2ème ROUND

Aircraft carrier

What is the use of the majors ? Simple, they have none. Artists made movies wrote books, recorded music, long before Universal, Editis, or Sony. The audience made Johnny Halliday’s records, Gérard de Villiers’ books, or the film: La grande vadrouille, best selling products long before the advent of TV commercials, multiplex, in-store marketing, showcasing of best-sellers, etc.

Chronicle of a long-foreseen crisis - part 3

In the book industry, while online sales develop inexorably, and the “bestsellerisation” of sales reinforces chain stores (less references, no storage, no need for a specialized clerk) in their M.O., the outlook on the Internet of most book publishers reminds the blindness of record publishers in the late 90’s. To this day, when I speak tout book publishers, reminding them the consequences of its development in the record industry, the answers are almost always the same:

Chronicle of a long-foreseen crisis - part 2

In the film industry, events seem to follow suit. First, the disappearance of the independent downtown movie theaters, replaced by the multiplex. Second, the development of VOD platforms controlled by media groups (Canal+, TF1) cell phone companies (Alice, Orange) and distribution chain stores (Fnac, Virgin). Third, the arrival of a transnational offer made by Apple, via Luxembourg (free from the constraints imposed on the media by the French Government).

Chronicle of a long-foreseen crisis - part 1

Simultaneously with the launching of Apple’s VOD, supported not by the strength of a catalogue (that does not exist physically) but only by its iPod video and AppleTV assets, the publishing world has published prior to the Paris book fair, the 2006 best-selling list, illustrating in many ways the magnitude of a long-foreseen crisis. These two announcements have been made shortly after the publication at the MIDEM, of the record industry results for the past year (- 11%)

 So what is the link between these three public announcements?