For Lovers Only- $.99

This week the Polish Brothers movie I discussed previously, For Lovers Only, is available as an iTunes rental for $.99.  It's a good chance to see a good movie and to check out the iTunes Store rental experience at the same time.

The film was made with only a cast and crew of three, the two Polish brothers, one on camera  (a 5D) and the other an actor, and one actress.  It is being self-dstributed online only for now.   It's been getting a lot of press lately in the film world.  It's an interesting experiment, as cameras become ever light sensitive the whole idea of what is needed in a film crew will evolve.  It is also a lot more honest than asking a whole host of people to work for free.  Although, I did finally meet for the first time someone who worked on a "spec" project who got paid (a small amount, ten years later) when the project got picked up by a cable channel.

Here's the trailer, again:


for lovers only... from Polish Brothers on Vimeo.

Loose Ends

Give me that old time rock n' roll

As an addendum to my last post (To Free or Not to Free), I see that Fast Company in their piece 20 Riskiest Business Moves of 2011 has listed as the 19th riskiest business move Music Labels Surrender to Spotify.  The main risk: jeopardizing paid sales with the freemium model.

Also, the recent update of Google TV and the announcement Friday that Google will be acquiring a lot more original content for YouTube should pretty much clarify where they are headed.  If you thought that 900 cable channels was amazing, get ready for hundreds of thousands or maybe millions delivered online.  As I've said before, there will be more content than ever. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity out there to those who can visualize and take advantage of this new order.  As the curse goes, may you live in interesting times...."

To Free or Not to Free, That is the Question

Pre-IPO

The subject of whether every entertainment product should be available for free just doesn't seem to die, particularly in the music industry.  There is always some new company out there that seeks to disrupt an already disrupted marketplace with a new offer of free.  All these years after Napster, well, there are new companies out there offering free, with business models seemingly TBD, or at least fully explained.  Where will this never ending dream of achieving marketplace dominance of free finally end up?  Who will be the proverbial last man standing?

This article from the Business Insider is a brief, intelligent look at the state of the streaming music business and one company's (Rhapsody) attempt to hold tight to making people pay.  Interestingly, there's no mention of Pandora in the article.

Several months back I attended a respected film industry event and nearly swallowed my tongue when one of the speakers said that they thought "we were through the worst" of competing against free.  I hope that they're right, unfortunately, I have my doubts.