Something I said on ILM yesterday.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Which nobody addressed - the thread was moving fast and this was a tangent.

I can think of two long-term marketing triumphs for the record industry. The former possibly accidental (but probably not), the latter definitely on purpose. First is the promotion of the album as a format and the repackaging of popular music as non-disposable. Second (linked to the first) is the promotion and success of the CD format as a way to buy old music as well as new.

It's the level of accident I'm interested in really. The move to album format, the move away from disposability - when did these happen (I know that in the UK 1969 was the year album sales overtook single sales), and how proactive or reactive were the record labels in this?

Comments

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

(woops, that was me)

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

You get it sometimes, EG $35 million for the new TMNT film by a guy who's never written or directed a film before. But I agree in general, yes.

[skyecaptain.livejournal.com]

Well, in that case they have a reliable franchise ("sure thing") where they know they're making the vast majority of their money back on merchandising and cross-promotion (which is true for most films, actually, but "merchandising" is really DVD sales, cable deals, etc.). I'm thinking more of auteur-types, a Scorcese or Tarantino, or more recently maybe a Cuaron or Innaritu, who have a kind of artistic freedom + huge budget that other directors don't have. (And within this sort of mini-model, you'll get interesting anomalies like a Darren Aranofsky, but then after his last one who knows how he's going to get funding like that again...Terry Gilliam being the poster child for getting totally screwed/jerked around as an "auteur")