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)

Re:Get Off Me!

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

I don't know about Canada, but in the Netherlands you're allowed to download as much as you like; you may not redistribute the stuff you download to 3rd parties. There is a tax on DVDs and CDs, but we already had video and compact cassettes taxed. To Dutch law, downloading is not much different from recording radio or tv broadcasts.

Re:Get Off Me!

[TC (WC)]

Yeah, it's almost definitely legal for the downloader. It isn't particularly legal for the distributer, probably, however. You're allowed to make personal copies of an audio recording. There are no provisions in the act limiting the source that one copies from. There are limitations with what your intent for the copy is. Intent to distribute, and intent to transmit via telecommunications are not allowed. So, downloading music and then not sharing it out is probably legal, while sharing it is not.

If you take a look at the Copyright Act (don't actually remember the full name... it's got copyright in there somewhere) it's article 80, IIRC.

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

[Nogami_Saeko]

Well said.

This article was brilliant.

If only the music industry was smart enough to listen to it. However I imagine that they'll be closing their eyes and ears hoping that suing the people they wish were customers will make all the bad times go away.

Poor bastards...

N.

Re:DVDs

[ichimunki]

Great. So it sounds like you're actively funding the other half of the anti-consumer crusade. Last theater movie I went to (Seabiscuit) they had an anti-piracy blurb at the beginning of the film. MPAA are also the people going after Jon Johansen and the other DeCSS folks. So Hollywood knows how to price DVDs... this is not as great as it sounds. The profits on movies are front-loaded at the box office, so the residuals from DVD sales are largely gravy (although admittedly they are spending a lot more on films, hoping to make it up on home releases... and the DVD does have additional material you won't see in theaters).

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

[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...

Re:DVDs

[FCKGW]

Encryption and region coding sure fit the definition of anti-consumer, as are their lobbyists that are trying to make things like NAT and VPN illegal.

Re:DVDs

[kryonD]

Actually, the article is not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination.

Let's take your average Summer Blockbuster. Average pricetag with good actors and good special affects and some reasonable marketing seems to be around the $100M mark. But that was just the cost of making the movie. Now we need to make it into a DVD.

Lets add another $20M for:
* The cost of converting 35mm Kodak into digital form.
* Editing time to get a seperate made for TV "Full Screen" version.
* Paying spanish and french voice artists to do some dubbing.
* More editing and remastering time for the "Making Of" mini-feature.
* Interview time with important cast members.
* Various royalties associated with having DVD player software come bundled with the disk so you can just pop it into your computer and watch it.

Now that you have this $120M master disk, how many copies do you make? How much money are you going to invest in packaging and additional goodies to make the DVD more tempting? How much do blank DVD's run in uber-bulk quantities? How much does the distribution chain cost to get the DVD from your warehouse to the self of the local Wall-Mart in Bum-F*ck, Idaho? If sales are slow, how much is your warehouse space costing per day because you made too many copies?

According to IRS.gov, there are approximately 130M individual income tax filings. Let's make a conservative estimate that 10M of these are teenagers or newly married couples who chose to file seperately, but live in the same household. That gives us 120M households who may want to purchase your $120M masterpeice. Let's say it's really popular and 10% of these people decide they need their own copy. 12M copies at $10 a pop would barely cover the cost of making it and you still haven't covered the packaging, storage and distribution costs....plus you want to make a little money in profit because your a well adjusted capitalist like the rest of us. $20 a copy should make this work, but then there's the little issue of your last movie that sucked and lost $70M. Then there's the reality that it's a fat chance that 1 in 10 people would purchase a movie for $20 that they can easily rent for $2.

The reason why DVD's can afford to exist on a $10 to $20 price range is because 12M people already went to a theater and shelled out $10 to see it on the big screen and most of these costs have already been covered. The music equivilant would be a live concert which you just can't do on that scale.

I'll be the first to say that the RIAA needs to find a new way of doing business, but I'll also be the first to admit that it's not as simple as most folks would think.

In the case, the article was trying to compare apples to oranges.

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.

Animatrix example

[Txiasaeia]

Here in Canada, the Animatrix DVD was about $25. For $30, you could get the DVD as well as the CD soundtrack. This makes *sense*; I don't own a single soundtrack in my CD collection of which I don't also own the DVD.

On the other hand, not everybody (*gasp*, I know!) has a DVD player, and moreover I'm not even sure how easy it is to rip music from a DVD. Never mind the fact that it's probably evil...

Re:Animatrix example

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

I'm not even sure how easy it is to rip music from a DVD.

This is something I've thought about as well, because I own quite a few music video DVDs ( The Cure, Run DMC etc ) and would like to be able to listen to them on the bus, etc, without lugging a laptop around. I'm not sure whether I should feel obligated to buy another copy of the albums in question...

To answer your technical query, if you have access to a supported platform, mplayer has a ao ( audio out ) driver for dumping wave data to a file. Team this up with playing selected chapters from the command line, and It's quite easy to use if not absolutely painless. As far as I know this is the only way to get the original theme from Buckaroo Banzai on CD. >:-(

I should get off my ass and craft a GUI for this: ( cue people to post their already existing GUI's below... ).

YLFI

Basic Comparison

[aeinome]

RIAA: Evil group of people with no morals, who are currently hated by 99% of /. MPAA: Not the RIAA. I think that says something.

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.

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:Basic Comparison

[ScrewMaster]

No, the MPAA is just as bad as the RIAA, and the only thing keeping them from an RIAA-style attack on the customer base is that current broadband technology doesn't permit easy sharing of movies. Remember that the MPAA was implicitly complicit in purchasing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act from Congress. I hear they got it for a song.

And Also...

[Erick the Red]

The artists who make movies get paid reasonable sums of money for their work.

I still go to see movies. I no longer buy CDs from major labels.

One thing wrong in the article

[d3faultus3r]

one decent justin timberlake song
uh huh right and I'll find that along with element 118, cold fusion and bigfoot, and non-buggy M$ products.

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:Nonsense

[kudos200]

While I doubt this will get read by anyone, since the article was posted a while ago, I'll say it anyways:

I was just thinking about the argument you guys make: buy used cd's; the RIAA gets nothing, you're happy etc. but I just realized that there's definitely a flaw to that logic.

Every time you buy a used CD, you are voting with your wallet. You're telling the used CD store that yes, people want used CD's. They will pay more for them than the store has to pay to get them. It's profitable to buy and sell used CD's.

By buying the CD, you are sending that message. Now, think about what would happen if you didn't buy that used CD. It'd sit on the shelf for a while. The store would think to itself: maybe it's not a good idea to keep doing this used CD thing. So it would stop buying them.

Then, the people who sell the CD's to the store (who are, incidentally, also the people who buy cd's new) would not be able to do so anymore. As a result, they'd be less inclined to buy new cd's.

By purchasing used CD's, you help keep the CD market alive. Not a huge effect by yourself, but everyone together makes a difference.

Anyways, I haven't thought this through all the way; it just came to me now. I may have made a couple mistakes myself. But it seems that buying used CD's may not be as harmless as everyone makes it out to be.

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.

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.

Re:What are you talking about?

[mozumder]

I find it actually easier to deal with MP3's versus my large CD collection.

My CD's tend to sit in a shelf or in a large book somewhere, and I tend to only keep about 50 or so CD's from my library in use over the course of a month or so. Mostly recent stuff. The rest of my CD's never get used. Too difficult/pain-in-the-ass to hunt through my CD's to find a song or album I want to hear.

I then started the process of recording CD's onto my hard drive. I now find myself listening to a lot more of my older stuff with a lot more variety. The MP3 players are great at catalogueing the music.

It's just much easier to use MP3 files when you have hundreds or thousands of CDs. My actual CD's are now sitting in storage somewhere in the basement.

Sure I suppose music could still be sold on physical CDs, but for me they're going to be recorded onto the computer anyways.

Overlooked point

[big_fish]

Although I agree with the author on most topics. Heck, my household doesn't buy music anymore on principle, but we still buy DVDs. The price point is right.

Buy one factor is not considered. A CD of music is more readily conveted to mp3s and shared over the internet than a DVD. The shear size of a movie (800-1600+ MB) make them more resistant to on-line sharing than music (for the moment).

I do have to applaud the movie industry for trying to make the DVD format more attractive with special content: the making of, choice of widescreen or scaled, alternate endings, etc.

If they further lowered their prices, people would buy more dvds as a matter of convenience. Everyone likes a nice box and cover art instead of two cdrs and a handwriten index card in the case where someone downloaded a movie.

The article has a nice junxtaposition bewteen the music and movie industry.

From the World of Stuart

[Henry V .009]

I am reminded of a quote on video game piracy that I once read:

The mainstream consumer has made it absolutely plain time and time again that the price he or she will pay for standard new-release items of leisure software, be they books, movies, pop albums, graphic novels, concert tickets or absolutely anything else, is 15 [pounds], give or take a couple of quid.

http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/estate/dh69/w os/world/ctw/piracy.htm

The problem is psychological. People simply do not compare the prices of CDs and DVDs. It is not how we think. In America, everything is $15 instead. Exchange rates do not matter--it is the number that is significant.

P.S. Why does slashdot strip the pound symbol?

Why I buy DVDs but not CDs

[BenFranske]

In the past year I've bought over 52 DVDs that works out to at least one a week. In that same time period I bought exactly NO CDs. Why is this? The DVDs are a much better value, many cast as little as $10, few are more than $19, they typically include making of featurettes, director's commentary, music videos, actor interviews, a good story PLUS the movie itself.

I would say that I love listening to music, but at the prices CDs are going for I find that my money is MUCH better spent on DVDs. For the same or less than the price of a CD I can buy a movie with all sorts of extras. The DVD has audio on it and a picture, the CD just has audio and no extras, why should it cost the same? The answer is it shouldn't.

I also have a lot of problems with the way the RIAA is trying to keep hold of their antiquated distribution methods and huge markups. Why should I support thier lawsuits with my money? Granted, the MPAA has not been the best player all along wither (they fought the introduction of the VCR for example) of course they have learned their lesson as the sales of movies in VHS form have made them a bundle of money. The RIAA refuses to see the future of music, not even doing a good job of promoting legal online distribution methods or interested in lowering prices.

I'll continue to add to my DVD collection, but until prices are MUCH more reasonable for a CD (say under $5 for ANY title I'm interested in) I won't be buying very many, if any. If the price and distribution method are right I think the record companies can get people to buy music again. Of course, this assumes the music is worth listening to, but that's another story.

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.

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.

Most Insightful Comment. Ever.

[Merlynnus]

This is the most insightful comment the mainstream press has had on the whole music industry situation:

Most of all, spend less on lawyers and more on creative thinkers. You can't subpoena success.

The more people that say this, the greater chance the music industry will start paying attention to their customers' wants again.

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.

Re:Yeah but downloading movies still not easy

[God! Awful 2]

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.

Maybe, but there's still a common misconception that CDs are dramatically overpriced because of this.

If a CD which costs $15 has 15 tracks, 5 of which are good, 5 of which are average, and 5 of which are bad, then it's inappropriate to say that the songs are worth $1 each. Maybe the good songs are worth $2, the average songs are worth $1, and the bad songs are worth nothing.

On the other hand, if you claim to like bands that produce CDs with only 1 good song, then my conclusion is that you obviously have bad taste in music.

-a

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.

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:regarding the canadian blank cd levy...

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

I don't suppose anyone out there could persuade the Canadian government to annex Australia, could they?

-- YLFI

Re:regarding the canadian blank cd levy...

[TheLoneDanger]

Do you, for one, welcome your new Canadian overlords?

Re:regarding the canadian blank cd levy...

[Dashing Leech]

The Canadians have a military?

Yes, but their primary role for some time has been peace-keeping.

Whoops, sorry. Forgot about the language barrier. For you Americans:

peace ['pEs] noun. 1 : a state of tranquillity or quiet: as a : freedom from civil disturbance b : a state of security or order within a community provided for by law or custom , 2 : freedom from disquieting or oppressive thoughts or emotions, 3 : harmony in personal relations, 4 a : a state or period of mutual concord between governments b : a pact or agreement to end hostilities between those who have been at war or in a state of enmity, 5 -- used interjectionally to ask for silence or calm or as a greeting or farewell

Nothing new for the movie studios...

[mpthompson]

Over the last 80 years the movie studios have had their business models dramatically disrupted on numerous occasions. In the 40's the movie studios lost anti-trust suits which forced them out of the exhibition business leaving them only control over movie production and distribution. Revenue and profits plummeted within the span of a single year and started the end of the "studio system" of stamping out movies on a weekly basis. Additional jarring changes came in the 50's with the advent of television, the rise of independent studios and actor/producers in the 60's, purchases by multinational conglomerates in the 70's, and then the introduction of the VCR in the 80's. While it is natural to resist change to the status quo, the movie studios have repeatedly demonstrated an amazing adaptability to change when left no other recourse. Learning to cope with disruptive change may be one reason the industry has been able to turn movie video/DVD sales into greater revenue than the actual exhibition of movies.

Only time will tell if the recording industry can demonstrate similar adaptability to challenges of their traditional business model or go the way of the Dodo.

Josie and the Pussycats better example...

[rklrkl]

Have a look at this (and be prepared to be staggered at the prices that UK retailers think they can get away with):

Josie and the Pussycats DVD: 17.99 pounds ($29)

Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack CD: 19.99 pounds ($32)

Same retailer, same movie, two pounds ($3) less for the DVD than the soundtrack CD ! It's ironic really, because the movie is only OK, but the soundtrack is utterly fantastic - I have it on auto-repeat at the moment...

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:Josie and the Pussycats better example...

[WIAKywbfatw]

Anyone who shops online at HMV.co.uk is crazy. Try Play.com or CD-WOW.com if you're a UK consumer shopping online.

CD-WOW concentrates on more popular music (not just mainstream) and doesn't have either item but Play.com has your Josie and the Pussycats CD at 9.99 pounds and the DVD at 6.99 pounds. So why you'd ever pay over twice as much for either item is beyond me.

Seriously, only an idiot would shop at HMV UK's online store. With a few exceptions, its prices are set to match those in its stores, so people who want to know how much a CD, DVD or whatever will cost can browse the site before they head to their local HMV.

Pointing out that HMV.co.uk is expensive is as revolutionary as saying "the sky is blue" or "it's cold in the North Pole". Similarly, using it as a comparison shopping example ("hey, look at how expensive everything is here in Britain!") is equally stupid, as you've picked an expensive retailer to start with, failed to point out that VAT (sales tax) of 17.5% is included in those prices, etc.

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.

The article has it correct...

[ksheka]

I buy DVDs instead of going to the theater. Why? Because it's cheaper to buy it than take someone with me to the theater. Also, I like lending a "find" to a friend and borrowing something from someone else. Do I watch them over again. Yes, but maybe one old movie a month.

I buy a DVD about once a month, and like building up my collection. Not too much overlap with my VHS collection, because a lot of my DVDs are of movies that have come out in the last 10 years. I like the extras, especially when the extra scenes are inserted into the movie, like in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

On the other hand, I rarely listen to the Top40 music stuff in the last couple years. My station is almost stuck on the classic rock and light rock stations.

I completed my classic rock CD collection about 3-4 years ago, and haven't bought a music CD in the last 2 years -- more out of disgust against the RIAA. Haven't borrowed a CD from anyone in a couple years. And now that I ripped all my CDs to my PC, I prefer listening to my own mixes of favorites rather than a store-bought.

Not sure if the RIAA wan't my business anymore. Not sure if I care.

Re:CDs and DVDs wouldn't be so expensive..

[siddhartha03]

Just stating that it's a circular argument doesn't do anything.

High prices didn't lead to people downloading music. The pure convenience of being able to download songs en masse online couppled with fairly high prices brought many people to download music. Which in turn lead to higher prices. Which lead to more pirating again because of its ease.

But you forgot to point out that people do it because it's more convenient. It's not just about high prices. It's about how people do what's easier.

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.

Re:DVDs should be $3.00

[WIAKywbfatw]

If the movie was any good it would have made a reasonable profit in theatres and the DVD should be able to be released at $3.00 a copy 18 months later. Anything else is a rip off. At least CDs have a production cost to recoup. DVDs have recouped by the time they are released.

You obviously have no idea about how much of the pie is taken up by the retailer, distributor, manufacturing, etc.

Typically, 25-40 percent of the price you'll pay in store goes to the retailer. So, on a $20 DVD that's $5-$8, which pays the rent, the wages, the electricity bills, covers shoplifting losses, etc. Turn that $5-$8 into $.75-$1.20 and watch stores go bankrupt in weeks. That's assuming that you could make and distribute a DVD title (whilst covering the cost of DVD extras, advertising, royalties, etc) for around $2 to acheive your mythical $3 price point.

Frankly, even large scale DVD pirates (who obviously don't have to worry about half the costs the original publishers have to deal with) would struggle to make any money selling DVDs at $3.

Time for you to come back from never-never land and learn that there's more to making and selling a DVD than you realise.

No, no, you got it backwards...

[Kjella]

Remember that the MPAA was implicitly complicit in purchasing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act from Congress. I hear they got it for a song.

They brought in Celin "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaai will alwaaaaaaaaaaaaaais luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuv juuuuuuuuuuuu" Dion and got it for not singing a song. (Pardons to any fans out there. You have my sympathies ;))

Kjella

Argh! Why must you be so sheep like?

[The-Bus]

OK, I am absolutely sick and tired of hearing people complain about how there is "no good music" that has been released in the past couple of years. This is the most ludicrous statement I have ever heard. When you say "no good music has been released in the past couple of years" you really mean "the music that is marketed to me by my local ClearChannel radio station and my Viacom Cable TV music networks is not satisfying me" -- that's like saying "the era of good sports cars is over" and using only Kias as a point of reference.

So, for your information, I am going to list brilliant albums of the past ten years (even half-brilliant ones), and categorize them by genre. Please try one of these out -- you're not guaranteed to love each one, but I do. If you hate all of these, then you don't have good taste in music to begin with... :-)

Rock/Alternative/Folk/etc

Badly Drawn Boy - The Hour of Bewilderbeast
a-ha - Minor Earth Major Sky
Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump
Radiohead - OK Computer
Beck - Sea Change
Beck - Mutations
Clinic - Internal Wrangler
Coldplay - A Rush of Blood to the Head
Elliot Smith - XO
Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
The Hives - Veni Vidi Vicious
The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Hey Mercedes - Every Night Fireworks
Brand New - Deja Entendu
At The Drive In - Relationship of Command
Hot Water Music - No Division
Sting - Brand New Day
Counting Crows - Hard Candy
Ben Folds - Rockin The Suburbs
Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen
Thrice - Illusion of Safety
John Mayer - Room For Squares

Jazz/Blues/Classical/etc

Don Byron - A Fine Line: Arias and Lieder
Soulive - Turn It Out
Kronos Quartet - Nuevo
Clint Mansell and Kronos Quartet - Requiem for a Dream OST
Christian McBride - Vertical Vision
Pat Martino - Live at Yoshi's
Pat Metheny - Speaking of Now
Greyboy Allstars - A Town Called Earth
Tan Dun - Hero OST

Electronic/Techno/Ambient

Air - Moon Safari
DJ Shadow - The Private Press
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing...
Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain
Royksopp - Melody A.M.
Crystal Method - Vegas
Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun
UNKLE - Psyence Fiction
Turin Brakes - The Optimist

Hip-Hop/Rap/R&B/Urban

Breakestra - Live Mix Part I & II
D'Angelo - Voodoo
Greyboy - Mastered the Art
Mos Def and Talib Kweli - Black Star
The Roots - Things Fall Apart
Quannum - Solesides Greatest Bumps
The Coup - Steal This
Cannibal Ox - The Cold Vein
Deltron 3030 - Deltron 3030
Mr. Lif - I Phantom
RZA - Ghost Dog OST
Jurassic 5 - EP

Again, you're not guaranteed to love each and every single on these -- but it's a good start. More info on any of these: AMG: All Music Guide

Re:Brilliant Idea # 1023

[forkboy]

I think this is where the recording industry is slowly heading. There are already standards for DVD-audio. I'm sure once portable DVD player tech becomes a lot less expensive and is integrated into Walkman-like devices, you'll start seeing albums get released with a ton of extras. As it stands now, there isn't a whole lot of room for extra material on a compact disc.

The reasons are technological

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Let's look at the basics, and everything else becomes clear:

A redbook CD is about 650 megs (usually less) of uncompressed audio. With audio compression techniques, (MP3, Ogg etc.) the CD becomes about 100megs (at a compression rate that doesn't *completely* mangle the music.) and each track comes out to about 5 megs or so. A CDR can be had for much less than a dollar. The last CDRs I bought were FREE after discounts and rebates.

So, to copy the Original CDR at "full quality" Redbook audio costs nearly nothing and when compressed to MP3, eats 100 megs on my drive.

DVDs are already compressed, and if the movie is over 2 hours, they are often VERY compressed. The DVD eats (usually) about 4.2 GIGs of space on my drive.

Now, until very recently hard drives weren;'t all that cheap. The first one I could afford of consequence was in 1994 when I bought a 1 gig drive for $580 and I got a damn good deal on it. DVDs didn't exist, but even if they did, my computer didn't have a large enough drive to store a movie, unless I wanted to experience it at 180x240 at 15ips and compressed beyond all human imagining. Also, the computers were so slow, that to rip that much data would have taken....a reeeally long time, given I was running a 48 mHz machine...

So, music was the first to get digitised due to its file size. the rest follows, really.

When the $400 desktop computer I pick up at best buy has a 4 terabyte drive, and processes data in the multiteraflop range, and has 7.1 audio built right in, and the video card has a gigabyte of VRAM, Hollywood will be making the same kinds of noises that the RIAA are right now.

Compressed audio sounds lousy, but no more lousy than DVDs presently look. Once the file size for DVDs relative to the hard drives and CPU speeds isn't such a big deal, people will cheerfully rip DVDs and burn them for their friends, and their will be precious little Hollywood can do about it.

When will the bandwidth to my house via (whatever succeeds DSL / cable modems) in 10 years be? No idea, but I kind of doubt that it will be able to move movies around with the rate of speed I can move a title of MP3 / Ogg choonz.

therefore, the bandwidth for trading movies over the internet at a reasonable quality will lag far enough behind that Hollywood won't give a rats ass about it for quite a while.

However, as we all know, the bandwidth for trading music, even entire CD Titles, has been around for quite a while, and hence, the RIAA get their knickers in a twist.

Therefore: Hollywood comes off looking better than the RIAA, because they know that I might have 1000 CDs of music on my 120 gig drive at a quality not very different from the original, but there is no way I'lll have a 1000 movies on my 120 gig drive at the same relative level of quality. Consequently, they toss out DVD movie titles for not that much more money than the MSRP CD title prices...

Now, when I have a 60 terabyte drive in my machine loaded to the gunnels with movies, and the bandwidth is there and affordable for me to P2P a full length MPEG2 movie in 7.1 audio in less than a half hour, and I'm just sitting back and burning DVDRs for friends and fambly, Hollywood WILL hunt my ass down, just like the RIAA hunted down the Kazaalings.

RS

Additonally about movie soundtracks

[Sycraft-fu]

They've already been paid as a part of the movie. IF the music is orignal, the composers and preformers were paid directly as part of the deal with the studio as a work for hire. If it is preexisting music, royalties were paid, often millions of dollars for a 30 second clip if the song is popular.

This would of course beg the question as to why a movie soundtrack would be so expensive, given that it was already paid for in the context of the movie. This gives rise to another intersting question: The music industry wants to pretend like when you buy music, you are buying a liscence to listen to it, not the actual good itself. In that case, do you have a right to the movie soundtrack through owning the movie (of which the soundtrack is a part)?

It's all about those CD factories...

[Fear the Clam]

CDs first came out around when I started college in 1984. You could only buy them new, and they cost at least $13. All of the news articles claimed that the high price (about twice an album cost) was because there were only a few factories in the world making the things, but the price would go down soon. I bought an average of one CD a week.

In 1989, the prices still hadn't come down, but I started seeing widespread sales of used CDs. I bought everything used. Aside from a new CD I bought in 1999, the labels haven't seen a penny direct from me since 1989.

In 1999, the prices of CDs still hadn't caught down, but I started downloading music, making MP3s, ripping my friends CDs, and doing direct hard-drive exchanges of MP3s.

It's 2003 -- 19 years since I started college -- and the price of CDs is about the same as it ever was. Two months ago, I finally bought a CD burner of my own -- a 52X -- so I can make my own CDs. I got it for ten dollars after the rebate.

If they can't get those damned facories built by now to significantly lower the price of CDs, they deserve to go out of business.

Speaking of piracy...

[lpret]

The theatre I go to has a picture out front of a pirate and talks about no pirates allowed. So a friend and I (while inebriated) dressed up as pirates and tried to get in. While using every pirate phrase we could ("Ahoy there bonnie lass, give us some tickets for the 9 o'clock showing or you'll not live to see another day") we got our way in and were able to see a movie! We asked a guy why pirates weren't allowed, that we felt it was disciminatory, and the guy just shook his head and said "No, the other kind of pirate." I still have no idea what he means by that.