Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

Here’s an oldie but a goodie.

The music industry loses money on 98% of the albums it releases in a year.

That, by the way does not take into account their favorite whipping boy since 1998, internet file sharing. According to most industry flacks who tout that number, that’s just the standard cost of doing business. Only 2% of their product will ever make a penny. The rest of it is money tossed down the drain.

If you like, you can blame it on the fact that only so much product can be consumed in a given year. You can also blame it on a fickle public that sometimes seems more obsessed with image than with quality. You could even blame it on a concentration on cookie cutter “product” that promotes general ennui from the public, although the record industry would prefer that you didn’t, as would many of the actually very good bands that are counted in the 98%.

But if you had an industry where 98% of your product lost money, would you stick with the same-ol’ same-ol’, or would you try to refine your production process and create a more consistent earner, even if it meant releasing fewer items?

Consider this There are between 4-6 major labels in the United States. Hal Vogel estimates that those labels release around 11,000 albums a year, excluding classical music releases. That means that their budgets for production, promotion, and touring support (see, Vampire Weekend? Some of us give a damn about an oxford comma) are spent on 220 albums that will actually turn a profit, while 10,780 of them are wasted.

You would think with numbers like that, at least a couple of the labels would consider ratcheting back the volume of releases and spending more of their budget on each individual product in the hopes of capturing a larger share of the market.

But the story goes that industry executives continue to invest millions of dollars a year without ever making it back. Not out of the goodness of their hearts, but because they don’t know what will become popular this year.

Which begs the question—really? They got to the top of their industry without understanding how it works? And they just can’t expect Eminem’s first post-rehab album to sell that many copies? That, um, doesn’t seem like just a sure thing?

Come to think of it, it seems completely unreasonable that 220 albums would completely make up the deficit of 10,780 albums that can’t make their budgets back. So how do these labels continue with a business model that bleeds money at an alarming rate without retooling for a better product?

The answer, as you might expect, is creativeaccounting. Really, by now you should be familiar with the kind of accounting trick the record industry pulls on its artists—they’ve been published everywhere for over a decade now. But this particular trick was a new one on me.

Tim Quirk of Too Much Joy reveals that there’s a difference between not turning a profit and not recouping the expenses of an album. And the difference is that in the second, only the artist gets screwed.

See, the money that is paid out to the artist and on production expenses is considered “recoupable.” This means that the label gives it as a loan to the artist, and the artist pays it back out of their royalties.

The artist makes approximately $23.40 in royalties for every $1,000 in sales. That’s considered a good deal.

So, using round numbers to make the math as easy as possible to understand, let’s say Warner Bros. spent something like $450,000 total on TMJ. If Warner sold 15,000 copies of each of the three TMJ records they released at a wholesale price of $10 each, they would have earned back the $450,000. But if those records were retailing for $15, TMJ would have only paid back $67,500, and our statement would show an unrecouped balance of $382,500.

Does the record industry actually lose money on some releases? Of course.

The question is, do they actually lose money on 98% of their albums? Or are many of those albums simply albums that haven’t “recouped?”

New Feature To increase my posting back at my original home on the web, I thought I’d institute a new feature. Movie recommendations. Note, they’re not “daily” or “weekly,” but pretty much whenever I take a notion to go a-recommending. Also, they’re not really “reviews” since I’m not going to talk about movies I don’t care for. Just movies I like, and why I think they’re worth watching.

Today’s recommendation: Om Shanti Om.

Non-Bollywood viewers may be a little lost with this one, but it’s well worth the viewing. Lush colors, broad comedy, likable actors and a sentimental story that mixes comedy, fantasy, and romance and manages to avoid being sappy (Oh, okay, it’s really sappy. But I like it) make it one of the better movies-about-making-movies that I have ever seen.

Actors interested in improving their comedy could do much worse than to take notes on Shah Rukh Khan, whose dance skills, handsome look, and knack for physical comedy put me in mind of Charlie Chaplin. Directors can get a glimpse of how to use cartoon colors without overusing them. Filmmakers in general will see how to take one of the most boring ideas for a plot ever and spice it up with a few twists on the topic.

Got a Netflix account? they have it for rent.

Shop at Amazon? They have it on DVD. Also at Amazon, third-party sellers offer it on Blu-Ray for less than the cost of the DVD (for those of you who already have the player). The visuals in Om Shanti Omare so significant to the style of the movie, I think it’s worth the HD. Yes, those two are affiliate links. If you buy them from this entry, I make a few pennies.

When you build a private industry around a public service, astoundingly bad ideas soon become the only ideas the market is capable of having. This is because public services are different from the kind of service given at a McDonalds’—or even from your local cable company. They are part of vital infrastructure, and a robust society can only be built on a foundation of free and democratic access to such services without fear of exploitation.

It might shock you to learn this post isn’t about health care. story is not about health care—it’s about prisons.

Debit cards are increasingly popular, so why shouldn’t jail inmates have them. How about a get-out-of-jail prepaid debit card when they’re set free?

They can. (Does this strike anyone else as kind of strange/funny?)

Strange, MSN Money? Yes. Funny? No.

The story is a further sign of how our society is now actively turning our prison facilities and inmates into a potential revenue stream. Incarceration and the actions of the justice system should be a public service. It should exist to see to it that justice (whenever possible) is done, and that those who can be rehabilitated get the help they need to re-integrate into society.

A system like this is full of flaws.

• It builds a private, profit-based monopoly whose market is literally captive.
• Being profit motivated, it is structured find ways (surcharges, service fees, etc) to leech money off of taxpayer funds, as well as from people who genuinely don’t need any more leeching done to them.
• It further underscores the importance of a debit/credit card to a person’s identity in modern society. Now, when children who grew up using pretend credit cards get busted for any number of possible infractions, they can rest assured that they will have a debit card waiting for them, full of their sub-minimum wage earnings—minus the registration, monitoring, fraud protection, and transaction fees.

Perhaps worst of all is that the range of services offered includes a “self-serve kiosk” that permits you to pay bail with a credit card in the event that you’re arrested—or allows your friends and/or family to pay your bail “from the comfort of their own home.”

Streamlining processes and making them easier to handle quickly is a good thing, yes. But putting somebody in a situation where they can swipe their credit card or face a night in lock-up puts them in a situation that immediately drives them into debt. And bear in mind that bail is not always paid by the guilty, meaning anybody stopped by the police can find themselves relying on the Visa or Mastercard to get them out of a jam.

Worst of all about that idea, however, is the fact that it suggests a revolving-door approach to the justice system. Systems like this are only profitable when they have a high flow of customers. Putting in bail kiosks is a blatant expression that in the future, the justice system will be the major cash cow of Wall Street.

Ask yourself this: Do you want to drive—even at the speed limit—past a police officer whose district is controlled not by public service, but by private industry? Do you want to walk down a street patrolled by a police officer whose office can only turn a profit if he meets his daily quota? The profit motive has no place in our judicial system.

I was a comic geek once upon a time.

From the time I was a little kid until almost a decade or so ago (was it really a decade since I was a college sophomore? Yeesh), I was an avid comic collector.

As a kid, I bought pretty much any superhero comic I could get my hands on—particularly anything with Spider-Man, Batman, Captain America, or Superman on the cover.

As a young teenager, I discovered ElfQuest and learned the joys of longform comic storytelling—something I had never quite gotten the hang of with superhero comics. And by the time I was the aforementioned college sophomore, my comics intake consisted pretty much entirely of Strangers in Paradise, Books of Magic, and brief flirtations with Cerebus and Sandman Mystery Theatre, as well as Bone (which I loved, but I got into way too late at the time).

And then it stopped.

One thing I’ve always said about being an actor is that you have to know your limits – you have to know what you’re willing to do in your career or to advance your career, and act accordingly. If you don’t want to do nudity, then that’s fine – that’s your line. It doesn’t give you the right to complain when you don’t get a role because it requires nudity. You drew your line and acted accordingly. You’ll never stop people from crossing that same line themselves, but you can always stick to your principles.

One of the common places where aspiring actors turn up is on game shows. It’s a quick, easy way to get on television, get experience talking in front of a camera, and experiment with both humor and building tension. As far as game show go, I confess that I’ve never defined a line. “Jeopardy?” “Wheel of Fortune?” Pfft. Kid’s play. “Deal Or No Deal?” Sure, I can do that.

“Fear Factor?” Bring it on. It’s stupid, childish, and grotesque, but it’s somewhat safe.

No, I’ve never defined a line. Until today, that is. I would never be able to bring myself to go on G4’s new show. (link via Some Guy With A Website)

“Hurl!,” which debuted last night on the G4 cable channel, is the first half-hour series that combines physical rigor with eating disorders and gastric distress. Contestants consume massive quantities of sure-to-bloat foods—chicken pot pie, franks ‘n’ beans, New England clam chowder—then engage in such activities as riding an amusement park Tilt-A-Whirl. The “winner” is the contestant who doesn’t lose his lunch. Or to be technical about it, who holds out the longest before he releases the hounds. Call it a pas de spew.

“Hurl!,” in other words, is for people who found “Fear Factor” much too nuanced and intellectually complex.

Yes, I know I said I’d go on “Fear Factor.” But “Fear Factor” is merely bread and circuses. Grotesque, overblown, sure – but not ultimately destructive to the human soul.

“Hurl,” meanwhile, is a concept that I find completely obscene. At a time when people in my own country – let alone the rest of the world – can’t afford three square meals a day, we’re actually doing a show where the object is to stuff your face beyond your capacity and then be the last one to vomit? Not only is it grotesque, it’s greedy, boorish, and insulting. It is, at long last, a line that I just wouldn’t be able to cross.

The expectation many had that the next-generation HD format would take off once the format war was over is pretty much a forgotten dream at this point. Sales of Blu-Ray haven’t experienced the massive jump people expected once wait-and-see consumers saw that HD-DVD was well and truly dead.

Consumers are balking at the $300-plus cost of most Blu-ray players especially because only limited movie titles are available in the format.

“People aren’t going to pay three times as much for a platform that’s only half-baked,” said Steve Wilson, a consumer electronics analyst with ABI Research.

The problem with both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats, of course, was largely the library. Perhaps it’s only obvious to me, but when you’re touting the superiority of the platform as a prestige format, you might want to consider releasing Citizen Kane – a movie with a long history that most people would display proudly in their collection, and something more likely to be cherished by someone who just dropped $399 on a player – instead of, say, Ultraviolet – a movie whose design concept can best be described as “blurry, obviously fake, and designed above all to not be viewed in HD.”

This in turn feeds the price question. Why should people pay a prestige price for a player where the majority of titles are movies that people just flat don’t care about seeing in HD – many of which are $20+ on the new format when they’re already in the bargain bins on the old? I just purchased Alien, Aliens, and Alien 3 on DVD for $5.99 each – movies I care about having in my collection (well, Alien 3 more for completeness’ sake). With the already high quality of DVD picture and sound, spending $25.99 for each of them on Blu-Ray would just feel wrong.

Of course, Blu-Ray could get an extra push from indie producers. More and more indie directors shooting on HD would mean an influx of content – some of which would be kept inexpensive to draw in new audiences, and which would help sell the new format to off-the-wall and indie film fans. Of course, it could provide this extra push – if Blu-Ray didn’t seem determined to exclude these producers from the new market.

Where are the POD solutions for Blu-Ray at this point? No, I’m seriously asking – where are they? CreateSpace, which is owned by Amazon, is still negotiating a deal to allow them to offer POD Blu-Ray. Kunaki? Lulu? Who knows? Neither one even mentions it. Why not?

It may have something to do with the $3,000-a-person entry fee the industry is imposing, otherwise known as the AACS DRM scheme. It appears that there’s been a real problem playing Blu-Ray discs that don’t include AACS, so everybody who wants to publish to the medium has to purchase an AACS license, and every title must include AACS – regardless of the wishes of the publisher and/or the artist.

Creative Commons-licensed material? Who cares? You’d better slap some copy protection on it.

Want to release a public domain film to Blu-Ray to help preserve our film history (or make a quick buck off of an HD release of The Last Man on Earth)? Sure. As long as that public domain film is one you’re willing to pay $3,000 to copy protect.

And forget about a sales system like EZTakes, that provides its DVD images DRM-free – but with the purchaser’s e-mail address embedded in the burnt copy.

Forget, too, about the share-friendly independent spirit that provokes legal statements like this one (found on my newest DVD, available soon, plug plug).

Low- and Micro-budget filmmakers will find themselves blocked out of the new next-generation disc market for as long as AACS is an expensive necessity and the artists are blocked out of making their own decisions as to how their content should be treated. The result? Well, unless the major studios wise up on their releasing schedule, a homogenized blend of movies nobody cares about seeing in High Definition, and a marketplace completely priced out of the range of the regular consumer.

After all, there’s one further aspect I’ve barely even touched on that is just as blocked by this current model – one could argue that DVD’s would never have become the consumer mainstay they are today if not for the bins of $1 DVD’s at the front of every major retail chain today…

I liked what I saw of Portal. It was goofy and fun and really cool once I got my hands on a controller.

Everything I heard about Mass Effect told me that it was a game I would want to play if I ever got the chance.

And, of course, BioShock looks really cool, too.

Oo! Let’s not forget GTA IV.

But what it finally took to get me to put an Xbox on my wishlist was to see this preview:

We hear a lot about innovation in graphics, innovation in hardware, and the occasional peep about (gasp!) innovations in gameplay. But sometimes it takes an innovation in user experience, too. I remember the first time I ever turned on my PS2 to play God of War—and within minutes was pulling off the most badass moves I had ever done in a videogame. The boss of the prologue level is the Hydra, fer cryin’ out loud.

When a game can make your experience thrilling to watch – and even more thrilling to know that you executed it, even if all you did was press a button or two – then you have an innovation in gamer experience. And the parkour action in this preview has me dying to take the game for a spin.

What is surely to be one of the most heavily-hit Flickr sets of all times has just gone up – a side-by-side comparison of landmarks from New York City and its digital cousin, Liberty City. It shows an incredible eye for detail and an astounding amount of work done on world building.

Too bad they didn’t spend that much effort on walking down the street.

For the record, with neither a PS3 or an XBox, I’m out of the loop on the GTA IV goodness. I’m sure if I had the controller in hand, I’d be loving it. That doesn’t mean the physics that let you knock over streetlights while Sonny Bono-ing yourself on saplings aren’t fundamentally broken, however.

And now, your dose of Yahtzee from The Escapist. Yahtzee takes on Army of Two. (some language not safe for work) He does a fairly good job after a rough start of avoiding the gay jokes – but that’s probably because he has plenty of cruddy game design to discuss.

April 1, 2008 – ONLINE—Folksinger C. Glen Williams has released a new single from his upcoming album, Ephemera Now – For the Future! as a free download from his blog, the ArtMachine.

“Ephemera is a folk album for the next decade,” says Williams. “It’s a set of traditional and original songs that deals directly with the ephemeral. That which is now but won’t be, and that which once was but is no more.”

The free track, “This Song,” uses traditional themes both lyrically and musically. “It’s a common theme of childhood,” says Williams. “A tribute, if you will, to that time of life when we had no desire other than to run, to play, to have fun, and to annoy our parents.”

The singer/songwriter – whose song “Wasted All This Time” recently appeared in the short film “Infected,” from Ian Donnelly and iDsD Productions – may have gotten a little bit carried away in the composition of the song, he reveals.

“The radio edit of the track will probably be the version that appears on the album,” he says. “As much as it pained me to cut even a single note of the song, the original composition is over an hour long. There just wouldn’t be room on the album for anything else if I included it.”

Lovers of great folk music, however, will be glad to know that the full version of the composition is available at the ArtMachine, along with the 3-minute radio edit, both as free downloads.

UPDATE: Due to overwhelming demand, the track is also available on a low-priced CD Single.

P.S. Happy April Fool’s Day, everybody…