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NEWS: GDH to Allow Downloaders to Set Price for 2 Gonzo Anime

It worked out pretty well for NIN and their ghosts album. Hell, I paid the five bucks on Amazon just to support them in their endeavor. The music is pretty good if you want something relax/pain/etc to, but really it was a show of support more than anything.

The Radiohead album was an opening pricing experiment and was nowhere near as successful as NIN's Ghost, which WASN'T an open pricing model.

Hat-tip to BenBrown for some perspective on the comparison. People also have to remember that music acts like Radiohead (which already are a well-known mega-act) make a huge percentage of their income through touring, which is obviously not a revenue stream available to the anime industry.

I feel I need to make a statement about a comparison I thought was unfair and inaccurate, regarding musicians versus anime producers/distributors.

First, my bonafieds: I am currently attending Expression College of Digital Art, in one of the most prestigious audio programs on the west coast. I work with musicians on a daily basis, and music is a large part of what we do here. Knowing the music industry is vital to our careers, if for no other reason that it will always be a fallback position if things go south in other mediums we actually want to be involved in.

MUSIC ARTISTS RARELY MAKE MONEY THROUGH CONCERTS. At least, signed musicians to big labels. This is a popular myth spawned by a public's unclear understanding of how the music industry works.

Music concerts are a wildly expensive undertaking. There is a greater profit margin per attendee than CD or radio airplay, to be sure, but people need to understand those models first.

Radio airplay doesn't do crap unless you recorded the music, mixed the music, or most importantly wrote the music. Modern singer songwriters almost never get played on the radio because the RIAA doesn't like the idea of its artists actually getting money before they do.

CD and album sales are always a huge net loss to the artist. Most artists--major, successful artists whom you probably have multiple albums of on your shelf--have gone broke, or are broke today, because of the sheer expense of printing and distributing CDs. Only exceptionally old bands who can afford to make their own copies themselves and who were smart enough to acquire rights to their own music make money off of CD sales, often decades and millions of sales after the music was written. This is because CD PRINT RUNS ARE PAID BY THE ARTIST WITH LOANS FROM THE RECORD COMPANIES. Those loans must be paid off or the artist will never see a cent offstage. Similar business models apply to music videos.

Concerts are first and foremost the method that signed musicians use to get out of debt fast. It is the only method within the music industry with sufficient profit margin to rapidly repay the loan that does not involve being free of the record label (often not possible, or if possible actively prevented). CD sales and radio airplay are merely advertisements for the purpose of bringing in paying attendees to concerts. FAILURE TO HAVE A SUCCESSFUL CONCERT RUN (THE LOANS ARE PAID OFF) ALMOST ALWAYS INSURES THAT THE BAND IS DONE AND PERMANENTLY BROKE.

TLC. Booker T and the MGs (actually, most of the artists of the once great STAX records). Almost every small band who's tried to "make it big," and plenty more who did.

Here is a great (if somewhat foulmouthed, so warnings aforetime) article that accurately explains to people with a complete cost breakdown what I'm talking about: Warning ! Some foul language ahead!

Why is this different from anime, especially in terms of fansubbing?

Anime has a guaranteed distribution channel upon release that recovers most or all of the money spent on the product. This would be ad or PPV-supported distribution on Japanese television, along with exhaustive and potentially lucrative ancilliary products like toys, statues, manga, etc.

This means that unlike CDs and concerts, anime actually makes money during the act of fansubbing assuming that the subs are released after the airing of each episode. Obviously, releasing shows before they premiere has the potential to rob viewership from those shows. They make money through ad revenue earned during the broadcast, or from the purchase of DVD footage. Often, this is not the case during music piracy. Also, obviously, this revenue stream is largely restricted to a regional basis (Japan).

A simple market change could make up the difference in ad revenue that fansubbing causes, whereas the music industry is very soon going to find itself gutted like a caught fish becaus it could not and would not revert to a musician- and engineer-friendly system, which is inevitably driving away large numbers of bright and skilled young talent.

OK, my rant is over, back to studying for tests.[/url]

I would be amused if people started paying BOST TV their $1.99, and then went and downloaded it from crunchyroll for free. That way people would still be supporting the industry and showing how dumb the crunchyroll model is at the same time.

Goodpenguin wrote:

Hat-tip to BenBrown for some perspective on the comparison. People also have to remember that music acts like Radiohead (which already are a well-known mega-act) make a huge percentage of their income through touring, which is obviously not a revenue stream available to the anime industry.

There was a very interesting post in the fansubber interview on that topic that I think a lot of people overlooked, not being knowledgeable (not to mention that I also have always thought that touring was the prime source of income for bands), I can only take his word with a bit of doubt, but it is interesting to see such a common assumption shot down:

thecactusman17 wrote:

content

MUSIC ARTISTS RARELY MAKE MONEY THROUGH CONCERTS. At least, signed musicians to big labels. This is a popular myth spawned by a public's unclear understanding of how the music industry works.

CD and album sales are always a huge net loss to the artist.

Concerts are first and foremost the method that signed musicians use to get out of debt fast. It is the only method within the music industry with sufficient profit margin to rapidly repay the loan that does not involve being free of the record label (often not possible, or if possible actively prevented). CD sales and radio airplay are merely advertisements for the purpose of bringing in paying attendees to concerts.

I can only take his word with a bit of doubt, but it is interesting to see such a common assumption shot down:

thecactusman17 wrote:

Stuff about music revenue, correlary to anime

thecactusman17 wrote:

Anime has a guaranteed distribution channel upon release that recovers most or all of the money spent on the product. This would be ad or PPV-supported distribution on Japanese television, along with exhaustive and potentially lucrative ancilliary products like toys, statues, manga, etc. This means that unlike CDs and concerts, anime actually makes money during the act of fansubbing assuming that the subs are released after the airing of each episode. Obviously, releasing shows before they premiere has the potential to rob viewership from those shows. They make money through ad revenue earned during the broadcast, or from the purchase of DVD footage. Often, this is not the case during music piracy. Also, obviously, this revenue stream is largely restricted to a regional basis (Japan).

babbo wrote:

I can only take his word with a bit of doubt, but it is interesting to see such a common assumption shot down: thecactusman17 wrote: Stuff about music revenue, correlary to anime

Thats an interesting quote babbo, it's a shame that I usually can't make it through the interview forums post by post, most of it is just too much non-sense to find interesting bits like that one.

The interesting part was he asserts that the anime studios have already recouped their expenses through the Japanese network contracts. This is completely contrary to everything I've ever heard that the studio doesn't see a dime from networks.