Music Industry Compared to Movie Industry

tgibson writes "The Denver Post has an article comparing the missteps of the recording industry to the movie industry's success with DVDs: 'The best-selling "Chicago" movie soundtrack is available on CD starting at $13.86. The actual movie, with the soundtrack songs included, of course, plus additional goodies ranging from deleted musical numbers to the director's interview and a "making-of" feature, can be had for precisely $2.12 more...'"

Comments

Get Off Me!

[inertia187]

They're nickel-and-dime-ing the consumer to death, and no one will do anything about it. What, do they think we're made of money? The surcharges and the "Artist" tax for all CDR related equipment has to stop. When will people take notice? (fp)

DVDs

[dzym]

I don't buy CDs at all, yet I regularly go out and spend $20 each (or more) on DVDs nearly every week.

Simply put, in my sole estimation, DVDs are worth my money--music CDs aren't.

Re:DVDs

[ScrewMaster]

Yes. Part of it is the investment made in producing the product. For example, how much does it take to produce a typical audio CD? $50,000? $100,000? $250,000?

Contrast that to a major motion picture which might have cost the studio a hundred million dollars or more to create, and I can buy a copy of that production for the price of a music CD. That, to me, is not a bad value. Sure, I dislike the encryption and region coding, and frankly the DMCA is almost enough to keep me from buying DVDs at all, but really there are some damned good movies out there nowadays. Honestly, I don't mind paying $17 or so for a copy of The Hulk or Spiderman or any of the other major motion pictures in recent years. And, I find that there have been thousands of releases of older films that I can buy at Walgreen's for three bucks.

On the other hand, the music industry may or may not be in financial trouble (hard to say, they lie so often.) If they are, I can tell you this: it has nothing to do with anything they say it does. Rather, their problems are a direct result of providing a poor quality product for too much money. This translates to not being a good value for the customer, and is a typical outcome whenever monopolies are involved. What has happened is that the customer base has been exposed to alternatives (all the way from "free" music from online applications to purchased music created by independent (non-RIAA aligned) musicians) and has begin (slowly, to be sure) to wake up to what a rotten value the major music studios actually deliver.

Re:DVDs

[iocat]

You've vastly overestimated the costs to make a DVD from a movie. Many movies *only* make money once the DVD/video sales are factored in. I believe the original Austin Powers movie was a mediocre success at the box office, but so huge on DVD/video that it spawned an entire (unfortunate) franchise. Movies make about 50% of their profit from overseas and video $$. So the DVD isn't just gravy, it's an integral part of the business structure. As for cost of goods, in the quantities they manufacture, COG for a top of the line DVD is probably well under $2.

Re:DVDs

[letxa2000]

Obviously the music and movie industry are different. I'll also agree that DVDs can be competitive because they've already made quite a bit of money (hopefully) at the box office.

However, you need to realize that the customer doesn't care. The question is "I have $20 to spend... What should I spend it on? Chicago DVD with the music for $15.98 or just the music for $13.66?" A heck of a lot of people are going to go for the DVD.

It's not our problem that the RIAA has a broken business model. In fact, that's exactly the problem. That's why they are suing their customers instead of selling to them. They're trying to defend a broken business model. It's unsustainable.

They have to compete for a customer's limited entertainment budget. That budget may be split over seeing movies in the theater, buying DVDs, going on a vacation to Cancun... and maybe buying CDs. Their most direct competition is DVDs and in that area they are NOT competitive.

All they can do is lower their prices DRAMATICALLY and hope that's enough. I'm not talking $10... $10 for a music CD or $15.98 for the same music on a DVD is still a hard sell. I'm talking drop the price down to $3 - $4.99. And even there it's a crapshoot as to whether or not they'll make it. Music is free now because they've overpriced their product and driven tens of millions of customers to get their music for free online. The cat is out of the bag and it's going to be hard to put it back in--even if they lower the price of a CD to $5, a price which might have prevented the original exodus to P2P music sharing, it might be too late for that to bring people back.

Re:Basic Comparison

[selderrr]

MPAA: Not the RIAA
that's nonsense. Wait until the day we have gigabit ethernet in every home and we can copy an entire DVD in
They've just have less enemies cause there's less easy ways to steal/copy. That's all.

Nonsense

[Stargoat]

The industry has placed a large tariff on new CDs. That is, you are not paying for the music, you are paying for: worthless artists who don't create art, executives, CDs that don't have anything special in them as vinyl used to have, and the RIAA. If anything, Congress should be looking into the music industry for collusion.

Buy CDs used. They're a more reasonably price, even if still over priced.

Re:Nonsense

[uncoveror]

Yes, used CDs are good. The RIAA and affiliated labels get nothing from them, as royalties were paid the first time. This is called the first sale principle. When the original owner bought the CD, it became his or her personal property to resel. As no new copy was made, copyright was not involved in the transaction. The RIAA, and pretentious entertainers like Garth Brooks want to abolish the first sale principle, and grab ill-gotten booty from used CD sales. To hell with them! Other than used ones, don't buy CDs.

Re:Yeah but downloading movies still not easy

[jarda]

The problem with CDs is that you usually pay for one song you want to and 15 others you're not interested in. With movie DVD, you just pay for what you want.

Re:Basic Comparison

[ergo98]

How absurd to see the MPAA cast as the "good guy" on here: Wasn't this the same MPAA that was cast as Satan-in-the-flesh when the whole DeCSS fiasco took place? Indeed, the only reason why the MPAA isn't more on the Slashdot hippocrisy-hitlist is due to bandwidth constraints making it a tad onerous to download DVDs (and compressing a 9GB movie down to a CD or two makes for a vast quality difference, quite unlike CD rips where a CD rip that's perceived as the same quality is an easy download). Soon enough, as bandwidth increases, these same jokers will be yipping about how the movie business model is broken, and they should put out movies for free and make money on toys, or some such moral justification.

Re:So what?

[notque]

Seriously. A DVD might have 3 hours of content on it while a CD might have 1 hour of content, but I can bet you 99.9% of the time, the CD is going to be listened to way more than the movie is watched, and therefore is the better value.

I can't watch a movie walking down the street or on my commute to and from work (or at work for that matter), but I can sure listen to music. These arguments are pretty stupid, IMO.

Because when I'm about with a group of friends, I say, Hey... Wanna listen to my cd collection? .... Half the time music is something to listen to en route to actually doing something. Music is not in itself usually an activity. A DVD, or movies in general are much more entertaining.

Also, music takes less money to make than a movie. I.E. I will pay more for a movie.

They're owned by the same companies!

[techmuse]

Most record companies are owned by a company that also owns a movie studio. Warner music / Warner Bros. / AOL Time Warner. Sony Pictures / Sony music. Universal music / Universal (studios) / Vivendi Universal. They even tie in CD releases to movie releases and book releases. They're competing against themselves.

Remember, if the MPAA had had its way...

[kaltkalt]

We wouldn't have had VCR's at all, and there would be no movie rental/purchase industry today. They were legally forced into allowing this industry to develop, which today they earn 60% of their revenue from. If they had had their way, the only way you could see a movie would be in the theater or on TV (and you couldn't record it as you'd have no VCR).

The music industry can follow suit. Embrace file sharing, don't try to stop casual non-commercial copying, and sell CD's for $3.99 each. They'd make a fortune.

The problem in both situations is that, when confronted with technology that seems potentially threatening, suing it until it goes away seems less risky and more economical than embracing it and trying to develop a new business model around its existence. Fortunately for both us and the MPAA, they lost. Now they make a fortune in the video industry. Unfortunately for both us and the RIAA, they have not yet lost (better lobbying) and are suing themselves into oblivion, while hurting end-consumers as well. Especially the 12 year old ones.

Music vs. Movies

[Esion Modnar]

When I buy a DVD, I might watch it one or two times, but I am certainly not going to watch it again, and again, and again...

A music CD, on the other hand, I could easily listen to the music on it hundreds of times, if the songs are good.

So even for the same price, music vs. DVD, the music gives me more entertainment value. However, I am refraining from buying either, partly due to economic reasons, and partly due to the fact that I hate the RIAA and the MPAA.

Re:Josie and the Pussycats better example...

[fdiskne1]

And the most ironic thing about this post is that Josie and the Pussycats movie is all about super-mega-corps brainwashing the public into thinking they need to buy into the latest pop music fads.

Re:Quality

[The-Bus]

No, the general quality of entertainers (notice I did not say "musicians" or "artists") on MTV (a channel you watch) has decreased.

STOP COMPLAINING! Who cares what MTV has to offer!

Artists on MTV / ClearChannel radio might constitute the majority of music industry sales but it's only because of people like you perpetuating these idiots. DON'T BUY CRAP MUSIC. That's the best way for music to improve.

I've spent plenty of money on Radiohead, Coldplay, Kronos Quarter, Placebo, John Coltrane, DJ Shadow, Turin Brakes, Goldfrapp, Money Mark, Yo La Tengo, Spiritualized, Royksopp, MC Paul Barman, and countless others. Why? Because I haven't allowed myself to be marketed to by the major labels or Viacom's television network or magazines, and I pick up stuff based on what I like, not what I am told to like.

Now, this might be a revolutionary way of thinking, but I'm sick and tired of people complaining they don't like artists that are being marketed to them. Go get yourself some taste in music and free will and discover artists on your own and stop complaining about the newest Creed album.

Re:Quality

[dirk]

This is ofcourse totally subjective but, it seems to me the general quality of music has decreased with time while movies have improved.
I feel contempt when I watch MTV while I actually pay attention to movie trailers.
I feel used by ("new") musicians while moviemakers entertain me.

This would be you aging and losing touch with the younger generation. If you ask anyone, at any point in history, they will tell you that things were better "before". Music in the 70s was not all great. Neither was music in the 60s or 80s. It was mostly crap whatever time you want to look at. The difference is that as time goes by, the horrible crap fades and the truly great stuff stays. Look at the top songs of any year and you will see the biggest load of crap that you are thankful you don't remember (top song of :1970-Close to You by The Carpenters, 1975-Mandy by Barry Manilow, 1979-Hot Stuff by Donna Summer, 1984-What's Love got to Do with It by Tina Turner). Music hasn't gotten worse, you've gotten older.