Wednesday, November 21, 2007

When in Doubt, Digitize.


That we all need to be digital to be functional seems pretty clear to me.

Kevin Morris' article on the Huffington Post this morning was well penned, I thought.

He writes about the current WGA strike in Hollywood and how Hollywood's main problem is actually its inability to come to terms with the new digital age. That, and as Morris puts it, a 'highly untrained work force.'

Here are some stats he mentions to support the point that if the entertainment industry does not come to full terms with the new digital age, things will look progressively worse for it in the future.

'Music. This is the horror story, the nightmare. Global music sales have by some reports dropped by 49% since 1997. The music business as we knew it has evaporated. Sales of CDs in the U.S. have slipped from $13.2 billion in 2000 to $9.2 billion in 2006 (that's down 30%). As of June 2007, overall CD sales have plummeted 16% for the year so far--and that's after seven years of near-constant erosion.'

I don't buy CD's anymore. I don't even have the need to keep adding to my DVD's because I consider them too bulky and well, a tad passé.

I have digitized my entire music library and the films are to follow. Economy of space, simple.

At its core, this is truly a minimalist choice and the digitization of media is minimalism-informed and the way of the future.


graph per huffington post

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jawohl. Organize, Compartmentalize, Digitize, aka OCD. Perfect! :-)

B.R. said...

OCD. I like this.

Anonymous said...

as a certain someone always says: economy of space.

Anonymous said...

how are you digitizing your dvd's?

B.R. said...

I already have my high-frequency films on the iPod. iTunes already has some best-sellers available. I am thinking all the titles will follow that pattern. It's obviously a process that will take a bit of time. Think of the VHS to DVD transition, perhaps? It's just my understanding of the conversion process.....