The future of the entertainment industry

[shamann]

For the foreseeable future (say next 10-20 years at least), I don't see that much of a change coming, though I wish it would.

Here's why:

The entertainment industry no longer is a separate entity from any other industry. Sure a lot of the day to day gets handled by people who aren't from other business strains, but we're talking about massive, multidivisional public corporations here. The money all comes for the same place, the industry is dominated by lawyers and accountants, the end result is no differrent than food delivery or oil.

Each major point is controlled by the same massive corporations: ticket sales dominated by Ticketmaster owned by IAC; TV glitz dominated Viacom and Disney et al; music dominated by Sony, Universal, etc; video games dominated by Sony, Microsoft; computers/gear dominated by Microsoft, Sony; film dominated by Sony, Universal, etc. Radio controlled by Clear Channel, etc. And so on.

From start to finish, these companies control everything, fuelled by stock prices and consolidated revenue streams, not necessarily from sales of specific product. If the movie fails at the theatrer, just repackage it for DVD and say its great, enough people will watch.

All these p2p lawsuits are just fanciful marketing. Make no mistake, they are not concerned with lossed sales, but rather market control and visibility. They want you to believe that every day matters, it's easier to sell a lifestyle to you that way. If every person realized it's all just the same, day in day out, trouble would maybe start a-brewing. Fat chance for that, too many f**kers desparate to suck at the teet of oppression.

The only way to see substantial change will be major collapse. That'll happen, but it always takes time, longer than we have I'm sure. There will be surface changes, say the demise of major independent recording studios or freelance producers or whatever. Maybe less opportunity to sell at an indy level because of more free stuff. But that's just surface stuff.

There will always be the rest of us, those outside the mainstream who find alternate ways of getting by, but we aren't centralized, and we don't hold nearly as much power as we sometimes pretend, and we'll always be outnumbered by the great dumbening. Look at recent p2p threads here. Some people are actually hoodwinked enough to act as though the legalities of copyright should in fact dictate personal morality. Just because we abide by the state's rules shouldn't mean that we agree with them as a matter of course. We do it to avoid running afoul of the state, because what a f**king hassle that can be.

[stefancrs]

stefancrs quoth Atleast I hope that todays copyright laws gets thrown out. As I see it, the only thing the copyright really should say is "you can not make money on this without the authors given permission". That would be just beautiful.

Copyright is what would allow you to enforce that. It is exactly what allows the creator of a copyrighted work to define what you can and cannot do with their work. There's a big difference; what you're actually talking about is a change in the 'default license' of copyright, ie instead of it being 'no unauthorised redistribution' you want 'no unauthorised profit from redistribution'. That can easily be catered for within current copyright law; the Creative Commons has such licenses.

Yeah, but what I meant is that the law should not allow such licenses, unlike it does today. I know you can give away stuff for free today if you like to.

Btw, you cannot download any text I've written without my permissiun.


Such a license for instance would be plain bollocks, yet, that is what we're heading for atm.

[chagzuki]

Xoxos is right about the death thing. Climate change is happening and we're all f**ked. So I guess Bush et al will be plugging themselves into 4D, surround sound sniffomatic entertainment systems in their luxury appartments on mars whilst everyone else will have the sensory experience of starving / drowning / overheating etc to death.

[The O'Neil Twins]

I knew I should have only asked for opinions regarding Calc II...

My apologies for my lack of foresight and adding fuel to this fire Is there any way I can change the author of this thread? ..... I kind of don't want my name associated with flame bait anymore

Still, my thanks to all the responses.

[stefancrs]

Chagzuki, let's see how the oil crash goes first, ok?

[onyxashanti]

i wouldn't worry too much.

we are all simply adding our life expeiriences to to that huge database that is the internet which WILL, without a doubt, become sentient and possess the knowledge and experience of all human history, rendering US obsolete. our individual lives are for our own amusement...the things we do and the songs we write, merely a back corner synapse in the mind of the child we are birthing as we speak.

hmmmm...

[The O'Neil Twins]

i wouldn't worry too much.

we are all simply adding our life expeiriences to to that huge database that is the internet which WILL, without a doubt, become sentient and possess the knowledge and experience of all human history, rendering US obsolete. our individual lives are for our own amusement...the things we do and the songs we write, merely a back corner synapse in the mind of the child we are birthing as we speak.

hmmmm...

T4: Rise of The Internet

Thanks though for your sympathy.

Btw, could you guys explain the necessity of the Taylor series in Calc?

[kilroy]

As I see it, the only thing the copyright really should say is "you can not make money on this without the authors given permission".

Or how about simply...

"You can not make money on this...neither could I."

[kilroy]

Xoxos is right about the death thing. Climate change is happening and we're all f**ked. So I guess Bush et al will be plugging themselves into 4D, surround sound sniffomatic entertainment systems in their luxury appartments on mars whilst everyone else will have the sensory experience of starving / drowning / overheating etc to death.

Soooo...in other words, there will be plenty of stimulating fodder for song writing.

[Lawnmower Of The Damned]

My stance on the topic is that we will eventually see the middle men being cut out, namely; the record industry. Musicians make music, record labels print it on peices of plastic, shipping companies haul the pieces of plastic to their destination, malls charge rent on the stores carrying these pieces of plastic, and the retailers sell the pieces of plastic to you. By the time all the middlemen have taken their cut, you have just paid $22 for a CD at your local mall's overpriced music store. When all is said and done, the musician will recieve a few pennies, and the rest will go to the record label, the shipping company, the mall owner and the retailer.

As Douglas Adams once noted, most of the revolutions happening now are not adding something to the experience, but removing something. Here's nice, 21st century version: Musician makes music, Musician uploads music to online service, consumer downloads music and prints it on pieces of plastic. With no middle men getting in the way, you end up paying whatever the musician considers fair. Even if we say $5 for the album then that will end up being $5 in the musician's pocket, instead of $0.50 at the end of the food chain.

Obviously there would be a cost for maintaining the servers, and paying for the bandwidth, but with millions of people buying their music through it an efficient system could be profitable with only a few cents "tax" on each purchase.

We already have the technology. We have lossless audio formats that are only a tiny bit larger than .mp3 files, we have internet connections that can download albums in just a few minutes, and we have cd burners and USB and Firewire connections that can copy that music onto a CD or digital media player in a matter of minutes.

Yes, I know we have legal .mp3 download services, but they are filled with profiteering corperate swine.

Why pay $1 per song with the musician still only getting their nickel at the end of the day while the rest goes into an innefficient anachronism when we can pay less while giving more to the musician?

That's my opinion, anyway.

[toine6]

Thing is... how does Joe Smoe Unheardof get people to know who he is?

There's a lot of great unknown artists out there. It seems the industry, as it is now, does a good job of shoving certain music down everyone's throats, some of it I like and wouldn't have known about otherwise, even if I do find my share of decent artists on my own. Yet the average consumer needs tabloid gossip, media hype etc. in order to make their decisions. How does one do that by thereself?

You don't need the record industry to make your album anymore, but you do need someway to advertise it to the masses. I think that's the trick. Otherwise, you only end up reaching a small group of likeminded internet groupies, and that doesn't pay too many bills or gain much recognition, if that's what your looking for.

[stefancrs]

Toine6: You haven't noticed how fast interesting or funny stuff spreads on the internet?

[toine6]

I mean some of it does, I've been sent the same rehashed blonde jokes or whatever many times, but I don't see too much interesting stuff spreading to everyone, there's a few things "Badgers, Badgers, Badgers" etc., but I've also seen some real cool stuff that hardly anyone else every will. I'm constantly on the internet, and I sorta see your point but I'm still unconvinced. There's 100,000's of artists out there on the internet and I've only listened to an almost invisible number of it. There's a lot of mediocre stuff out there, I don't have time to explore 24 hours a day to find the best stuff. At least the record industry (used to) pick out the better quality talent for me. Queen, Beatles, Michael Jackson or whatever. Would Led Zepplin have become as big if they were internet only, how would you have ever found them?

I'm not saying the internet can't be used as a marketing tool, but I'm not too convinced so far that it works for most people. I don't know of any Aphex Twin or whoever that lives only on the internet, if there is such a person out there, they likely remain small and fairly unknown.

I'm rooting for the internet to work and have been supporting internet artists almost exclusively. I enjoy Vast, who has goine almost entirely internet exclusive, but whom I would have never heard or known of had they not released two albums on a major label, with press, marketing, and MTV. They still have a small following but I think they'd still be rather obscure if they hadn't gotten the exposure that a major label provided the way they did.

[stefancrs]

Well, if most people actually already listened to internet based musicians, no doubt they would send links to the more intestering ones to their friends. Two internet musicians I really appriciate:
http://www.scene.org:8080/~radix/mosaik/index.php (the rymdlego ones are my favs)
http://www.sushibrother.se/

They exist. They have lots of listeners. It's just that it's not your or your friends

[ford442]

the future of entertainment is upon us!

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=s ... y_brain_dc