No More Piracy?

All the talk 5-10 years ago was about the piracy of songs and videos on the internet. The widespread use of programs like Napster, Limewire, Kazaa, and others had youths trading songs and videos with each other for free. For all intensive purposes, no one had to buy CDs any more at all, you could just download a program, type in the name of the song, and download it for free. I can personally say I did not buy a CD past age 10, and I downloaded more than 2,000 songs illegally before I was even in high school.

Then came the period of time where the music companies tried to fight the system. They said they would sue individuals who downloaded illegally. They threatened massive fines. They said there were federal officials watching the download networks. And for the most part, this scared primarily parents, but not the kids. Programs like Napster and Limewire had to disband their illegal operations, and they became pay-by-download programs. They were the predecessors to ITunes.

Eventually, people found new ways around paying for songs. Programs like BitTorrent started, where you could share files over a local network (for example a school dorm network). Kids and students had new ways around it all.

But instead of fighting it, music records and bands began to realize how they could take advantage of this. The days of selling 6 million records were long gone, no one did that any more. People didn't play CDs in their cars, they used their Ipods. Music began to be released for free, and sites began to form launching music for free.

A previous post mentioned GirlTalk, and how he rips music and puts it all together. But he also puts his music online for free. You have a choice of paying for his cd, at which point you get digital tracks, and a cd sent to your house. But you can also download all 3 of his cds for $0....for free. OK GO, a rock band, has released several songs online for free. Websites like whitepanda.com, goodmusicallday.com, and fratmusic.com, all offer songs to download. They are free podiums for new artists to share their music, and where people can go and download songs for free, albums for free. Artists realize that the money is not necessarily in selling CDs, and getting recognized by the public is easier than being signed by a record label.

The music industry is at a turning point. People don't listen to the radio as much as they used to. CD sales are incredibly down. But DJ shows, Rock Tours, and interest in music is higher than ever. Music brings together the generation labeled "millenials" and it will be interesting to see how the industry adapts to cater to their needs.

-Swenson

Opening Day in Baseball

This past week saw the Major League Baseball season start across 15 cities in the United States. For me, like so many individuals across the country, it should be a national holiday. It's a day when you feel like you're 12 years old and on a Little League field again. For college students, it's the day you bring your laptops to class and watch the games online instead of listening to lectures. But unfortunately, for students and many fans, Opening Day has become a tradition they cannot see live any more.

Opening Day ticket prices have soared into the hundreds and thousands just for one ticket and the average person cannot afford this. In fact, tickets for the entire season have been raised to such a level that most people can go to maybe one game a year, if that. Baseball has become a game that only the rich can attend and that the even richer play.

Baseball is the only major sport in the US that does not have a salary cap. It has what's called a "luxury tax," where if teams go over a certain amount, than they have to pay a fee to smaller teams. This is a system that supposedly helps the smaller market teams that cannot compete with New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. But there is no hard salary cap, or ceiling, that teams cannot go over. So for all intents and purposes, a team can have a $500-million salary -- buying up the best player at every position -- and it would just pay a lot of money to the smaller teams at year's end.

What this has done, aside from create a massive inequality in teams in the MLB, is jack up prices across all stadiums. The new Yankee Stadium does not have a ticket for under $100. That means even the worst outfield seat is still about $100. This is absurd for a baseball game. You can no longer grab a friend, get some beers and hot dogs, and watch a game for cheap.

The reason tickets are going up in price so rapidly -- in addition to demand for the game being at an all-time high according to attendance records -- is the increase in payroll. Team presidents and general managers have to raise revenue to pay for the salaries of all their players. The best way to do this is increase ticket prices. And as long as people will continue to go to the games and pay the ticket price, owners will continue to raise prices and pay the players more.

For the new Yankee park, it's been said that there are over a million millionaires on Long Island, so thats a huge market to pay only $100 for a baseball game. But what about all the fathers and sons who want to watch the game as a vacation ticket? The middle class is being phased out of baseball and that's very unfortunate.

The topic of a salary cap will come up soon for Major League Baseball. The inequality in the teams across the league is too great right now and it will ultimately hurt baseball. There needs to be some parity in the league, which a salary cap will help. But a cap will also help fans. It will help reduce ticket prices, increase player loyalty to individual teams, and create an altogether better dynamic for the sport.

--Parker Swenson

Wooo-hooo! Spring break!

By this time next week I will officially be on spring break in Panama City, Fla. after what is sure to be an epic 13 1/2 hour drive (starting at 6 a.m., ew). As someone who has recently been having cash-flow problems -- mainly, I don't have any money -- I started thinking about the economics of spring break.

Spring break can get really expensive, as my roommates and I figured out while trying to figure out where to go. You have to worry about housing, transportation, food/alcohol, and incidental costs. Personally, I will have to spend a lot of money on sunscreen because my skin seems to reject sunlight and a high SPF is really expensive. Do they want me to burn?

However, I digress. We basically decided to go for the bargain spring break, which means cheap hotel (with a kitchen), location that was within driving distance, and -- on a personal level -- plenty of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

When we were booking things, I realized that however annoying our extremely late spring break can be occasionally, it does save us money. First, W&L students don't have to go to Mexico, the Caribbean, or somewhere in the deep south to find a warm beach. Second, our break is so off of "SPRIIIIING BREEEEAAAAK!" season but still before summer that we get cheaper hotel rates. (In fact, our hotel was a full 40 bucks more per night during the peak of the season.) W&L's weird schedule saved me a significant amount of money.

Also, we will have the entire beach to ourselves, which I prefer (more room for sandcastles). So anyone in Panama for spring break come and find us. The trick to finding me on the beach is to follow the sounds of "Panama" by Van Halen and to look for the blinding beacon of my paleness. Oh, how I wish parasols were still in style.

--Michelle Hirschfeld

Throw the Book at Them

We’ve tackled music, movies, and TV. We’ve touched on fashion, festivals, and the Final Four. Now it’s time for Econotainment to set its sights on another sector of the entertainment world: books.

Groan.

For months, Apple’s iPad has loomed on the horizon, with retailers drooling to let customers light up the screens of the company’s new tablet device. So far, the response has been mild, as the figures trickle in. The Los Angeles Times reports that the Cupterino, Calif. company sold more than 300,000 iPads on Saturday, the day the device finally saw the light of day. (And this doesn’t even factor in the 1 million apps and 250,000 e-books that have been downloaded since then.) And while some experts say that the response to the iPad has been only lukewarm, there’s no denying what some of the numbers say about the publishers of trade books: they’re in trouble.

From 2004 to 2007, print book sales stalled around $24 billion, according to figures from the Census Bureau. Alternately, the International Digital Publishing Forum shows the e-book sales have grown exponentially during the last five years. And I read on Yahoo! News today that Borders is about ready to call it quits.

Peter Olson, a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, has heard the groans from these publishers. In an illuminating Q&A on the institution’s Working Knowledge Web site, Olson suggests that in order to keep people reading, publishers ought to embrace technology rather than press their noses in a paperback.

“I think the fundamental issue is not the rate of adoption of the e-reader, or whether publishers will survive in their current form, or what their role will be in the future,” Olson explains. “The fundamental question at the very bottom of this is, will people read books at all?”

That’s a terrifying proposition, and not just because, as an English major, I’ve spent the last four years perfecting the art of reading books (as if such an “art” could ever be perfected). I might not recall the atomic mass of Sodium or what a polynomial is, but I do remember the name of Holden Caulfield’s brother and the words that Sydney Carton speaks at the end of "A Tale of Two Cities" (For the record, he declares, “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.”) Reading has opened my eyes and sharpened my mind and, like many people, I’m genuinely afraid of what might happen to it as publishers trade pencils for touch-screens. But I have hope that despite the industry’s suffering, the J.D. Salingers and Charles Dickenses of the future are still typing away somewhere.

And even though my cynicism about Twitter knows no bounds, this is still pretty hilarious.

--Michael Morella

"Lost"-nomics

I gave up on the complexities and time commitment of keeping up with the TV show "Lost" at some point toward the end of its second season. However, I have a couple of roommates that have kept up the "Lost" fanaticism all the way through to the sixth and final season. I can't lie, curiosity will get the best of me and I will probably join them in gathering around the television to watch the show's series finale on May 23.

Advertisers are apparently betting that people like me are common if the price of a 30-second commercial spot is any indication. AdAge reports that available advertising slots during the "Lost" finale are going for a whopping $900,000. The price is well above the current going price of a "Lost" ad of just over $200,000.

The huge increase in price shows how advertisers expect huge numbers of returning viewers who want to find out the end of the mystery, which will make the finale a cultural event. Cultural events are becoming more important to advertisers in our Tivo-DVR-just-watch-it-online viewing attitude. The climactic "Lost" finale will be a rare show many viewers watch in real time, including commercials.

"Lost" viewership is best characterized as rabid and loyal. Many companies and advertisers would love to tap into such a passionate customer base. It's the type of show people talk about and advertisers hope those viewers will carry the conversation over into discussing the commercials.

Comparable Series Finale Prices:

"M.A.S.H." (1983) -- $450,000

"Seinfeld" (1998) -- $1.4 million - $1.8 million

"Friends" (2004) -- $1.5 million - $2.3 million

"Everybody Loves Raymond" (2005) -- $1.3 million

--Michelle Hirschfeld

Girl Talk: Future of the Music Industry?

[Note: Originally published February 14 on Sakai (well, attempted to publish)]

<-------(Girl Talk is the shirtless guy in the middle)

This weekend I joined many Washington and Lee students at the Girl Talk concert. The day after dancing the night away, I realized what makes Girl Talk so much fun in concert also makes him a disaster for his label. Girl Talk makes his music through sampling, which is grabbing snippets of other songs. What makes Girl Talk a controversial artist in the music industry has to do with the industry's business model, whereby it makes money by owning the rights to music use. Any time a person uses a piece of music in a commercial way -- like in a television commercial, in a movie, or by releasing a CD -- he or she is expected to pay whoever whoever owns the music.

So, every time Girl Talk -- whose actual name is Gregg Michael Gillis -- uses clips of other artists, he runs the risk of a lawsuit. Girl Talk does not pay for samples when he makes a mash-ups. He cites the fair-use doctrine, which is a law that allows for the unpaid use of music as long as it does not make up a significant part of a song.

However, when I listen to a Girl Talk CD, ("Night Ripper" is my personal favorite), it is hard to believe that some of the songs are not significant portions of the mix. Luckily, Girl Talk’s music has not been challenged in court, but it is probably only a matter of time. As sampling and other artists like Girl Talk become more popular, the outcome of any Girl Talk lawsuit would be vital to the future of the music industry and the millions of dollars it generates each year.

--Michelle Hirschfeld

"Avatar" the Country?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past five months, you probably have heard of the latest blockbuster film, "Avatar." Directed by the infamous James Cameron, "Avatar" was a pioneer in the technology and film techniques that were used in filming the movie. Cameron is no stranger to groundbreaking films, as his previous film is the all-time highest grossing movie, "Titanic." However, after waiting more than five years for technology to develop to a level he was content with, Cameron released "Avatar" to more hype and success than could ever be imagined.

"Avatar," which was released in 2D, 3D, and IMAX, has quickly become the all-time highest grossing film, both domestically and internationally. "Avatar" has grossed more than $740 million in United States sales, and another $1.94 billion in international revenue. The film is still in some theaters around the country, although most 3D and IMAX presentations have been pulled due to "Alice in Wonderland." Even with the smaller theater selection, "Avatar" is still bringing guests to the seats, and rumor has it some current showings are featuring more than 40 minutes of additional footage to entice people to come back to the theater.

To put this in perspective, "Avatar" has grossed nearly $2.7 billion in revenue. If the film was a country, this would rank it above 30 other countries. The small countries of Samoa, Liberia, and Sierra Leone would all rank below "Avatar" in GDP. And this is only with "Avatar" being in theatres for less than 5 months. If we were to imagine the total money garnered by this film, it would be unbelievable.

For example, if we assume that the average price of a ticket for "Avatar" is $10, that means about 270 million tickets were sold for the film. Now assume that of those 270 million, half bought popcorn and sodas, which cost about $10 at a typical movie theater. And maybe of all those ticketbuyers, a third of them car-pooled together on the way to the movies. So that's 90 million paying $4 for a gallon or two of gas for the trip to the movies and back. So in addition to the $2.7 billion the movie made by selling tickets alone, it also helped generate this much revenue:

Movie: $2.7 billion

Food: $2.7 billion

Gas: $360 million

Total: $5.76 billion

This is absolutely absurd for one movie to help an economy. And that doesn't take into account the public transportation, the wages for employees, the bar drinks, the candy, and everything else that the movie helped generate. (This also does not include DVD sales, just imagine!) With a GDP of $5.7 billion, that would rank "Avatar" above Niger, the Barbados, and Montenegro.

This movie was the most expensive movie ever made, with a budget of about $500 million. But it was the first movie incorporating this new technology and it widely outgained its costs. Additionally, Cameron has hinted that he would like to make a trilogy based on the main characters' travels to the other moons around Pandora. These are sure to make similar money and threaten to break this new record.

Not too bad for a movie, a 3-hour piece of entertainment.

--Parker Swenson