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| Author |
Message |
| 25 new of 163 responses total. |
krj
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response 19 of 163:
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Jan 10 23:13 UTC 2003 |
Another unrelated story in Fox News' entertainment
column on Tommy Mottola's firing is this:
Whitney Houston's new album JUST WHITNEY has sold 430,000 copies in
the USA. The article describes it as a "dismal sales failure;"
you might not think 400K copies as a failure, but Whitney
has a contract reported elsewhere to be worth $100,000,000,
and this Fox item claims that she has borrowed $20 mil from
her label Arista as an advance against future royalties.
So, on a per-CD basis, Fox claims that Ms. Houston has borrowed about
$40 for every copy of her CD sold.
(Arista, according to Fox, claims 1 million copies shipped and
is asking for a platinum record on that basis; I thought the RIAA
had put up safeguards to stop giving out awards on the basis of
shipments, not sales, years ago.)
To give this a little more context: sales of JUST WHITNEY are
less than 1/10 of what Eminem has sold with his last couple
of releases -- nowhere near enough sales to support her
megacontract.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,75046,00.html
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tod
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response 20 of 163:
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Jan 10 23:24 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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tpryan
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response 21 of 163:
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Jan 10 23:39 UTC 2003 |
Can we conclude that Country Music fans don't know how to
download and burn CDs, or that they actually do want the CDs from
the artists.
?
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krj
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response 22 of 163:
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Jan 13 16:59 UTC 2003 |
We're getting another burst of "music industry crisis" stories.
The February issue of Wired puts the subject on its cover, though
none of that content is posted online yet.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/13/business/media/13TUNE.html
"Music Industry Braces for a Shift"
2000 CD (and cassette!) sales were 785 million; 2002 sales were
681 million, for a two-year decline of 100 million.
Lots of punditry: the business' problem remains that their biggest
costs, for "talent" and marketing, are out of control, and there
are always music execs willing to overspend in those areas.
Sony Music, trying to "think outside the box," has brought in a
TV executive to replace outgoing head Tommy Mottola. It is
suggested that most music industry executives are stuck in the old,
failing business model and will have to be replaced.
One unnamed executive says the price of CDs must come down, observing
that it is absurd that a movie soundtrack CD now costs more than
that same movie sold as a DVD.
On the other hand, the RIAA's Hilary Rosen sounds even more pathetic
than usual when she talks about keeping the price up in the face
of falling sales, and then goes on: "... she said the industry needs
to promote the joy of CD collection and to revive the value of owning
a physical object."
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keesan
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response 23 of 163:
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Jan 13 17:14 UTC 2003 |
What does a DVD cost?
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jep
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response 24 of 163:
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Jan 13 17:56 UTC 2003 |
How much does a physical blank DVD cost? I imagine it's around 50
cents.
How much does a DVD cost that has a movie on it? $25-30 if it's a top
of the line movie or one that's in demand, such as a recent Disney
movie or any successful movie released in theaters in the last year.
If I want a movie or CD, I buy it. But there aren't that many I really
want.
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mcnally
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response 25 of 163:
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Jan 13 19:28 UTC 2003 |
John's numbers are a little out of date. Many popular recent movies are
released on DVD in the $15-$20 price range and last year's biggest
blockbuster DVD releases (the first "Lord of the Rings" movie and the first
"Harry Potter" film both sold for around $15-$17 the week of their release.
It's fairly rare for a new single-disc movie to cost $30.
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keesan
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response 26 of 163:
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Jan 13 19:46 UTC 2003 |
Is this 'less' than the cost of a CD?
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jazz
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response 27 of 163:
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Jan 13 20:48 UTC 2003 |
Moreover, it's not uncommon to see a movie, months after release and
the initial buying sprees have died down, to be released for $10 or $20 less
than it was originally. Not so with CDs. A few are released for less, and
usually it's not significantly less, by the publishers.
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gull
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response 28 of 163:
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Jan 13 21:37 UTC 2003 |
CDs and movies bottom out at about the same prices. Bargain-bin CDs,
ones that are on the verge of going out of print for lack of demand,
tend to cost around $10.
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mynxcat
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response 29 of 163:
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Jan 13 22:22 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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slynne
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response 30 of 163:
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Jan 13 22:25 UTC 2003 |
Heck you can get the *real* bargain bin cds for .99-3.99 at Big Lots.
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krj
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response 31 of 163:
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Jan 14 18:36 UTC 2003 |
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51958-2003Jan13.html
"Entertainment, Tech Firms Reach Truce on Digital Piracy"
*Some* tech firms -- most notably Dell, Intel and Microsoft -- and
*some* parts of the copyright industry -- most notably the RIAA --
claim to have reached agreement on Something on copyright issues.
There are as yet absolutely no details on what that Something is.
Notably absent from the agreement are the Consumer Electronics Association
from the hardware side, and the MPAA (movie trade group) from the
copyright side.
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krj
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response 32 of 163:
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Jan 16 08:03 UTC 2003 |
The agreement is widely reported in Wednesday media. Essentially
the parties agree to play nice together. The RIAA agrees not to
push for government technology mandates; the tech industry agrees
to stop promoting copying, which I guess means an end to those
Intel Inside! ads showing young people with homemade CDs.
A number of observers report that this shows a split between
the RIAA and the MPAA, with the movie industry sticking to its
demand for the Hollings bill or something like it to mandate copy
controls in all digital devices which could conceivably access
copyrighted content.
-------
The forces of Truth and Justice lost as the Supreme Court rejected
the arguments of the plaintiffs in the Eldred case. By a 7-2
margin, the Court ruled that while the Sonny Bono Copyright Extension
Act was probably bad policy, it was within Congress's power to pass
such a law.
-------
Finally, here is a Canadian story on the music industry situation
in our northern neighbor. Two interesting differences in the
Canadian story, compared to the American version:
1) The CD sales decline in Canada has been much sharper, with a
17% decline in 2002, and a 25% decline over three years.
That's about twice as bad as the drop in USA sales.
2) Lots of space is devoted to the "copyright tax" which Canada
levies on blank media and some digital equipment.
From Toronto's Globe and Mail:
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/ArticleNews/gtnews/TGAM/20030115/RVM
USI
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gull
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response 33 of 163:
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Jan 17 02:56 UTC 2003 |
So copyright isn't for a 'limited time' after all.
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mcnally
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response 34 of 163:
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Jan 17 03:22 UTC 2003 |
Sure it is. It's "limited" to however long brodcast media conglomerates
can keep buying votes from legislators. Heck, I expect the Mouse to be
liberated any day now..
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other
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response 35 of 163:
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Jan 17 08:10 UTC 2003 |
You mean "any 20 years now."
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dbratman
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response 36 of 163:
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Jan 18 00:21 UTC 2003 |
Somewhere I read a pro-Mouse person saying that their idea of an ideal
copyright term would be "infinity minus one day." That's still
a "limited term," you see.
I am tickled by Lawrence Lessig's observation that the first Mickey
Mouse cartoon was an unauthorized takeoff on a Buster Keaton film that
was released _earlier the same year_. Try doing that to a Disney film
these days and see how fast your empire grows, says Lessig.
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mcnally
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response 37 of 163:
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Jan 18 00:42 UTC 2003 |
"infinity - 1" isn't finite, but I have no doubt that it would nearly
satisfy the copyright lobby.
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gull
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response 38 of 163:
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Jan 18 01:31 UTC 2003 |
The next copyright bill will probably set the length of copyright at maxint
years.
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mcnally
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response 39 of 163:
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Jan 18 02:08 UTC 2003 |
At least it will be "for a limited time".
Out of curiosity, does anyone understand the implications of the US
unilaterally extending copyright terms? The previous extensions probably
haven't been an issue with our Berne Treaty partners because I think they
just brought the U.S. into line with what most of the others were doing
but what happens if the U.S. decides to keep extending and Europe does not?
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other
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response 40 of 163:
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Jan 18 07:14 UTC 2003 |
Economic santions against the EU until they comply. And guerilla market
tactics by the copyright holders to undermine the value and accessibility
of 'unauthorized copies' of the affected works, naturally.
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other
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response 41 of 163:
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Jan 18 07:14 UTC 2003 |
sanction... /cnat
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tsty
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response 42 of 163:
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Jan 18 11:35 UTC 2003 |
the european copyrights were not extended ... LOTS of greate stuff
hitting right now. i thnk it was a pavoratti story about the legit
distributor outright *buying* the bootleg company for total control
of pavoratti recordings.
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remmers
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response 43 of 163:
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Jan 18 12:18 UTC 2003 |
The Disney organziation has benefitted greatly from the public domain
("Snow White", "Cinderella", "Hunchback of Notre Dame", etc. etc.) and
appears not to want to give anything back, ever. Disgusting.
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