Having discussed this in the past, I'm fairly certain that you're correct, in as much as we're more or less in sync on this issue. Regardless:
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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Of course, my indicating the choice of actually dying was a gross exaggeration, but I think we see eye to eye. Generally speaking, there's a large group of people out there who don't even consider paying a single cent for their music, movies, games, or software, etc. Yet they do spring for other things that, to me, have a much, much lesser end value. I think it's odd and worthy of examination.
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You're attaching a mystery to this that isn't actually present. It's because you make an assumption that there's some sort of unemotional logic behind the purchase decisions being made.
You or I may think it remarkable folly to spend money on a ringtone, or immoral to obtain a video game or song for free. This may be due to ideology, or simple logic.
"Song X costs $0.99 on iTunes, but Rogers/Bell/AT&T wants $2.49 for the right to use a poorly rendered loop of it as a notifier. This is not good value."
Vs.
"I want Song X."
Indeed, it'd be folly to assume that we're above the same traps fallen into by 'the masses,' rather than that we simply have different value definitions.
Typical acquisition decision-making flows toward best value. It's not whether or not an item can be obtained, but rather what is the least costly way to obtain it. In that I think a delineation occurs between (to stick to the example) a ringtone and an mp3. An mp3 can be downloaded through bittorrent at virtually no cost and little inconvenience. This contrasts with iTunes, and for those who are savvy enough to use bittorrent and/or don't use an iPod and the attendant software (iTunes) is likely to be the best value. A ringtone, as the contrast, exists within a closed system. There's only one way to acquire it, and therefore the best value exists through that one way as the default.
I think on particularly high value items it's possible to cross a threshold where the purchaser decides that the product isn't worth the cost, but I think it skews when we're talking about amounts under $5. That's pocket change, and tends to be discounted by most.
This relates back to the larger discussion in that the perceived value of cultural content to the end consumer has fallen sharply. Even if piracy were eliminated, I don't think many people would be willing to go back to $20 per CD. That paradigm was irrevocably destroyed.
Which is why the smart content producers are realizing that they're not in the business of marketing a product, and are looking for alternate revenue streams.
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Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
Amazon is making (or perhaps merely has been until lately) the same mistakes Sony used to (or perhaps still does to an extent) when it came to new technologies and their products in general. The attempt at proprietorship at something like eBooks ain't going to work in the long run. I see many people preferring the Sony Reader over the Kindle for that very reason. I think this has been rectified with the Kindle DX handling PDFs, but it was, at one point, an issue.
That said, smart publishers are realizing that they produce content, not products (i.e. books). It's a different situation than what the music guys face. Books are visual, so it's not quite the same thing. I'm interested to see how things will go down the road, but I can't see myself willingly giving up my paper-bound books. They're as close to a perfect invention as anything.
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Amazon's mistakes have been made by many producers. Apple, Microsoft, even Nintendo. There's an assumption that if you control the hardware you can control the content. This assumption is invariably proven false by the talented hobbyists who undertake the dismantling and undermining of these ideas.
If Amazon hadn't included .pdf functionality in their Kindles, either someone else would have marketed a product that did and made the Kindle obsolete, or someone with enough time, energy and knowledge would've created a hack to do it anyway.
You raise an interesting point, obliquely. The music industry forgot for a while what business it was in -- the Powers That Be got too caught up on marketing little plastic discs and forgot that the real value was in the content that's on them. I think this is starting to change, but it's painfully slow.
I sincerely hope that those in the publishing industry are smart enough to adapt to this as it comes, and not just because I have a friend in the biz. Marketing an experience (in the form of a paperback book, as the case may be) is one strategy. Understanding that there are other ways to leverage your content and being flexible enough to adapt to the changing landscape is going to be the key issue, however.
I don't think the masses are inherently evil, and out to rob the poor hardworking artists. I do think the masses are strongly resistant to having the will of others forced upon them, and now that technology exists to enable them to route around such things those days are pretty much over.