RHTI 27: $6 mil Home Theater, Courtney Love/Writer's Strike, "No Country for Old Men", Jill Sobule

[eugovector]

New Episode Up, to start with, here's the... Unboxing of the Popcorn Hour
The Full Video Review will be up on Metacafe in a few short days, audio in the next Podcast.

Also, Please, if you haven't yet, take the survey.


Jim's gonna get us an Apple HD rental Review...as soon as they update

One of the better music industry analyses...from Courtney Love: ??!!

$6 Million Home Theater, all speakers, no seats:

No Country for Old Men - 5 stars


Bad Karma from illegally downloading music? Jill Sobule makes it all better: http://www.jillsnextrecord.com/

...and a Review of "Underdog Victorious"

[HomeTeam]

Good show.

Interesting info from Courtney Love.

I wish some numbers were released from Radiohead as to how that experiment went. I'm sure in the end they made some profit and probably more than they would've made had it been released on a label, nevertheless, I'm just curious.

I wish I had that type of money to do a theater like that. Would've done it differently, but man, that's still pretty nice, though not enough seats.

Overall, good show, can't wait to hear the full Popcorn Hour review.

[eugovector]

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1883

http://blog.wired.com/music/2007/10/...tes-radio.html

As of November, by most accounts, they had made $6-10 million. Not bad, and that's before the $80 version comes out.

Now, a lot of people will take issue with the vast number of people who chose to pay nothing, to which I would counter:

1) They still made $6 million in a month.

2) Many people who downloaded for free simply would not have bought the album if they had to pay for it. It's like when the movie industry will say they "lost" $25 million dollars from people downloading "Norbit". Not that "In rainbows" was a "Norbit".

3) Did you try to use the Radiohead site? It was impossible to navigate. Artsy as it was, by the end, I was so frustrated at the hoop I had to jump through, I left, at the downloading page, without downloading. It angered me that much. Love radiohead, like the album, love their attitude, but as a consumer I have to say that if Amazon had been in charge of their distribution, they would have seen a lot more people paying.

4) They are still a multi-million dollar band and, like home theater, every $$ you spend from your budget on radiohead is one less $$ that goes to small acts who need the money more, like Jill Sobule. If I have $25 to spend on music, I'm going to be more inclined to give it to to act who needs it more. Radiohead will make more music, if Jill can't eat, she may never release another album.

[HomeTeam]

Just an added info, Nine Inch Nails (which in this case means Trent Reznor) has done something similar to Jill Sobule in releasing an album with a price structure with different extras for each price structure starting with the first 9 tracks of the album for free.

Things like this look to be catching on.

[eugovector]

I saw that and meant to blog it. The full album (something like 36 tracks) is supposedly only $5, so I'll be buying it out of sheer principle alone and will probably feature it on a future episode.

Thanks for the heads up.