“There are an estimated 45 billion free music downloads happening annually, compared to around 360 million annual paid downloads. How to convert more of the free downloads to paid? Lower the price. How about five cents a song? “It’s certainly better than the system we have right now. If you charge five cents for 45 billion annual downloads, it’s a lot better than nothing.”
Tag: 10.24.05
Calatrava Towers
Santiago Calatrava is “the most crowd-pleasing architect since Frank Gehry. His work, too, is dazzling and emotionally engaging. And, just as Gehry exploited the trend of museum building in the nineteen-nineties, Calatrava has aligned himself with the latest architectural fashion: bespoke luxury-apartment towers.”
Munitz On Things Getty
Getty president Barry Munitz sits down to address the controversies swirling around the institution – the Italian artifacts case, morale, his salary and the infamous Porsche. Are staff jumping ship? “There hasn’t been a massive outflow. There hasn’t even been a major outflow of people. The museum director resigned and one other person who was her closest partner and colleague went at the same time. Not a single person left the museum in the year since she left. Everybody stayed. We went from a search (for a new curator) and hired the No. 1 candidate on everybody’s list, Michael Brand.”
Cuban: Studios Have To Change How They Deliver Movies
Mark Cuban believes that Hollywood’s distribution system requires radical change. “He wants to do away with artificial windows so that consumers can buy a movie ‘how they want it, when they want it, where they want it.’ He argues that movies should be made available simultaneously on cable television, DVD, and in movie theaters, letting consumers decide whether they prefer to see it at home (even if it means paying a premium for a new release) or in the theater. This is not mere theory.”
A Go For $326-Million Kansas City Performing Arts Center
Arts backers in Kansas City say they’re going ahead with plans to build a $326-million performing arts center designed by Moshe Safdie. The project has been in the planning since spring 2002. “The board of the center has approved groundbreaking for fall 2006 contingent upon reaching an interim funding goal of $45 million prior to Feb.1, 2006. The plan calls for two 1,600-seat halls, one for symphonic music, the other for opera and ballet. Backers have raised $228.5 million so far, leaving them $97.5 million short of their goal.”
British Film Industry Is Ailing
“A report commissioned by the U.K. Film Council this month found that industry jobs dropped 20 percent last year and predicted that investment would fall to $570 million in 2005, down 70 percent from last year. More movies shot elsewhere would have a devastating effect on a sector that contributes about $5.5 billion annually to British gross domestic product, the report added. Tourism officials are also worried. They estimate that around one-fifth of the 28 million people who come to Britain each year do so after seeing the country depicted on screen.”
An Intellectual Property Economy
“In recent years intellectual property has received a lot more attention because ideas and innovations have become the most important resource, replacing land, energy and raw materials. As much as three-quarters of the value of publicly traded companies in America comes from intangible assets, up from around 40% in the early 1980s. In information technology and telecoms in particular, the role of intellectual property has changed radically. What used to be the preserve of corporate lawyers and engineers in R&D labs has been speedily embraced by the boardroom…”
Video Games, Movies Blur The Lines
“Video games are among the fastest-growing, most-profitable businesses in the entertainment world. In the United States, domestic sales of video games and consoles generated $10 billion in revenue last year, compared with movie ticket sales of $9.4 billion. But with the exception of a few well-known directors – like George Lucas, who created a series of Star Wars video games, and Andy and Larry Wachowski, who wrote and directed “The Matrix” movies and helped create Matrix games – few in Hollywood have been able to successfully operate in both worlds. But that seems to be changing.”
TV’s Voodoo Accounting
Two Hollywood talent agencies are suing Paramount, contesting the studio’s claims that although the popular TV show “Frasier” has earned $1.5 billion dollars, it has lost $200 million. “Complaints about the way studios divvy up the profits are rampant within the industry. And it’s not just the little guys doing the complaining.”
Bloomberg’s Arts Support (Not Universal Praise?)
Sunday, the New York Times ran a story about NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg’s generous personal support of the arts. But “oddly omitted from the article are any comments from the major arts advocates in the city, including those from the Alliance for the Arts and the New York City Arts Coalition, who have not been shy about expressing their disappointment with the Bloomberg administration for having an arts expense budget lower than it was during the final fiscal year that began under former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.”