Thursday, November 13, 2008

My Naughty Habits

I love watching television. I cut that habit by not having a television. But now that I have google reader, I keep up on all my favorite television blogs, which also updates me on a few movies as well. All downloaded, uploaded, and viewed in precious illegality. But today, I was really dismayed by this whole thing. I had to wait for the bathroom, and didn't feel like reading any articles or blogs, so I thought about watching some tv, and looked through the list, and there was Quantum of Solace. I just remembered hearing that it didn't come out in the US until tomorrow, but here it was in perfect quality waiting for me to watch it now. Conveniently, while waiting for my roommate to finish using the bathroom. I felt sort of ashamed as I pressed play and as a person who has daily dreams of being in Hollywood.

But then I think it's their own fault. The prices continually went up on tickets and never dropped. The movies are all the same, and 80% of them really do suck. They are waiting too long to bring them out to DVD. They don't try and work out more deals with different mediums, such as Netflix Watch Now. The television networks use streaming, which is choppy with my slow network.

I think they don't understand that the majority of viewers will not download the movies or shows. It takes too much space on our hard drives. I don't find it inconvenient to go to the networks' websites. I don't even mind the ads, I prefer them to the porn ads, I get in all these illegal sites. But I as a consumer, feel like they drove me to this.

I feel the same way about the music industry. Except now I believe that they are almost too late. They drove up the cost of an album to almost $20 -25, when their competitors had it for free? Very silly. The cost of an album should be $5 -15. They should include exclusive passwords to get online content with the album, which might offer discounts on shows, t-shirts, or posters. That would easily stop me from downloading. They should work with artists to create solid albums, instead of singles. They should offer more decent pop acts, better than Taylor Swift or Katy Perry, who to me seem like more of an embarrassment to my own childhood than musicians.