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A History of the Ricky Gervais Show

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As these things go, I’m a relative latecomer to the podcasts of The Ricky Gervais Show: I only got ’round to listening to them a couple of weeks ago. Better still, I came into it totally cold, not knowing what to expect, and I was instantly hooked on the mad ramblings of Karl Pilkington.  So much so, that as a matter of fact, I have no issues with paying for the podcasts of the second season.

It totally passes my Blackjack test:  do I anticipate getting more pleasure out of this than playing a single hand of Blackjack?  And in this case, the answer is a resounding “yes.” To be fair, Ricky was on Letterman last week, and explained that they are charging for this season to recoup the hosting and bandwidth costs for all of the downloads.

However, for those of you who don’t want to pay for your monkeynews, or you want to see to find out what the buzz is all about  prior to  paying — it looks like the Podcast Series  1 archive will also cost $5 to grab in one fell swoop — I’ve discovered a secret online stash of dozens of episodes of The Ricky Gervais Show.

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Major Labels Colluding? Same As it Ever Was

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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.

 

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The Return of the Mix Tape

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Whether you like it or not, you’re going to be hearing a lot about social networking this year. For a supposedly lonely place, the Web has a lot of ways to bring humans together. With very little effort, you can find a like-minded soul. . .or at least someone who shares your feelings and took the time to create a playlist to reflect them.

As noted in the Washington Post, song-sharing (not to be confused with file sharing) is poised to change the music industry:

IMixes — as well as playlists on other services such as Rhapsody, Musicstrands and Soundflavor — are the online cousins of amateur cassette-tape and CD mixes created over the years by countless music collectors as soundtracks for parties and road trips. Many of the playlists focus on a theme — and many of those on a personal one, whether the subject is a lost love, a class reunion, a nasty breakup, duty in Iraq or a new romance.

Consumers don’t trust radio programmers. Not enough variety, not enough information. Station playlists are too limited and decisions about what gets played and what doesn’t get played is subjected to a pseudo-science that seems almost random (for a great example of this, check out Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink for a story about an artist named Kenna).

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“I heard that we’ve sold over a million downloads”

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That, my friends, is a million downloads of a television show — the U.S. version of The Office, which in its second season, has come into its own, both critically and commercially.

It’s always great when quality and popularity intersect, especially when they intersect in a show that nobody really gave a chance to succeed. So how did the U.S. version of The Office get to be so great? In a long interview with Television Without Pity’s co-founder Wing Chun, writer and actor B.J. Novak (he plays Ryan, the temp) holds forth on such topics as:

  • Living in the shadow of the Ricky Gervais version
  • All of those downloads.
  • Improvisation on the set.
  • Michael’s man-crush on Ryan.
  • Why their move to Thursday nights makes sense.

Nothing, alas, on the Prism Durosport. Nevertheless, from my standpoint, it’s beginning to look like The Office is going to end up being the greatest cover version of a stone-cold classic since Husker Du’s “Eight Miles High.”

Does TV Want to be Free?

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The L.A Times has an article today pointing out that TV execs are having a devil of a time convincing people that when they download a television show from, say, BitTorrent, that they are stealing that show.  In a weird way, it’s a problem that the TV industry created itself: for over a half-century, we’ve been told that, unlike a song, or a film, or a book, or a videogame — that show you are watching is free. 

You the consumer aren’t paying for it, but rather the advertiser(s) who sponsoring that show, hoping to get you to purchase their product(s).  My guess is that this is a model that is rapidly becoming outdated, and we are lurching toward a totally new era, where how we consume TV will be more like how we consume other media products. 

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Apple’s Digital Convergence Strategy Comes Into Focus

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“It took McDonalds 8 years to sell a billion burgers”
– Steve Jobs on the success of iTunes

It’s hard to say exactly what the folks at Apple were thinking when they promoted today’s special event as the announcement of some “fun” new products. For weeks I’ve been convinced that Apple was on the verge of announcing an extension to the current line of iPod socks. Cashmere, perhaps.

For any other computer company todays announcements would be minor at best. Hardly worthy of a special event drawing international media attention, not to mention dozens of live bloggers dutifully typing every word Steve Jobs uttered (has any executive ever had a larger pool of personal stenographers?).
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1 Billion Served, Another Billion Imminent

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As promised, Medialoper team coverage of the 1 billionth iTune sold continues. Today, we look at the economics of the iTunes store. Conventional wisdom suggests that margins on the songs are so low that the real moneymaker for Apple in its iTunes experiment is the iPod.

That, of course, suggests that making money on volume is quaint concept. Apple is selling approximately three million songs a day, meaning the second billion will be reached much faster than the first billion. Unless things go horribly wrong, the third billion will be even faster. 83% of legally downloadable music is sold via the iTunes music store.

Let’s pause for a moment and ask the first obvious question: why in the world would anyone not be cutting a deal with Apple right now? Why would anyone be putting all their eggs in Microsoft’s basket? Yes, two questions. If you want to sell your music on the Internet, wouldn’t it be smart to go where the money is? You don’t have to be exclusive — make deals with everyone — but be smart.

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An iTunes Killer From Amazon?

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Anxious to find a business model where free shipping won’t cut into its profits, Amazon is reportedly working on a digital music service that could debut as early as this spring.

Insiders say the online retailer is “in advanced talks” with the four major labels. You will recall that the labels have been unhappy with iTunes standard pricing for some time now. The fact that Steve Jobs frequently calls them “greedy” hasn’t helped much either. As a group, the major labels aren’t much for an honest appraisal of their shortcomings.

The service will apparently be based around a low priced, Amazon branded, mp3 player. Early reports don’t address the issue of DRM, but it’s almost certain that an Amazon music store would likely use Microsoft DRM to protect songs.

In order for Amazon to succeed where others have failed, the new music store will need to offer the following:

  • Music that plays on an iPod
  • Reasonable pricing
  • Seamless end-to-end integration between the music store, the user’s computer, and the portable player
  • DRM that is minimally invasive and allows consumers the opportunity to burn CD’s and listen to tracks on a range of devices

Can Amazon pull it off? I think it’s unlikely, and here’s why:

The fact that Amazon is actively talking with all of the major labels is being seen as a major advantage for the company. I beg to differ on this point. It could actually be one of Amazon’s biggest weaknesses in this new venture. Let the record labels start meddling in any new online music venture and it’s likely the resulting service will be anything but what consumers are actually looking for.

I’m also skeptical that Amazon can deliver a user experience to rival iTunes. The Amazon shopping experience is looking more dated by the day and Amazon’s forays into Web 2.0 have only been minimally successful. I doubt that the team of new programmers the company has hired over the last year will have a substantial impact on the underlying cruftyness of almost everything Amazon does.

Then there’s the DRM issue. The Amazon’s hardware will have to be pretty amazing to encourage tens of millions of iPod users to swap their devices for an Amazon player. Not only that, but the major labels will have to be generous enough with their DRM policy that users have the same control over their music collections as they do with iTunes purchased music.

It looks like the only area where Amazon may be able to compete is on pricing, and even then only if they’re willing to give the player away for practically nothing.