Decline of the porn industry

[davey]

What do people think?I disagree with him.I dont think porn will ever die.As long as there are 12 year old boys having their first wank with some dog eared porn book they have found or some fat bastard ,billy no mates bloke who has never had a bird wanking in the toilets at lunchtime at work and every single other sort of bloke in between these 2 there will always be a market for porn and where the girls are concerned a market for "fresh meat"

[max_tranmere]

The Louise Theroux programme looks interesting. I will be watching on Sunday. Porn has gone the same way the music industry has, with free things on the internet basically killing the business. Although in the pre-internet days lots of people watched pirate videos of porn films so many people were getting their stuff in a way that the film makers didn't earn any money from even then.

[Sam Slater]

The music industry fucked itself over by not moving with the times. For years they refused to licence music to be sold in digital formats, forcing people who wanted music on their new .mp3 players, ipods, laptops and phones to go rip their own stuff (time consuming and difficult to get top quality rips) or let those who know what they're doing rip the stuff and torrent it off them.

One thing Steve Jobs did do right is talk some of the industry round and place their stuff on iTunes. Even then it was crappy 128kbps quality and DRMed so you could only use it on Apple software. It was also only available to adults with credit cards. Meanwhile, genuine people who still bought CDs and ripped their own soon found this was a lottery as the industry started DRMing actual CDs to stop people copying their own music onto their laptops. They were crippling their own product and lots of people, again, saw it easier to torrent stuff.

Finally, we can get non-drm music in 256 and 320kbps. But even now a lot of albums are a quid more expensive than the physical CD (I made a post about this a few weeks ago). The trouble is, with making people jump through hoops and go through shitloads of frustration this past 10 years, they've helped create a culture that thinks illegally downloaded music is not only free but less of a hassle. I know people are more comfortable putting others into neat little boxes but not all pirates were/are just torrenting because they want free stuff. A lot are, but not all.

As an example of what I mean, I bought 2 Neil Young albums recently (the albums were cheaper than digital download on Amazon and 7digital. Once delivered I had to:

1) Rip CD using EAC and LAME with "-V 0 --vbr-new" (220-260kbps)
2) I use tagscanner to fill in any errors on the mp3 tags and embed album art.

This can take, depending on error checking, 15-20 mins per CD and then another 5-10 mins checking mp3 tags, embedding album art and making sure I've got right folder structure. I'm neat! It could take me an hour to do 3 CDs. In comparison I could have all this done for me by torrenting said albums which would take 10 mins. It's also free and I don't have to wait around for deliveries.

A little controversial this but if you've 100s of CDs in your collection and thinking of putting them on your laptop/phone/ipod/tablet you'd save yourself a week's work just torrenting them instead. I wouldn't consider this theft if you've already paid for the CDs.

The music industry has been rather good at reselling us music we already own too by changing the media it's placed on every 10 years. I've had Michael Jackson's 'Off The Wall' album on vinyl, tape, CD and Apple's .aac file for my iPod. I've bought that album four times and I bet there are a fair few like me who've done similar over the years. I'm sure they're racking their brains trying to think of another way they can push us to buy our music again. I've not much sympathy in all honesty.

The whole insustry is going down the pan because there's just not any really good music out there over the last 10 years. Even at 36 I listen to music from the '60s, '70s and early '80s more than anything. All of it music that was out before I became a teenager; most of it before I was even born. Great albums were coming out on a monthly basis during the 60s and 70s. You're lucky to get a single 'great' album once a year now. And then we have to think of what music is competing with these days. 25 years ago you had a few TV channels, the odd VHS rental, the radio or your music. 20-15 years ago you had Sky, cheaper VHS rentals, your radio and your music. 15-10 years ago you had Sky, really cheap VHS purchases, better quality DVDs, your radio, your music and this silly think we called the internet. 10 year ago to today we have Sky HD, Freeview HD, cheap DVDs, blurays, HD movie streaming and all watchable on affordable 40"+ HD TVs. If that doesn't take your fancy you can argue with people online *cough*, shoot people in the head playing Call of Duty, invite your mates round to thrash them on Fifa 12, listen to the radio or......maybe.....your music. A lot of it is about heavy competition in the entertainment market. We're spoilt for choice.

As for porn......well, we've been saturated with it since the beginning of the internet. Pre 1997 I could count the number of porn scenes I'd seen on one hand. It's lost it's mystique and novel appeal. Also, back in the day porn directors were people who could really shoot. They were guys who didn't quite make it into the mainstream. The last 10 years has been about Joe Bloggs round the corner buying a digicam from Argos and emailing willing models to meet him at a Travelodge so he can film himself and a few mates jizzing over her. With the quantity shooting up, the quality has nose-dived. But at least the porn industry adapts to changes in technology pretty sharpish. People will still complain but people will always like to see young, pretty girls being fucked and jizzed on.

Bloody hell, I went on a bit there. Off for a read.

[jimslip]

Porn is not just in ,"Decline", it is in freefall to oblivion. In comparison to the exciting buzz in the 1990's and through the early Millenium, porn now resembles a decimated mining town. I do not believe the young generation thirst for porn, in the same way that we did. They have sex thrust in their faces without any of the problems we faced. From personal relationships to pop videos, sex is there on a plate. Even if a few are interested, they certainly do not "thirst" to pay for it and that is the problem, paying for it.

So, sure, the tube sites are booming, piracy is booming, for now, but these must be fed by those of us that are willing to invest our money in productions and as profits dwindle, so does the incentive to produce, so even the tube sites will start "Suffering". The World is now left just chewing on the last few bones of the once fat Golden Goose of porn, soon the last remnants will be wrapped up and chucked in the bin, like an old KFC meal!

The difference between porn and the booming music industry, is that they are free to market in whatever way they choose. We on the other hand are shackled, by laws and regulations which together with the aforementioned problems are slowly but surely strangling the life blood out of this industry.

I wouldn't say I was gloomy about the future, but:

[img]http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-frq7ypWqgaQ/T ... 00/wad.jpg[/img]

[Dave Wells]

Agreed !

[frankthring]

I totally disagree with both Mr Slip and Mr Wells ! In fact in Jim`s case I
really do not understand his gloomy predictions....the man owns a very
successful website for heaven`s sakes! If Jim is to be believed his website
should be down to 10 members by now ! (he has been blathering on about
the death of porn for so long).
Davey you are right. Porn will not die or go away because having a wank
at the image of whatever kind of sex it is that turns you on will be around
as long as men eat and shit ! We all need to unload our jism too !! - with or
without a real woman....
The problem with the Porn Industry is that the web has killed quality stone-
dead. Now Everyman is a porn director. He waives his handycam, books a
model, maybe even does the fucking himself. Mr Slip said recently on this
site that Everyman porn was a good thing, that porn was no longer in the
hands of so-called "professionals" or had high-end production values.
I would partly agree with him. There should be a place for reality and
amateur porn just like there should be a space for porn features. But porn
webmasters and companies wanting to keep their costs down, have resulted
in a saturated market where 80 per cent of the stuff largely looks the same.
End result - it looks so bloody boring !!!! This flat sameness of domestic
living rooms, cameras being waived around and low/little production
values....This stuff is 95% of what is shown on the free tube sites and is
nullifying in its bleak gonzo dullness.
So will porn die or die out. No !! We need that wank. But is the industry
or the state of the finished product looking the worst now it has done in
forty years ? In my opinion - yes !

[andy ide]

Of course porn's not going to die. It's just that loads of people who made a mint flogging shit are going to get fucked, or have been already. Good riddance. Some of these purveyors of total crap will survive, I suppose, due to their size and the sheer strength of their marketing operations.

But the future of porn lies in tailor-made and well-crafted content for very picky people. Same as it ever was, but now you've really got to be good at your job. I shouldn't think Kink and AbbyWinters are making the kind of margins they used to, but they're not exactly about to go belly-up.

It would be refreshing if tonight's programme acknowledged this immense shakeout rather than painting a picture of total apocalyptic gloom.

[andy ide]

"One thing Steve Jobs did do right..."

Just the one then? The shit that gets written on this forum.

[jimslip]

Frank you always stomp around beating this drum that screams, "If only every porn shoot was made in Antigua and every girl had stuck on tits and sausage lips and every stud had a bandana, shades and bicycle shorts, all would be well. A world where 2 studs in Gladiator costumes (wearing shades of course) and being pushed around in wheely-bins covered in tin foil, shouting, "Unleash the dogs of war!" somehow resembles the actual "Gladiator" blockbuster.

Your tone is similar to those that must have said about the new "Talking films" in the 1920's, "Oh, if only they kept films silent, who wants to see a film where you can hear what people say, Ha!Ha!" or "That show, "On The Buses" best thing ever made, why can't they just keep making stuff like, "On The Buses?" After all you could have, "On The Cabs" or "On The Horses" or "On The Motorbikes" or "On The Roller Skates!" Is this not a good analogy for porn?

This is exactly what killed porn off, its stubbon refusal to move on from 1990's.

And as for citing lack of "Professionalism" as a reason for porn's downfall, in recent years I have been witness to some of the most technically appalling shite I have ever seen, from so called, "Professionals". People that look at you with a blank expression when you talk about a "White balance". People who can film a whole scene and not notice that it's completely the wrong colour!

Yes you are right Jim Slip is actually growing. This is not the norm and I know of 2 major UK players in porn that have recently given up the ghost, or "Moved on". The future isn't rosy. It is a case of the Last Man Standing and if you think to survive all you need is to get an, "Old bloke" and film him shagging some birds in a living room.........then GO DO IT!!wink! !cigar!!cigar!!cigar!!wink!

[one eyed jack]

The bubble had to burst at some point. Too many people coming in doing it and flooding the market.

Good porn/ bad porn is all subjective it depends on how investors take it to the next level and monetise it successfully through a new business model.

A lot of producers hailing the end of file sharing and torrenting should realise that way may be the demise of porn as we know it but may well also open up a new future with that same said technology.

Maybe the new gold dust is traffick. The tube sites are living on borrowed time also. I like Jims colourful description of it.

Porn is going to have to be a lot more than what it is right now to get the man with the credit card tapping in his digits. Getting him to wank is not that difficult at all.

Maybe I've been lucky so far to focus my energies on couples but to those who havent seen what I do probably wont understand it outside of being mere boy girl porn and that's where it is underestimated.

Its got to be more engaging than just sex. Thats the hook to get them in but what else is there to make them want to stay? Or even pay?