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Nels Wadycki

Month: September 2009

  • Ong Bak 2: Available Now on VOD

    Nels W

    But the interesting part is that it’s not out in theaters until October 23rd (that’s 23 days from the time of this writing).

    The whole “available now on VOD, Xbox Live, and Amazon” part seems a stark contrast to the “in theaters October 23rd” part, and while I applaud the effort/ingenuity, I have to wonder what research led to the decision. I’m sure there is a market for people who are going to buy a movie, but aren’t going to go see it in theaters.

    Ah… now I see: Ong Bak 2 (Pre-Theatrical Rental)

    The key is obviously “Pre-Theatrical Rental” because the cost of that rental (at least on Amazon) is $9.99. That’s fairly comparable to seeing the movie in the theater (though if you have VOD or Xbox Live, or a computer hooked up to a TV through which you can play the Amazon rental) then you can get several admissions for the price of entry. So I still have to wonder, are they going to make more money off of people renting this from home than they are from people going to the theater (or going to the theater and subsequently buying the movie)? In this case I’m less skeptical simply because of the movie. It seems like a fanboy kind of movie that people will actually want to see as soon as they can. And I can imagine people watching this in a dorm room on someone’s oversize computer screen, versus, say Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs or Fame.

    ong_bak_2_wp_01

  • The Album Is Dying A Slow Death

    Nels W

    It’s like The Internet is a disease and it’s slowly damaging the organs of the album. One by one it goes through the body of the album, taking a chunk here and there. The album isn’t on life support yet, but it will be soon enough.

    From Read/WriteWeb:

    Radiohead’s frontman Thom Yorke announced that the band will no longer release full-length studio albums and instead focus on downloadable singles.

    Billy Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins aren’t quite ready to go all the way there, but instead they’re breaking the album into 11 EP’s of 4 songs each. That way Billy can still fulfill his artwork and concept fetish by including pictures, paintings, etc. with the EPs while making the music available to people who don’t share his proclivity for the visual aspect of the theme.

    dyptych4

    While The Smashing Pumpkins method is already familiar to them (see also: The Aeroplane Flies High), Radiohead’s declaration shows an awareness of changing methods of distribution as compared with the “old world” ways. The reason we have albums in the first place is because records (and tapes, and CDs) only held a finite amount of material before their storage space was exhausted. Today, even fairly low end computers come with 80-90GB of storage, which is enough for several albums even for loss-less quality distribution. We no longer have the limitations that made the album a necessity in the first place, so why continue on with the tradition?

    If you say “because of the recording industry” then it really only further serves to show how far the industry’s head is under the sand. Here’s a great example: Jay-Z’s Blueprint 3 (which I like) is $10.99 on iTunes. But each of the individual tracks is $1.29. So, to buy the album as singles (with the Radiohead model) you’d pay $19.35. Yes, I realize that by releasing singles, labels run the risk of not having people buy all of the singles, but since The Blueprint 3 has 15 songs on it, each person would only have to buy 57% of the songs (8-9 of the 15 songs) to get the same amount of money.

    If you’re a ruthless music company exec, why are you basically giving people 6-7 songs for free?

    Do you really think that people who might otherwise download the entire thing for free are going to instead pay $10.99 because it’s a better deal than buying each song individually? No. They’re still going to download the whole thing and pay nothing. But the people who would pay $10.99 for the album, I’m guessing they’d also pay $10.32 to buy 8 of the songs individually. Especially if you release one single a month for 15 months, I bet you get a pretty high conversion rate. Then it’s only $1.29 a month. That’s not a big deal. Seems like a much easier sell than trying to convert an entire $10.99 (or $19.35) all at once.

    The album is dead. Long live the single.

  • Book Recommendation: Talent Is Overrated

    Nels W

    (The link is to the paperback which comes out in May 2010 – there is a hardcover available now)

    I read this book back in July and since then I’ve thought about it on almost a daily basis. The hypothesis, stated by itself, sounds fairly ridiculous because it comes down to: There is no such thing as talent. Perhaps I feel so strongly and was so influenced by the book because I’ve kind of always felt it was true, but presented in the book are studies that provide the kind of evidence I’ve always believed in a more anecdotal way.

    My personal favorite example (not presented in the book) is Michael Jordan. Say what you will about Jordan (and if you don’t know why I qualify it that way, then don’t worry about), but he practiced, and practiced right. I’m sure there were people who spent more time playing basketball than Jordan in high school (okay, I’m not actually sure about that, but it’s possible), but Jordan, like Jerry Rice – who is actually used as an example in the book, used his time most efficiently.

    There is the well known story of Jordan getting “cut” from his high school varsity team as a freshman (but mostly because freshman weren’t allowed to be on varsity – I know how that is). As a result of that slight, Jordan would go to the gym early every day and practice. Did he have talent? I would argue no, and that’s why it’s so hard to explain Talent Is Overrated. Most people would scoff at the notion that Michael Jordan didn’t have some natural talent. But I would say he didn’t.

    Did he have a genetic disposition for height that made him grow to 6′ 5″ (or however tall he actually was)? Yes.

    Did he have a very strong work ethic? Yes.

    Did he have a natural talent for basketball? No. He just combined the two factors above and decided he wanted to play basketball.

    I would argue that anyone with his height and the same strong work ethic could be the best in the world at playing basketball. Anyone who disagrees with that probably underestimates Jordan’s work ethic. He didn’t get better simply because he was destined to become the best basketball player ever. He got better because he wanted to become the best basketball player ever, and he wanted it more than anyone else.

    Yes, he played in a time when the media exposure was just right, and he played on a team that was able to put people around him who also worked hard and were able to play like Jordan wanted them to play.

    If you think I’m biased… well of course I am. But I’m not the only one. Someone else wrote a book about it and cited studies from people who were researching the same idea.

    If you don’t think there’s a chance you’ll ever believe that people aren’t born with innate talent, then don’t bother reading Talent Is Overrated. But if you think that maybe the people who are the best at what they do got that way because they worked hard and worked smart, then I cannot recommend this book strongly enough.

  • Aardvark on the iPhone – Mobile Answers

    Nels W

    The need to call my brother-in-law when I was out and needed access to a computer ended when I got my iPhone, but now Aardvark has taken that sort of help and said “Hey, you can ask hundreds of people’s brothers-in-law at the same time!”

    I’ve been a fan of Aardvark for some time now, so of course I downloaded the app right away. It’s great that the iPhone has Push Notifications now because otherwise the app would be fairly useless, but as it is, it works pretty much as well as the IM interface that I normally use.

  • Jay-Z is on fire, and so is Lala.com

    Nels W

    So, I just got The Blueprint 3. It’s $4.99 on Lala.com, but only $3.99 on Amazon. I got it from Lala to support the little guy. I decided it was worth $5 after only the first 7 songs – two of which I’d already got the “web version” of on Lala. It’s that good.

    But, after buying the MP3s, I discovered that there’s a Beta section in Lala, which – among other things – lets you scrobble tracks to Last.fm.

    exclamation-point

    I may never buy another MP3 again! Considering I can open a tab in Firefox, play songs on Lala.com using less RAM than iTunes (with much faster reaction time from the app), AND have them scrobbled to Last.fm… the only advantage that MP3s have is that I can put them on my iPhone… but I don’t really listen to music on my iPhone; I usually listen to audiobooks in the car or when I’m walking or whatever (and the audiobooks come from the Chicago Public Library via Overdrive download or imported Audio CD). Also, I could back up my 15 GB of music on my desktop computer (using Hamachi) and then have an extra 15 GB on my laptop hard drive (which I’m hoping would improve the read/write performance of my computer). And since it’s synced via the Lala Music Mover, I know that those backed up songs are going to be available on Lala.

    So, that’s the interesting part of the tech stuff. I’m about to do one of those track-by-track album reviews right now (possibly my first ever, but certainly a copycheated idea; gotta keep up my copycheating cred to hold the belt).

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