Producer Versus Studio in a Case of Money and Ego
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Alan Ladd Jr. is raising his voice in a courthouse cri de coeur over a series of perceived slights by Warner Brothers.
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Hollywood can make actors and actresses very, very rich. Or it can
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Figuring the winners and  losers in the aftermath of the writers' tentative contract deal  is a complex calculation. Writers themselves fall in both  categories.
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It has been well recorded that the mid-nineties are best known for sudden popularity of independent cinema, but independent from what? The term "indie" is as slippery when applied to films as it is to music. The studio at the vanguard of this "revolution" was Miramax, which was long a subsidiary of Disney, and as for the "revolution" itself, it unleashed more painful and derivative Pulp Fiction clones than it did anything truly revolutionary. It was bled dry, turned inside out, repackaged, and sold back to the masses until it became the paradigm of unhipness. This seems to be the nature of all revolutions, from the Soviets to the Sixties; the bullshit always comes full circle.     While it's easy to be cynical of all so-called revolutions in hindsight, what one can't be cynical about is the intense enthusiasm audiences had for the so-called independent cinema of this era. To every person who ever dreamed of being in the director's chair, it seemed like all one needed to have the new hit movie was a vast knowledge of pop culture, the ability to write pages worth of rambling dialogue, and a Visa card.
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For several years now, the refrain in the movie industry has been: "We don't want to make the same mistake as the music industry." Hollywood studios, having ventured billions of dollars on their titles, say they can't afford to let customers get used to finding movies via black-market file-sharing.
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New masters of the universe--or creators of too much leverage?
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I just figured something out, and it's the kind of thing that's best said publicly, even though it's likely to: 1. Be misunderstood and 2. Upset some people. But since it's all about this blog it really is best to air it here. First what triggered the epiphany. I was over at Loic Le Meur's house in San Francisco yesterday having lunch with his family and friends. We were all drinking wine (very good wine of course), enjoying the view, and talking about this and that, when the subject turned to Mike Arrington. Loic said that Mike told him that we used to be best friends. I couldn't figure out what that meant, because our friendship was the business kind of friendship not the personal kind. What does it mean to best friends in that way? And how does that relate to having a blog? It never occurred to me that friendship meant that (here's the epiphany) that I would only say positive things about Mike's business. It didn't occur to me until I heard Loic's side of a blog-fight that I saw happen from a distance, with Sam Sethi, Mike and Loic.  Complicated? You bet. Too complicated. An unspoken deal that I never agreed to. When Mike was starting TechCrunch, I pointed to his blog all the time, with glowing phrases. Because I was truly impressed with what he was doing and because I wanted to encourage other people to do it too. I wanted people to write about technology products based on how they used them, not based on alliances, investment, posturing of execs, the crappy stuff that means almost nothing to users, and imho is just a substitute for actually understanding the technology. Mike was approaching products the way I felt they should be approached. Hence the praise. Fact is, my opinion of Mike, as a person, hasn't changed much in the last couple of years. He has a personal charm and charisma that not everyone finds appealing, but I do. I like hanging out with the guy. However, that doesn't mean that if my opinion of TechCrunch, his business, isn't uniformly positive (and of course these days it is actually fairly negative) that I will withhold it. But it's also part of Mike's way of dealing with people that he sees criticism as betrayal. I just don't see it that way. I've had the shit kicked out of me so many times, and as a programmer I understand that criticism is necessary to perfect a user interface, even to get the damned thing working, that even when it hurts, I have to push the hurt aside and listen to what people are saying, and try to respond to it. Professionalism demands it.  Anyway, one of the reasons I want to write this now is that I've written about Loic's business here a couple of times in very positive terms. I don't want anyone, esp Loic, to assume that this will always be so. If they get in the way of other creative people, or otherwise act as a poor example of entrepreneurship in technology, of course I will write about it, and will say what I think. I would expect Loic and people at his company to take what I write to heart, and consider it. My feelings won't be hurt if they don't do what I say.  Same as when I said Facebook sucks. Or when I criticize Techmeme. This isn't in any way meant to reflect on the quality of the people at Facebook (some of whom I know to be outstanding people of high principle) or Gabe Rivera who I know to be a very smart and competent and honorable person. It's possible to critcize someone's work and still admire the person. My epiphany is that a lot of people who thought were my friends, didn't understand this very basic thing about me.
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Comment is free: Decca Aitkenhead: The connection between overpaid artists and bad albums is undeniable. Record labels are failing to turn money into music
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An open mind makes more money. Here's your mind opener.
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Rui Capela's software has appeared in this column many times. I've written about it directly (see At the Sounding Edge: Using QSynth and QJackCtl and HDRs and DAWs For Linux: The New Breed) and it shows up in almost every article I write. I'm not exaggerating when I state that Rui's programs have become indispensable components here at Studio Dave, so naturally I'm interested in the mind behind it all. In this entry I'll recap the nature and state of Rui's software, after which we'll meet the man himself in another lively interview here at the sounding edge.
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Some fear a less lucrative future for writers as studios turn to alternatives.
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How much a given movie makes or costs to make affects me less than how many movies are being made, and I find myself wondering: how many is too many?
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By Dolbeck, Andrew  The media business is big business. The industry's high potential profits draw investors while high levels of competition drive dealmaking and consolidation.
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There's a mini-debate going on about whether podcasting is a success or worth it, or whatever, I'm not sure exactly what the issue is, but it's framed this way --> if you can't get advertisers to hitch a ride on your podcast then podcasting is not worth much if anything.  I'm having a slow Friday so far, it's cloudy and chilly here in the Bay Area, we're in the January doldrums, so I thought maybe I could liven things up a bit by saying both sides of this argument are full of shit wrong. Let me explain. My phone doesn't have a business model. Neither does my porch. I still like having a phone and a porch because they help me meet new people and communicate with people I know. Same with my blog and podcast. Meanwhile... There's another mini-debate about bloggers playing pranks at CES. The Gizmodo guys ran around with some gadgets that turn TV sets off. At CES is this a big deal because much of what goes on there is TV. They were being assholes, interfering with people's ability to do their jobs and make a living. As a result bloggers get a bad rep.  The problem is that they're not bloggers, they're reporters and they work for a company that's not a blog, it's a publication. Publishing stuff on the web with blogging software says nothing about the people and what they write.  A blogger is person who has an idea, expertise or opinion who wants to convey that to other people. The unedited voice of a person. What makes a blogger interesting is that they do something other than writing a blog. If all you do is write a blog, and if you want or need to make money from your blogging, it's really hard to distinguish what you're doing from what professionals who don't use the web (are there any left?) do. Same with podcasting. I do a podcast from time to time because I want to say something. Whether I can run an ad on my podcast means nothing to me because I would never do it. And if I went crazy and let someone put an ad on there, it would only be to reciprocate for them having hosted the podcast, as a way of paying for the podcast itself (I'm contemplating doing exactly that right now so I had to include the disclaimer). I would never burden my podcasting with the task of supporting me. It's not why I podcast. We keep having this argument. Amateurism is good and there's lots of it. Professional writers and broadcasters probably have a place, I don't know, it's not my problem. But let's be clear blogging and podcasting exist independent of a professional's ability to eek out a living using the tools of blogging and podcasting.  Now I'm going to try to get some work done.  See also: Podcasting News, Mashable.
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Big Broadcasters ready to cuff labels again Column Although the recording industry is thought by some to be all-powerful, American broadcasters actually wield far greater power. Radio has been able to get away with not paying labels for music they play: specifically, performance royalties that broadcasters elsewhere in the world owe to the labels for broadcast music. But is this all about to change?â¦
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LOS ANGELES  - Figuring the winners and losers in the aftermath of the writers' tentative contract deal is a complex calculation. Writers themselves fall in both categories.
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Collectively, independent record labels are a sleeping giant waking up and demanding its due. Think many Davids versus a few Goliaths. Commentary by Eliot Van Buskirk.