The recording industry needs stars


And that means more than someone who looks good
Dirty Harry at libertas has a different take on the Rolling Stone piece I talked about a few days ago. Emphasis added.

The entertainment industry — recording or otherwise — needs Stars. A couple of Van Halens and the recording industry could turn around. Hell, if the music industry would just stop with these dark, arty, angry, political, socially conscious, thoughtful types and aim for a little joy, that sure wouldn’t hurt. When’s the last time you turned on MTV or VH1 and tapped your toes?

So, why write about this on a film website? Because piracy is rampant and everywhere. For a mere five dollars, any soon-to-be released movie can be purchased as a bootleg from an illegal alien in the Circuit City parking lot two miles from my house. Or, The Hot Little Number I Call Mrs. Harry can bring it home from work for the same price. But I don’t buy them because the quality sucks. Not the bootleg quality — the movie itself. I’m not wasting five dollars on another lousy Hollywood movie.

In other words, it’s easy to blame piracy. It’s easy to pout and jut out the lower lip, and blame everything but the product itself. The collapse of the recording industry could be the best thing that ever happened to music fans, because this insane practice of pulling Mouseketeer ears off tots, over-producing, and hyper-sexualizing them will no longer be profitable. Stars will have to work their way up appealing to and building fan bases the way they’re supposed to; in coffee houses, gin joints, and on the college circuit.

Hollywood has the exact same Star Problem the recording industry does, and when the movie-pirating technology catches up to the recording industry, films will face the same business model crisis. But nothing can stop that. The pirates will never go away. In my day pirates snuck cassette recorders into live concerts. In the 1920’s pirates hand-copied sheet music. Stopping piracy is like trying to stop the tide. It can’t be done. But you can swamp the pirates with a phenomenon.

No pirate could take away the profitablity of an Eddie Murphy, Harrison Ford, Stallone, or Schwarzenegger in their day. Seeing their films was an event. Today the stars are no longer the events, the films are. Does anyone really care about Tobey, Johnny, Matt, or George outside of their snug franchises? And even the films are getting stale as they enter the threequel stage, disappointing audiences already generously prepared to be somewhat disappointed.

Piracy is to the entertainment business what shoplifting is to Wal-Mart: It’s part of the price of doing business. There’s enough honest people out there for Wal-Mart to make a very nice profit, and Wal-Mart knows how to appeal to them. The danger to the entertainment industry isn’t pirates; the danger is in not making an appealing enough product to overcome the profits lost to pirates.

Although my tastes have changed, they haven't changed that much. There just isn't that much that is original in either modern music or modern films. That is why the profit is falling. Yes, customers will respond to something they already know (IF they aren't buried in it), but they will respond more to well crafted originality. The first Rocky was a pretty good film, but by Rocky III Stallone was phoning in the lines. Look at what has been playing in the theatre this summer. Shrek The Third? Evan Almighty? Nancy Drew? Hardly original stuff here.

You have to take risks with the content. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - July 1, 2007 at 01:37 PM  Tag


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