Sunday, April 17, 2011

Music "Business" & iTunes

So yesterday was Record Store Day 2011. It was an awesome experience for me. While I was only interested in the Foo Fighters "Medium Rare" release, it was still great to be involved with. When I arrived at Dearborn Music around 8:30am, I found a line already existed in the rain! We quickly struck up conversation with others in line, discussed what releases each person was there for and just talked music in general with others. It instantly took me about about 20 years to a time when this was just a regular occurrence. It happened every Tuesday morning (but usually the Monday night before), when new quality releases were coming from artists and the fans were excited day in and day out.

However, Record Store Day is not the focus for this entry. Let's go back about 12 hours prior to getting in line at Dearborn Music. While doing a scan of Facebook, I'd noticed that Lady Gaga announced her new single "Judas" was being released 4 days early via iTunes for the price of $1.29. As time went on, the mere thought of this bothered me more and more. I've made my thoughts clear on iTunes and how many things it does counter-culture to what music, art, artists and fans are about, so I don't need to retread that here. But it's this particular practice of exclusive product with inflated cost that has me quite bothered.

It basically boils down to this; How is it ok and applauded by the public to charge a THIRD more for a product or service just because you can provide it earlier than others? Anyone else employing the business model of iTunes would be called on the carpet in public forums. You may say "It's only twenty-nine cents, what's the big deal?" And I would answer in this fashion "That's exactly what they expect you to say" Can you think of one other product or service that this is acceptable from? Electronics stores have exclusive products constantly that range from early movie or album releases, to gadget and even appliance exclusives. Do they up-charge? Sometimes. But 30%? Not that I've ever seen, it's not acceptable and there would be public outrage. In most cases I've encountered, media products might receive a $1 inflation based on an original cost between $10-$25. So you're dealing with one or less than one percent profit being made from exclusivity. Electronics & gadgets tend to be even less. Take a hot new gadget with an MSRP of around $400. The highest I've ever seen items like this at a store stocking it exclusively is around $10. So again, a fair charge to get the product earlier from one venue in particular.

Really think about it and ask yourself; would I consider paying 30% more for any other product if it were exclusive to one venue? Or would you consider this to be shady, under-handed, untrustworthy, etc? Now let's take it a step further; what if that product only worked via a device provided by the same venue charging you 30% more to use it in the first place?

I'll give a fabricated, non-real world example to make my point more clear. Let's say that an energy company manufactured small home appliances. But in order to use their products, you had to have special outlets installed in your home. These outlets didn't work any different than the wide variety of other outlets available, they were just "locked down" so to speak. They only power this company's products and sometimes cause problems with your other, non-compatible appliances. Now add this to the pile; now that you've installed this companies outlet (or delivery system) in your home; now you are locked into buying only their products to work with that outlet. Upon investigation, you find out that their products are several under powered when compared to similar products from other companies. To further compound the issue, you find out that these under powered products are priced two and sometimes FOUR times as much as other, more powerful products.

So far in this example, you've bought into two items that cost more, offer less functionality and often times cause many convenience issues. Now to top things off, you come to find out that you can get an item to use with this appliance a little earlier than elsewhere. In this example, the item will cost $100 elsewhere in a few short days. But the company that sold you on their outlet and their appliance that runs on that outlet will let you have that item a few days early for $130. Would you even consider that? Would you think of it as a favor, a plus or a reason to do business with that company? I sincerely doubt it. In fact, I believe quite the contrary. I honestly believe that if ANY other company on planet Earth used these practices, they would be subject to endless amounts of controversy and they wouldn't have a customer base very long.

Yet for some reason, this practice is not only ok, but expected and accepted from iTunes. You have to over pay quite a bit for any product in the iPod line. You have to install their system resources heavy, exclusive software that only works with the iPod line. And then get a song early that they're already overcharging for (at their regular $.99 price), you have to pay 30% more. It's wrong, it's bad for business and all I can do is hope that someday soon the general public wakes up and realizes it. When something is at such a low price point, it's easier to get away with practices like this. As I said before, you were probably thinking "But it's just thirty cents!" near the beginning of this post. But again, I maintain that it's the practice, not the price that it's important. You wouldn't go to a car dealership to purchase a car that only runs on a certain company's fuel, if that fuel were over priced. And you certainly wouldn't find it acceptable to pay 30% for a $30000 vehicle because they could get it to you a few days early.

So why is it ok for iTunes to do the same thing?


-Russ

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Kurt & Courtney



Being the recent anniversary of the death of Kurt Cobain Hulu.com recently promoted that they had this doc on their website, I had seen it before years ago and thought it may be interesting to see it again since it was a long time since I had seen it.

The doc was done by Nick Broomfield a British film maker, and from the outset you can tell the film was done on the real cheap and you find out why about 1/2 of the way through the film. If you want something slick you will not like this at all.

The film starts as an examination of Cobain's relationship with Courtney Love and a look into his early life. We see the typical Cobain bridge in Seattle shots, we are taken to his school and hear from a teacher of his and an aunt. All say he was sweet but lonely in different ways and all look very unprepared for the meetings (A running theme throughout the movie). We go to a pre-fame girlfriend who has held on to a lot of Kurt's artwork from back then. You start to notice a lot of odd silence in the movie were the interviewee is nervously staring at the interviewer waiting for a sign on what he wants, Mr. Broomfield needs an editor badly.

This gets us to his relationship with Courtney. Looking back it feels like they were together for a long time, however the movie states it was only 2 years. He tracks down an old friend that the couple did drugs with, a friend who was repeatedly (and sadly) shunned by Kurt's handlers. Then it starts to get a little strange. The drug friend seems to be out of it, not that she is on something right then, but you can tell the years of drugs has killed most of what she may have been. Then we get to see some of Courtney's "people"... A father who has basically disowned her and a ex boyfriend/rockstar who claims Courtney's drive for fame drove him away from fame.

Courtney's father comes off in the film as a man angry at his daughter for her wild actions or just trying to peddle his books about the grunge couple. However after further research you find out that this man was a big force behind the Greatful Dead and has published many books on his own, most having nothing to do with Kurt or Courtney. But in the movie he comes off as a revengeful, sour man.

Next is Rozz Rezabek. He is a former Seattle phenom who Courtney tried to push to be famous. It got so crazy that he moved far away and dropped out. His thoughts are that Courtney wanted to be famous riding on the coattails of her famous boyfriend or husband, this is her game plan and he has her old writings to back his theory. Another weird, angry person in this story.

Now the film turns to a conspiracy movie. Did Courtney have Kurt killed? As odd as people had been... We ain't seen nothing yet... Welcome El Duce! We find ourselves in a vehicle being driven by "Divine Brown's pimp"!?! (Yes.... The "Hugh Grant" Divine Brown) And he claims to know someone who claims Courtney offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt and his name is El Duce, a singer for a band called The Mentors. We get some awful Mentors video. As they pull in they are greeted by a broken privacy fence and a barking dog, then a crazy, degenerate looking man who is introduced as El Duce. He says on camera the story of Courtney and $50,000 as best as his drunken self can. He also mentions a man named Alan then says "Ooops.... I'll let the FBI find him!" followed by laughter. It has been assumed by many that "Alan" killed Kurt, we may never know as El Duce dies two days later after passing out on a train track after leaving with some unknown individual.

We also get Tom Grant, a former cop who is now a PI who believes Courtney had Kurt killed. He even has an interesting site about it http://cobaincase.com/index.htm . The movie spends a lot of time with him really focusing on two things, the lack of fingerprints and the amount of heroin in Kurt's system (2 times a lethal dose) the latter is debunked by a doctor by showing a man standing on one leg with what is assumed is the same amount of heroin. There is a mountain of evidence on the site though that is better then these 2 items (Though they are bombshells themselves), I would recommend a look at the site if you are into this type of thing.

The film takes another turn as the films financing starts to be denied. A big financier is MTV and at the time "The People Vs. Larry Flint" is out and in the Oscar hunt, and Courtney is a big star on the rise. She is threating lawsuits against everyone who says or does anything remotely negative about her or Kurt. Nervous people start pulling the plug on the film and no we have gone from relationships and examining childhoods to a murder mystery to a movie about censorship.

We also get a visit with Dylan Carlson, Kurt's best friend and a very odd, screwed up individual. One thing you should keep in mind is that all these people had scheduled interviews and supposedly knew the subject matter, yet almost all seemed oddly lost. Dylan thinks that all the odd circumstances are just coincidence and then makes a very unconvincing threat saying that Kurt couldn't have been killed because if he had been then Dylan would have killed those responsible. We also go back to Courtney's dad for some more crazy threats to her and to the friend who was shunned by the handlers, she says she is scared of Courtney, we get a similar story from a journalist who had done a story on the couple when Courtney was pregnant, everyone in Seattle seems to be frightened of Courtney who is coming off as a psychotic lunatic who now has lots of money. We also go back to the druggie friend from earlier who claims to have pics of all three of them shooting up, which she never produces.

We end up with Broomfield finding Courtney at an ACLU gathering where she speaks of freedom of press as she is shutting down access and threating lawsuits behind the scenes. Mr. Broomfield somehow finds his way to the stage to call out Courtney but is quickly taken offstage after his comments, pretty ballsy stuff.

In the end Mr. Broomfield claims that he has not seen enough to say Kurt was murdered, but he is definitely not a Courtney fan. The doc is OK, a little messy, not very well produced, but worth it for the characters that the film comes across. It would have been nice if it could have used some Nirvana music, however Courtney killed that, but I doubt I had to tell you that, lol. I would recommend watching it if you like the music or are into conspiracies at all, just be ready for a slightly disjointed movie