Looks Like You'll Never Own Movies Again

[ProfD]

5 hours ago, SamuelBLupowitz said:

The trick is building a system that actually works for the creators and their audiences. 

The system usually works until it becomes a huge corporation bloated with multiple layers of bureaucracy and bean counters.

 

Independent companies (movies, TV, music) who are willing to pay their content providers will rise up.

 

Same goes for artists and musicians who find success going the independent route instead of waiting on a major label deal. 

 

The Jam Band scene is a great example of artists and musicians and ancillary folks (sound engineers, lighting, road crew, etc.) being able to make money without the music industry machine of record sales,  airplay, videos, etc.

 

The pandemic shook up many aspects of the way we do business. It shuttered some businesses and opened up new opportunities for others.

 

Those who figure out the best way to utilize resources, intelligence, technology and talent will always thrive. 

 

Those who cannot see the future and/or who lack the desire and willingness to adapt to change will either get left behind or shrivel up and die on the vine.

 

Every generation goes through phases as time and technology marches. 😎

[Stokely]

2 hours ago, KuruPrionz said:

If he is "buying well" then it is sort of a "savings account that can be useful" concept and I'm not against it. If he buys new guitars, that is a mistake many people make. 

Carefully purchased used guitars can be worth more than the ask price right off the bat. Fix them up, make them play great and look good and value goes up. Some of them will continue to increase in value at a much better rate than the bank will give you. It's a gamble, like buying stocks but like stocks if you do your research and purchase wisely you can show a good profit over time. 

 

I agree with the tuning idea, I've got my guitars well tweaked to stay in tune for the most part. I don't use guitars with whammy bars live. My other tendency is to take "beaters" to gigs, mostly screwdriver guitars that I put together out of the parts that I prefer. I'm 6'2" with large hands and prefer the wide fatback Warmoth necks, I have a Strat with a 1 7/8" wide at the nut fatback neck. I scalloped the fretboard so you have to play relaxed, which is the best way to play in any case. I know way too many guitarists who stress their hands out trying to "muscle" the sound out of the instrument. That's not my game. Thick pick, light touch, relaxation wins the game. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against it in any way.  I find it amusing    He has some excellent guitars, with a wide range of "pedigree" shall we say (ie, not a gear snob) and really knows how to use them.  Most of them he buys used, he can do setups and can evaluate issues and whether they are an easy fix or a major issue.   Problem is, we play in high humidity and heat after being in AC so it's really hard for any guitar to stay in tune.    The worst in this respect were two PRSes he had, both American-made.  We tune down a half step and that may have been an issue with those particular guitars.  Whatever the reason, he ended up selling them for that reason (I honestly didn't think they sounded as good as either his strats or les pauls but I keep my opinions on other people's instruments to myself unless I'm asked!)

[KuruPrionz]

24 minutes ago, Stokely said:

Don't get me wrong, I'm not against it in any way.  I find it amusing    He has some excellent guitars, with a wide range of "pedigree" shall we say (ie, not a gear snob) and really knows how to use them.  Most of them he buys used, he can do setups and can evaluate issues and whether they are an easy fix or a major issue.   Problem is, we play in high humidity and heat after being in AC so it's really hard for any guitar to stay in tune.    The worst in this respect were two PRSes he had, both American-made.  We tune down a half step and that may have been an issue with those particular guitars.  Whatever the reason, he ended up selling them for that reason (I honestly didn't think they sounded as good as either his strats or les pauls but I keep my opinions on other people's instruments to myself unless I'm asked!)

Many PRS guitars have a floating whammy bar. Tuning one string pulls the others flat. One string going flat makes the other strings go sharp. 

Floating whammy bars are a disaster waiting to happen. I've blocked the bridge on my Strat, no whammy, no problem. 

The original Floyd Rose bars did not have fine tuners on them and the locking nut makes using the guitar tunes a complex jumping through of hoops. 

So they put fine tuners on the bridge. Slightly less worse. I used to install Floyds for people, Eddie Van Halen made them "fashionable" but he had several guitars and a tech so it didn't matter so much. 

When I used a Floyd live I always had a backup guitar and needed to use it often. 

[Notes_Norton]

My Parker can be hard tail, sharp only whammy, or floating whammy. I tried the floating adjustment when I first got it, and found it too troublesome for me. Since guitar is my 7th instrument, I need it easy to get along with.

[RABid]

On 8/2/2023 at 11:02 AM, RABid said:

Even though they are one of the leaders in subscriber count Disney claims to be loosing money, or at least not making as much as they expected.

Got a notice today. Disney+ is raising prices from 11 to 14 dollars a month. That is a 21 percent increase. Amazon Prime and several others have also announced big increases. Time for me to decide what to cancel and accelerate the churning of my subscriptions. 

[David Emm]

52 minutes ago, RABid said:

Got a notice today. Disney+ is raising prices from 11 to 14 dollars a month. That is a 21 percent increase. Amazon Prime and several others have also announced big increases. Time for me to decide what to cancel and accelerate the churning of my subscriptions. 

 

And so begins the next market culling, where the number of services will greatly exceed the amount of material people really want to see. I'm putting a couple of such entities out to pasture, much like you. There's a point in my thinking where I finally hear a certain bell ring and take the next action. Much more of the streaming wars and I'm going to wind up spending that money on Omnisphere. If I'm going to stare into a screen like some anime cyborg, it should be for a greater cause than Derivative Twaddle, Vol. 176. 🤨

[ProfD]

On 9/23/2023 at 10:13 PM, David Emm said:

Much more of the streaming wars and I'm going to wind up spending that money on Omnisphere. If I'm going to stare into a screen like some anime cyborg, it should be for a greater cause than Derivative Twaddle, Vol. 176. 🤨

I'd imagine staring at a screen and scrolling through and auditioning 10k presets in Omnisphere could be more fun.😁😎

[bill5]

That's not much of a choice   

[David Emm]

4 hours ago, bill5 said:

That's not much of a choice   

 

I'm sure its safe to assume that Omnisphere wouldn't throw a hackneyed plot device in my face that was an antique before Mae West needed her first brassiere.

 

If you don't know who Mae West was, then I'm too damned old.

 

Look her up. She plowed her own path at a time when women all but never managed it. My hero! 🤩

[bill5]

You seem to be presuming I'm waaay younger than I am. Thanks   Although you don't have to be old to know who Mae West was, any more than you need to be even older to know who Geronimo was. 

 

My point is neither appeals to me in the least. The more presets a synth has, the less interested I am. 

[ProfD]

28 minutes ago, bill5 said:

 The more presets a synth has, the less interested I am. 

A Moog Grandmother could be in your future. Hopefully before inMusic changes the chips.😁😎

[bill5]

See what I mean, I have no clue wth "inmusic" even is. I wouldn't mind a Moog. Or a grandmother, if she was hot.   

[ProfD]

40 minutes ago, bill5 said:

See what I mean, I have no clue wth "inmusic" even is. I wouldn't mind a Moog. Or a grandmother, if she was hot.   

InMusic is the company that bought Moog Music.

 

A hot grandmother will definitely have a few presets. Programmability might be limited. 😎

[Notes_Norton]

I just read an article that stated people are buying music CDs again (along with LPs). Perhaps when enough people get tired of having to rent a dozen streaming services to get the movies they want, DVDs will return.

 

Who knows?

 

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[ProfD]

On 9/26/2023 at 9:20 AM, Notes_Norton said:

I just read an article that stated people are buying music CDs again (along with LPs). Perhaps when enough people get tired of having to rent a dozen streaming services to get the movies they want, DVDs will return.

 

Who knows?

 

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

I would not get hopes up too far.

 

CDs, LPs and DVDs (if they return) will only appeal to a fraction of people.  Similar to 8-track, reel-to-reel and cassette tapes.

 

Most content providers won't bother to use physical media.

 

The younger generation and future will be all-in on digital distribution and streaming. 

 

The physical media generation won't be around for much longer.😎

[Anderton]

On 9/26/2023 at 8:20 AM, Notes_Norton said:

Who knows?

 

I think it's a nostalgia thing, like vinyl. However, I could see specialty companies doing things like classical releases on physical media...until you can't get players anymore, which is probably not too far off in the future.

 

Craig

[analogika]

23 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

I think it's a nostalgia thing, like vinyl.

 

Nah. It was a brief blip during Covid. Sales were down again in 2022. 

Vinyl is still rising (it's still a tiny market though) and just overtook CD sales in the U.S. for the first time in thirty years — but vinyl has a completely different charm. 

Vinyl is haptic, it's visual, there's ritual involved, it's imperfect, crackles, maybe distorts, requires care — and it's got 12"x12" cover art. 

 

The best thing you can do with a CD is rip it into your computer/player of choice and then chuck the physical medium. Apart from the odd booklet that is WAY too small to appreciate, let alone read, it has no appeal, nor benefit over the digitally stored copy. There's not even anything particularly "retro" about it. It's just annoying plastic clutter. 

[ProfD]

1 hour ago, analogika said:

The best thing you can do with a CD is rip it into your computer/player of choice and then chuck the physical medium. Apart from the odd booklet that is WAY too small to appreciate, let alone read, it has no appeal, nor benefit over the digitally stored copy. There's not even anything particularly "retro" about it. It's just annoying plastic clutter. 

Yep.  Both vinyl and CDs have to be stored somewhere. 😁

 

Those sales will really plummet if buyers read about us old folks trying to decide the best way to digitize our physical media collections.🤣😎

[bill5]

2 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

I think it's a nostalgia thing, like vinyl. However, I could see specialty companies doing things like classical releases on physical media...until you can't get players anymore, which is probably not too far off in the future.

 

Craig

I doubt it. If you can still get record players, I think you'll still be able to get CD/DVD players for a long time. 

[analogika]

12 minutes ago, bill5 said:

I doubt it. If you can still get record players, I think you'll still be able to get CD/DVD players for a long time. 

 

I think you'll be able to get optical players, because every CD player you can buy today also does Blu-Ray and DVDs. (I did discover that Roksan and Naim still make CD players, but others, including Linn, stopped years ago.)

[Anderton]

3 hours ago, analogika said:

Nah. It was a brief blip during Covid. Sales were down again in 2022. 

 

Yes, but overall, look at how small CD sales are. When they reach these kinds of sales, they'll fluctuate from year to year. It's like if 200 more CDs are sold, it will be a 50% increase   2023 will bring Taylor Swift CD sales into the picture and it will bounce up a little bit. Then go back down. Then bob around that sort of sucky sales zone until all that's left is collectors.

 

 

3 hours ago, analogika said:

The best thing you can do with a CD is rip it into your computer/player of choice and then chuck the physical medium.

 

I suspect that's what a lot of people do. They want higher quality than (most) streaming services, and it doesn't cost anything to rip it to a drive.

[Anderton]

1 hour ago, bill5 said:

I doubt it. If you can still get record players, I think you'll still be able to get CD/DVD players for a long time. 

 

But as streaming goes to higher resolutions than CDs, the only demand for CD players will be for playing back old stuff, which was probably ripped anyway. I think Analogika's right, you'll still be able to get optical players...although companies like Disney pulling back on DVD and Blu-Ray production won't help.

 

As more and more companies that own content try to force us into getting it only from streaming, the demand for optical will go down. Which is a pity, because at least for me, it's a great local storage medium as backup for HDs and SSDs. Maybe I'll need to move to LTO technology at some point. Or maybe I'll be dead by then, and it won't matter

[ProfD]

Playstations and XBoxes will play DVDs and CDs too.😎

[bill5]

44 minutes ago, Anderton said:

 

But as streaming goes to higher resolutions than CDs, the only demand for CD players will be for playing back old stuff, which was probably ripped anyway. I think Analogika's right, you'll still be able to get optical players...although companies like Disney pulling back on DVD and Blu-Ray production won't help.

 

As more and more companies that own content try to force us into getting it only from streaming, the demand for optical will go down. Which is a pity, because at least for me, it's a great local storage medium as backup for HDs and SSDs. Maybe I'll need to move to LTO technology at some point. Or maybe I'll be dead by then, and it won't matter

That's pretty much where I'm at with it I have external HDs to save all my stuff and replace them every so often, so screw streaming media. Unfortunately, kids now just don't get it as streaming everything is their default. Enjoy the enslavement you poor kids!

[analogika]

1 hour ago, bill5 said:

That's pretty much where I'm at with it I have external HDs to save all my stuff and replace them every so often, so screw streaming media. Unfortunately, kids now just don't get it as streaming everything is their default. Enjoy the enslavement you poor kids!

 

As much as I hate subscriptions, I envy my daughter. I look over at the 4,000+ vinyl records sitting in a massive shelf, and think of the boxes of CDs sitting in the basement now that I've ripped them all to the hard drive sitting here on my desk, and of the time, the effort, and the money involved — she'll probably come out ahead, and has none of the bulk, the care, the annoyance etc. And she has access to more music than I do in my collection.

Yeah, I have some stuff that's not on Spotify. And yeah, I have a bunch of original mixes and masters, where Spotify only has remasters, plus Spotify pushes everything through their own mastering chain, so nothing sounds exactly the way it's supposed to. 

 

Who cares? 

[analogika]

2 hours ago, Anderton said:

 

Yes, but overall, look at how small CD sales are. When they reach these kinds of sales, they'll fluctuate from year to year. It's like if 200 more CDs are sold, it will be a 50% increase   2023 will bring Taylor Swift CD sales into the picture and it will bounce up a little bit. Then go back down. Then bob around that sort of sucky sales zone until all that's left is collectors.

 

Contrast with vinyl, which just surpassed CD sales and is continually rising… it'll never be a major market, but it is both a "retro" cult and a collectors' market. We're not seeing that with CDs, and I somehow doubt we ever will. 

[ProfD]

19 minutes ago, analogika said:

As much as I hate subscriptions, I envy my daughter. I look over at the 4,000+ vinyl records sitting in a massive shelf, and think of the boxes of CDs sitting in the basement now that I've ripped them all to the hard drive sitting here on my desk, and of the time, the effort, and the money involved — she'll probably come out ahead, and has none of the bulk, the care, the annoyance etc. And she has access to more music than I do in my collection.

Your daughter has access to everything...her subscription collection and may even inherit her dad's vinyl, CDs and hard drive. 🤣😎

[Notes_Norton]

Since my tastes in music run from mainstream to niche genres, I have things that will probably be difficult or impossible to stream. I also have favorites that have long been out of print. I don't know if there is enough demand for some of the most obscure music for it to appear online.

 

If I want some music that is only streamed, I suppose I could record it while streaming. Legal? Don't know, but if not, keeping a copy for myself is low-risk. I'd rather buy it though, and compensate the artist, so if I have the choice, that's the way I'll go.

 

I don't own a lot of movies, but I do own a lot of music. That probably makes me a geezer, but I'm OK with that.

 

Since Netflix no longer sends DVDs, I'll be streaming my first movie this week. Mrs. Notes and I like to watch one movie per week. I've tested streaming YouTube videos to make sure everything hooks up.

 

My sound bar has 3 HDMI inputs. The DVD is in HDMI 1, and I hooked the laptop in HDMI 2. Flick of the remote button, and everything that plays on the laptop, is also on the TV screen. Easy peasy, even for this codger.

 

My public library connects to a couple of streaming services, so I'm going to be trying them first. Learn how to do it for free, and then invest in a paid streamer.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

 

[Anderton]

31 minutes ago, analogika said:

We're not seeing that with CDs, and I somehow doubt we ever will. 

 

You're probably right, and I think the distinguishing factor is the artwork. Otherwise, why do people buy vinyl and never play it?

 

But you never know with collectors, and what may or may not become collectable. It's hard to believe what Beanie Babies were selling for during their peak. Maybe rare CD box sets will become a thing...and buyers will never play the CDs

 

[bill5]

48 minutes ago, analogika said:

 

As much as I hate subscriptions, I envy my daughter. I look over at the 4,000+ vinyl records sitting in a massive shelf, and think of the boxes of CDs sitting in the basement now that I've ripped them all to the hard drive sitting here on my desk, and of the time, the effort, and the money involved — she'll probably come out ahead, and has none of the bulk, the care, the annoyance etc. And she has access to more music than I do in my collection.

Yeah but she'll never know the joy of going into a record store and leafing through the bins, of finding a record you're interested in on sale, of buying and the anticipation as you drive (or bike?) home, ripping off the shrinkrap and reading the lyrics or liner notes as the record plays.....buying an album used to be a minor event when we were kids. Now it's all thrown at kids all at once and it's a yawn. I think instant access to everything is a double-edged sword.