Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry 402
VoidEngineer writes "In a surprisingly insightful article entitled Harry Crushes the Hulk, Frank Rich discusses how "Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix" beat out "The Hulk" and goes on to offer some insightfull and interesting comments on demographics, digital media piracy, file sharing and p2p networks, the iTunes store, and more... His conclusion? "[Consumers] may well be willing to pay for their entertainment -- if the quality is guaranteed and the price is fair."
Without even reading the article.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have an Australian Drivers licence, and my local video store requires *australian* photo ID. So, that counts me out as a video consumer. The last time I bought a CD was for *one* song I liked. I'd use ITunes if it were available out here.
Sadly, I doubt that the companies will wake up and smell the coffee...
I'm boycotting all RIAA products (Score:3, Insightful)
(the fact that their stuff is overpriced crap makes this easier)
Bottom line (Score:4, Insightful)
Books are tangible (Score:1, Insightful)
Bookws are more tangible then dvds or cds. You can flip the pages, feel the texture of the paper. CD/DVDs you put in a player. Its harder to pirate books, sure you could scan it, but who wants to read it on a computer. Also theres photocopies also a unlikely way of pirating.
Though alternatively, people are buying this book when its avaible to the largest fair use system of them all, the pub library.
One disappointing comment in the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
"The question is: How do all those lovely entertainment-seeking kids weaned on 'Harry Potter' grow up to become thieves? Surely, they know that stealing copyrighted songs and movies is akin to shoplifting sweaters at the Gap."
How can an author who is obviously intelligent enough to write an otherwise-interesting article sneak that in? Making a copy of music is NOT the same as stealing the original. Now, if I went to the Gap, bought one sweater, and then used my home cloning machine to make 50 more and ship them off to people on the Internet for free... that would be a fair comparison. However, "pirating" music (ugh, I despise that term) is not equivalent to stealing a physical good. If I steal one Gap sweater, that's one less sweater that the Gap has to sell... but if I make a perfect bit-by-bit copy of a CD and hand it to a friend, the original is still completely intact and able to be sold, used, or traded.
It's disappointing that the author fell into the RIAA's trap on that point. However, the rest of the article is quite good. Good weekend reading...
Re:Is it as good as they say? (Score:5, Insightful)
The media coverage of Harry Potter started *because* of its popularity, it didn't cause it. I will grant that the popularity of the fifth book has probably been helped along by the media coverage, but remember, the popularity of the series was already quite entrenched when the fourth book was being anticipated. The fact that little kids were lining up to be the first to read a 700 plus page book on their own was what made the story newsworthy.
Quality is guaranteed? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the whole problem. The media companies want to invest their money in the sure sell, so we keep getting sequels and boy bands.
For media-based entertainment products, "quality" involves a bit of variety, a bit of risk.
Re:I'm boycotting all RIAA products (Score:5, Insightful)
Being on the NY Times doesn't make it true (Score:3, Insightful)
Normally I'd agree in the conservative estimate of 2 readers per book, but I think that a large portion of sales are driven by a 'me too' mentality. I'd put readership at more like
Would anyone care to bet against me that sales of Tolkien's LOTR and The Hobbit books skyrocketed because of the movies and not just because everyone suddenly, simultaneously and miraculously figured out that they're just really good books (which they are)?
Face it. These people (a lot of them) buying the new HP book are buying it because everyone says they have to and to get a preview of the next movie.
The Hulk just happens to have had fewer big-budget movie prequels than HP (not counting the low-budget Bill Bixby junk) and LOTS less media hype. The Hulk CG also sucks from what I've seen in the trailers. Hopefully I'll change my mind when I watch the DVD in 6 months.
Gawd I hate faulty (I think the word is 'specious') reasoning almost as much as I hate the knuckleheads who believe the faulty reasoning simply because it was written in the NY Times. Probably mostly the same knuckleheads who stood in line to but the latest HP book so that it could sit on the coffee table to show everyone how smart their knucklehead kids are because they can read.
Re:One disappointing comment in the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it reasonable to claim that stealing music (by copying it) is similar to stealing goods? I would say it depends on which dimension of the act you are focusing on and why. As you point out above, the physical aspect of the act is very different, and the outcome for the victims is relatively different, but from the perspective of whether it is wrong to do it, that doesn't really make any difference does it?
Btw. a book might make for good weekend reading; an article is something you read while on the toilet.
Re:Bottom line (Score:5, Insightful)
I tried reading a e-book copy of a book once. Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' wasn't available at any local bookstores so I downloaded it. It was horrible. Plain-text is really bad for large amounts of text. So I layouted parts of it myself and that was a bit better but I still had to read it on a computer screen. Sure--you can print it out, but a stack of loose pages is a lot less comfortable to handle than a bound book. That is the big difference between books and other forms of entertainment. With books the package is important and not easily recreate-able at home. Films, games and music can be burned on any old blank. With 'The Diamond Age' I read the first couple of pages and then ordered it.
From the article:
By the next year, The Times would have to bend to Harry's will and initiate its first separate weekly children's best-seller list, lest adult fiction get crowded out by the Rowling juggernaut.
That is kind of unfair, isn't it? After all people of all ages read the books.
Re:Bottom line (Score:3, Insightful)
When you buy a CD or DVD, you experience the data it contains in exactly the same way as you would with the pirated version; the same speakers, the same screen.
A book is quite different - while the data may be identical, most people would far prefer the experience of reading from a bound dead-tree version than from a CRT/LCD etc (not to mention the portability factor - not everyone has a laptop).
As for the 'quality' of the fifth Harry Potter book; well, thats another argument altogether, and theres enough flamebait in the world as it is.
It's the Economic Downturn Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone else getting tired of this? I mean, can't reporters make the connection? When was the economy at it's peek? In 2000. What has it been doing since 2000? Going into deeper and deeper recession. What does that mean? People are spending less money on goods and services.
What?! The entertainment industry saw a drop in sales during a worldwide economic recession? It must be the pirates fault!
my car's transmission system crushs Harry (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, the author IMHO compares unfairly the Hulk with the newest Harry Potter book. My suspicion is that the amount of money spent on marketing is probably the same order of magnitude for both. Ie, Harry Potter now is as much an instrument of Big Media as the Hulk movie.
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll give you the reason:
Hype.
People are sheep. Please try not to be a sad sheep, don't defend this tripe you call literature.
Re:You know what I realized (Score:3, Insightful)
I figure the reason is production costs have gotten so cheap that companies would rather reach a broader audience using lower prices than screw the fans. That, and when your dealing with record labels as small (relative to the big guys) as Metal Blade, you get nicer people in charge. People who enjoy what they're doing for more than the thrill of money and power and genuinely want people to enjoy their music
Re:How about labeling crippled protected CDs... (Score:3, Insightful)
First thing is I take it back to the store as it quite clearly doesn't fit the purpose it was intended for.
Secondly, I download the album tracks using Limewire.
Third thing is I go to the band's online shop (if they have one) and purchase $20 of merchandise.
IMO, this is win-win - I get the music I originally wanted to purchase, I have some merchandise, and it's showing my support for the band.
Granted, it's probably less than legal, but it does ease my conscience knowing the the band is still making some money from me.
Tim
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the characters tend to be far more realistic than you would expect in children's literature. Not all the good guys are nice, and not all the bad guys are mean.
Summary: It's just a good story. Read more.
Somewhat right... (Score:4, Insightful)
Now things are different for me. Now I live in the small town of Robbinsville, NC. There are 2 video rental stores both with poor selections and no movie theaters at all. I love movies, so yes, I admit, I download movies that I used to go to theaters to see, cause otherwise I have to wait for the rental. For movies that have been out a few months however... I now use netflix as my rental source, I still don't prefer to P2P, as the quality isn't good and I personally believe that if I like something, I should pay for it so that the people who make it get the incentive to make more things like that.
Money makes the world work, but the article does make a point, everyone targets the younger crowd who have no money to spend, yet they continue to raise their prices higher and higher till their target audience can't afford it anymore, of course they would turn to P2P. I mean movie ticket prices are somewhat rediculous, there are places that it costs $10 for a matinee ticket! Why would a kid want to shell out $10 for 2 hours of mindless entertainment, when they could pay $17 for a book that will entertain them for days. Even the audiobook version is 24 hours of entertainment. And what Rowling can do for young minds is far more magical then anything Harry learns at Hogwarts. For a long time children have fallen away from reading, the instant gratification world in which we live has bred children to not want to read, and in many cases, not be able to read. Yet J.K. Rowling has the most amazing ability to grab minds child and adult alike and make them crave more and more. Each book she releases longer then the previous, this one nearly 900 pages in length, yet children as young as 6 make it through it not once but multiple times. And when Rowling can't write fast enough for these eager readers, the children actually look to OTHER books. Rowling has done more for literacy then anyone in the late 20th century.
Sadly it won't be enough, we live in far too much of a video world, Children come home from school and immediately turn on the TV to watch increasingly disgusting cartoons or play mindless video games, they do this until they go to bed, then get up and continue the next morning before school, when the weekends come instead of sitting outside under a tree reading a good book, they spend the whole day inside burning images into their eyes, and when they cannot get enough through TV and what movies they can afford to see in theaters, they hop online and download the rest of the available movies. Would the best thing be a reasonable price on entertainment? Or less entertainment with more quality to it?
Re:Is it as good as they say? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, no, that's not what the whole article assumes. Rich doesn't say that he considers any of the Harry Potter books art, merely that they're something good that the target audience is willing to not only go out of their way to read, but also pay for. His point is merely that something of quality can still actually sell, and that it doesn't necessarily need to market itself to the lowest common denominator in order to succeed.
And, at the risk of being moderated redundant, as others have said, the books receive media attention because they're so popular, not the other way around. The books were huge sellers before all the media attention started, and if it were suddenly to go away, that wouldn't change--the people who read and love the books would search out the new ones without all the news stories.
Quality, price, and format. (Score:3, Insightful)
Let me download a high quality FLAC (maybe even optionally at higher bitrates; 24bit 96khz would make audiophiles cream) so I can transcode to whatever format I like. Let me download a smaller MP3 or Ogg at a range of qualities. Let me have my full fair use out of it, and maybe charge on a sliding scale based on the different sizes. Hell, let me get it elsewhere and just pay for a cheap license so I can support my favourite artist.
Let me not have to worry about whether some dumbass transcoded all his Ogg's from his MP3's encoded with Xing and ripped from a scratched CD in burst mode. Let me not have to spend 3 weeks downloading an album from a billion different encodes. Let me not have to wait for someone to post something to news and spend hours every day hunting through 100's of MB's of headers.
If the music industry can't compete with slow annoying overloaded networks full of substandard rips of music that doesn't even come properly indexed, it doesn't deserve to make money.
And no, pouring more money into lawsuits does not count as competing.
Re:Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry (Score:3, Insightful)
The funny thing is that the fourth book was in a way about the entertainment industry. It showed how the media can make people believe things that aren't necessarily true.
The latest one (#5) continued this thread, and also delved into the world of politics and corrupt (i.e. self-serving) governments.
Re:Hype factor? Three years versus... (Score:2, Insightful)
Retail Respect (Score:3, Insightful)
The other camp, such as independent bands, movie studios, book publishers etc. treat consumers with the respect they deserve. They recognize that people will use good (or at least some) judgment in their decisions and buy quality and originality. They are not requiered to purchase any one provider's product and thus the providers recognize the need to truly differentiate themselves from the rest.
Sadly, though I'm not sure how, the method which does not serve the customers seems to be winning
Re:Without even reading the article.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:5, Insightful)
If you don't care for Harry Potter, that's fine, not everyone does. But by this statement you're implying that you don't read fiction because you're an adult, and I fail to see what one has to do with the other.
My father is in his seventies now and still devours about three novels a week. He is a rather intelligent and well-educated man. He cared for my ailing and home-bound mother for ten years all by himself until she passed away a few months ago. All through that time he read tons of fiction. It helped him remain sane while he saw my mother deteriorate despite his best efforts. A social worker that visited him once said she was astonished at the quality of care he was giving my mother.
Here is a man that is very much an adult. He shoulders his adult responsibilities seriously and with skill. Yet he continued to read fiction during that time. We need fiction as an escape, if nothing else, a way of immersing ourselves in another world as a way of recovering from the harsh realities of real life.
Re:lame swipe against the Matrix (Score:2, Insightful)
Harry on the other hand gets better and better with each new installment. I read the original and thought "not bad, I've seen better" and left it on a shelf for months going back to my normal reading routine, then one day when I heard that a 4th book had been released I decided to give it another go and try the Chamber of Secrets and noted that it was better, at that point I didn't stop reading until I had read all 4 of the books that were out at the time (a matter of 3 days). Now I read OotP in about 12 hours (decided to read it slowly) and it has toped them all, I can't imagine how Rowling will continue to push the limits of her imagination for us the readers.
That's the difference the author was pointing out.
Re:Being on the NY Times doesn't make it true (Score:2, Insightful)
Face it. These people (a lot of them) buying the new HP book are buying it because everyone says they have to and to get a preview of the next movie.
Why would people be buying the fifth book in the series when there's only been two movies? At the rate they've been going, Order Of The Phoenix won't be made into a movie for another two years.
If people were buying a book just to "get a preview", they'd go out and buy Prisoner of Azkaban.
The Hulk has less media hype? Turn on the TV, watch some commercials. Tell me how many ads you see relating to products or programming tying in with Order of the Phoenix versus how many ads tie in with The Hulk.
Re:You know what I realized (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Being on the NY Times doesn't make it true (Score:2, Insightful)
If I had more than a few minutes or really cared I'd pick the article apart point by point, but the main point is that the Harry Potter series was no doubt very popular in book-only form, but would NEVER have sold $100M worth of books in a weekend without the HP movies and the media hype.
Based on what? Do you have a background in book publishing? Have you completed writing or reading a recent study on the relationship between media exposure and sales volume of hardcover fiction?
Normally I'd agree in the conservative estimate of 2 readers per book, but I think that a large portion of sales are driven by a 'me too' mentality. I'd put readership at more like
What are you basing the
Would anyone care to bet against me that sales of Tolkien's LOTR and The Hobbit books skyrocketed because of the movies and not just because everyone suddenly, simultaneously and miraculously figured out that they're just really good books (which they are)?
As with Harry Potter, the LOTR was made as a film because of the great popularity of the books, not the other way around. Also, one should note that there have been a couple of real garbage LOTR animated films that didn't seem to do much for the franchise.
Face it. These people (a lot of them) buying the new HP book are buying it because everyone says they have to and to get a preview of the next movie.
I don't see why I should "face it". Would you give any more credence to me saying "Face it. No ones buying the new Harry Potter book because of peer pressure."?
The Hulk just happens to have had fewer big-budget movie prequels than HP (not counting the low-budget Bill Bixby junk) and LOTS less media hype. The Hulk CG also sucks from what I've seen in the trailers. Hopefully I'll change my mind when I watch the DVD in 6 months.
FYI most people in the US don't read the newspaper hardcopy or soft. Do you not watch television? Have you not seen the constant commercials of the green-cookie dough looking monster bouncing around the screen? How many Harry Potter commercials have you seen? Also, your opining that the "CGI sucks" is exactly that, opining. I have neither seen nor read anything that "CGI realness" has any viewership effects (positive or negative).
Gawd I hate faulty (I think the word is 'specious') reasoning almost as much as I hate the knuckleheads who believe the faulty reasoning simply because it was written in the NY Times. Probably mostly the same knuckleheads who stood in line to but the latest HP book so that it could sit on the coffee table to show everyone how smart their knucklehead kids are because they can read.
God I hate the spelling "Gawd". I also hate captious arguments as much as I hate the knuckle heads who throw out a term like specious, apparently understand it's meaning, and then use it to rant about some argument or exposition they don't care about without making any real refutations of any of said argument/exposition's points.
Most importantly, I think you missed the fundamental point of the article which IMHO was not that Harry Potter kicked the Hulk's ass or Harry Potter sells awesomely 'cause it's awesome and would have sold awesomely no matter what (which seem to be the points you are refuting). Instead, I think the article was trying to comment on the fact that human beings are not a bunch of hype-driven lemmings in spite of all the attempts to make us otherwise. And that even children growing up in a shit-hole marketing wasteland are able to easily discern between "heartfelt, I wrote this as a labor of love" quality and "I make $12.00 an hour to write half-hour GI Joe episodes" quality.
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because you are no longer a kid, and your tastes have changed. The Harry Potter books, which I have not read I will admit, are aimed at children, not at your level. From all I've heard, they are written well, but so is, say, the Judy Blume books that kids loved. Doesn't mean adults will find them of interest.
" My wife says its aimed at a lower grade audience, so why does she read it?
This is similar to something I have wondered about for several years: why do adults like the HP books? Cleary they weren't meant for them, and adults were clueless about the books until their kids discovered them and made a fuss. My theory is three-fold:
- The hype factor: When anything gets hyped a lot, people join in just to see what the fuss is about.
- The quality factor: The HP books are apparently well-written, not just hyped junk. The hype machine came after Rowling wrote the first few books. They are good books, simple as that. Again, I cannot speak from personal experience, but I have friends who have read the books and tell me what they think.
- The literacy factor: Adults are not reading as often as they used to, and the literacy level of adult fiction has lowered over the decades to keep up with the times. Compare a newspaper from a hundred years ago to one today. Compare a popular novel to one today. People like easier material. They get lazy. So when they pick up a HP book they find it's easy to read, contains a good story, and they feel as if they are accomplishing something.
"I have read a few chapters of the HP and find it near tripe. I am not a fan of fiction anymore, I am an adult, and find the story to be a waste of time."Well, I find your concept of adulthood to be odd. Fiction is universally known as a window into the human condition. The best fiction tells us more about the world than the most thoroughly researched non-fiction. It says more in a glance than reams of charts and facts. So to hear you dismiss all fiction tells us why you don't like the HP books, but it also tells us something about you.
Namely that you are probably just trolling. :)
Re:Quality, price, and format. (Score:3, Insightful)
Um...
So, not only do I have to use a specific OS and a specific application, I have no choice over format and have to use a low bitrate AAC? I don't think so.
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoa, buddy. Couple of things here.
As for adults not reading as often as they used to - unless you can bring some kind of statistics to the table, I'd have to disagree. Adults this day and age are far more educated than adults at any other peroid in time. To say that they read less is to fall into a stereotype about this generation vs. "the great generation" of yesteryear.
As for the literary merit of adult fiction: again, not the case. More educated people = more educated things to read. As science and philosophy and even society advance and become more complicated, it is nessesarily reflected in the literature.
As for the comparison between old literature to modern literature: Of course old literature is harder to read! It was written in a vernacular that is no longer used. People write and speak differently now, and so modern literature looks easier simply because thats how you speak. Old prose being harder to read does not increase its literary merit.
So when they pick up a HP book they find it's easy to read, contains a good story, and they feel as if they are accomplishing something.
What an elitest thing to say. You're assuming that outside of your circle of friends and family, and "present company excluded," America is filled with trailer park trash. And it's absolutely not true. People arn't happy about reading Harry Potter because "Oh! I read a 900 page book! Whoa, I didn't know I had it in me!" No, people are happy they read Harry Potter because it sparks the imagination.
Re:Bottom line (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's the Economic Downturn Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
The consumer is willing to give up money for their entertainment, but not convenience. I'd rather pay the artist $10 for some music I liked than get it for free without a sense of entitlement to it; but I certainly don't want to pay $18 for a useless hunk of plastic that may damage my hardware and gives me no sense of entitlement.
in defense of the Hulk movie (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to say the NYT article wasn't interesting.
Re:Is it as good as they say? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it as good as they say?
I'd like to see the marketing campaign that can get 10 year olds to sit and read -- nearly continuously -- an almost 900 page book that was actually crap. :)
Re:Bottom line (Score:3, Insightful)
They did it because other books were being held back. Rowling's astounding success was preventing other books from being released, because the publishers were holding them back until they had a chance to get on the bestseller list. With HP1/2/3/4 out there, they were relegated to #2 at best, even if the book was of a quality that would normally garner a #1 spot for several weeks.
If you were going to enter a Chile cooking competition, in which it cost you a lot of money to enter, but winning (or placing well) would gain you a nice profit, would you even bother entering if you saw that Betty Sue, who was 90 if she was a day, had won the past 45 years and showed no sign of stopping? So people stop competing, and the competition dries up in the Chile contest.
To bring competition back, they make a Senior Chile contest separate from the normal one. People happily compete in both, everyone still KNOWS that Betty Sue could kick all the asses of the young whippersnappers, but now they have a chance again.
I don't see a problem with what they did.
Re:It's the Economic Downturn Stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
A little story from being a teenager... I absolutely felt that Metallica was the greatest thing ever the first time I heard them in 1987. I copied all the stuff I could from friends and over time slowly bought all their major albums. They were the first band that I saw in concert. I listened to Master of Puppets so much that the label wore off and the tape broke. I purchased a second copy of it and proceeded to leave it in a friends stereo the weekend before we both moved away to different colleges. Instead of waiting to get it back I purchased my first CD, you guessed it, Master of Puppets. I do really believe I'm the average person and that I copy something because I can't afford it or don't find it worth purchasing. Now I have downloaded new Metallica stuff before thinking of buying it and finding a real copy has been pretty hard, their label is working hard at placing fake songs on gnutella. I've litterally had it with them, I think they are harming more than helping their following. I will not buy St. Anger(for one it sounds like they are trying to fit in with the current scene, I remember when bands tried to sound like Metallica), nor will I see them in concert.
The simple fact of the matter is that if somebody can't produce something that I feel is worth buying, I won't purchase it. If I'm not going to purchase it, it's not a sale. I won't buy a Rick Springfield CD, they aren't losing money. Personally I think Apple has a good idea going with iTunes but a gnutella download != lost revenue.
Re:Being on the NY Times doesn't make it true (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, the books sell largely on word of mouth. And the word of mouth is so positive because a lot of people, young and old, have found the books enjoyable. And people, young and old, seem to be actually reading it, all 870 pages. In the week after release, I couldn't go anywhere without seeing somebody toting the book.
Re:I have been arguing this with the wife all day (Score:3, Insightful)
Popularity doesn't equal quality. It never has done and it never will. Harry Potter is easy reading, a kind of a literary equivalent to Celine Dion.
I find that people who dismiss popular books simply because they are popular often turn out to be the kind of folks who are going to write the Great American Novel someday, but so far haven't "made time" to do it. They're the sort of folks who come up to me at parties and propose that I write a novel using their ideas, after which they'll graciously split the royalties with me. I rarely have the heart to tell them how pathetic they are.
Rowling, of course, is not Proust. She has accomplished something far more profound than any other writer of the late 20th century-- she has persuaded millions of children to take up reading for pleasure. Any real writer-- as opposed to the many envious dilettantes who infest the field-- will be grateful to her for that service, since she has single-handedly reversed a grim trend in the number of new readers. And any person who cares about literature will care about Harry Potter, even if the books do not suit that individual's personal taste. Why? Because if you do not understand why so many people love to read about Harry Potter, you do not understand something very important about millions of your fellow human beings. This is your problem, your failure, not a problem or failure in Rowling's work.
Harry Potter is indeed "some sort of classic."
"Harry Potter apologists?" What does Rowling have to apologize for?