Off-topic: more on the death of the music business
By S Simmons. Filed in Internet resources, filmmaking, from the net |
TechCrunch has an article titled “Ian Rogers On The Death Of The Music CD Business: “I Don’t Care.†If you are a music fan who enjoys the convenience of buying music online and really sees online delivery as the future then click over and give this article a read. This Ian Rogers guy hit the nail on the head when he says:
“Continuing to talk about the health of the music industry on these terms is as if we’d all been crying about the dying cassette business in 1995. The difference is that when we moved from cassette to CD the winners were the same (big companies who owned access to cash, distribution, and marketing) and the definition of winning was the same (more units sold for these big companies).”
If that quote intrigues you then read the whole article and say AMEN! The sooner the old-guard, ivory-tower music industry collapses in upon itself the better off we will all be, at least from a consumer standpoint. If you are a signed artist then you might feel differently. It’s amazing to me to read that the artist Joe Purdy paid for a house with proceeds from iTunes. If that’s true then there might be hope for “regular” artists in this digital distribution model.
What we really need for us in the filmmaking world is our own equivalent to iTunes. Yes it’s possible to get indie content on iTunes but it hasn’t broken open for filmmakers the way it has with music. I wonder if any independent filmmakers have been able to even buy dinner off of their profits from Amazon On Demand or Jaman?
Wednesday, November 19th 2008 at 2:34 pm
AMEN!
Wednesday, November 19th 2008 at 2:50 pm
I’m curious, from an indie filmmaker’s perspective, would that iTunes alternative/equivalent include some form of DRM? Is that considered a more acceptable practice in movies vs. music?
Thursday, November 20th 2008 at 8:56 am
Thanks for the find, about to click through.
Its less about having available online distribution channels (iTunes, Amazon O-D etc) and more about having the marketing muscle behind a film or band/artist. Just the fact that its easily available, unfortunately doesn’t make people look for it.
Friday, November 21st 2008 at 2:26 am
If the iTunes store opened up their doors to indie filmmakers, they would be flooded with new content, and most likely the majority of it would be awful. How would Apple separate the wheat from the chaff? It’d be very difficult. And that means that the filmmakers who have something worthwhile to say run the risk of having their voices lost in the crowd. Now, you could argue that a lot of these indies aren’t having their voices heard AT ALL right now, so I guess that would be a slightly better situation. But not much better.
Friday, November 21st 2008 at 6:44 am
True Jon but don’t they have that same issue with all the chaff music out there too? Or at least some of these independent services have to do that. There’s no reason the same thing couldn’t happen with indie film.