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Harry Potter and the Entertainment Industry
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."
... I would certainly pay for accessible, reasonably priced, good quality music and video.
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...
until they stop suing everyone and bribing my congressman
(the fact that their stuff is overpriced crap makes this easier)
The entertainment industry loves 15+ kids for their spending power, but loathe them for the grand scale theft of music and videos. However, they will pay for quality, ie. the fifth Harry Potter book, but won't spend the same kind of dough on an album with one hit and a lot of fillers. It's nice to finally see journalists getting the point so many in the Slashdot crowd have been trying to make for some time.
Overall, a good article, and it draws some interesting parallels. However, I found one piece of the article to be very disappointing...
"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...
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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.
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.
.5 readers per copy. Really.
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.
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!
Woopty Doo Basil, what does it all mean?!
Harry Potter is a children's story set in an adult world. As you go farther along, you begin to see that the HP universe is actually a very frightening place, where very bad things can happen to very nice people.
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.
Visit the
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?
It seems to me that there are two commercial camps that have very different methods of treating the consumer. One camp, consisting of the RIAA, MPAA, major media etc. has somehow established the mentality that we are OBLIGED to consume their products. They figure we can not live withou what they provide( at unreasonable cost and restriction ) and that we know it. Not only do we KNOW that we must have what they provide, but we WANT it. In short, they are not serving us, they do not respect us as discerning consumers.
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
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.
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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. :)
Not to say the NYT article wasn't interesting.
mt
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. :)
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.