njohnson747
02-18-07, 11:20 PM
Newsweek magazine has posted an interesting story recently that has relevance to the relationship between porn, the internet and the HD format war. The piece indicates that the adult film industry is in the middle of its worst software sales slump in years, in part impacted by the sheer volume of free adult content available online. That would stand in sharp contrast to the notion that the adult industry is powerful enough to influence the HD-DVD/Blu-ray format war. In fact, despite the free content that's already online, industry analysts see the most profitable part of the porn market moving from DVD directly to the Internet... bypassing HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc entirely. Sounds logical, right?
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6518/nwkgalahporn070207sy7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Here are some interesting excerpts from the Newsweek article:
Feb. 07, 2007 - Contrary to the popular maxim, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there. Like the two big stories that emerged from the Adult Entertainment Expo in Sin City last month: 1) the adult film industry is large enough to potentially be the deciding factor in the battle for format dominance between Blu-ray and High Definition (HD)-DVD, and 2) the adult film industry may be in its worst sales slump in recent memory. Taken together, the two just don't add up.
The reason may well lie in the lack of confirmable information about the porn industry’s true size. These numbers—specifically that the sales and rental of pornographic videos and DVDs are a $3.6 billion industry—have been repeated so often in industry and mainstream news outlets that they have acquired the patina of fact. Throw in cable and satellite television, the Internet, magazines, strip clubs and novelties, and the oft-bandied estimate balloons to nearly $13 billion.
Estimates of course don’t account for the elephant in the Web: Internet porn. It’s nearly impossible to get any reliable data on how much people are making online, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s much less than the $2.8 billion business AVN makes it out to be. The adult industry is suffering from the same pirating woes that have increasingly been bedeviling the recording industry. “When I was younger, you found your dad’s Playboy; but at least your dad paid for that Playboy,” says Allan MacDonell, who recently recapped his 20 years working for Larry Flynt’s Hustler empire in his memoir, “Prisoner of X.” “Now you’ve got Google and you type in ‘amputee sex’ or whatever you want. You’re conditioned now that you don’t have to pay for that stuff.”
As a result of all the free (and now, thanks to home studio technology, amateur) content circulating online, there is a glut of increasingly graphic supply and stagnant demand, according to numerous porn producers. “Never has so much porn been released,” writes director/producer James (Jimmy D.) DiGiorgio in an e-mail. “It has become harder and harder for a (newer) manufacturer's product to stand out, and that has resulted in harder and more extreme content being produced. Like many others in the adult industry, I've seen my personal income take a hit as a result of all this ... If the adult industry produces so many billions of dollars, where are the billionaires among its ranks?”
Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17033892/site/newsweek/
http://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6518/nwkgalahporn070207sy7.jpg (http://imageshack.us)
Here are some interesting excerpts from the Newsweek article:
Feb. 07, 2007 - Contrary to the popular maxim, what happens in Vegas doesn’t always stay there. Like the two big stories that emerged from the Adult Entertainment Expo in Sin City last month: 1) the adult film industry is large enough to potentially be the deciding factor in the battle for format dominance between Blu-ray and High Definition (HD)-DVD, and 2) the adult film industry may be in its worst sales slump in recent memory. Taken together, the two just don't add up.
The reason may well lie in the lack of confirmable information about the porn industry’s true size. These numbers—specifically that the sales and rental of pornographic videos and DVDs are a $3.6 billion industry—have been repeated so often in industry and mainstream news outlets that they have acquired the patina of fact. Throw in cable and satellite television, the Internet, magazines, strip clubs and novelties, and the oft-bandied estimate balloons to nearly $13 billion.
Estimates of course don’t account for the elephant in the Web: Internet porn. It’s nearly impossible to get any reliable data on how much people are making online, but anecdotal evidence suggests that it’s much less than the $2.8 billion business AVN makes it out to be. The adult industry is suffering from the same pirating woes that have increasingly been bedeviling the recording industry. “When I was younger, you found your dad’s Playboy; but at least your dad paid for that Playboy,” says Allan MacDonell, who recently recapped his 20 years working for Larry Flynt’s Hustler empire in his memoir, “Prisoner of X.” “Now you’ve got Google and you type in ‘amputee sex’ or whatever you want. You’re conditioned now that you don’t have to pay for that stuff.”
As a result of all the free (and now, thanks to home studio technology, amateur) content circulating online, there is a glut of increasingly graphic supply and stagnant demand, according to numerous porn producers. “Never has so much porn been released,” writes director/producer James (Jimmy D.) DiGiorgio in an e-mail. “It has become harder and harder for a (newer) manufacturer's product to stand out, and that has resulted in harder and more extreme content being produced. Like many others in the adult industry, I've seen my personal income take a hit as a result of all this ... If the adult industry produces so many billions of dollars, where are the billionaires among its ranks?”
Read more here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17033892/site/newsweek/