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

What are you talking about?

[notque]

Even if CD's were priced at $3, it would be much easier to download them instead of buying them.

To be quite honest, I would rather have cds of my entire music collection. When I purchase cds, I listen to them much more intently, I hear music the way it was intended in an album sense.

I have no idea what songs I have are on what album. I couldn't name you 1/4th my collection on a good day, but I can name you almost every cd I own.

When I burn a cd, it just doesn't feel the same.

If you priced cds at 5 bucks a pop, I would never download another song (aside from learning about a band to subsequently buy.)

I walk into a music store, and I WANT to buy thier music. I do. I refuse to because of the prices (except for punk/emo/techno comps that are reasonably priced.)

I can purchase a video game with the latest graphics, or two cds.

It has EVERYTHING to do about the money, and not about the ease. I hate walking into music stores because I want to buy their albums.

I really do.

Quality

[Ligur]

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.

regarding the canadian blank cd levy...

[Frymaster]

the following is ripped off from the copyright faq:

To paraphrase the introduction to an early Copyright Board ruling:

On March 19, 1998, Part VIII of the Copyright Act came into force. Until then, copying any sound recording for almost any purpose infringed copyright. Part VIII legalizes one such activity: copying of sound recordings of musical works onto recording media for the private use of the person who makes the copy.

It does not matter whether you own the original sound recording (on any medium), you can legally make a copy for your own private use.

To emphasize this point, endnote 4 of an early Copyright Board ruling says:

Section 80 does not legalize (a) copies made for the use of someone other than the person making the copy; and (b) copies of anything else than sound recordings of musical works. It does legalize making a personal copy of a recording owned by someone else.

Note that the Copyright Act ONLY allows for copies to be made of "sound recordings of musical works". Nonmusical works, such as audio books or books-on-tape are NOT covered.

The wording of the Copyright Act gives rise to some very odd situations. In the 6 examples below, "commercial CD" means a commercially pressed CD that you would normally buy at a retail store.

1. If someone steals a commercial CD, steals a blank CD-R, and then copies the commercial CD onto the CD-R, they are a thief, but they have not infringed copyright.
2. You can legally lend a commercial CD to a friend, give him a blank CD-R, let him use your computer, and help him burn the CD-R which he can keep for his own private use.
3. You can legally copy a commercial CD , keep the copy, and give your friend the original.
4. You cannot legally make the copy yourself and give your friend the copy.
5. Your friends Alice and Benoit really like the new commercial CD you just purchased. Alice borrows it and makes a copy for her own use. She then passes the commercial CD on to Benoit, who makes a copy for his own use. Benoit gives the commercial CD back to you. This is all perfectly legal.
6. However, if Alice had copied the commercial CD, given it back to you, and passed her copy on to Benoit to make a copy for his own use, then copyright would have "probably" been infringed. There is some doubt here because Alice's original intent is important. In the strictest terms, her copy was no longer just for her private use. Pretty strange considering that the end result of examples 5 and 6 are exactly the same!

Re:DVDs

[CrowScape]

Let's see; The movie industry is giving me movies in a format that I have confidence in that they won't degrade any time soon at an affordable (sometimes dirt cheap) price with loads of extra material that wasn't in the theaters (a good percent of which is actually worth my time to enjoy). All of the discs can play on devices from my four year old DVD-ROM drive to the latest progressive scan player from Panasonic without a hitch. Yeah, that sure fits the definition of anti-consumer.

Also, you're underestimating the revenue DVDs bring in. It gets more and more significant each passing year and many movies that flopped at the box office have nearly redeemed themselves on DVD.

As for the anti-priacy ads, I thought those were supposed to be for comic relief! And here I was rudely chuckling with many of my fellow movie goers...

Not a fair comparison

[jshindl]

On the surface it sounds wrong that CD's and DVD's differ in price but only a few dollars. But understand DVD sales, while important, aren't the ONLY source of revenue for movie makers. Each movie makes money by selling tickets in theaters, selling ads before (and sometimes during) movies, product tie-ins, etc. So that CD, which should cost $30, only ends up costing $15 because it's subsidized by all of the other ways Movie makers make money.

Music writers & singers have no such options. There is no advertsiing capability on a Justin Timberlake CD. There are no Justin Timberlake action figures.

The price of CDs at $15 is not a mis-step, it's the reality of the costs and lack of other ways to make money off of CDs.