Why Movies Are Not Exactly Like Music

Ars digs into the proposition that movies will go the way of the music business, and finds some reasons not to be totally gloomy about Hollywood's immediate future. For one thing, the movie biz managed to introduce a next-generation format to follow the DVD, a trick that eluded the music crowd (anyone remember DVD-Audio? SACD?). Blu-ray isn't making up the gap as DVD sales fall, but it is slowing the revenue decline. Perhaps the most important difference from the music business is that movies aren't amenable to "disaggregation" — unlike CDs, which people stopped buying once they could get the individual songs they really wanted. Ars concludes: "The movie business is facing many of the same challenges that are bedeviling music, but it's not about to go quietly into that good night — and it may not have to."

Comments

DVD Sales Gap

[Enderandrew]

DVDs sales are going down, but some of that gap is Amazon Unbox, Netflix, iTunes, DVRs, Hulu, etc.

The movie industry gets paid from all of these sources (including DVRs in that movie companies are paid to air movies on cable).

BluRay sales aren't huge because some retailers keep insisting on charging $35 for BluRay movies. We all know the cost of the disc is minimal. Amazon can sell BluRays for $10-$20. I'm not going to pay $35 for a movie, and I'm not alone on that issue.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Swizec]

It takes an hour to download a 720p movie. You don't usually _need_ a 1080p movie. And more importantly, with the technological marvel that is streaming you can start watching after 15 minutes (unless you're downloading .mkv or something) and the playtime will not catch up to the download time.

But then again, some people don't have FTTH like most of us in developed countries do. :)

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[commodore64_love]

Gotta disagree. Songs have gone from 1400 kbit/s CD songs to 128 kbit/s AAC songs.

If movies underwent a similar downgrade in quality, instead of ~5 Mbit/s DVD movies you would have 0.45 Mbit/s streaming videos that people could watch in realtime on their computers, televisions, or iPods. We are now seeing that transition where people download their favorite shows or movies rather than drive to Walmart and buy the media.

It had nothing to do with Hollywood or Bluray, but because until recently people didn't have the minimu 0.5 Mbit/s connections. Now they do.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[pebs]

For instance, a few months ago, I ordered PPV Gran Torino in 1080p for my wife and I to view one evening. Six hours later it was ready to view, but she was already in bed.

The real WTF is why you rented Gran Torino.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Croakus]

You steal when you refuse to pay anything for something that a person worked years of their life to produce, and instead end run around them and download a copy of their hard work from an illegal source. It doesn't matter whether it was a sculpture, a painting, a movie or a song. The fact that we musicians are treated like our art is worthless simply because it's easy to rip us off is offensive beyond words. If it were as easy to copy a sculpture, sculptors would react exactly as we have. If you don't want to pay for the song, don't listen to it. If you download it for free from a source that wasn't authorized by the artist (IE: taking their hard work without payment and without permission) than you are a thief; it's that simple. If I did the same thing to General Motors they'd lock me up for grand theft auto.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[zmollusc]

Do you play an instrument? I bet you don't pay a fee to the instrument maker for every note you play. I bet part of that fee doesn't get paid backwards to the supplier of the materials the instrument is made from. A singer? How much do you pay the production line guy who made your microphone every time you sing into it?

Sculptors? You know the plastic mouldings that nearly everything is made from? Someone has to sculpt the moulds. Do they get a percentage? No, and they have to work to very tight tolerances not 'that looks finished now'.

One of the reasons your 'art' gets 'ripped off' so much is that the people doing so will never be in the position of doing a job once, then getting royalties forever and they don't see why they owe you anything for doing the duplication themselves.

Are you contractually obliged to bitch about downloaders?

Go make pattern parts for GM vehicles, you won't get put away for grand theft auto, but you won't get paid per mile used either.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Croakus]

Then please explain to me how we're supposed to pay our mortgages and feed our families.

The business models that you are trying to use to justify your position have no relevance whatsoever with regard to making music for the entertainment of others. The sound recording itself is our product exactly the same as guitars are Gibson's product. There is NO DIFFERENCE. If you get a copy of the sound recording that I worked hard to produce without either paying me for it or me giving it to you than you have stolen it from me.

I'm sorry that reality is so inconvenient for you.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Nemi]

I understand the logic of your thinking. I really do. I am a software developer, so my "product" is essentially the same as yours.

However, I would suggest that you have a misunderstanding on what you should get paid for. It isn't for the end product, which is not directly comparable to what some other artisan would get paid for in the past (a concrete object). The simple reality of the situation is that bits that have no cost or difficulty being reproduced are just not going to be re-sellable. It is as simple as that.

So what do you and I have that we can "sell"? Our skill. I get paid by my employer for the TIME I spend writing code for them. Your employer? The paying public. Play a gig at a bar or other venue and get paid for that performance. Now you can make a living. It cannot be easily reproduced by other people, so you have a product that its all your own. Will you make millions doing it? Probably not. But it is an honest living.

You do do this because you love it, right? Not for the money?

You're frustrated because your expectations do not match reality. When this happens most people try to change reality. That works in many cases, but in this case I would say this is not going to happen. Changing your expectations is the only way you are going to be happy.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Omestes]

. If you get a copy of the sound recording that I worked hard to produce without either paying me for it or me giving it to you than you have stolen it from me.

No, I copied it. You were not deprived of anything, therefore it isn't theft. The copying might be illegal, or immoral, but it still isn't theft. The closest we get to theft with copying is the potential deprivation of profit. If I copied your song, then smashed the masters, it would be closer to theft since I actually denied you use.

I personally think copying music without compensating the artist is wrong. I also have nothing against using P2P as a "try before you buy" medium, I have nothing against pirating thing from musicians who don't actually derive profit from sales (anyone who is dead, or don't own their own rights), I have nothing against pirating things over a certain age (lets say 30 years). I have nothing against pirating music released to be intentionally broken (DRM), or that is released in the spirit of limited scarcity. I have nothing against pirating music that I have already bought, albeit in a different form, whether or whether not I actually own the media.

Though, honestly, I really don't care anyone. Artists, and their backers, have been trying to screw their customers over for years, so I see nothing wrong with playing the same game and screwing them over. This is especially true of RIAA labels and artists, I would generally never even CONSIDER buying their music, no matter how much I like them (if I like them, I will see them in concert and buy a damn shirt... though even that experience is getting a biut customer hostile with bigger shows). I am not your guaranteed revenue stream, and if you screw with me (even a little), your not getting a damn cent from me.

Musicians are NOT special people who deserve special rights and protections. If you don't play music, someone else will. If you only play for money, then you aren't really worth much in my eyes. If you find having a day job to onerous, then tough shit. If you aren't successful enough to do music 100% of the time, and live off of it, then you should have a job just like the rest of us.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[danny256]

If I copied a site like slashdot called slashdot2, copied all of the articles from slashdot, and got users and people to read it and added some advertisements, would you tell slashdot to get another "business model"? After all, noting of value was taken..only copied. This should be fine in the digital age..right?

It's ironic that you say that, because Slashdot runs on free software and the scenario you're describing would be perfectly legal and ethical. Feel free to get all the Slashdot source code, fork the site to "Slashdot 2" and use Slashdot's RSS feed to populate it with stories.

Despite anyone's ability to freely copy its content Slashdot still manages to make money. Maybe you could learn something.

"Why Movies Are Not Like Music"

[clang_jangle]

Uh -- because movies have pictures?

The most important sentence in the article:

[jrq]

On the other hand, it does have one tremendous weakness that doesn't afflict music: consumers often watch films only once.
Really, if anyone should be working on a system to enable on-demand viewing of their intellectual property it should be the movie industry.

Re:The most important sentence in the article:

[mcgrew]

Correction: consumers only watch bad movies once. How many times have you watched Star Wars?

Obvious difference

[spitzak]

An obvious difference is that people are interested in seeing a movie exactly once, and as soon as possible.

Music relies on people wanting to hear it multiple times and they are probably more interested in the music well after it exists. And complete knowledge of the contents of the music increases, rather than decreases, their desire to hear it.

Re:Obvious difference

[Ephemeriis]

An obvious difference is that people are interested in seeing a movie exactly once, and as soon as possible.

Music relies on people wanting to hear it multiple times and they are probably more interested in the music well after it exists. And complete knowledge of the contents of the music increases, rather than decreases, their desire to hear it.

Incorrect.

Completely wrong.

So wrong it makes me wonder where on Earth you came up with this idea.

In a lot of ways, a movie is like a novel. There are some you read through once, and then get rid of because they just aren't that amazing. There are some you have to re-read several times simply to understand them. And then there are the favorites that you keep coming back to year after year.

To claim that everyone is only interested in seeing a movie once, and that they're all basically disposable, is simply ignorant.

Sure, if you're talking about some generic action/horror movie aimed at teenfolk that's probably accurate. They're just looking for something to serve as background noise while they hang out with their friends. They'll go see it within days of the opening, they'll see it once, and they won't even pay much attention to it.

But then you've got the G/PG stuff aimed at little kids. You've obviously never witnessed a small child and their favorite movie. They'll drag you to the theater a dozen times while it is showing... They'll make you buy every single solitary piece of merchandise tied into the film... They'll need the DVD the day it becomes available... And they'll watch it over and over again, until the disc literally wears out.

Then you've got movies with some real substance to them. Things like Pulp Fiction. Movies where you literally notice something new each time you watch it. Movies that take multiple viewings to actually understand what is going on.

Then there are the quality movies that just don't get old. This will, of course, vary quite a bit depending on your personal preferences... But I don't know how many times I've watched Alien or Evil Dead II or Cannibal: The Musical.

Re:Obvious difference

[TheGratefulNet]

could it be...

that you're BOTH RIGHT?

ie, you've just demonstrated that each person has their own take on what form of entertainment works for them and makes them happy.

there IS no one-stop style that fits all.

some movies: watch once. others, watch many
some songs: listen once. others, listen many

people are different. wow. what a revelation.

Gaming,

[Icegryphon]

Do they get into the fact the people are wasting there time and entertainment budgets on gaming?
Can't go see a movie when you are busy playing CoD:MW2 or Tekken 6 or etc.
Also at 60$ a Crack you might be hurting for expendable cash.

Re:Gaming,

[Ephemeriis]

Let's work something out: a $60 game will get you what, hopefully 10+ hours of playtime? (Sidenote: oh how I long for days gone by when that would've been considered short...) That's less than $6/hour. Blu-ray discs are about $20; given a movie length of about 2 hours, that's around $10/hour - almost twice as expensive.

Exactly.

It is really hard to justify going to the movies these days. Our local theater charges roughly $12/ticket... So that's $24 for the wife and I. For roughly two hours of entertainment. And more often than not it really doesn't feel like we're getting our money's worth... Either the movie will be mediocre (if not completely disappointing) or the other patrons will be distracting or whatever.

Instead, we can wait a few months until it comes out on DVD and pick it up at Blockbuster for $5 or so... Or at a Redbox machine for $1... Or grab it on Pay-Per-View for $7... Or wait for Netflix to send it out... All of which dramatically lower the price and dramatically increase the chances of us enjoying ourselves (no annoying folks in the theater, etc.)

Or I can spend my money on a game instead... We used to have a couple WoW accounts going. $30 a month, for the two of us, for basically unlimited entertainment. Much cheaper than going to the movies or renting or anything else.

Duh!

[chill]

I've argued this for years. CDs and their predecessors are collections of individual performances, with a few exceptions. The music industry has made an entire business model on selling an expensive set based on the saleability of a single unit. That is, they sell albums based on people wanting just one or two songs.

Movies are not like that. As much as people like to joke that much coming out of Hollywood has 5 minutes of entertainment lost in 2+ hours of bad acting, poor dialog and non-existent plot, no one is really interested in seeing just trailers.

Add to that the perceived value by the audience. I can go to the store to but a DVD of a 2+ hour performance, or a CD of a dozen 2+ minute performances for about the same price. Why does a movie that cost $100 million to produce cost the same as a music CD that maybe cost $10 million (or $1 million, or less)? The movie industry isn't going broke, so the music industry must have INCREDIBLE profit margins and is screwing over the consumer like nobody's business!

Good music can be produced for next to nothing, whereas it is much more difficult to do that with movies. A song or album can be credibly done by an INDIVIDUAL, or maybe a band and a few extra people to produce. Ten people, tops, unless they're padding it. No sets to build, to props to make, etc.

The whole music industry argument that the movie industry is just like them and "next is just FUD.

Re:Duh!

[slim]

CDs and their predecessors are collections of individual performances, with a few exceptions.

You've just broken the heart of every artist that's ever agonised over the running order of their album.

Good music can be produced for next to nothing, whereas it is much more difficult to do that with movies. A song or album can be credibly done by an INDIVIDUAL, or maybe a band and a few extra people to produce. Ten people, tops, unless they're padding it.

I agree up to a point, and I happen to prefer, on the whole, cheaply recorded music.

But consider that lots of people like the expensive stuff. The mainstream superstars spend millions on studio time with extremely high end equipment, studios with expensively built acoustics, engineers and mic technicians and session musicians who charge professional rates. How much do think it costs to hire a 40 piece orchestra for a day?

Still cheaper than a typical movie, but not what you can afford to do with your disposable income.

Re:Duh!

[tepples]

A song or album can be credibly done by an INDIVIDUAL

There are a couple problems with writing, recording, and self-publishing your own album:

• How do you promote it? The major labels have a lock on MTV, FM radio, and XM radio, the traditional ways to discover popular music.
• How do you distribute it to people who don't have high-speed Internet access? The major labels have a lock on Walmart* and Best Buy, and some genres (such as country music) would appear to be more popular among people who live in areas where dial-up is the fastest (miles from the closest DSLAM, and no cable TV available).
• How do you plan to avoid or defend copyright lawsuits in case part of your song happens to coincidentally match the hook of a song that was played on the radio? Compare Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music.

Re:Duh!

[chill]

Well, the "shuffle" feature on CD players introduced back in the 80s broke their hearts first. I'm just pointing it out. :-)

And while they are exceptions, not many albums are produced with 40-piece orchestras.

I've seen more than a few musicians (a couple, personal friends) who have built acoustically engineered sound rooms in their homes. And computers can replace 99% of the expensive equipment, other than instruments. Heck. Most of that expensive audio equipment is nothing more than specialized computers. All the digital stuff, anyway.

And while I certainly don't begrudge costs like studio musicians, engineers and techs, we're still talking several orders of magnitude cheaper than movie production.

Another huge difference

[plastbox]

Also, one pretty significant difference between the two is the cost of production. Terminator 2 cost about $90 million and is 137 minutes long. That's $647.482 per minute. A typical album might contain an hour of music or so and can (despite what the MPAA wants you to believe) be produced for next-to-nothing*.

Of course, I am not taking into account all the last millennium issues with distribution and publicity. I'm talking about the costs of actually making a movie or album

*By "next-to-nothing" I mean that cost of time in a studio and a good mixer/sound technician is low enough that even unknown, new bands can pool their money and pay to have an album recorded quite easily.

Re:Another huge difference

[MadKeithV]

That's a nonsense argument. Movies can be made for next to nothing as well with a handheld camcorder. See "Blair Witch Project" and the like. Sure, those are lucky shots, but so are the bands that "make it" on a shoestring budget.

The amount of gear and expertise required to make a decent album with half a chance of making any money at all is more than you'd think.

Lots of bands are making cheap recordings, some of them are even good. But very, very few of them make any money off of it, let alone enough to live off it.

Re:Gloomy?

[TheLuggage2008]

...if the big centralized studios vanished and we just had independent filmmakers left I don't think I'd shed any tears.

You say that now, but how are you going to feel when there are no big studios left to greenlight "Cheaper by the Dozen 3"?

Rental might be for you

[tepples]

Five bucks is what I pay for a flick. No more. When it hits the five dollar bin at Wal-Mart, that's when I may or may not buy it.

And Netflix lets customers keep a flick for two weeks at that price. Unless it's a cult classic like Rocky Horror or an animated electronic babysitter for single-digit-year-old children like Cinderella, I don't see what kind of flick you'd necessarily want to keep longer than that.

Re:Disaggregation

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree.

For a good example, see here.

Fundamentally Different

[sycodon]

Music and movies are fundamentally different. Aside from the obvious visual aspect, they are much longer, require that you pay attention, and get worse with each viewing.

How many people would put on Top Gun each morning when they get into work? How many people would actually pay attention to it after the fifth time that week? How many people wouldn't notice how cheesy the dialog and special affects are after subsequent viewings?

I suspect that if you were put into a PET scanner, entirely different portions of the brain would light up when watching a movie vs. listen to music.

So while music can be listened to over and over again with the same level of enjoyment, movies can't be watched over and over again...unless you are stoned.

I don't think movies are going to go the way of music.

Other ways movies are different

[wiwa]

I can download an album in less time than it takes to listen to it. I can barely tell the difference between the downloaded version and what I would buy at a record store. And it's already in the format I want, either for listening to it on the computer or putting it on my iPhone.

A movie, on the other hand, I'm probably going to have to leave to download overnight. It still won't be quite as good quality as the DVD version, and it will certainly be inferior to the BluRay version. If I want to watch it on my TV, I have to go to the hassle of burning it to a DVD. (If I want to watch it on my iPhone, I have to go to the even greater hassle of transcoding it.) It's probably easier to just walk to the video store around the corner and shell out the $4 to get 3 movies right away.

What's more, that 200 MB album I downloaded is probably going to get listened to dozens of times. The 2 GB movie might get watched twice if it's REALLY good.

Intrinsic worth

[Enderandrew]

Your logic operates under the assumption that a movie has a fixed value, that intrinsically all films are worth $20.

In a free market, value is determined by supply and demand.

You're trying to validate theft of IP by a product losing value due to low demand. Just because an item is placed on sale, that doesn't mean you are entitled to pay nothing for it.

Re:said it before, am saying it again

[Ephemeriis]

It seems to me that this plan would be reliant on people actually wanting to watch the new releases after having seen the previous ones. You seem to assume that after watching the low-quality VCD, folks would want to watch the DVD... And after watching the DVD, they'd want to see the theatrical release and buy the boxed set.

The problem with this, of course, is that a lot of movies just aren't that good.

I could easily see this working for something like Kill Bill or Ghost Busters...

But I'm not certain that it would work for the majority of movies out there. I mean, I enjoyed The Hangover... But, having watched it on VCD or DVD, I really don't think I'd feel the need to see it in the theater. And I certainly wouldn't buy the boxed set. And that was a pretty fun movie.

Sure, if the popularity for the VCD is low you don't have to make a crapton of DVDs... And if the DVDs don't move you can just skip the theatrical release... But it seems to me that most of the money goes into producing the film itself - not duplicating it in various mediums. The money goes to paying actors, and lighting guys, and directors, and writers, and whoever else... Not to buying blank discs and celluloid.

So I'm really not certain you'd wind up making enough money to break even. I really think that with most of the crap coming out of Hollywood these days, most people would be content with a VCD or DVD. I don't think you'd really see all that many people showing up in the theater or buying the boxed set.

Re:WTF does NEED have to do with this?

[ShadowRangerRIT]

People use need to mean want. I don't know where the cutoff is for 720p vs. 1080p, but I know that above roughly the 40" mark (higher for DLP sets that have a bit of blur to them) the blockiness of 480p becomes very noticeable. I chose a 40" 720p set a couple years ago for precisely that reason; I see no need for BluRay, and I'd rather my less graphically capable systems (e.g. the Wii) don't look completely horrible. I expect around 60"-70" or so 1080p becomes "necessary" in the same way; if you go with a lower resolution it looks like crap, so to make your investment worth anything, you need video of sufficient quality.

Re:said it before, am saying it again

[rcastro0]

> It seems to me that this plan would be reliant on people actually wanting to watch the new releases after having seen the previous ones.

No, I don't think you got the point. The point is that this plan would be reliant on people actually wanting to wait to watch the new release in their most preferred format.

I propose the following:
(1) People have only one chance to have a first impression of a movie.
(2) They can chose what that first impression is.
(3) They will chose the one that best satisfies them, within their cost/convenience/quality/social mix (for the occasion).

Therefore, they will pass the chance to watch a movie in a format that robs them the full experience it can give. You know what I am talking about. Any /. reader knows very well how to DL a free copy of a movie, right now, at this moment. He/she can pick between a quick download that will be trasfered to (an can be watched on) their cellphone screen. Or they can get the PSP version. Or the VCD version. Or the DVD version. Or the HD version. Yet... how many /.ers have stopped going to movie theaters because of that?

Myself, I don't have time to watch every movie. And the limited time I have, I will use to watch the best movies in the grandest way (at a movie theater, or at least in HD). I will not be wasting time with bad movies, nor wasting great movies with a tiny screen...