Digital Distribution — The Future Is Now
Posted by Dirty Harry on Saturday, June 21st, 2008
Via the excellent SpoutBlog come this look at where the future of distribution is heading. Digital downloads tripled in a single year:
Apple’s iTunes Store, the 800-pound gorilla in digital music sales, is starting to flex its muscles on the movie side.
Studio execs said that iTunes movie sales and rentals — which the computer company said tops 50,000 daily — dominate the small but closely watched digital movie biz. Apple is now on track to sell or rent 18.25 million movies a year, or triple the number of last year, before it inked deals with all major studios for new-release rentals and sales.
Studio execs say activity immediately spiked once Apple started offering new-release purchases from all the majors in early May and haven’t let up since.
You conservative filmmakers worried about what to do with your completed don’t-abandon-the-Iraqi people-to-terrorists film, need worry no more. It costs nothing to post it online. It costs nothing to hype it online. The limits of our sweat equity lies only within ourselves.
Filed in General |
Kinlawon 21 Jun 2008 at 11:14 am 1Two points.
1. Again as regards digital dist: what happens when the storage drive crashes? Burn your own disks? Nope. For the time, trouble, money, and lack of quality (and lack of a little booklet inside)you might as well buy retail. Unless it’s having several back up hard drives I just don’t see it yet.
2. Harry, a lot of loyal readers (including me)are REALLY wondering what happened with you and Jason. You don’t owe us an explanation, but given our support past and present it would be nice.
HARRY HERE: Regarding point one: What happens if the hard-drive with all your music crashes, your DVD collection is lost in a flood, your CD books stolen in a burglary? Chances are you will have something available through digital movie downloads you presently don’t have with DVDs — a free ghost collection stored somewhere else in the event of a tragedy.
As far as the story behind the separation, while I am grateful and overwhelmed by everyone’s support, I’m just as overwhelmed by the curiousity. Please just wish both parties the best of luck and rest assure the details aren’t all that interesting. I have moooooved on.
Troyon 21 Jun 2008 at 12:09 pm 2Awwww Harry… you know human nature. People assume the worst and then don’t believe you when you say it’s a relatively ho-hum reason. Most of our own falling outs(fallings out?) are rather mundane affairs. I’m a post Apuzzo/Murty Libertas lurker/commenter so I wouldn’t know enough history to find it interesting in the first place I guess.
Point 2 — I already use the web to store all of my lectures and research for work; digital movie storage seems perfect. When David’s much-anticipated zombie apocalypse occurs, besides watching a few movies via Ed Begley Jr.’s now genius generator to figure it out (Romero flicks, 28-Days, Omega Man, etc.) movies will be inaccessible.
Kensingtonon 21 Jun 2008 at 12:33 pm 3Unfortunately, this digital distribution revolution appears to be coinciding with a new movement on the part of the big Internet providers to set caps on how much their customers can download.
Until that gets sorted out properly, this thing will almost certainly have to suffer, don’t you think?
Kinlawon 21 Jun 2008 at 1:56 pm 4Harry:
Regarding Point 2: I will respect your wishes and not bring it up again.
Point 1: I concede that you can lose your collection in a variety of ways. However, I still believe hard drive crashes are more common than the other causes you mention.
I also think that you are being optimistic about the provider storing copies for you, at least free of charge.
My music is not stored solely on a hard drive either.
PS: Be careful saying those two words (that start with “m” and “o”) You don’t want to end up like those people.
Carolynon 21 Jun 2008 at 3:18 pm 5Yoo, Kinlaw. Check out the latest posting on Libertas. They’ve just likened Obama to one of the best loved actors in Hollywood - Sidney Poitier.
And who did they liken McCain to? Captain Queeg.
Real subtle, huh? Like a jackhammer to the forehead. And because it’s anonymous, you’ve no idea if the hammer was pounded by Jason or Murty, or God knows who.
Sigh. Something like that just makes me want to ‘mooooooove’ away from Libertas. Real fast.
JBon 21 Jun 2008 at 10:01 pm 6These issues are a bump in the road. Competition from WiMAX and the ever-expanding FiOS should resolve the download cap issue (see Sprint unlimited minutes play) Same for storage — high capacity flash drives are on the horizon.
Jonathan G.on 23 Jun 2008 at 11:57 pm 7Good Information..we can liken the itunes Store in video to Red Envelope Productions that Netflix runs online. They do very good and have an open door policy with new independent films. I bet if Apple is willing to put for the internet promotion for new indie filmmakers, they will be just as lucky as the new songwriters and be able to make more than a honest buck, but we’ll see..
http://moviedistributionfacts.wordpress.com/
Flynn35on 24 Jun 2008 at 12:52 am 8Nothing will take the place of watching EL CID in 70mm at the Hollywood dome. Watching films on your computer is lame. Sure its convenient, but to watch Lawrence of Arabia on a 20″ monitor is not the same thing in a huge theater with 70mm surround sound. This is how all films are meant to be and don’t put a head stone on theatrical yet.