I agree--I actually thought the reason for the price increases (which have been going on BEFORE P2P) were that the artists saw that scalpers were getting outrageous prices for the tickets, so they decided to raise their prices, figuring that since fans were willing to pay these amounts anyway, the artists may as well price the tickets higher and take a bigger share.
Plus, let's be realistic here--they don't LOSE money on a concert tour. Tickets are sold months in advance for big acts. If too few tickets are sold by a given date to make $, the show will be canceled.
I work at a small company that, unfortunately, depends greatly on our IT dept. For years, they have been the biggest anal orifices around, mainly because the guy that was CIO was a bad-tempered cokehead. He used to be a close friend of the president, but after he poured out his bad temper on too many people, his friend (the prez) fired him. Unfortunately, his attitude infected the entire IT group, and even after getting rid of a large number of his cronies, the rest are still infected with his poisonous attitudes.
About half of these bozos won't even respond to emails. Even after one of the new guys developed an internal management tool (basically an electronic memo board where anyone involved in a topic can post messages seen by everyone involved), they still refuse to use it half the time. They have refused for years to put anything in writing, because they would then have to actually work instead of surf the net and goof around.
Whenever the sales team brings in a new customer that has special data needs that might require them to actually put in a couple of hours' work, the first thing out of their mouths is "we should charge them for development!" NO YOU BLOCKHEADS!!! IT'S CALLED WORK--IT'S WHAT YOU DO FROM 8 TO 5!!!
The main thing that IT needs to realize is that the rest of the company is their customer. They rarely do, because they're so insulated from the real world. They need to realize that they wouldn't have their hefty paychecks if no sales were brought in.
If I had my way, I would love to start outsourcing some of our IT functions. Maybe to India. Then, if we needed something special, we could ask our guys first, and when they whined like the spoiled children they are, we could say, "never mind, we'll get the guys in India to do it." Eventually, either they would provide better service to the rest of the company, or the outsourcers would. Problem solved.
Basically, an internal IT dept full of jerks is a monopoly, and competition provides lower costs and better service.
Besides the topic of rude people in theaters (pages more of which could be written), my main reasons for not seeing as many movies (and I live 3 miles from a new theater): 1) Cost--2 tickets now cost as much as BUYING the DVD. Add popcorn & snacks, it's cheaper to watch @ home. If you have 2 kids you're probably out $50 2) Comfort--finally, most theaters have better chairs to sit it, but for years the chairs were designed to give you backaches 3) Home theater systems--you can get great sound at home for about $200. 4) Ticket lines, concession lines, lines to get your ticket torn so you can finally go sit down, restroom lines. Mainly because they still seem to schedule too many movies to start around the same time. Then, we have to wait another 15 damn minutes through the trailers and other people still arriving late because they know they can arrive late because of the 15' of trailers!!!! 5) Extras--DVDs always seem to have something extra for us, deleted scenes (my favorite) are very common, and other extras. What extras have theaters added for us that we really want? Answer: None.
I missed seeing 3 big movies in theaters last summer. I bought the DVDs. The home viewing experience was better (in terms of comfort, food/drinks, pause button). Sound was about the same (and I have one of the cheaper HTS's)
I really enjoyed reading your post; I might have something to add. Consumer prices at the movies have gone up, for me, to the breakeven point. The cost for two adult movie tickets is now >= the cost of buying the DVD when it comes out. I missed seeing 3 "big" movies last summer and bought them on DVD instead. I came out ahead $$-wise.
Some other things that make theaters unattractive: cost of concessions, previews (show them BEFORE the start time instead of AT the start time), rude people, and lack of extras (there's always something extra on the DVDs). I would add uncomfortable seats, but over the past 10 years they have FINALLY put in comfy seats. However, there are no price breaks for moms with a few kids. Planning on taking your 2 and one of their friends to a kiddie flick? Say goodbye to $50
Maybe it is time that the big studios get reamed by the same downsizing issues EVERY OTHER industry has faced. Then the indies will figure out internet distribution and make the money directly. Perhaps a model similar to buying songs on the internet will evolve...buy movies direct from indies, burn them to DVD, play on your home theater system, everybody's happy except Hollywood. Unfortunately, no one will care about Hollywood. All the guys & gals doing the grunt work will do it for the independents and still have jobs. The overpaid losers running everything into the ground will get the axe.
I couldn't agree more. I'm so tired of loser sales recruiters contacting me with the "you'd be a great fit for this position" when it's obvious they didn't read my info. Monster really sucks because of that.
My point is, if this idea was so obvious to me, it should have been obvious to them as well. It should have been figured into their business plan.
Any time a company is providing a product or service, they should figure out in ADVANCE how much money they will make/lose. Net_revenue_per_customer = Rental_fee - (#_of_movies_rented_per_month x shipping_cost). Solve for (#_of_movies_rented) = 1 to 30.
Maybe they did figure this out, but they made a bad assumption that "most people won't rent that many in a given month". Still, you solve for your worst case scenario and allow for it in your plans. (I buy insurance for this reason)
If they had figured this into their plans, and the heavy renters didn't go for the higher-priced level, they'd have made more money from the infrequent renters.
Even if they didn't plan ahead, a better way to fix it would be to come up with tiered rental levels, inform everyone of the new plans, ask them which level they'd like to be at, and continue from there. They would end up keeping only customers that they made money on.
The shitty, sneaky method they used (and continue to use) to delay shipments cost them a class-action lawsuit and more bad publicity than Blockbuster could have ever dreamed of buying.
While I do agree that the purpose of ANY business is to generate a profit, I also think that their business plan should have included an estimate of cost per user for every number of rentals per month that is logically possible.
(The numbers in this ex. are all made up) Let's say that using fastest-case USPS delivery, it would be possible for a user to rent 23 movies per month. Okay, now what are NF's gross revenues, shipping costs, etc. for each rental level, 1 to 23 movies per month? This gives them their breakeven point beyond which they lose money. Suppose they find that users that rent 11 or more DVDs/mo cost them money, 10 or less rentals still earn them money.
Okay, let's use COMMON SENSE here (something that must not have been available at NF in the early days): NF SHOULD have advertised that you can rent up to 10 movies per month (or whatever the actual breakeven point is for them). They could have offered a higher price point (where they still make $) for more frequent renters--and a lower one for infrequent renters. You have then stratified your customers based on usage.
Now, the customer knows exactly what the limits are and is happy. When you tell people up front what the deal is, it's fair. When you overpromise and undeliver (which is basically what NF did), you PISS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS!
Guess what? This idea took less time for me to think up than it took to toast my pop tarts. If I can come up with a simple idea like this, then so can75% of the population. Out of curiousity, how many of you had a similar idea germinating in your heads? My next recommendation would be to fire the geniuses that didn't come up with this. Okay, that's all for now...my pop tarts are getting cold.
If Muslims can riot and destroy the property of non-Muslims when cartoons offend them, then I think it would be fair for Israeli pilots to drop bunker buster bombs (I think we sold them a few) on the buildings where Arabic/Islamic papers are printed that spew hatred and Nazi rhetoric that offends Jews. (By the way, Arabic peoples living under Jewish rule have more freedoms than Arabic peoples living under Arabic rule--Newsweek did a story on this 4-5 years ago.)
It should also be acceptable for Americans to riot and destroy Islamic temples and Arab-owned property when we see news footage of Muslims or Arabs burning our flag (this is deeply offensive to our veterans and many currently in the military). Or perhaps we can just call in an airstrike on the location of the flag-burning?
I've heard from the extremely small peaceful minority of Muslims that say "Islam is a religion of peace. The word 'Islam' means to submit" -- but to me, "Islam" means "hypocritical terrorist religious group that is not, as a group, mentally developed enough to reason or discuss issues with".
When Pat Robertson puts his foot in his mouth on national TV, enough people criticize him that he apologizes later. But anyone who criticizes ANYTHING about the Islamic religion is marked for death.
You are correct, of course; individually I don't get that much spam. Most spam I get isn't that big in terms of size...(I'm sure my download.com logs for a week would outweigh the spam I get in a year) but 'everyone' knows a ton of spam is sent, and hopefully that knowledge would help convince otherwise dimwitted legislators to veto a stupid idea like this.
THANK YOU/Ditto! Paying to receive spam would really torque me off. As well as those emails you get from any online store you've ever bought anything with (Ebay/Adam & Eve/etc.) Also, popup ads are a big issue--I don't mind viewing them but it's insane to make me PAY to view ADS. I can't see penalizing us for this. Seriously, some fellow that surfs an adult site generates 5 pages of popup ads plus ads on the page he wants to view. It is not ethical to charge someone to view ads he has no control over (I know, Firefox+Adblock, but you still don't know what will come up until you view the page).
On the other hand, if we got a bill at the end of the month and could dispute and refuse to pay for spam & popups the loss of revenue might give ISPs a reason to stop spam & ads. But who am I kidding? We'd never be allowed to do that.
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I agree--I actually thought the reason for the price increases (which have been going on BEFORE P2P) were that the artists saw that scalpers were getting outrageous prices for the tickets, so they decided to raise their prices, figuring that since fans were willing to pay these amounts anyway, the artists may as well price the tickets higher and take a bigger share.
Plus, let's be realistic here--they don't LOSE money on a concert tour. Tickets are sold months in advance for big acts. If too few tickets are sold by a given date to make $, the show will be canceled.
I work at a small company that, unfortunately, depends greatly on our IT dept. For years, they have been the biggest anal orifices around, mainly because the guy that was CIO was a bad-tempered cokehead. He used to be a close friend of the president, but after he poured out his bad temper on too many people, his friend (the prez) fired him. Unfortunately, his attitude infected the entire IT group, and even after getting rid of a large number of his cronies, the rest are still infected with his poisonous attitudes.
About half of these bozos won't even respond to emails. Even after one of the new guys developed an internal management tool (basically an electronic memo board where anyone involved in a topic can post messages seen by everyone involved), they still refuse to use it half the time. They have refused for years to put anything in writing, because they would then have to actually work instead of surf the net and goof around.
Whenever the sales team brings in a new customer that has special data needs that might require them to actually put in a couple of hours' work, the first thing out of their mouths is "we should charge them for development!" NO YOU BLOCKHEADS!!! IT'S CALLED WORK--IT'S WHAT YOU DO FROM 8 TO 5!!!
The main thing that IT needs to realize is that the rest of the company is their customer. They rarely do, because they're so insulated from the real world. They need to realize that they wouldn't have their hefty paychecks if no sales were brought in.
If I had my way, I would love to start outsourcing some of our IT functions. Maybe to India. Then, if we needed something special, we could ask our guys first, and when they whined like the spoiled children they are, we could say, "never mind, we'll get the guys in India to do it." Eventually, either they would provide better service to the rest of the company, or the outsourcers would. Problem solved.
Basically, an internal IT dept full of jerks is a monopoly, and competition provides lower costs and better service.
Besides the topic of rude people in theaters (pages more of which could be written), my main reasons for not seeing as many movies (and I live 3 miles from a new theater):
1) Cost--2 tickets now cost as much as BUYING the DVD. Add popcorn & snacks, it's cheaper to watch @ home. If you have 2 kids you're probably out $50
2) Comfort--finally, most theaters have better chairs to sit it, but for years the chairs were designed to give you backaches
3) Home theater systems--you can get great sound at home for about $200.
4) Ticket lines, concession lines, lines to get your ticket torn so you can finally go sit down, restroom lines. Mainly because they still seem to schedule too many movies to start around the same time. Then, we have to wait another 15 damn minutes through the trailers and other people still arriving late because they know they can arrive late because of the 15' of trailers!!!!
5) Extras--DVDs always seem to have something extra for us, deleted scenes (my favorite) are very common, and other extras. What extras have theaters added for us that we really want? Answer: None.
I missed seeing 3 big movies in theaters last summer. I bought the DVDs. The home viewing experience was better (in terms of comfort, food/drinks, pause button). Sound was about the same (and I have one of the cheaper HTS's)
I really enjoyed reading your post; I might have something to add. Consumer prices at the movies have gone up, for me, to the breakeven point. The cost for two adult movie tickets is now >= the cost of buying the DVD when it comes out. I missed seeing 3 "big" movies last summer and bought them on DVD instead. I came out ahead $$-wise.
Some other things that make theaters unattractive: cost of concessions, previews (show them BEFORE the start time instead of AT the start time), rude people, and lack of extras (there's always something extra on the DVDs). I would add uncomfortable seats, but over the past 10 years they have FINALLY put in comfy seats. However, there are no price breaks for moms with a few kids. Planning on taking your 2 and one of their friends to a kiddie flick? Say goodbye to $50
Maybe it is time that the big studios get reamed by the same downsizing issues EVERY OTHER industry has faced. Then the indies will figure out internet distribution and make the money directly. Perhaps a model similar to buying songs on the internet will evolve...buy movies direct from indies, burn them to DVD, play on your home theater system, everybody's happy except Hollywood. Unfortunately, no one will care about Hollywood. All the guys & gals doing the grunt work will do it for the independents and still have jobs. The overpaid losers running everything into the ground will get the axe.
I couldn't agree more. I'm so tired of loser sales recruiters contacting me with the "you'd be a great fit for this position" when it's obvious they didn't read my info. Monster really sucks because of that.
My point is, if this idea was so obvious to me, it should have been obvious to them as well. It should have been figured into their business plan.
Any time a company is providing a product or service, they should figure out in ADVANCE how much money they will make/lose.
Net_revenue_per_customer =
Rental_fee - (#_of_movies_rented_per_month x shipping_cost).
Solve for (#_of_movies_rented) = 1 to 30.
Maybe they did figure this out, but they made a bad assumption that "most people won't rent that many in a given month". Still, you solve for your worst case scenario and allow for it in your plans. (I buy insurance for this reason)
If they had figured this into their plans, and the heavy renters didn't go for the higher-priced level, they'd have made more money from the infrequent renters.
Even if they didn't plan ahead, a better way to fix it would be to come up with tiered rental levels, inform everyone of the new plans, ask them which level they'd like to be at, and continue from there. They would end up keeping only customers that they made money on.
The shitty, sneaky method they used (and continue to use) to delay shipments cost them a class-action lawsuit and more bad publicity than Blockbuster could have ever dreamed of buying.
While I do agree that the purpose of ANY business is to generate a profit, I also think that their business plan should have included an estimate of cost per user for every number of rentals per month that is logically possible.
(The numbers in this ex. are all made up)
Let's say that using fastest-case USPS delivery, it would be possible for a user to rent 23 movies per month. Okay, now what are NF's gross revenues, shipping costs, etc. for each rental level, 1 to 23 movies per month? This gives them their breakeven point beyond which they lose money. Suppose they find that users that rent 11 or more DVDs/mo cost them money, 10 or less rentals still earn them money.
Okay, let's use COMMON SENSE here (something that must not have been available at NF in the early days): NF SHOULD have advertised that you can rent up to 10 movies per month (or whatever the actual breakeven point is for them). They could have offered a higher price point (where they still make $) for more frequent renters--and a lower one for infrequent renters. You have then stratified your customers based on usage.
Now, the customer knows exactly what the limits are and is happy. When you tell people up front what the deal is, it's fair. When you overpromise and undeliver (which is basically what NF did), you PISS OFF YOUR CUSTOMERS!
Guess what? This idea took less time for me to think up than it took to toast my pop tarts. If I can come up with a simple idea like this, then so can75% of the population. Out of curiousity, how many of you had a similar idea germinating in your heads? My next recommendation would be to fire the geniuses that didn't come up with this. Okay, that's all for now...my pop tarts are getting cold.
If Muslims can riot and destroy the property of non-Muslims when cartoons offend them, then I think it would be fair for Israeli pilots to drop bunker buster bombs (I think we sold them a few) on the buildings where Arabic/Islamic papers are printed that spew hatred and Nazi rhetoric that offends Jews. (By the way, Arabic peoples living under Jewish rule have more freedoms than Arabic peoples living under Arabic rule--Newsweek did a story on this 4-5 years ago.) It should also be acceptable for Americans to riot and destroy Islamic temples and Arab-owned property when we see news footage of Muslims or Arabs burning our flag (this is deeply offensive to our veterans and many currently in the military). Or perhaps we can just call in an airstrike on the location of the flag-burning? I've heard from the extremely small peaceful minority of Muslims that say "Islam is a religion of peace. The word 'Islam' means to submit" -- but to me, "Islam" means "hypocritical terrorist religious group that is not, as a group, mentally developed enough to reason or discuss issues with". When Pat Robertson puts his foot in his mouth on national TV, enough people criticize him that he apologizes later. But anyone who criticizes ANYTHING about the Islamic religion is marked for death.
You are correct, of course; individually I don't get that much spam. Most spam I get isn't that big in terms of size...(I'm sure my download.com logs for a week would outweigh the spam I get in a year) but 'everyone' knows a ton of spam is sent, and hopefully that knowledge would help convince otherwise dimwitted legislators to veto a stupid idea like this.
THANK YOU/Ditto! Paying to receive spam would really torque me off. As well as those emails you get from any online store you've ever bought anything with (Ebay/Adam & Eve/etc.) Also, popup ads are a big issue--I don't mind viewing them but it's insane to make me PAY to view ADS. I can't see penalizing us for this. Seriously, some fellow that surfs an adult site generates 5 pages of popup ads plus ads on the page he wants to view. It is not ethical to charge someone to view ads he has no control over (I know, Firefox+Adblock, but you still don't know what will come up until you view the page). On the other hand, if we got a bill at the end of the month and could dispute and refuse to pay for spam & popups the loss of revenue might give ISPs a reason to stop spam & ads. But who am I kidding? We'd never be allowed to do that.