Some of the major studious are sitting on the sidelines ...watching Disney score.
And scoring is what they are doing.
Disney announced it sold 125,000 movies the first week that it let Apple sell Disney movies at the iTunes movie store.
Those
must be some pretty profitable sales, too.
Think about it. There was need for transporting 125,000 DVDs in planes, trains, and trucks all over this country - or world, for that matter. So Disney is shipping product without shipping costs.
In these days of gas prices fluctuating around three dollars a gallon, cutting shipping costs is something every company would like to aspire to - if it can.
Clothing stores, consumer electronics stores, food stores - they have to ship a physical product. Music and movie business - no way. People are going to watch these products, which are digital in nature, on a screen. That means electronically.
It is the golden age of the movie business.
Now, like the music business, they can release a product to Apple and be raking in money very soon afterward. There is no loading of trucks days beforehand, designing of packaging and cover art months beforehand.
There is just... release, ...and revenue. Simple, huh?
Macworld: First Look: iTunes Store movies: What you need to know:
just as Apple sold more than one million songs in the first week of the iTunes Music Store, and has sold more than 1.5 billion in the past three-and-a-half years, Disney CEO Robert Iger says his company has sold 125,000 movies on the iTunes Store in the first week. So people are clearly interested in what Apple is trying to do.
As fleets of trucks and freight trains crisscross the country, ships sail the seven seas, and airplanes soar above all of them - Disney CEO Robert Iger can smile as he looks out his office window and mutter,
slowpokes
.
Because Disney no longer has to wait for art to turn into packages and media in factories all around the world in order to make fast sales leading to quick bucks that they bank as easy money.
Wal-Mart, the ultimate truck stop and consumer tangible goods shopping mecca, is none too happy about this. But guess what? Even Wal-Mart announced this year that high gas prices were gouging into their bottom line because consumers wanted to drive less.
Well, guess what? Consumers also do not want to spend 25 minutes shuffling up and down the aisles, flipping through DVDs and CDs, basically seeing what 11 discs are hidden behind the one facing toward them - over and over again.
The retail discount, department, and specialty stores are really not optimized for movie & music shopping. It is not their fault. It is the medium's fault: DVD and CD. While their contents is completely digital, their media and packaging certainly is not.
If I want to buy a song and I have any clue about its name, artist, or a lyric - I can hunt it up online and buy it from iTunes within 5 or 10 minutes. So, if I want to hear a tune I cannot get out of my head before lunch on the weekend or play it for a date who is coming over for dinner tonight - I can do that. In fact, I can do it while the food is cooking.
Contrast that with going to Wal-Mart or Suncoast.
- Get dressed or at least pull on shoes.
- Turn off stove, TV, computer, lights.
- Grab keys.
- Walk out to car. Start it. Gas is burning now.
- Drive. Stop. Go. Turn. Stop. Wait. Drive.
- Finally, almost half an hour later from time I interrupted everything I was doing/enjoying, arrive at the Wal-Mart
- Find the right DVD center in the store.
- Revert to a primitive
hunter and gatherer
in quest for DVD(s).
- Walk all the way across the warehouse, er, store to get to the line at the cash registers.
- Wait in line for 25 minutes because Wal-Mart is too cheap to staff the dozen cash registers with clerks; only 4 are operating. Your time means nothing to Wal-Mart.
- Sale complete. Congratulations, you now have your movies (or music) in hand - plus, a bonus: a paper receipt that reflects your costs. Except for all the gas ($1.60) and time (75 minutes and counting) you have wasted.
- Drive home. Traffic is lighter now. It only takes you 15 minutes to get home. Leave it for later to spend the 5-10 minutes it takes to unwrap the anti-theft packaging your CDs and DVDs are enmeshed in
for your protection
.
So, an hour and a half of your time - an hour of which is not even spent shopping but just waiting in line or waiting to get where you are going - plus some gas gone up in smoke, and you now have your hard-won
relaxing entertainment
.
And now, thanks to the wonders of shopping at Wal-Mart, that is one and a half hours of your day that you don't need to be entertained during!
Wal-Mart is not even close to the best way for the consumer to buy shows and songs. In reality, it is expensive in terms of time and money.
