Hahahahahahahhaha.. oh... holds belly... hahahaha.. oh the spasms just won't stop. Phew. Oh boy. I think I actually snorted a bit while I was laughing there. Thank god I wasn't eating something otherwise my screen would be covered in food.
Well I found on my NYT iphone app that if you acknowledge the update prompt but break out of it and then go back to the App you get all the content for free... so there's that workaround. Just don't upgrade the app, because then it'll ask you to pay.
Studios band together, create a consortium of sorts. All studios pays a certain amount into a pot for a separate licensing body to work out rights for all films 'owned' by studios. In addition they start a joint web division which would create a service to distribute these films.
All rights managed and cleared films are fed to said web division for online distribution. So when someone say's, "What do you mean you haven't seen [insert movie here]?", you can instantly go to the website and start watching.
Income could be advertising or an all-you-can-eat model or a combination with some freebies thrown in. You watch a film by X studio, X studio gets paid. You watch one for Y studio, Y studio gets paid.
Furthermore, and this is the fun part as the studios now have this playground where they can try things out. But what I'd like to see is worldwide release of a film in theatres and on this service at the exact same time. Want to watch a film that would've traditionally gone to the US Theatres > UK Theatres > Airplanes > DVD > netflix.. etc. Sure you might pay a hefty premium, but you could organise a party of friends take a few bucks off 'em and watch at home.
If the film sucked, but the marketing was good, you would get lots of rubes watching a crap film at the same time, maximising your potential income before word got out. Having all these films at your fingertips you might see all of the sudden a heap of folks watching John Hughes films due to some social network buzz... old films could go viral with millions of new viewers opening up entirely new and un-thought of revenue streams due to sudden popularity. Simply because you're reducing obstacles to consumption.
Think about it, all that content. All those shows and films they could be making even greater amounts of money from but instead they continue create barriers...
(/fantasy)
Now, when someone says, "Have you seen [insert film here]?", a large percentage of those folks go instantly to a torrent site and start downloading.
Of course he defends it. Pulling crap from his ass and presenting it as gold is obviously his lively-hood. All of those menacing charts, graphs and non sequiturs don't come cheap.
Bon Jovi's magical time was when marketing could sell a band based on image and advertising. Now is the magical time that consumers can actually hear the music and decide whether or not it's worth their allowance money.
I used to buy used CD's or records all the time, because you could actually listen to them first in store and make an informed decision. How much of that money spent on used music go to the artist, none.
Twitter is a foreign language to those that don't actually use the service that often.. filled with #'s and @'s and other strange symbols difficult to divine to the person not steeped in the protocol. Twitter is a lot of noise and very little signal. It's never experienced the breakaway success that Facebook had and for those reasons I think it will die a death eventually and this sounds distinctly of a hammer driving another nail. It's great for already existing pundits/celebrities/journalists/media types to amplify their already existing fan bases.. but I think that for the normal person it's a waste of time.
One thing this reveals to me is that the news reference volume, on par with Facebook, far outweighs the actual traffic. Of course it does, it's favoured by the media as another bullhorn and they're biased towards its purpose but the person on the street can't really be bothered. So we have artificially inflated cultural value that, to me, offers little besides an echo chamber of noise.
Furthermore I think this is a case where patent expiration will cause innovation... obviously unbridled growth hasn't done much for the industry... so let's get back to actually creating things people need.
I like the mental reversal in regards to health care keeping a population healthy results in more earnings. For whom remains to be seen but I've never thought of it that way.
They've had their windfall from findings that 50% of the population had some sort of psychological disorder and consequently needed some pharmaceutical to treat their problem. They are allowed to advertise on television which to me is ethically problematic. They've grown tremendously in the past couple decades due to all of this and now the market is heading rightly for a 'correction'. What more to do they want? F'em.
Working with the music industry and having friends running small independent labels we see nothing but opportunities. We're astounded at the expanding variety of music and the growing number of new artists releasing music nowadays. As seems to be the standard now, lots of bands are offering free downloads of entire albums, making profits on vinyl, gigs and other things. No one is getting stupid rich, but folks are making a living. Music is alive and well just in places where the majors aren't looking. Their business is in the shitter for all the reasons Mike points out. Today one person can write, produce, release and market an entire album for next to nothing. Major labels? Who needs 'em?
Check out the http://www.freemusicarchive.org for a taste of the future. It's free and ever-growing and there is some fantastic music (new and old) on there.
Here in Europe, where you can find these at any shop, sometimes folks use these to smuggle or hold other things besides 'toys'. The plastic bubble that holds the toy is air tight and they're easy to 're-package' making them look as if they're store bought. Perhaps there's a deeper reason for the ban and a reason why the border patrol confiscates them from folks arriving from notoriously cannabis lenient Canada. Just a thought...
Of course journalists frame things with a bias towards the technologies and stuff they themselves use. Macs, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Most normal folks don't give a damn about Twitter, the only ones that care and report on it is the media because they make up a large percentage of the user base.
As you can see, the news reporting volume is similar to Facebook, but the actual user base and people that actively use the site have remained relatively static since it's inception. So what you've got is a skewed perspective purely based off the fact that most journos can't get enough of the self-congratulatory back-patting, propaganda, and mutual hand-jobbing that goes with Twitter.
The more I think about it, the more I get annoyed with the media and major news organisations as they dance the dance of death in coming to grips with the fact that they no longer hold the only set of keys towards dissemination of information. What has happened is they have gotten more shrill, more noisy and more divisive and what they're reporting is increasingly out of step with actual reality. Crime for instance has been trending downwards for 2 decades however reports and media outcry in regards to crime has gone in the opposite direction. Or Swine flu again... took the Guardian weeks to actually acknowledge that despite their coverage on hospital beds running out, death in numbers, etc... that this year is actually mild in comparison to years past.. wouldn't want to sully the doom and gloom with actual facts. I could go on...
The libels laws here in the UK suck ass preventing any form of factual criticism of entities and corporations such as this for fear of unfounded reprisals and lawsuits. Even completely unemotional and factual presentation of information could potentially force one into court where you have to prove your innocence. A woeful situation for anyone wanting to speak out.
I know folks want to think that the artist/venue/promoter are innocent victims in all this but that's not actually the case. I'll explain:
Ticketing is a de facto monopoly regardless of how you slice it. A limited resource where demand sometimes outstrips supply. Now as a artist/venue/promoter you of course want your tickets sold, so you give the biggest allocation to the largest and most reliable ticketing provider, which most of the time is Ticketmaster. In order to gain a larger allocation of tickets from the venue/artist/promoter what do you think agents like Ticketmaster bargain with? If you guessed by setting extra fees, you'd be correct. Most of the time during these dealings, side deals are cut so that the venue/artist/promoter/agent can profit further from the sale of this limited resource. Now Ticketmaster doesn't mind being the boogie man and takes the flack, that's their job and why venues/artists/promoters use them. So fees are in fact shared between the parties and are set by collusion between the agent and the venue/artist/promoter. With the extra and reliable income that Ticketmaster promises based on getting these allocations there is really no desire to promote competition. It's greed on all sides where Ticketmaster plays the bag man. Obviously if the venues/promoters/artists wanted something different which was fairer for the punter, they would do it. But the promise of extra gravy... well that's sometimes hard to resist.
Re:
Avoiding payment... just don't upgrade.
Re: Re:
(untitled comment)
Clients..
Otherwise known as the perfect client.
Here's a novel idea.
Studios band together, create a consortium of sorts. All studios pays a certain amount into a pot for a separate licensing body to work out rights for all films 'owned' by studios. In addition they start a joint web division which would create a service to distribute these films.
All rights managed and cleared films are fed to said web division for online distribution. So when someone say's, "What do you mean you haven't seen [insert movie here]?", you can instantly go to the website and start watching.
Income could be advertising or an all-you-can-eat model or a combination with some freebies thrown in. You watch a film by X studio, X studio gets paid. You watch one for Y studio, Y studio gets paid.
Furthermore, and this is the fun part as the studios now have this playground where they can try things out. But what I'd like to see is worldwide release of a film in theatres and on this service at the exact same time. Want to watch a film that would've traditionally gone to the US Theatres > UK Theatres > Airplanes > DVD > netflix.. etc. Sure you might pay a hefty premium, but you could organise a party of friends take a few bucks off 'em and watch at home.
If the film sucked, but the marketing was good, you would get lots of rubes watching a crap film at the same time, maximising your potential income before word got out. Having all these films at your fingertips you might see all of the sudden a heap of folks watching John Hughes films due to some social network buzz... old films could go viral with millions of new viewers opening up entirely new and un-thought of revenue streams due to sudden popularity. Simply because you're reducing obstacles to consumption.
Think about it, all that content. All those shows and films they could be making even greater amounts of money from but instead they continue create barriers...
(/fantasy)
Now, when someone says, "Have you seen [insert film here]?", a large percentage of those folks go instantly to a torrent site and start downloading.
Uhm..
Magic...
I used to buy used CD's or records all the time, because you could actually listen to them first in store and make an informed decision. How much of that money spent on used music go to the artist, none.
Twitter?
Check out the trends:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=twitter%2C+facebook&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&am p;sort=0
One thing this reveals to me is that the news reference volume, on par with Facebook, far outweighs the actual traffic. Of course it does, it's favoured by the media as another bullhorn and they're biased towards its purpose but the person on the street can't really be bothered. So we have artificially inflated cultural value that, to me, offers little besides an echo chamber of noise.
Re: Thinking...
Thinking...
They've had their windfall from findings that 50% of the population had some sort of psychological disorder and consequently needed some pharmaceutical to treat their problem. They are allowed to advertise on television which to me is ethically problematic. They've grown tremendously in the past couple decades due to all of this and now the market is heading rightly for a 'correction'. What more to do they want? F'em.
Hmmm...
(untitled comment)
Check out the http://www.freemusicarchive.org for a taste of the future. It's free and ever-growing and there is some fantastic music (new and old) on there.
Because folks use them for smuggling.. ?
But of course...
For some support to my argument, check this out:
http://www.google.com/trends?q=facebook,+twitter
As you can see, the news reporting volume is similar to Facebook, but the actual user base and people that actively use the site have remained relatively static since it's inception. So what you've got is a skewed perspective purely based off the fact that most journos can't get enough of the self-congratulatory back-patting, propaganda, and mutual hand-jobbing that goes with Twitter.
The more I think about it, the more I get annoyed with the media and major news organisations as they dance the dance of death in coming to grips with the fact that they no longer hold the only set of keys towards dissemination of information. What has happened is they have gotten more shrill, more noisy and more divisive and what they're reporting is increasingly out of step with actual reality. Crime for instance has been trending downwards for 2 decades however reports and media outcry in regards to crime has gone in the opposite direction. Or Swine flu again... took the Guardian weeks to actually acknowledge that despite their coverage on hospital beds running out, death in numbers, etc... that this year is actually mild in comparison to years past.. wouldn't want to sully the doom and gloom with actual facts. I could go on...
Visa..
UK Libel Laws.
The libels laws here in the UK suck ass preventing any form of factual criticism of entities and corporations such as this for fear of unfounded reprisals and lawsuits. Even completely unemotional and factual presentation of information could potentially force one into court where you have to prove your innocence. A woeful situation for anyone wanting to speak out.
I mean really...
De Facto Monopoly
Ticketing is a de facto monopoly regardless of how you slice it. A limited resource where demand sometimes outstrips supply. Now as a artist/venue/promoter you of course want your tickets sold, so you give the biggest allocation to the largest and most reliable ticketing provider, which most of the time is Ticketmaster. In order to gain a larger allocation of tickets from the venue/artist/promoter what do you think agents like Ticketmaster bargain with? If you guessed by setting extra fees, you'd be correct. Most of the time during these dealings, side deals are cut so that the venue/artist/promoter/agent can profit further from the sale of this limited resource. Now Ticketmaster doesn't mind being the boogie man and takes the flack, that's their job and why venues/artists/promoters use them. So fees are in fact shared between the parties and are set by collusion between the agent and the venue/artist/promoter. With the extra and reliable income that Ticketmaster promises based on getting these allocations there is really no desire to promote competition. It's greed on all sides where Ticketmaster plays the bag man. Obviously if the venues/promoters/artists wanted something different which was fairer for the punter, they would do it. But the promise of extra gravy... well that's sometimes hard to resist.
(untitled comment)
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