Last week the Wall Street Journal broke an excellent story. Unfortunately the WSJ is a subscription only site though because the story was such a good one and because I love receiving cease & desist letters I'm going to republish. The article is entitled Pop Singer Falls To Strike a Chord Despite the Millions Spent By MCA and is a must read.

Basically MCA blew $2.2 million dollars trying to turn Carly Hennessy (not Carly Hennessey) into the next Celine Dion. Total sales of Carly's album: 378.
10:21:14 PM   []

I think the music industry has a lot to learn from the porn industry.

How are they similar? Both are..

• content industries.
• driven by the profit motive.
• worried about 'pirates'.

1. Popular format. Instead of providing pictures and movies in a proprietary format the porn industry provides it's content in formats playable on just about any computer and electronic device. On the other hand the music industry wants you to listen to music using a format laced with Digital Rights Management (DRM) which will limit the number of people you can share the song with and how many times you can play it. These DRM formats will only play under certain OSes and certain devices. This infuriates customers. My conclusion: Give the customer what they want, whether it be jpeg images or MP3 files; the customer is always right. I believe that this is the number one reason that the porn industry has fared so well. Instead of fighting it's customers it works for them giving them what they ask for even if it means they may lose some sales.
2. Meta-data and organization. Advancements in technology has brought us not only more music but more porn. Today anyone can produce their own content. What this means for the you the consumer is more content. Great! But what if you can't find what you want? You need someone to organize it right? And that's reason #2 that people will pay for porn. Likewise people will pay to download music online if the songs are correctly tagged and organized.
3. Speedy downloads. Yes you can use any number of P2P networks to get your music or porn but despite all the fancy techonlogy behind those networks it still takes an incredibly long time to get what you want. People pay for porn because they can get it faster saving them time and money. Likewise people will pay for the speedy online delivery of music.

Thoughts? (Yes the porn industry is evil but they're good at moving units).
8:15:28 PM   []

The other problem with day-skiing is that you end up skiing on no sleep since you have to wake up so damn early to drive to the hill and when you get home you're dead. I know. I'm a whiner.
7:43:05 PM   []

Here it is headers and all. (I know I shouldn't get so excited about spam but I did feel left out).

Received: from ns1.superior98.com ([63.170.11.198]) 
by pollak.overlookmedia.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.3779);
	 Sat, 2 Mar 2002 00:50:49 -0500
Date: Sat, 2 Mar 2002 00:50:47 -0500
Message-Id: <200203020550.g225olR03514@ns1.superior98.com>
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.388)
Reply-To: 
From: 
To: 
Subject: Thanks For Lunch Mike
Return-Path: susan7888@smtp2.superior98.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 02 Mar 2002 05:50:50.0021 (UTC) FILETIME=[34F7CD50:01C1C1AE]


Mike,



  Thanks again for lunch it was great!



Best regards,


Steve

12:56:56 AM   []