Price of Fun

[Bruce Steinberg <bruces@xxxxxxx>]

re:

        Date: Thu, 18 Aug 1994 13:54:47
        From: timm@xxxxxxxxxx (Tim Moody)
        
                        <...>

        Personally, it is a little rock-n-rollish for my tastes, but there are
        certainly things on it that other people will like.  I look at it like
        this:  If I fork out twenty bucks for something, whether it be a
        instuctional video, a how-to-book, a new harp or someone's CD, or
        something else all together, I want to be able to get something out of
        it.  If it is one lick, that's OK.  If it is a new technique, that's
        OK.  If it's a whole song or something really new, that's even better.
        My point is I will be glad to fork out the money if I can only get one
        thing from it.  If I can get more, that's better.  I guess my reason
        for this is the lack of info for the harp(which has gotten a LOT
        better in the last five years) and my love of it.  If I were looking
        for a good blues CD, then I probably would pass over the Johnny Mars
        one.  But if I was looking to glean a little something, I'd probably
        give it a once over.
        
                        <...>

////////////////
        
Tim's comment on the dollar-value of useful content reminded me of the
following article I received and saved recently, which I hope most of you
find as interesting and thought-provoking as I did, at least next time 
you're prioritizing how to get the most bang for your hard-earned buck.  B*

                        *       *       *

From: "New Media Associates, Inc." <0005406742@xxxxxxxxxxx>


                The Price of Fun: Value vs. Technology

OK, let's just clear one thing up -- before any more irate publishers of
multimedia magazines try to crazy glue my E-mailbox shut.  I didn't tell
the Wall Street Journal that most CD-ROMs don't even have even a
minute worth of information or entertainment on them.  That was a
misquote.

What I did say is that most CD-ROMs don't have more than a hour's
worth of useful information or entertainment on them.  One Hour -- not
One Minute.  And, what I said was that if all you get is an hour worth of
fun out of a CD-ROM, it had better cost a whole lot less than $30/50/70.

Which brings me to the price of fun.  Back when I was on Wall Street, I
started to put together a simple spreadsheet that calculated the average
price paid for an hour of fun.  All kinds of fun.  I priced out helicopter
skiing in the Andes.  I budgeted photo-safaris to Kenya.  I tallied up
carnivals, rock concerts, amusement parks and dude ranches.  Or, how
about reading a book.  And, I even figured out the number of hours of
fun in bottle of wine.  No recreation was left un-charted.

This may surprise you but, in the world where most of us live, most fun is
priced at around $1 to $2 per hour.  Sure, averages can be deceiving.
Yes, Ripple and other vagabond brews cost less and there are some very
old forms of fun and some exotic ones that cost considerably more but
your everyday leisure activity nowadays is pretty well clustered around
that magic figure -- $1-2/hour.

Myst takes an average user 40 hours to complete and it costs roughly
$40.  Music CDs get played for 10-20 hours of fun and they cost $15.  A
two hour video rental costs $2-4.  America Online costs $10 for 5 hours of
connect time (the price of "shareware").   Romance novels take 3-4
hours to read and cost $4-6.  Think about it.

How much do you spend per week on fun?  $10?  $40?  $100?   Add up
your cable subscription, your magazines, your movie/concert/video
rentals, your beer bill and your vacations.  What does it average out to?
And, how many hours a week do you have enjoy yourself?

Let's look at the averages.  On average, Americans have about 40 hours
a week for leisure.  And, we spend about 5% of our pre-tax income on
leisure (regardless of income).  If you pull in $80,000 then, if you're
average, you should spend about $4000 for 2000 hours of fun annually.
That's $2/hour.  Most Americans make less.

Any product/service which costs $50-100/hour will automatically have a
very  limited market.  And, if the product seems to have a chance for
mass market appeal, it will be made illegal so that it doesn't eat up all
the rent money.  Until CD-ROMs all cost $4.95 or until they are all as good
as Myst, multimedia will continue to suffer from an industry crippling
value gap.   Shocked that only CD-ROM bundles sell?  Think again.

[ Copyright New Media Associates 1994]