Edited by Xterm11: ESCAPED YOUR HYPERLINK at 07/09/09 10:17 PM
Xterm11: ESCAPED YOUR HYPERLINK was starred
Xterm11: ESCAPED YOUR HYPERLINK was unstarred
When I took psych 301 back in college, the professor said something about how price increases should be no more than 10% at a time. Humans, apparently, don't really perceive 10% changes. Anything more than that, and we get cranky. If the price had gone up to $1.09, people probably would have essentially shrugged.
Of course, the labels are still making hand over fist, it seems, so I guess my prof needs to go look at the data some more...
@Poppie: Not to disagree with you about the 10% bit, but the pop music industry is in pretty bad shape thanks to iTunes. This is an industry that is about hit singles, not music acts. Churn out the "latest greatest" and pack an album of not-hits around it. Sell it, and rake the moneys in.
Then along comes iTunes, with it's single-track pricing model, and suddenly all the little kids could buy just the songs that they've been told are popular, and skip all the bundled stuff. Now you've got a label that used to be able to rake in $15 or more for a hit song only getting a buck. Sure, the wealth gets spread out a bit more (they can "collect 'em all" rather than having to pick and choose which ones they really liked enough to buy a whole album to get it).
The thing that's really been holding up the pop music production line is the sale of short ringtones that cost multiple times what you'd pay for the whole song.
@The Illuminator: I'm no Kanye fan myself, but I gotta say that he still sounds a great deal better than a lot of the random generic yippety yap that comes out of the hiphop genre. That said, it's actually a pretty difficult thing to do, and some are exceptionally good at it.
@The Illuminator: If you're talking about the robotic-sounding aggressively applied auto-tuning effect that snaps pitches to the nearest note in the scale (the effect that made its first big splash with Cher's "Do you believe in Love") that's become very trendy in hip hop vocals these days, I agree.
It was used creatively for awhile and now, all of a sudden, it's everywhere and therefore annoying. It has nothing to do with the talent of the rapper or rap itself. It's just a trendy production fad that will hopefully burn itself out quickly so rap can get back to the business of rapping and stop trying to pretend that it's Cher.
@frigg: Actually...autotune is used _precisely_ because it can hide the fact that someone can't sing to save their life. Cher wouldn't have survived long enough to cut the first autotuned song if she couldn't hit a note, but it didn't take long before pop music execs figured out that if you've got a singer who meets all of the requirements except the ability to sing, you just autotune their vocals and pass it off as a "creative/artistic" thing. There was at least one of those boy-toy "song and dance" bands that had one member who was always autotuned, and I'm guessing he didn't get a lot of solo bits (which is kinda sad when you consider how unsuited music CDs are for showing off his line-dancing skills).
@adaorardor: I've heard of rap, but who is this "William Burroughs" that you speak of?
@Kaiser-Machead: Kaiser, you know that 99.999999% of the people who frequent Gizmodo won't even see what you did there right? I mean, you know it'll fly RIGHT over their heads right? What a waste of cleverness....
Not surprising, really. I just paid for a $300 phone call to south Korea to speak with my nephew for 45 minutes. Then, they charged my father $1000 by 'accident' after he installed DSL (which is actually slower than Wild Blue satellite, somehow!). And now my sister is waiting for them to upgrade her DSL to 6mb, the highest tier ATT offers in her area. They promised her it would be done two months ago and have charged her the higher rate. My parents spent 5 hours on the phone to fix the error, my sister spent two nights of waiting, and I'm pretty sure the stress of it all has shortened their lives.
Here in California, I get about 20mb down, 2mb up - but that's with TimeWarner. My nephews speed in Korea? 1500 up, 80mb down. Yes, I said 80. I can't even get a stupid signal for my phone in my house - and I live in Los Angeles.
Dear God apple, please get out of bed with these idiots soon!
We accidentally engaged our Legal Department in a three week project to rewrite the Terms of Service, sent the new Terms to the printers, and prepared to enclose them in the mailers. We had no idea we had done all this.
Apparently, we hired a few temps in the Accounts Receivable department and one of the temps was given a workstation that included a button that said "Rewrite and issue new Terms of Service". Investigation revealed that it is located where the tilde should be. It was an honest error and the temp responsible has been let go.
We are currently looking into why we have such a workstation. We had no idea that there were new Terms of Service being put into effect and this was the first we learned of it.
Because of time, we will not take any questions.
We feel that it is best to move on and focus more on the exciting phones and applications available on AT&T's wireless service.
We want to look forward, not backward.
That's in the past. This is the new AT&T.
The file is closed.
I have no recollection of that event ever happening. You must be mistaken.
" that girl you got to drunkenly Facebook you the other night knows your sexual proclivities right off the bat." You say that almost like it is a bad thing… I want to know!!! I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.
@Software_Goddess: Yeah. Where I'm from, we call that a pickup line.
"Hey. How's it going? Because your time is important, let's get down to brass tacks. I like feet, ropes, and candle wax. And my friends all call me Ponies. How about we leave and you find out why."
07/09/09
Who would need two P's on a single keyboard?
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
I see what you have done there.
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
07/09/09
"APPLE 1337"?
04/24/09
04/24/09
04/24/09
My Lenevo X61 notebook was unusable with Vista. I downgraded to XP and now it's a marvelous machine.
I'm not a fan of eye candy either way... Hell, I'd be perfectly happy with Win2K's UI. But I do need a stable OS most of all.
04/24/09
04/24/09
04/24/09
04/10/09
Step 1) Increase price
Step 2) ????
Step 3) Profit
Dammit I forget what the middle step was. I guess this is why I failed economics.
04/10/09
Step 2) Use logic to explain that the drop in sales still equals the same profit as before.
And you forgot:
Step 5) Curl up in fetal position telling ourselves that everything is going to be OK,
Step 6) Cry,
Step 7) Curse our God.
04/12/09
Does "Step 2" involve underpants in some way?
04/10/09
04/10/09
For Shame!
04/10/09
Of course, the labels are still making hand over fist, it seems, so I guess my prof needs to go look at the data some more...
04/12/09
Not to disagree with you about the 10% bit, but the pop music industry is in pretty bad shape thanks to iTunes. This is an industry that is about hit singles, not music acts. Churn out the "latest greatest" and pack an album of not-hits around it. Sell it, and rake the moneys in.
Then along comes iTunes, with it's single-track pricing model, and suddenly all the little kids could buy just the songs that they've been told are popular, and skip all the bundled stuff. Now you've got a label that used to be able to rake in $15 or more for a hit song only getting a buck. Sure, the wealth gets spread out a bit more (they can "collect 'em all" rather than having to pick and choose which ones they really liked enough to buy a whole album to get it).
The thing that's really been holding up the pop music production line is the sale of short ringtones that cost multiple times what you'd pay for the whole song.
04/10/09
04/10/09
04/10/09
04/10/09
@valkilmerisawful: Que?
04/10/09
It was used creatively for awhile and now, all of a sudden, it's everywhere and therefore annoying. It has nothing to do with the talent of the rapper or rap itself. It's just a trendy production fad that will hopefully burn itself out quickly so rap can get back to the business of rapping and stop trying to pretend that it's Cher.
04/10/09
04/10/09
/sarcasm
(There ya go Ponies.)
04/11/09
04/12/09
I hear he also likes fishsticks.
@frigg:
Actually...autotune is used _precisely_ because it can hide the fact that someone can't sing to save their life. Cher wouldn't have survived long enough to cut the first autotuned song if she couldn't hit a note, but it didn't take long before pop music execs figured out that if you've got a singer who meets all of the requirements except the ability to sing, you just autotune their vocals and pass it off as a "creative/artistic" thing. There was at least one of those boy-toy "song and dance" bands that had one member who was always autotuned, and I'm guessing he didn't get a lot of solo bits (which is kinda sad when you consider how unsuited music CDs are for showing off his line-dancing skills).
@adaorardor:
I've heard of rap, but who is this "William Burroughs" that you speak of?
04/10/09
04/10/09
Without some prices too high for people to buy
04/10/09
04/11/09
*Excited chatter in the crowd of admirers forming around him*:
"Is it true he can understand any joke, no matter how humorously complex?"
"I heard that one time he was the only commenter, besides the o.p. of course, who got the joke!"
"I heard that once, he laughed at a joke that was whispered between two friends across a room!"
04/11/09
And I never met Eddie Murphy either.
04/11/09
04/11/09
04/03/09
Here in California, I get about 20mb down, 2mb up - but that's with TimeWarner. My nephews speed in Korea? 1500 up, 80mb down. Yes, I said 80. I can't even get a stupid signal for my phone in my house - and I live in Los Angeles.
Dear God apple, please get out of bed with these idiots soon!
04/03/09
The difference is the lack of 500 to 2000 ms round trip access times.
04/03/09
We accidentally engaged our Legal Department in a three week project to rewrite the Terms of Service, sent the new Terms to the printers, and prepared to enclose them in the mailers. We had no idea we had done all this.
Apparently, we hired a few temps in the Accounts Receivable department and one of the temps was given a workstation that included a button that said "Rewrite and issue new Terms of Service". Investigation revealed that it is located where the tilde should be. It was an honest error and the temp responsible has been let go.
We are currently looking into why we have such a workstation. We had no idea that there were new Terms of Service being put into effect and this was the first we learned of it.
Because of time, we will not take any questions.
We feel that it is best to move on and focus more on the exciting phones and applications available on AT&T's wireless service.
We want to look forward, not backward.
That's in the past. This is the new AT&T.
The file is closed.
I have no recollection of that event ever happening. You must be mistaken.
Thank you.
04/03/09
03/30/09
03/30/09
"Hey. How's it going? Because your time is important, let's get down to brass tacks. I like feet, ropes, and candle wax. And my friends all call me Ponies. How about we leave and you find out why."