downloads

Why Gene Simmons Hates You

June 23, 2008 by Jim Connelly

You know what, music fans? You suck. You know how I know that? Because Gene Simmons thinks that you killed the record industry.

Look, when I was your age, a band like KISS would come out with an album, and it would get played on the radio, and then you would ride my bike down to Tower Records and buy the album.

Multiply that action by millions of kids — an army! — and boom! the guys in KISS were zillionaires. Just like that. It was all so simple. It didn’t even matter of those albums were mostly singles and filler, because that’s how the game was played.

And nobody ever played it better than KISS, who were — all things considered — an OK hard rock pop band with a handful of undeniable songs, but not all-time-greats. Not musically.

As marketers, however, they were the best ever. Not even Madonna comes close to the sheer marketing chops that KISS showed from day one. Until, that is, the market changed.

Why Steve Jobs Pre-announced Apple’s iTV Product

September 12, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Of all of the product announcements made during today’s Apple event, the most surprising, by far, was the pre-announcement of a new set-top box. Code named iTV, the box will use standard wireless networking to feed iTunes content to any home entertainment center. The device is scheduled to come out in the first quarter of 2007.

Does anyone remember the last time Apple pre-announced a new product this far in advance? What happened to the legendary Apple secrecy? A huge part of Apple’s mystic is built around the intense reaction the press has to the unveiling of unexpected new products. That coverage usually drives customers to jump on the bandwagon and buy the latest Apple products immediately. By previewing iTV this far in advance Apple risks losing both the buzz and consumer interest during the months leading up to its release. Worse yet, iTV won’t be available for the holiday shopping season.

Debunking A Few Amazon Unbox Myths

September 10, 2006 by Kirk Biglione

Last week Amazon launched Unbox, its long rumored video download service. In the days since its unveiling Unbox has attracted a storm of media coverage – a surprising amount of which has been misinformed and misleading. As a service to Medialoper’s readers, we will now attempt to debunk a few of the most persistent myths surrounding Amazon Unbox:

CinemaNow Steps Up (A Little)

July 19, 2006 by Jim Connelly

A couple of days ago, I discussed the announcement by the film download service Movielink that they had licensed software to allow downloaded films to be burnt to DVD. Of course, there was still the tiny little hurdle of getting the studios to go along with their plan. Maybe by the end of the year.

Enter CinemaNow. They announced yesterday that they have not only licensed DVD-burning software and gotten a studios to take a flyer on the concept, but they have actually started offering the service. Naturally, there are issues.

Movielink Steps Up (A Little)

July 17, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Some good news for those who are interested in legally downloading film: Movielink, one of the major services originally created to sell movie downloads, is going to allow consumers to burn their downloads to DVD.

Will this be the magic steriod that will kickstart the mostly-ignored film downloading service? Probably not, but it is a start.

Fools Go Forth: Digital Distribution And Artist Compensation

July 13, 2006 by Kassia Krozser

It is no secret that most entertainment companies are inefficient businesses — they spend far too much and save far too little. Nothing exposes this inefficiency like digital distribution. Even better — nothing exposes the inequities in artist compensation like digital distribution.

Artist royalties are calculated based on a contractual formula. Depending on your agreement, you might get a percentage of net revenue that takes the sales price less returns, bad debt that sort of thing. Or a percentage of net revenue that factors in certain costs like product manufacturing, mastering, freight, whatnot. The deals differ across industries, but, interestingly, when you look at how book royalties, music royalties, and home entertainment, formerly video, royalties are calculated, they are remarkably similar. Motion picture participations (video royalties are a subset of this) have additional complexities that I won’t cover here.

Are Downloads Licensed Music or Traditional Record Sales?

June 23, 2006 by Jim Connelly

According to at least one major label, they are both!! It just depends on whether you’re an artist or a consumer . . .

I know that it’s old news that Cheap Trick and the Allman Brothers are suing Sony over download royalties: a while back, Kassia did an excellent analysis on it.

The other day, however, I came across a posting on P2Pnet.net (love that name!) that discussed this very topic. The posting had an excerpt from an article in the Internationl Herald Tribune that reminded me just how two-faced the record companies really are when it comes to this issue, and why you have to take it with a grain of salt when they say that they’re (all together now) “just trying to protect the artists” with their draconian download restrictions.

Number 3 With A Pound Key

April 11, 2006 by Jim Connelly

In what is nearly the polar opposite of U.S. record labels trying to goose album sales by not releasing singles for downloads, the U.K. music industry is releasing a cell-phone only single.

That’s right: a cell-phone only single. “Stop Me,” by Planet Funk. Can anybody say “Publicity Stunt”??

Labels Make Another Dumb-Ass Move

March 10, 2006 by Jim Connelly

According to the New York Times, in a desperate attempt to goose CD sales, major labels are considering stepping back a decade, and experimenting with the concept of not releasing advance single downloads from upcoming albums.

So just as iTunes hits it’s billionth download; and it’s clear that people are embracing downloading as a viable option the major labels decide, welllll, that ain’t good enough.

Major Labels Colluding? Same As it Ever Was

March 3, 2006 by Jim Connelly

Have you ever wondered why it costs roughly the same for you to purchase a CD of, say, Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde — an universally acknolwedged classic of 75 minutes of sublime music, and Bob Dylan’s Down in the Groove — a universally acknowedged piece of crap that barely breaks a half-hour? As a music fan, of course, you’ve probably come to expect that all albums, then CDs, then downloads all cost pretty much the same. It’s just that some enrich your life forever and others get you maybe a buck and for sure a snide look from the guy at the used CD counter.

In a lot of ways, this pricing is kind of like paying the same amount of money for a McDonald’s hamburger and a Prime porterhouse at Morton’s. Only in entertainment do we risk essentially the same money for such wildly varying degrees of pleasure. Part of that is wrapped up in our understanding of art: not even the greatest are great every time out — and of course, to be fair, even Down in the Groove no doubt has its defenders — but part of that is wrapped up in the methods of those who control the distribution.

In this case, that would be the major labels — these days they are configured as such: SonyBMG, Universal, EMI, and Warner — in the past, configured differently, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is, no matter how they are configured, from the consumer standpoint they’ve artificially set the prices to be the same, regardless of quality, regardless of manufacture cost, regardless of length (except that a 80-minute double-CD could be sold for twice as much as a 78-minute single CD), regardless of just about anything. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end amen.