If the music industry “does’t get it” why would the movie industry
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A few weeks ago a service called SpiralFrog was launched and we were one of the first to report on it in our article, "SpiralFrog - More Proof the Music Companies Just Don’t Get It". Well this weekend a similar story was announce about legal movie downloads.
The new service run by Amazon.com is called Unbox but I think the term "Unintellegent Marketing" might be a better description. I happen to follow Mark Cuban's blog "Blog Maverick" because in a former life I was deeply involved in the design of the Broadcast.com data centers that made him a billionaire.
It turns out Mark shares my view on this new service and has posted a review by Richard Greenfield along with his own commentary at his blog. The review and examination of the problems and shortfalls of Unbox is extensive and dead on so rather then review it ourselves we will just recommend that you read Mark's Review of Unbox on his blog. Internet Movie Downloads vs Store DVDs - a quick biz lesson
What do you think the future has in store for Unbox and downloading of Movies in general?
~ Jack Spirko
Technorati Tags: Richard Greenfield, broadcast.com, unbox, mark cuban, movie downloads, blog mavrick, online media, online video, streaming video, amazon.com, file sharing, video downloads, movies
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zune said,
September 11, 2006 @ 10:35 pm
I wonder why Blockbuster and Hollywood Video haven’t started downloads yet.
jspirko said,
September 12, 2006 @ 9:20 am
Zune,
One word answer would be cannibalization. Rather then see future opportunity and addressing market demand both the Music and Movie industries are more concerned about short term loss.
Rather then see a 7 dollar downloadable sale as growth opportunity they see it at the expense of a 19.99 sale.
The way to handle both music and video is simple, charge only what you need to turn a fair profit then make it simple to use, easy to get what you want and totaly portable. Do that an the market will pay for the service and ilegal copying will be minimized.
Yet, if you make it easier and more convienient to “steal” content then to purchase it, then the result is easy to predict.
The root emotion driving the boneheaded decisions in the entertainment industry is GREED. Neither movies nor music can really be copy protected. Want that movie in a portable format? Run the movie on your PC and run a screen capture video (like camtasia http://www.camtasia.com) program, then render it in flash, mp3, quicktime, etc and done.
That is just one way to get around any copy protection of video. The music industry is still getting beaten by LimeWire, etc. the same fate awaits the movie industry. These guys are failing on purpose because they honestly believe they can hold on to the older modle that has given them marble floors and leather walls in their offices.
Jack