A few days ago, it was announced that the Orange County Register will be outsourcing some of their editing to India. This, of course, is one of the dumbest things a newspaper has done in a while. (Outsource editing of the English language to a non-English speaking mass of people?) But beyond that, it is an example of how truly the newspaper industry just doesn’t understand new media. The Orange County Register, of all papers, should be best poised to make good in this new economy, but as we can see, this is not what is happening.
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If you haven’t checked out Redbox, I recommend you do so. The idea is pretty simple — they have a kiosk, usually inside of a grocery store, that stocks some of the more recent DVD release films. You stick your credit card in, movie automatically comes out. The real kicker is the price — you get to keep the movie until 9pm the next day for only one dollar.
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Everyone loves to talk about the death and the demise of record companies, as if they’re all going to curl up and die today, returning the power back to the artist. Personally, I think this is a load of crap. While certainly the record industry is in decline and huge changes to be made, none of those changes will involve the death of all the major record labels. There are, however, some interesting possibilities for the future of the industry, and I will present one of my theories for you now.
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In a totally predictable but vague article, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. says that the music video is dead, and that while he is not entirely certain what the future of music marketing is, he’s putting a lot of stock into the internet. This is hardly a surprise, given that Ethan (who is very close with the band) and the gang over at WBR have been working very hard over the past few years to increasingly market their artists on the internet, with R.E.M. often being the first out of the gate. But are music videos really dead?
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Despite my relatively positive opinion on eMusic, I have cancelled my membership. It’s not that the service wasn’t good, but rather, it is unnecessary. The biggest problem is that it is not a strong enough store on its own to replace iTunes or Amazon, and at the same time, it does not really complement either of them very well, either.
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Posted by Daniel on June 20th, 2008 in Random | 3 Comments »
Earlier today when deleting old domains and such on my server, I accidentally deleted this blog in its entirety. I also did not figure this out until about an hour ago. Nevertheless, it is back up and running now. But since I had no backups, it was completely rebuilt, i.e. some links may have changed. I’m setting up automatic backups on the server as we speak, and nothing like this should ever happen again. My apologies for the downtime and the inconvenience.
Apple has announced that the iTunes Store has surpassed five billion legal song downloads. This is pretty cool, but hardly a surprise, since iTunes has been the top music retailer in the country since April, even amongst brick and mortar retailers. Regardless, this is still extremely awesome. I pretty much use iTunes exclusively for music purchases unless what I am looking for is not available. How about you?
Everyone’s favorite1 burger joint is getting some interesting publicity today. First it was the guy who lost 80 pounds eating nothing but McDonald’s, but now it’s something a little more related to new media. McDonald’s is holding a public contest to write the jingle for their next television commercial. According to the website, there’s really no rules other than the inclusion of the following Grammy-winning lyrics: Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame seed bun.
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So apparently EMI announced that they’re going to be releasing several albums on vinyl on August 19th of this year, including stuff by Radiohead, Coldplay, the Beach Boys and John Lennon. Indie kids everywhere are rejoicing (or are complaining that EMI is simply trying to earn a few bucks for the shareholders) whereas some analysts wonder if this is a good decision financially. There’s talk of vinyl being “brought back” in a time where physical media seems to be going away… but the truth is a lot more simple than this. Ready for it?
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Posted by Daniel on June 15th, 2008 in Random | No Comments »
I have renamed this blog New Media Economist. It just makes sense to talk about the entertainment industry as a whole, rather than keeping a whole other blog about the film industry. So enjoy, as this will also likely mean more content, more often.