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Top Ten Entertainment Experiences Of 2007

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 10, 2008Posted in: Articles, Comics, Movies, Music, Sports, TV, Video Games

2007 was pretty lopsided for me in terms of where my quality entertainment experiences came from. It was a phenomenal year for video games. Perhaps the best single year of new releases for the medium since 1997, if not better. Conversely, there just wasn’t much there in terms of great music. Some solid releases, sure, but nothing that remain etched in my mind as transcendent. Live shows definitely resonated better for me than the album experience did. For sports, I’ll preface my conclusion by saying that I only regularly follow the MLB, the NFL, and the NBA. Besides the lone entry on the list, there were no other truly memorable moments for me this year. Television was fairly solid, despite the writers strike putting a damper on my mood late in the year. Comics had some pretty high moments, and also some pretty “meh” ones as well. Finally, 2007 was just not my year for movies as I wasn’t motivated to seek out much other than the obvious films. While some were fairly entertaining, I just couldn’t argue for their inclusion on this list over the items picked.

Without any more ado, here’s my top ten entertainment experiences of 2007:
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Ding Dong DRM Is Dead – Sony/BMG Joins Amazon MP3

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on January 10, 2008Posted in: Articles, Music

Just one year ago, we in the industry thought it unfathomable for even one of major labels to abandon DRM for digital downloads of music. Yet here we are, living in a world where all four major labels are now selling their wares sans DRM.A press release went out today confirming that Sony/BMG would be making their catalog available for sale on Amazon MP3 by the end of the month.Am I surprised at the celerity of the major labels in making the move to DRMless MP3? A little. I’ve always maintained it was a merely matter of time before the labels ditched DRM. If it was not to accede to consumer demand, it would be to fight the Frankenstein they created in the iTunes music store.

Do I think Amazon MP3 has what it takes to take on iTunes? Sure. Amazon MP3 sells the better product to more possible customers at a better price ($0.89-$0.99 compared to the $1.29 of iTunes Plus). As long as consumers are educated properly and the service is marketed competently, there’s a very good chance this may be the one challenger to the iTunes throne to succeed.

But does this really matter at the end of the day?

No.

The future of music distribution is not in a la carte track sales. It’s in the pay-what-you-want model that Radiohead and Trent Reznor have pioneered. It’s in the value proposition that eMusic offers when you are getting $25 tracks for $9.99 a month. Neither of these are the ultimate solution, but they are steps forward. You have to look at how MOST people are consuming music nowadays. They do it via bulk through bittorrent or eDonkey or what have you. Selling DRM-free MP3’s for $0.89 each would have been a good start… seven years ago. In order to be the true winner of this sad drama, you have to be looking ahead of current consumption patterns. You need to take chances instead of playing catchup.

We’ve got a long way to go before this is finished.

Read the press release [businesswire.com]

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Pinpointing What Makes Comics And TV So Fun

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 2, 2007Posted in: Articles, Comics, TV

You know that “whoa” feeling you get when you’re watching the second season of a television series and a character or event happens that ties seamlessly back with the first season? This sort of payoff is a big part of what makes serialized content so appealing. Shows like Lost and The X-Files were always maligned for being impossible to jump in the middle of. It’s hard to cannonball into these shows because the creators have spent so much time building the mythos, that not knowing this history severely impacts the enjoyment one can derive from a given episode. Fans of these shows, though, will tell you that the payoff from these shows is infinitely more satisfying than from episodic shows (Law and Order), or even season-contained series like Heroes or 24.The reason I bring this up is because I just got caught up with Geoff Johns and Dave Gibbons’ summer blockbuster comic storyline, The Sinestro Corps War. It’s one of the most entertaining experiences I’ve had all year in any medium. The Sinestro Corps War is the comics equivalent of a well-done summer action flick. I found myself in an interesting position with this story because I’ve never been much of a Green Lantern reader. I’ve read one or two GL storylines in my life, but by no means am I a regular reader. However, the writers have woven in characters from previous DC mega-stories which I have read. If DC’s goal was to get non-Green Lantern readers to start reading the books, they would have achieved it unquestionably.

Now, barely anyone I know reads comics, but almost everyone follows some sort of TV series. I sorely want to tell everyone I know about this story because I want them to experience the same sense of “fuck yeah!” I had, but I question what its impact will be on a person who knows nothing of the characters. In a sense, comics to the non-reader are like Lost to a non-watcher. It’s too daunting or too disorienting to start in the middle, but comics have an added problem of always being “in the middle.” Comics are essentially television series that have been going on for over 40 years. I imagine publishers are constantly trying to figure out a balance between appeasing long-time readers and getting new blood in, but I really don’t think you can truly duplicate a long-term payoff without diluting the experience.

It’ll probably have to wait until we can download experiences directly into our minds before I can fully share with others what makes comics so awesome.

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Internet Radio Sucks It From SoundExchange

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on December 2, 2007Posted in: Articles, Music

Bloomberg recently reported that AOL, Yahoo!, and Pandora are considering shutting down their internet radio operations due to the continued refusal of SoundExchange (the arm of the RIAA that collects royalty fees) to lower their preposterous royalty rate increases for song plays.

Siding with the music companies, the board in March ordered that royalties be raised to 0.11 cent for each song listened to from 0.08 cent last year. The rate is scheduled to reach 0.19 cent in 2010.

“The current math doesn’t add up,” said Lisa Namerow, managing director of AOL Radio in Dulles, Virginia. “If the rates remain as they are, it would be very challenging to sustain a business that is profitable.”

It may seem trivial when we are talking about fractions of a cent, but keep in mind this is for each play of each song for each user. When you start multiplying millions by thousands, you’re talking about significant number of pennies per year. Don’t forget that the rates are essentially doubling in the span of a few years.

The thing that caught my eye was the revelation that both Yahoo and AOL experienced a 10-11% decline in users last month. The Bloomberg report says it was due to AOL and Yahoo not linking to their radio sites anymore, but I’m still able to see links from their respective music home pages. Perhaps both companies pulled advertising or intra-site promotions. Regardless, this development is very troublesome and a portent of doom for the nascent internet radio industry.
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Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune Demo Impressions

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on November 9, 2007Posted in: Articles, Video Games

Sony has done a lot to piss gamers off since the Playstation 3’s launch, but they seem to finally be getting their act together by concentrating on fixing the biggest problem – the lack of good fucking games to play. Since waking up at 6am to fight the holiday shopping crowds for a Playstation 3 last December, I’ve used my PS3 very little. There’s a layer of dust over the system that I could draw pictures on with my finger. That’s changed the last month, though, with the release of Ratchet and Clank Future Tools of Destruction and Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Uncharted has been on and off of my gaming radar over the past year or so. I first saw a trailer of the game late 2006. The graphics looked pretty impressive, but I had no idea what the game played like. Other people were immediately slapping “game of the year” and “Sony’s best first-party title” labels on it. Shills they may be, but the hype at least piqued my interest in the game.

Fast-forward one year later and I still had no idea what the game was like. Reading the interweb only gave me the impression that the game was “Tomb Raider, but with a dude instead of Lara’s tits”. Fortunately, the 1200MB demo hit the Playstation Network earlier today, allowing me to finally see if this game was worthy of the hype.

The short answer is yes.

I’ve had a chance to go through the demo a few times and have been quite impressed. The game combines tight, responsive controls with gorgeous graphics, realistic human animations, and challenging (but winnable) combat to create one of the best games I’ve played this year. A simple way to describe the gist of the game would be to say that it’s an amalgamation of Gears of War, Tomb Raider, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, and Syphon Filter: Dark Mirror. If the full game delivers on the puzzle solving element and continues the solid combat and platforming from the demo, I’ll be ready to proclaim it the best title on the Playstation 3 thus far and the best reason to finally take the PS3 plunge.

Read my detailed impressions after the jump

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Cutting OiNK Out Of Your Diet

By
Andy Yen
– Posted on October 31, 2007Posted in: Articles, Music

no piggy

Normally, eating less bacon leads to a healthier life. In the wake of the OiNK music torrent sharing site shutdown last week, though, less piggy in your system turns out to not be so good for you.

Much has been debated and written about the topic already. If you haven’t read Demonbaby’s excellent rant yet, I HIGHLY recommend you do so. It’s a bit long, but articulates the significance and background of OiNK very well. Many of my sentiments are echoed within that post.

Since I used to work for a legal music download service, I feel compelled to throw my two cents in on the topic of digital music distribution.

One of the biggest reasons why legitimate digital music services are not offering great solutions for music fans is that the people selling the music simply do not get it. There is a disconnect between everyone involved. The record labels don’t understand why offering a DRM-infused song file is anathema to what the customer wants. The digital retailers don’t understand what the consumer wants exactly. They proclaim to want DRM-less files because that means their potential market is bigger. Then they can sell their wares to people with iPods, Zunes, Walkmans, or any music player. What they don’t understand is that a 128kbps AAC or WMA file is nowhere near “CD quality”. They assume that since the average person can’t tell the difference between bitrates, there’s no point in wasting bandwidth and storage space for higher quality song files.

Which is simply insulting.
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