Movies good, music bad

Posted on September 15, 2003 by Ian Betteridge

And excellent comment on the Denver Post about how the movie industry has got things right with its approach to DVDs (cheap, lots of extras), while the recording industry has got things completely wrong with CDs (expensive, cheap). This should be required reading for anyone in the music biz. The days when you could flee customers are over: wake up and smell the burning CDs.

[Listening to: Way Out West - Big Star - #1 Record / Radio City (02:49)]

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  • http://www.hegemony.org.uk jim

    I thought it was the customer who was fleeing?

    And am I being obtuse here, or do I not remember an outcry over the pricing of DVDs because they cost less to manufacture than videos (being essentially printed rather than laboriously copied) and that saving is not being passed on to the consumer?

    Instead we get *extras* to justify the bumped up price (as well as the higher quality of DVD, but that’s kind of cheating as its built into the format rather than value added by the manufacturer). Some extras are excellent but most are simply the EPK repackaged.

    The amazon listing for John Woo’s The Killer is 18.99 for the DVD and 12.49 for the video, with no extras. 6.50 for another 200 scanlines?

    I appreciate the general point that DVDs are only marginally more expensive than CDs, but the CD is the only way the record company has of recouping the cost of production. The DVD of a movie is the third or fourth recycling of the product: most movies will have had theatrical release, pay-per-view release and video rental release before they go on sale – with broadcast sales still to come. The cost of production of a CD is still low by comparison with the consumer price but a box office hit will have recouped its costs before DVD release making the returns from the DVD, in effect, pure gravy. By this metric, the DVD should cost less than an equivalent CD.

  • http://www.ludicrous.org.uk Ian Betteridge

    For the record companies, too, the CD is often the second or third time of recycling. How many CDs have you bought by bands where you’ve already bought the album in the past?

  • http://www.hegemony.org.uk jim

    And those are usually discounted: I picked up John Wesley Harding at the weekend for 6.99 – about the same as the iTunes price.

    I’m not a huge fan of the music industry cartel: the pricing of CDs has been deeply anti-consumer. However I think holding the DVD up as a paragon of virtue is fallacious. DVD pricing is as rigged as the CD market.

    What about UK pricing for TV-series box sets? 24 season 2 is fifty quid (discounted on amazon to 32.99).