Why Movies Are Not Exactly Like Music 378
Posted
by
kdawson
from the not-going-gently dept.
from the not-going-gently dept.
Ars digs into the proposition that movies will go the way of the music business, and finds some reasons not to be totally gloomy about Hollywood's immediate future. For one thing, the movie biz managed to introduce a next-generation format to follow the DVD, a trick that eluded the music crowd (anyone remember DVD-Audio? SACD?). Blu-ray isn't making up the gap as DVD sales fall, but it is slowing the revenue decline. Perhaps the most important difference from the music business is that movies aren't amenable to "disaggregation" — unlike CDs, which people stopped buying once they could get the individual songs they really wanted. Ars concludes: "The movie business is facing many of the same challenges that are bedeviling music, but it's not about to go quietly into that good night — and it may not have to."
Gloomy? (Score:3, Interesting)
not to be totally gloomy about Hollywood's immediate future
Why would I even care? Seriously. I like movies, but if the big centralized studios vanished and we just had independent filmmakers left I don't think I'd shed any tears. I might actually welcome that just to see what happens.
New physical music media? (Score:4, Interesting)
The summary seems to suggest that audio needs a new physical format. Why? It's not like the so-called "musicians" of today want to make longer records (for which more storage would be necessary), and it's not like consumers want higher-quality audio, either - it's been repeatedly (although I wouldn't say conclusively) shown that most consumers can hear no problems with 128Kbps MP3's, and that they're perfectly happy with said bottom-of-the-barrel quality. CD's aren't great, but it's not as anybody's starving for something better (as opposed to video, where people seem to want constantly higher and higher resolution). Also - and I hate to say this, but - it seems as if the music industry is starting to "get" digital distribution which further negates the need for a new format (as opposed to the movie industry, who still totally less-than-three's physical distribution).
--- Mr. DOS
Music and movies likely headed for the same fate (Score:1, Interesting)
Yes, there will probably always be physical and "owned" media revenues of some kind (collector's editions, etc.). But I think the tech is very close to being able to deliver subscriber streams to the the home on a ubiquitous scale, with mobile devices not far behind. The price points are the only things somewhat remaining to be determined.
said it before, am saying it again (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Forget chasing 'pirates'. This will save a lot of expensive legal bills. Cut back drastically on advertising too, as you don't need to whip people up into a frenzy to get them to theatres in the first week.
2. Make film (Citizen Kane2, The Reckoning: starring Adam Sandler or something).
3. Make a VCD cut and make unlabelled cheapo vcd's. Using the economies of scale, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate vcd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies. Your margin is the difference between a bulk pressed cd and a small scale burned copy.
4. Simultaneously sell the film as a download for the same price as you get for the vcd. ...wait a few weeks
5. Make a nicer, longer dvd cut of the film and, again, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate dvd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies.
6. Sell the dvd cut of the film online at the same price as the DVD wholesale price. .... wait some more
7. Theatre release of film in lovely THX/35mm
8. Dvd/Bluray boxed sets with extra everything.
9. Laugh all the way to the bank (which then gambles half your money away and pays the other half to its CEO).
Re:Gaming, (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's work something out: a $60 game will get you what, hopefully 10+ hours of playtime? (Sidenote: oh how I long for days gone by when that would've been considered short...) That's less than $6/hour. Blu-ray discs are about $20; given a movie length of about 2 hours, that's around $10/hour - almost twice as expensive. On top of that, some multiplayer games
--- Mr. DOS
Re:DVD Sales Gap (Score:5, Interesting)
For instance, a few months ago, I ordered PPV Gran Torino in 1080p for my wife and I to view one evening. Six hours later it was ready to view, but she was already in bed.
Re:DVD Sales Gap (Score:5, Interesting)
Question: aren't you therefore stealing $15 (or $30 for Blu-Ray) from the distributor by not paying the full 0-day retail price?
No, you say? But why not? After all, you're apparently stealing $20 from them if you pay $0 for it, so why aren't you stealing $15 if you pay $5?
Let's throw that question open to any distributor executives or their lawyers who happen to be wandering by.
Re:DVD Sales Gap (Score:5, Interesting)
It takes an hour to download a 720p movie. You don't usually _need_ a 1080p movie. And more importantly, with the technological marvel that is streaming you can start watching after 15 minutes (unless you're downloading .mkv or something) and the playtime will not catch up to the download time.
But then again, some people don't have FTTH like most of us in developed countries do. :)
It only takes an hour to download a 720p movie if you happen to have access to about 7mb+ broadband. And even then, you're subject also to the bandwidth of the service you're trying to download from. For instance, take trying to download a movie from Sony's PS3 store. You'll only ever make that mistake once. You could have a 10 petabyte internet connection and it would still take you 16 hours to download a TV episode from them because they won't send you the file at anywhere near a reasonable speed.
Jim Bob and Michelle Plus 18 (Score:4, Interesting)
how are you going to feel when there are no big studios left to greenlight "Cheaper by the Dozen 3"?
If Twentieth Century Fox dramatically scales back its operations, then the Gilbreths [wikipedia.org] are going to have to shop their works to smaller studios, including those that use the medium of SWF serials rather than traditional feature films. But these studios will have to compete with reality TV: see Jon and Kate Plus 8 or 18 Kids and Counting or Table for 12 or the new series starring Nadya Suleman and her kids.
Re:DVD Sales Gap (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:DVD Sales Gap (Score:3, Interesting)
You must have a different PS3 store than the one I use. Mine gets me a 30 minute TV episode in about 10 minutes, max. And I can start watching it as soon as I start downloading it. Very nice.
Re:New physical music media? (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny how this is another difference between film and music. Popular music audiences don't really care about resolution or sound-quality - they generally want familiarity, reassurance, a sense that they're having fun and fitting in. (Adorno was right about this 70 years ago.) But when they see a film - and really, we're talking about the same people - they do what high visual resolution, excellent camera work (as they understand it), etc. Now, they may have really poor discrimination for quality in script-writing, in narratives, even in the finer aspects of cinematography - they may even be as entirely committed to cliches in film as they are in music - but they do respond positively to higher quality in the delivery medium.
Re:Obvious difference (Score:1, Interesting)
could it be...
that you're BOTH RIGHT?
ie, you've just demonstrated that each person has their own take on what form of entertainment works for them and makes them happy.
... except the OP said that "people are interested in seeing a movie exactly once, and as soon as possible." That comes into direct conflict with the notion that different movies have different "re-play value" to different people.
Re:DVD Sales Gap (Score:1, Interesting)
You probably shouldn't be talking about "business models". You haven't got one anymore. You really need to come up with a new one.
How does someone repeating something that is demonstrably untrue get modded insightful?
The sound recording IS NOT exactly the same as a Gibson guitar, because each guitar requires resources to make. Copies of sound recordings NO LONGER DO.
They did once, of course, and while they did, it made sense for the people making the original works to tie their business models to the industry of making copies of their work. But it is a very inconvienient reality that you're doing everything you can to deny:
THE INDUSTRY OF MAKING COPIES OF MEDIA IS OBSOLETE.
Your whole "business model" is still chained to an industry that, quite literally, no longer produces anything of value; when anyone can do it at home at effectively no cost. Your work is, itself, rendered unjustly valueless by this bond, which you refuse to break. Because it's "inconvenient".
The world has changed. You need to figure out how to change with it, not scream and cry and bitch about how everyone's acting differently now. Of course they are! They can see the truth in front of their faces. No amount of you lying to them will change that now.
And yes, I produce music. I don't do it for a living, because in order to produce bounty works you need to have a fanbase first. You have one.
All those people who loved your CD? How likely do you think they'd be to pay you to make another one?
You won't know until you get out there and take the plunge.