Movie industry hits ticket sales decline on the nose: It’s put out some stinkers<\/a><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nBusiness is off twenty percent.\u00c2\u00a0 Let me repeat that, 20%.\u00c2\u00a0 Weren’t movies supposed to be recession-proof?\u00c2\u00a0 Weren’t economically challenged consumers supposed to seek refuge in low-priced entertainment at the cinema?<\/p>\n
Your retort, of course, is that films are no longer cheap.\u00c2\u00a0 Especially those in 3-D.\u00c2\u00a0 Still, everybody in the industry agrees there’s one true problem.\u00c2\u00a0 The movies suck.\u00c2\u00a0 They’re shitty.\u00c2\u00a0 People don’t want to see them.<\/p>\n
The film industry has lost track of its primary mission.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is to tell stories.\u00c2\u00a0 Special effects are superfluous.\u00c2\u00a0 Too many directors focus on image when it’s truly all about the tale.\u00c2\u00a0 Every few years a blockbuster emerges from the fringe, that costs almost nothing to produce.\u00c2\u00a0 And the real reason these flicks triumph is story.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s like trying to sell music without songs.\u00c2\u00a0 Whoops, we’re doing that, have you listened to the Top Forty?\u00c2\u00a0 Ever try to sing along?\u00c2\u00a0 Good luck!<\/p>\n
People need food.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t need movies or music.\u00c2\u00a0 They can keep their wallets closed.\u00c2\u00a0 The challenge is to create something so compelling that people need to go, price ends up being secondary.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, if price were such a big factor no one would overpay a broker or purchase tickets on StubHub, they’d have almost no reason to exist!<\/p>\n
And Apple wrote the book on charging a premium for desirable product.\u00c2\u00a0 The key is "desirable", not "cost".<\/p>\n
You can lose the habit of going to the movies, you can lose the habit of going to the show\/concert.\u00c2\u00a0 The reason I no longer go to the movies is not the cost, but the time…wasted.\u00c2\u00a0 I end up leaving the theatre wanting my two hours back. That’s more important than the money.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t go unless the film is a slam dunk.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve got better things to do to entertain myself, I’ve got a plethora of options.\u00c2\u00a0 Something’s got to be really damn good, really damn interesting to get me to bite.<\/p>\n
In order to get people to go to shows a couple of times a month, hell, once a month, focus must be placed primarily on quality, that’s more important than cost.\u00c2\u00a0 Open the newspaper, go on Ticketmaster, how many shows do you find that are truly must-see?<\/p>\n
I know it’s hard, with the barrier to entry in music so low.\u00c2\u00a0 But with the laser sharp focus on money there’s been an abandonment of quality.\u00c2\u00a0 Both movies and music used to focus on promoting quality.\u00c2\u00a0 Sure, the blockbusters paid for the artistes, but now the marketers are not interested in the artistes, the major studios have closed their specialty divisions and major labels won’t sign anything that can’t get on Top Forty radio, unless you’ve got a touring base and are stupid enough to make a deal with the devil under the illusion you’ll make more money, which is patently untrue.<\/p>\n
What’s Apple’s motto?\u00c2\u00a0 It makes INSANELY GREAT products?\u00c2\u00a0 Look at the chart, is Katy Perry INSANELY GREAT? Then why do you expect everybody to pay attention?\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, Cee-Lo’s "F**k You (Forget You)" is not insanely great, it’s just a novelty song with a bad word.\u00c2\u00a0 And the Black Eyed Peas…\u00c2\u00a0 Come on!<\/p>\n
And something insanely great knows no boundaries.\u00c2\u00a0 Rockers will buy R&B if it’s insanely great.\u00c2\u00a0 And vice versa. That’s the essence of Prince.\u00c2\u00a0 Black guy plays insanely great music that straddles rock and soul and EVERYBODY is interested!\u00c2\u00a0 Or at least they were when he was still putting gems down on wax.\u00c2\u00a0 But they’ll still go to the show, because he’s insanely great there.<\/p>\n
We’re living in a sea of mediocrity.<\/p>\n
At least they’re owning up to it in the movie business.<\/p>\n
But we’re still living in a land of ignorance in the music business.\u00c2\u00a0 When is everybody going to agree that most music is substandard, that we’ve got very little greatness, that if we had more the business would be a hell of a lot healthier?<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been threatening to cancel the L.A. "Times", but as a reader e-mailed me, the problem is you can only do it once. It’s so thin, and compared to the "New York Times" and "Wall Street Journal" it’s a narrow picture of the world absent so much as to make one wonder if readers end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-12C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4007,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4006\/revisions\/4007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}