Live Journal Image Playground

My cousin Ed Chen(aka skp) has been working on his Live Journal Image Deathmatch. It's a part of his Live Journal Image Playground. It's a neat hobby project and looks pretty good. It's the kind of simple project that can generate a lot of traffic without a lot of money or programming. Sort of like AmIHotOrNot.com.

Audio vs. Video content

I was thinking about why people hate the music companies and Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) so much, and it seemed odd to me that people don't hate the movie studios nearly as much. Then I remembered something I read a few months ago about how people hate renting music, they prefer to buy(on CD or iTunes). But people are happy to rent video content(via blockbuster, netflix, or pay per view). Consumers want to own music permanently, but they don't like to own videos.

Why are people happy to listen to the same song a thousand times, but few people will watch a movie more than once? Part of it is that music is something you listen to in the background, while watching a movie is a primary activity, but I don't think that can explain it all. Another thing is that a song takes a couple minutes, a movie usually takes a full 2 hours(or even 1/2 hr for a tv show). But it still feels like there is a big gap in how people want to pay for audio content compared with video content.