....LMB: "Disintegration"....

August 03, 2004

After the big prehistoric killer asteroid hit the Earth, I imagine those first mammals said to themselves "it's getting pretty cold out. Good thing I've got this warm fur coat and a hibernation instinct." And the last dinosaurs were saying "it's getting pretty cold out. I'm... going to eat some leaves." Had they the brain pan, opposable digits, or tool-making skills, that same dinosaur might've said "I've got to make a shelter or a winter coat or something," and survived.

I feel that today's big media industries are like those dinosaurs. I'm not trying to pull some kind of hipper-than-thou, techno-manic attitude, that these businesses don't understand "the digital revolution" or some shit. I'm saying that these industries are working on business models that're decades old, and due to changes in society and technology, might not be viable any more.

I've written several articles where I talk about the music industry's violently stubborn refusal to accept change. Since probably the 1950s, the recording industry has depended upon the fact that mass-producing recorded music is so expensive that all musicians needed a corporate sugar daddy to survive. But now you can record an album on a friend's computer for cheap, burn CD copies for cheaper, and transfer the songs over the internet for free. As we know, the record industry has made little-to-no effort to adapt to its new circumstances; instead, it has tried to sue and intimidate people into pretending that it's 1950 again.

I found an odd example of both the changing music enviroment and the effects of the RIAA's backlash in this article. Brothers Alan and Andy Berry opened up a record store in Indianapolis, selling hip-hop music. As an interesting aside, the Berrys admit that they would "break the streetdate" for new albums. "Streetdate" is a collusion between record label and record store to refuse to sell an album until a certain day, even if the store has the records sitting in plain view for a week. In exchange for honoring the streetdate, the record companies give advertising money to the stores. But since they really only give this money to big stores, Berry's Music didn't see why they should bother.

But the main part of the article is about mixtapes. A local DJ will put together a number of exclusive tracks, by well-known and unsigned artists alike and sell copies of the compilation. They are quite popular. Berry's regularly sold mixtapes for several years. Then, *BAM*, the RIAA shows up with the cops, confiscates $10,000 worth of mixtape CDs, and arrests the brothers on 13 counts of royalty theft and fraud. Responds Alan Berry:

"We never really questioned the legalities of them. We never did. Because, one, we were getting some of the mix-CDs through our regular vendors that we bought our quote-unquote 'legit' product from. The same place I would get the Interscope record from, I would get mix-CDs from, from national distributors. Two, the artists are on there endorsing the mixes. I mean, Eminem's on the mix-CD saying, 'Yo, this is Eminem. You're listening to DJ Green Lantern.' Then he drops three or four exclusive free-styles and he’s talking within the mix, about the mix itself, saying Lantern's his man. You would kind of assume that Eminem's fine with it."

Which sounds pretty damn reasonable to me.

Unfortunately, the brothers Berry decided that they had to sell their store and all their records to pay for their legal defense. They managed to plea bargain down to a misdemeanor, but that carried a heavy fine. The only upside is that Alan plans to open up another record store, Naptown Music. If anyone hears about that place opening, please drop me a line so I can announce it. The fella could probably use a little publicity.

Was this a case of the RIAA trying to destroy the mixtape, which is effectively an alternative to a record label? I'm not sure, because I have not seen any other stories of stores closed for selling mixtapes. Was this a case of the RIAA cracking down on the violation of streetdate? That seems a little more likely to me.

My next example is the newspaper industry, by way of the comic strip. Scott Kurtz, of the internet comic PvP wants to get his comic in the newspapers. He explains that many comics are part of a syndicate. The syndicates pay the cartoonist, own all the rights to the cartoons, and sell bundles of cartoons to the newspapers. Kurtz claims that comic strips were originally a way for one local newspaper to draw readers away from another. But nearly every city in America is a one-paper-town these days, so there is no competition. Kurtz quotes a fellow cartoonist who says

"If any one newspaper would get the balls to just 86 their comics page, and suffer through the months of letters they would receive, we'd be done for. Once the papers realize they can survive dropping the comics page, everyone will do it."

And s/he's right. If comics are an expense, and newspaper publishers find out that they can keep selling as many papers without paying for that expense, the comics will vanish. Which leads to Kurtz's plan to give his cartoon away to newspapers for free. He figures that it would be free publicity, and that he (and other cartoonists, if they followed suit) could make their livings selling books of their cartoons, advertising on their websites, and cartoon-related merchandise.

Very strange, the modern newspaper. Almost none of them have any competition locally. I guess each local paper competes with the nearest regional paper and with the nearest "paper of record" (NY Times, LA Times, Washington Post). The local has the advantage that it'll say what's going on in your very city, the others have the advantage of real news.

And finally, we have the television. The TV business model is way fucked up. TV has made its profits by selling time to advertisers for decades. But advertisers want to get the most for their money, so TV stations started getting their audiences measured by the Nielsen company back in the 1940s. And today, TVs sell time to advertisers, based upon audience measurement by Nielsen. 60 fucking years later, not much change.

The biggest change has been what audience the advertisers want. Originally, advertisers wanted as many people as possible to see their ad. But since they were paying per person, they later decided that as much as possible, they only wanted to reach audiences likely to buy the advertised product (in the advertiser's wildest dreams, a network would air a program about toothpaste, watched by millions of toothpaste enthusiasts, on which they could advertise their own particular brand of toothpaste).

The shift in advertiser desires led to a shift in programming strategy. Instead of creating shows that would appeal to everyone, the networks began creating shows aimed at specific consumer-oriented audience segments. Advertisers want to reach a wealthier audience, because they have more money to spend, which makes sense. But they also want to reach a young male audience, almost to the exclusion of most other audience segments (no one has explained that to me very well. Wouldn't you want everyone's money?)

Anyhow. This article is about television's hunt for the 18-34 year old male audience... and how they're losing it. Guys this age (my age) resent advertising, don't watch advertising, and "hunger for authenticity", so how are advertisers responding? With advertising styles that either don't promote their products or that will incur Gen X wrath (I don't know how much "experimental" fake real life advertising the public will take before someone gets his ass whupped).

All I'm saying is that they times, they are a'changing, and the media giants, they are a'stupid.