarists Take Down Amusing YouTube Mashup Video
Maybe too close to the truth
For instance, if it weren't for vocalizers, pitch shifters, key straighteners, dubbing, chorus effects, patching, etc. we wouldn't have a lot of the manufactured chick singers we have now. I mean, does anybody really think Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, or Jennifer Lopez can sing? I'd bet dollars to donut holes that the raw tracks sound like nightmares.
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