Utah bound!

Perhaps the blog might get some kind of updating this week; granted mostly pictures and hopefully tales of epic snow and great runs. For the first time really we picked a week where it looks to be snowing almost everyday. And with 9" last night, and from my source on-the-ground 'Its dumping hard' its going to be nice for a while! Can't wait to get there!

The fate of music

I was reading the New York Times the other day on the plane home and there was a list of 10 items of reflection by Bono which had some interesting points but to be fair, a lot of self indulgence on some items to think about and consider in the upcoming year. Anyway the one item that touched a nerve for me was about the fate of the TV and movie industry going the same way as the music one.
I don't think this could be further from the truth. Maybe music did suffer because the files were smaller and nobody could have predicted that Napster and following peer to peer networks would blossom as they did, but the simple fact is that like the dinosaurs the music industry did not try to adapt and essentially killed itself from inaction. Obviously, hindsight is 20-20 but the thing that killed the music industry was not the internet, it was greed. If you were to look at album sales and the percentage that actually reaches an artist, it is something like 5 cents a single for talking points we'll give them a whole dollar; or ~8% (almost surely less) of a cd's cost. The artist is not relying on that cd revenue to survive; it comes from shows (roughly 40% of ticket prices) and merchandising (even more) and radio. In fact Mr. Bono you could release your next cd for free and you would still make many millions in concert sales and merchandising alone. I understand that a lot of the cost of the cd goes towards research, design, mastering but again they could have looked to other sources... they chose not to. Don't blame the carriers (and learn how a peer to peer network works)

TV and movies on the other hand are already posting episodes for free online- they already have advertising, and they are clearly trying to make it work. TV is more popular than ever and movies are breaking records yearly. They have seen the light as it were, and I don't think those two are going anywhere.