The Unbundled Economy: It’s one of the implications of (my guess at, given that I haven’t actually read) Free, its apparently what Tyler Cowen is talking about in his new book. As the price of transmitting small chunks of information crashes to zero, the efficient market structure no longer involves assembly and sale of bundles of chunks, but instead sale of the chunks themselves and after-market assembly.
Case in point, the porn industry (which is pretty much always at the leading edge of structural change.)
Vivid, one of the most prominent pornography studios, makes 60 films a year. Three years ago, almost all of them were feature-length films with story lines. Today, more than half are a series of sex scenes, loosely connected by some thread — “vignettes” in the industry vernacular — that can be presented separately online. Other major studios are making similar shifts.
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In lieu of plot, there are themes. Among the new releases from New Sensations, a studio that makes 24 movies a month, is “Girls ’n Glasses,” made up of scenes of women having sex while wearing glasses.
But old habits die hard, even in the porn world:
“The feature is not as big a part of the industry today,” Mr. Orenstein said. But he says he still plans two to three bigger-budget releases each year, including the recently shot “2040,” which is about the pornography business of the future. Mr. Orenstein described the movie as “an almost Romeo-and-Juliet story between an aging porn star and a cyborg.”
Cheap Talk 
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July 8, 2009 at 9:11 am
michael webster
1. The distribution channels still cost a lot to maintain, even if the content travelling down the channel is relatively inexpensive.
2. The adult video industry is heavily involved with affiliate marketing, read the friend finders IPO.
3. A lot of these snippets are designed as teasers for either subscriptions to streaming or dvd/video downloads.
4. The market for attention for goods x on the internet hasn’t repealed the basic economics for creating those goods in the real world.
July 14, 2009 at 3:17 pm
sheisoverthere
Just to let you know if you’re interested, CNBC’s original documentary: “Porn: Business of Pleasure,” is premiering on Wednesday, July 15th, at 9pm EST on CNBC.
CNBC’s Melissa Lee, goes inside the $13-billion adult entertainment industry. There’s big money in adult pornography but as porn enters the mainstream, its taboo-part of what has made it so alluring to the consumer, and profitable for the industry, may be fading at a time when the porn industry is struggling.
Porn profits are under assault. Piracy and a weak economy have decimated DVD sales- down 40% in the last year. In fact, it’s just another branch of the publishing industry, facing the same hurtles as books, magazines, and “old media.”
To check out more about “Porn: Business of Pleasure,” please click here: http://bit.ly/ncnja