We gave up after realizing that there is no way to have such a discussion without constant double entendres. This was amusing, especially after the second gin-and-tonic, but more than a little distracting.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
I hear it's getting harder and harder to make an explosive entry onto the scene.
Would you say you suddenly came upon that realization?
Honestly, I'm amazed a professional porn industry still exists at all. There's people who not only do it for free, but do it with aplomb, and now there are myriad places on the Internet for them to broadcast their work. The only thing that guards against this in other media fields is quality that's only found in the pros, but, well, porno quality is defined by different criteria than quality in music or writing or movies.
I mean, I'm willing to bet that there's always going to be room for a Pirates, but I imagine it will be a vastly smaller industry. Too many people getting busy and putting it on the Intertron for free.
/dick joke
Just curious, what are the "various recent challenges" to the adult video industry business models? I would think it would be very hard not to make money in this industry since the costs of entry- a digital recorder, some editing equipment, maybe a website for marketing purposes, and a few people with morally casual attitudes- are relatively low (not that I have ever considered changing my career path or anything).
Stiff competition, slippery..agents, sagging production quality, distributors trimming costs...I see the porn industry looking to the Feds for a money shot to spurt growth. And that's no fluff.
Bru,
Porntube - it's hard to compete with free.
But, in reality the quality of $0.05 a minute streamed internet porn is infinitely better than porntube. So, I'd say that while the old tape/dvd model is done the streaming of high (video) quality porn is still an area you could make money at.
Don't knock the porn industry -- it's responsible for rapid adoption of VHS, DVD, and secure credit card payments over the web.
Also, didn't you mean to strikethrough "porn" and not "adult video" in the post?
jmo,
I may not have the experience you have with paid porn, but is it really "infinitely better" than the free streaming sites like youporn and pornotube? That's a pretty hard sell..
There was a good article in one of the conde nast publications last June (no link while I'm commenting from the phone) about how Dvd sales went completely soft after youporn hit big. I don't remember the exact details but the revelation in the article was that the site was started by a middle aged MBA whose family didn't sen know about it, and it was handling more traffic than CNN doing almost no advertising and employing only one other employee.
The big players in the film industry don't know what to do. The site is clearly eating thier lunch but was making only a tiny fraction of the revenue it is creatively destroying for them.
Several of my friends will confirm that I laid out the business model during the rise of YouTube, but balked at the prospect of forever being known as a porn baron.
Ironically, this post popped up less than two hours after Megan's post...
http://reason.com/blog/#130933
There is something very strange about demand for paid-for sex and porn. Over the medium term, it does not seem to be much affected by increases or decreases in the supply of sex or porn offered for free. If the two are not widely accepted as substitutes for one another, has the porn industry much to worry about?
Was the friend male or female?
How do sites like youporn pay the bills?
My line of thinking . . .
Free porn will make the porn industry less profitable while also increasing the supply of porn. As the profits drop, the investments in porn will drop, making the quality of porn lower. Soon, professional porn production will be dominated by 3rd world companies, with quesitonable hiring practices. Horror stories about pornography production in locales such as Thailand, Russia/Eastern Europe will make the rounds, anti-pornography groups will make moral crusades against it that aren't focused solely on sex, and this will lend credence (if not allow) for greater filtering of sexual content on the internet.
That's when my crystal ball breaks.
How do sites like youporn pay the bills?
Advertising. And there's tons of those sites.
As the profits drop, the investments in porn will drop, making the quality of porn lower.
As I suggested above, what constitutes quality in porn, I suspect, is a very different animal than what does in other kinds of media, and I think a lot of people find the free stuff as good as the paid stuff. But I suppose that's the kind of claim that needs data. Someone write a dissertation about this.
Its one of the few industries left that can experience organic growth over the next couple of years. The problem is maintaining it.
The problem with advertising on the free sites is that it's inherently limited to advertising for pay sites. (Or so I imagine). It's not like P&G has banner ads up for Tide.
If free kills pay, doesn't it kill itself?
"but is it really "infinitely better" than the free streaming sites like youporn and pornotube?"
For the difference between $.05/minute and free yes it is "infinitley better" in terms of quality and selection.
It's like the difference between bittorrent and iTunes - for the $.99, for me at least, it's worth the reduced hassle.
Nobody here has pointed out the obvious, so I might as well do it. I like iTunes and netflix because it has a lot of the obscure stuff, like The Cramps, or 70's Japanese martial arts flicks that bittorrent frequently doesn't have, because everybody uploading to bittorrent is trying to upload and download _insert name of favorite blockbuster act or movie here_. Plus, using bittorrent is stealing, and just wrong on general principle.
From what I can gather, at least from what my friend have told me, some of the paysite operate under the same general principle. If you've got generic content, with generic beauties, you'll probably be standing in line with Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt, and Joe Francis for a bailout.
"Was the friend male or female?"
Exactly what I was thinking.
Please please please do a bloggingheads about this topic. It could be a great source for some sort of double entendre drinking game.
It does seem like the "free stuff paid for by advertising" business model ruins everything it touches unfortunately.
Alternate hypothesis - the specialization of porn into a balkanization of fetishes, some that become so bizarre that they can only be produced in 3rd world countries.
Can't wait for tallbabes.com!!!! :D
Alternate hypothesis - the specialization of porn into a balkanization of fetishes, some that become so bizarre that they can only be produced in 3rd world countries.
Remember rule 34 of the internet.
http://xkcd.com/305/
4chan already exists.
I take it that reality thrust itself upon you when you were well-lubricated? What was the climax of the discussion? And did you fetishize commodification?
The free stuff is a deadly threat to the pay services because the "professional-grade" porn is showing up on free sites pretty rapidly now, and the video quality is getting better and better, not that I watch any of it.
Who is going to pay for a 2 hour movie when all they really want is 5 minutes?
The free stuff is a deadly threat to the pay services because the "professional-grade" porn is showing up on free sites pretty rapidly now, and the video quality is getting better and better, not that I watch any of it.
That's a great point. You know I'm not a hard-core restrictionist when it comes to copywrite abuse but it seems to me to be a simple fact that the widespread availability of illegally downloaded intellectual property severely hurts those industries. For the best example, see the PC game industry; many video game companies are just giving up in PC releases, despite PCs being in some ways the best platform for gaming, because people who are really into PC games tend to be the people with the skills to steal them.
"Was the friend male or female?"
Exactly what I was thinking.
Actually, maybe it's better if we use our imagination.
I'm very sorry, but:
"I'll be in my bunk."
Must, must, must read David Foster Wallace's essay entitles "Big Red Son."
3 things
- watching porn online @ home
- internet companies changing the focus on releasing scenes daily and not full movies every 4-6 weeks
- rampant piracy of the newest best quality porn every day.
Yancey Ward: ...and the video quality is getting better and better, not that I watch any of it.
Yeah, but you have a friend who does, right?
Anonymous Coward:
3 things
- watching porn online @ home
- internet companies changing the focus on releasing scenes daily and not full movies every 4-6 weeks
- rampant piracy of the newest best quality porn every day.
What is this a list of? Top 3 things human males are grateful for?
Freddie: I mean, I'm willing to bet that there's always going to be room for a Pirates, but I imagine it will be a vastly smaller industry. Too many people getting busy and putting it on the Intertron for free.
I've got to go with jmo on this -- the $0.05/minute stuff is infinitely better than free and will survive for that reason. The performers who feature in e.g. Private productions are model-quality attractive, which is much more appealing than the Jane/John Q. Public that appears in the free stuff. Er, or so a friend of mine tells me.
FWIW, I've generally thought of Freddie as a pinko-commie leftist nutjob, but anyone who can give the nod to Pirates is okay in my book.
Freddie,
The issue of copyright infringement is one shared by with the movie and music industries in general and, no doubt, makes life more challenging for folks in the porn business as it does for folks in the world of media in general. Where there is a challenge that is essentially unique to porn is in the competition from amateurs producing content to which they, legitimately, hold title. What prevents this in the rest of the media world is the skill set necessary to produce content acceptable to consumers of the same.
Put simply, most of us don't have the musical chops to be a threat to Beyonce nor the directorial or acting skills to worry Spielburg or Streep, but porn is different. The problem for porn industry is that its consumers have never been noted for demanding much in the way of production values. What is worse still, honest passion feeds the turnon, whereas any hint that the performers are operating out of strictly monetary motivation is a mood killer. In most contexts being considered a "professional" is considered to be complementary (and "amateur" has somewhat pejorative connotation), in the context of porn this is not necessarily the case.
As a result, I am not sure that succeeding against "pirated" copies of product, even to an extent unmatched anywhere else in the media (like *that* is going to happen) would be of much help to the porn makers. My guess is that it will still be profitable to produce commercial porn, but probably for fewer companies, implying an industry shakeout. Like the computer software industry there, the result will probably be coexistence between those producing proprietary content and selling it and those providing content gratis.
We'll know it has made a difference when we see lots of product placement.
(OH No! not that sort of "placement". Or maybe it will be...)
Bru —
Actually, low barriers to entry (such as low capital cost) is one of the markers of perfect competition and monopolistic competition. Under conditions of perfect competition, profits are always low; if anybody's earning excess profit, new companies will enter until prices are driven down to marginal cost. Porn doesn't reach the level of fully homogeneous, fully interchangeable product, but it's definitely on the perfect competition end of the monopolistic competition range.
Throw in price pressure from the people doing free porn (that is, people who are taking a loss on production costs because they're doing it as a hobby) . . .
jmo: But, in reality the quality of $0.05 a minute streamed internet porn is infinitely better than porntube.
Maybe so, but it's also infinitely more expensive.
(Okay, not really, since your own time has value too.)
"Who is going to pay for a 2 hour movie when all they really want is 5 minutes?"
Women.
sextir.com is a free porn site - We provide the world with free: porn videos,porn movies,xxx free movies,free porn,free sex.
Best porn hub and tube on the web