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

[chadplusplus]

And let's not forget the instant gratification demanded by many consumers. On typical broadband, a song downloads in less than a minute. The significantly longer time required to download a movie (if purchased and stored in Blue Ray quality) is longer than the time required to drive to Blockbuster or Walmart to buy the physical copy of the same movie.

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.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Rogerborg]

Question: aren't you therefore stealing $15 (or $30 for Blu-Ray) from the distributor by not paying the full 0-day retail price?

No, you say? But why not? After all, you're apparently stealing $20 from them if you pay $0 for it, so why aren't you stealing $15 if you pay $5?

Let's throw that question open to any distributor executives or their lawyers who happen to be wandering by.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[Evil Shabazz]

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. :)

It only takes an hour to download a 720p movie if you happen to have access to about 7mb+ broadband. And even then, you're subject also to the bandwidth of the service you're trying to download from. For instance, take trying to download a movie from Sony's PS3 store. You'll only ever make that mistake once. You could have a 10 petabyte internet connection and it would still take you 16 hours to download a TV episode from them because they won't send you the file at anywhere near a reasonable speed.

Re:DVD Sales Gap

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

To be fair, CDs are only 1400 kbit/s because they were designed to be played back on hardware with almost zero processing power. Depending on the source material, it isn't uncommon to see lossless compression get this down to around half the original size. Still a far cry from the bitrates of the lossy stuff; but less dramatic than the uncompressed/lossy compression comparison.

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:

[commodore64_love]

>>>to hear Kevin Spacey say, "I killed him." under his breath

And I watch Kevin Spacey's other movie over-and-over just so I can see him disrobe the hot cheerleader. Ahhhhh 16-year-old perfection.

(mutters)

I'm going straight to hell

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.

Disaggregation

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

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.

I stopped watching movies a few years ago, now all I watch are the trailers. They are free, you get 80% of the story, and it is always the best parts too. What's not to love?

said it before, am saying it again

[zmollusc]

1. Forget chasing 'pirates'. This will save a lot of expensive legal bills. Cut back drastically on advertising too, as you don't need to whip people up into a frenzy to get them to theatres in the first week.

2. Make film (Citizen Kane2, The Reckoning: starring Adam Sandler or something).

3. Make a VCD cut and make unlabelled cheapo vcd's. Using the economies of scale, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate vcd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies. Your margin is the difference between a bulk pressed cd and a small scale burned copy.

4. Simultaneously sell the film as a download for the same price as you get for the vcd. ...wait a few weeks

5. Make a nicer, longer dvd cut of the film and, again, sell these so cheap that the guys selling pirate dvd will buy from you rather than burn their own copies.

6. Sell the dvd cut of the film online at the same price as the DVD wholesale price. .... wait some more

7. Theatre release of film in lovely THX/35mm

8. Dvd/Bluray boxed sets with extra everything.
9. Laugh all the way to the bank (which then gambles half your money away and pays the other half to its CEO).

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.

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:Gaming,

[Mr. DOS]

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. On top of that, some multiplayer games

      --- Mr. DOS