News Update
iTunes Variable Pricing
The people bitching loudest about the price increase are those who don’t buy at all. If you’re savvy enough to be following the online scuttlebutt, you’re savvy enough to steal.
The future of selling music is not track by track on iTunes, or any other site. It’s something akin to a subscription, getting everything for one low price and paying rights holders based on the number of listens.
Yes, I agree this is a stupid move, with potential short term gains and long term consequences, but isn’t this what the major labels specialize in?
It would be logical to drop prices, dramatically. Especially in light of the recession. But labels would rather be an exotic resource than an everyman provider, Ferrari as opposed to Toyota. Until you get everybody partaking at a low price, you can never achieve scale.
Beatles CD Remasters
What’s next, Beatle ringles? Chrome cassettes?
It’s hard to believe that the Beatles used to be first, paving the way for other artists. Now they’re so far behind the curve as to be laughable. Sure, I’d like to hear the new product, there will be a revenue-generating event, but Sony should have licensed Beatle albums for the introduction of SACD. Just like Sirius overpaid Howard Stern to avoid bankruptcy (you may have forgotten that Sirius was fading before it hired the King Of All Media, ultimately, Sirius purchased XM).
The Beatles should sell these same remastered files in a lossless format online. The Beatles should be the act selling subscriptions at the iTunes Store. The Beatles can lead, they’re the number one brand in popular music, but so afraid of fucking up their reputation, they’ve become followers. Not only does it tarnish the brand, it doesn’t generate enough revenue.
Eminem
Perez had this to say:
"’We Made You’ is not a great song. It’s not a bad song. It’s thoroughly average."
I’m on the same page, but I wouldn’t be quite this charitable. It appears more effort was put into the video than the song.
But that’s nineties thinking. For a nineties paradigm. Wherein MTV banged product and it sold. Now, once again, it’s about what goes into the ears, not the eyes.
Sure, there’s shock value with the Sarah Palin reference in the video, but do you really want to hear this song again?
Eminem will debut number one. Every newspaper will write about the album. But sales will be a fraction of what they were for the "Marshall Mathers" and "Eminem Show" records and will probably drop precipitously.
Hip-hop broke by being timely, by stating an ongoing truth. Eminem should be dropping a track every other month, commenting on what’s going on today. Sarah Palin? What about the recession, what about Geithner, what about GM?
A sideshow.
View the video here: Eminem – We Made You
Schumer Anti-Scalping Bill
A little birdie told me that at some arena shows, as few as 3,000 tickets are available to the general public when the concert finally goes on sale. How in hell is Schumer’s plan going to solve this problem?
You’ve got the holdbacks for the act, the building, the promoter, the fan club pre-sale, the AmEx pre-sale…
No, concert ticket availability will only be solved by a market solution. Acts have to auction off tickets for fair market value. It’s the only hope. Sure, you can print names on tickets or do paper-less ticketing requiring I.D., but scalpers can beat every system. That doesn’t mean you don’t try, but if your act is in such hot demand, chances are fans are willing to pay handsomely to see you. Where is it written that fans are poor? That they must be charged the least to get in the building? As for fat cats buying expensive tickets…there are fewer of these each and every day. If Schumer really wanted to solve the problem, he’d address income inequality, but then that would offend his big donors.
Asshole.
Congress should not delve into spheres it doesn’t understand.
The problem in the concert sphere is not ticket scalping, but the low overall demand for shows. In other words, the lack of creation of stars people want to see on a large scale. Indict Jimmy Iovine, not Irving Azoff. Who’s laughing all the way to a Ticketmaster/Live Nation merger here. Schumer is so clueless as to be beaten before the game begins. Never ever believe you’re so savvy as to be able to triumph over someone who’s spent their whole life doing something. It’s one thing if they’re breaking the law, crack down upon them. But to legislate business changes? Come on.
Peter Bart
I guess this is the end. We live in a 24 hour news cycle. No one needs "Variety" plopped down on their desk first thing in the morning. They’ve already read all the news online the night before.
Did you read the transcript of that guy’s SXSW speech? Wherein he stated how much better things were today, when he could get tons of Apple news as opposed to buying "Macworld" the day it came out and getting months old info? Very insightful:
Sun
You’ve got to know when to hold ’em and know when to fold ’em.
Give Richard Parsons credit. He sold Warner Music for too little, but he avoided the headaches of a declining business thereafter.
Did Sun not see what happened when Yahoo spurned Microsoft’s offer? Sun’s stock tumbled 23% after it decided not to merge with IBM. Can you tell me what’s going to bring Sun’s stock back up? For the life of me, I can’t see what helps this declining company’s stock.
Stop overvaluing your assets based on legacy value, what they were worth a time long ago. Like the value of music. Just because a single was a buck decades ago, that doesn’t mean people should pay more today. A single just doesn’t have the same value. And the more you raise the price, the more you discourage people from buying additional tracks and the more you encourage stealing.
Wouldn’t you have loved to have cashed out of the stock market a year ago? What makes you think the assets on your company’s books are immune to a plunge in value?
