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Music Industry Staggers While Film Industry Blooms
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.
I'd take a DVD over a DivX any day. I like the extra features on them and the quality is noticeably better.
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.
A music CD ripped to MP3 typically takes somewhere around 60 to 100 megs of space, with individual tracks averaging around 5 megs each--and can be downloaded separately. A movie of good-length typically takes around 600-700 megs in DivX ;-) format, currently the most popular "moviez" format. This cannot be downloaded and subsequently enjoyed in chunks.
Pirating movies takes a substantially higher amount of bandwidth per movie than small-time MP3 warezing, and the bulk of the music industry's loss comes from the high amount of 'small-time" MP3 pirating.
"How are people going to justify stealing a movie by saying it isn't any good after the movie's already a $100-million hit?"
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.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
Vivendi Universal and Sony Corp. are preparing to sue individual song swappers... I'm curious how this will be done.
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When the CD soundtrack costs as much as the DVD withe the movie and more, that explains a LOT.
DVD movie prices are going down, and consumers feel they have value. They don't feel the same way about overpriced CD's.
I'm impressed that no one mentioned the fact that I can get the new Collector's Edition of "The Evil Dead", complete with 4 hours of extras and a special "Necronomicon cover" for ~$20, while Britney Spears most recent 65 minutes of suck costs about the same?
El riesgo vive siempre!
I know not everybody does the same thing that I do, but when CD's first arrived I was eager to replace many of my favorite cassette tapes because of the CD's higher quality and convenience. I wonder if DVD sales aren't for similar reasons. Now that you can get many older movies for less than 10 dollars... I bet many people are just upgrading their collections. Like CD's, that'll probably drop off as people for the most part have what they want and the only thing left to get is new releases.
Blender And Linux Fan
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.