Hey, wait a minute. He’s got a good idea. So movie viewership is faltering and music sales are stagnant. Why not mix the two together, creating a synergistic Super Friends? His proposal is simple: movie theaters print a code on their tickets that entitle them to some sort of digital download. It could be a song, a copy of the script, or a screensaver. You get some web traffic, some good will, and a way to gauge a consumer’s interest in a certain product or service.
How many people are going to rush out and buy the Soundtrack to the new Rambo movie ? But riddle me this. How many more people would go to the movie if they knew that their movie ticket stub had a code to unlock a free download of the movie’s soundtrack ? Or if they bought a ticket online in advance of the release, they could download the soundtrack right from the online ticket site ?
Anything to get people into the theaters and off of Canal Street, right?
Music and Movies – Give Away the Soundtrack [BlogMaverick]
Well, Ice Cube was giving away copies of his last CD throughout his tour…at $15, adding that onto a ticket price for a live concert, people hardly noticed…but if you asked me to pay another $10-$15 for a soundtrack download, before I’d seen the movie, that’s a different matter…depends on the difference between non-soundtrack and a soundtrack ticket…and how much the popcorn costs…
Alright, enough already. At first, I thought it was a clever, albeit unethical, means to draw readers, but now it’s no longer clever. You write an inflammatory and/or deceptive headline, knowing people will see it & go to your site to read the “exciting” post, and then in your opening sentence, you say “just kiddin’.”
“But it works,” you say? Yep, maybe so, but you know what else it does? It reinforces the notion that blogs are not trustworthy journalistic devices, and blog writers are not journalists. And when the Editor-in-Chief is the one being deceptive, it proves both.
That reminds me: I thought Arrington was supposed to fire you & ask Blake to take over? It wasn’t exactly a well-kept secret, but what I don’t know is why it was put on hold; when I heard “CrunchGear has become somewhat of an embarrassment to the TechCrunch Network family,” I thought it was a done deal…
No, you’re wrong about that, Scott. I have become somewhat of an embarrassment to the Biggs family, as far as I can recall, and as such I’ve been replaced at home with a charming, teetotaling lad of 18 who is thinking of going into the seminary. It’s easy to get those two things confused.
Cuban is well known for posting “inflammatory” things and flaming him has become accepted practice. I’m only pointing this out in a tongue-in-cheek way while saying his idea is actually great. If you get suckered by a loud headline, I encourage you not to read any major newspaper, magazine, or website in the world and instead watch only C-SPAN.