Proof of Premium Content Demand

Still don't believe that content prices are under massive pressure from consumers to rise? Still don't believe that boutique culture is the future?

Here's some proof:

A flick with no stars scores highest per-screen opening. $30 tickets. (And to think I've been talking about $24 price points for movies--I may have to adjust my prices upwards.)

They seem to have done it by offering free booze but it's a shorter walk from dropping the free booze and offering a better movie than it was to tripling the movie price and offering a way to get drunk. It's my assertion that films ultimately hold more value than booze. Call me crazy, but Yoga, tea instead of coffee and consciousness are on the upswing in my medium and well-heeled circles. Getting blotto and unconsciousness are increasingly passe.

All people need to know is that people will pay $30 to go to a movie-based event. The imagination of entrepreneurs and hustlers will do the rest.

$10 Magazine with a $117 Subscription Rate

This magazine is called Monocle and is $10 only because it's made in the UK (where it's 5 Pounds) and sold in the US, but it was front-racked in the Lincoln Park Borders in covering up a bunch of the business heavy hitters--Fast Company, Conde Nast's Portfolio, etc. And it has two stacks--proof that there certainly isn't much consumer resistance to higher prices for better content here in little ole' Chicago--just producer ignorance and entropy.

A year's subscription is 75 Pounds or $117--about eight times higher than a regular monthly. A lot of this is because they get all fancy, and I can't say it's as enjoyable a read as a Vanty Fair (they fall into a common "premium" trap of trying to appear different and precious to justify their price instead of just being more fun, lovelier, smarter and more varied), but the point is that consumers are happy to drop coin for something special.

Inside, they also note that the market for high end sunglasses is growing at twice the rate of that for moderately priced ones--but you already knew that. Premium branded everything is growing more rapidly than moderately priced offerings. Just read Trading Up.

Except poor little content, of course. The product that informs and inspires our lives most directly. There we only have one option--mass market drek or going without. The demand for premium content offerings just grows and grows. It's never satisfied because the market won't allow it to be generated sustainably--profitably. A premium boutique movie or book is rewarded nine times out of ten with commercial failure. I'm constantly amazed at the meager content offerings on which rich people have choosen to survive. They have the best of everything--and not a single film, tv show or song in the world. Even the Paul Allens, who spend tens of millions on Jimi Hendrix guitars and music museaums (and are wont to hop up on stage with a guitar), would rather devote a hundred mil. towards newer, zippy electronic gagetry than better content to enjoy on it.

Maybe they just all feel the best days are behind us--are stuck emotionally in the long lost nostalgia of their high school years?

If it wasn't their own uptight, repressed fault, I'd feel sorry for them. People all the way down the socio-economic ladder have not only songs but dances, movies, YouTube, DJs, mix tapes, soap operas, reality television, scores of magazines and lots of novels.

As more and more of us get rich, the demand for premium, boutique culture and floating content prices grows and grows.