As a consumer who wants such a product as Pixar’s soundtracks on CD, Yes, absolutely I want to upset others on the topic. If Disney does not want to listen to the consumers, maybe getting a few upset will get them to realize what a bad mistake it is to release it via digital alone.
I am personally e-mailing the companies in competition with the Oscar nomination in competition with Pixar and letting them know it’s a good idea to advertise Disney has no confidence in marketing it as such. I am posting it on other sites. I am trying to put pressure on them since the normal means did not work with UP and frustrating to see them do this yet again.
Its not going to work, none of those people value your opinion. Sorry if this comes off as cold, but I don’t think any of those people really care what one person thinks. I might be wrong though.
Not to bring my own Disney bias here (yeah, I do that a lot…) but, as a dear user above pointed out, Steve Jobs+ITunes=He’d want them to be as popular as possible. And to be honest, for me, TS3<Tangled. TS3 just didn’t have a phenomenal soundtrack, except for the Spanish version of Friend in Me.
By the way, I would also like to point out that PATF and Tangled are musicals. The music is a huge part of the movie, yes, bigger than TS3. Sorry, but most older people have IPods or other MP3 players, are more likely to want the music digitally, and most likely older people are going to be the ones to buy soundtracks that are mostly instrumental. This way, the soundtracks with music that would attract children are on a media that is more attractive for children these days (CDs, 'cause most kids aren’t going to have IPods). BTW, here’s advice for you if you have such a problem with digital music: Buy the digital ITunes version, for about 5 bucks cheaper than it would be in disc-format, and burn a CD. Or the Amazon version. Its actually quite an intelligent business strategy, would actually benefit the soundtrack and bring in the most profit, and has probably been perfectly tailored by people who have gone to college for 4 years and interned even longer to get there. As the little sister of a music-business major who wants to intern for Disney, these people aren’t stupid. Trust me, this isn’t just Disney going “WAAH WE HATE PIXAR LET’S NOT RELEASE THEIR SOUNDTRACKS ON CD!!!”
The sad fact we need to remember is these things aren’t tailored for us.
“The sad fact we need to remember is these things aren’t tailored for us.”
If that is the case, it a product that would have not been created. Disney would not be concerned about the nomination for Oscars. There would be not care about creating it in the first place. THAT mentality is a cut off from the consumer corporate non service mentality.
THAT mentality is what has taken Disney down in the past. Seeing it from Pixar in particular is disconcerting, its the last thing any Disney fan should want to see or support. There is a great book you can read, “Inside the Magic Kingdom” by Tom Connellan. Its the management philosophy that Lasseter has been hyping as well what has been used to keep the Magic Kingdom successful. Any time I see something of this nature, a great example of where management is shrugging off a consumer want or need for their own benefit, it throws a huge red flag up. Because, you get enough issues like this forming and many small issues become a huge one that can change the positive direction Disney has been going towards and reaching for.
I have seen numerous companies do the same thing and what is an anomaly or just one small issue, tends to grow if it is ignored and or accepted. Because such issues become the norm. Hate to see it happen, especially when I as a fan and consumer get affected by such a mentality.
So, while there may be those that say it is OK or it won’t make a difference, I am still willing to say the opposite. On the principle that the last thing I want to see happen is that this becomes the norm, not just with Pixar, but with other properties/franchises of Disney.
Well, you missed my point. When I said “us,” as in, us specifically. When a company is making you, me, us mad about something, before complaining, we need to sit down and ask ourselves: Is this actually angering the product’s audience as a whole, or just me? In the case of the latter, which it all too often is, we need to then ask ourselves: will the company actually care?
As I said in my last post, most of the consumer of this product will be buying the product digitally. If that was not the case, Disney would not have released it this way. As I said before, executives are not stupid. They look very closely at the trends and see what is the most effective way to release their product. If sales drop after this because of the lack of CDs, then yes, they will change their ways. But the truth is that unless you have a following of millions of people that are just as outraged as you are (show me the numbers please) I am not convinced that the consumers you claim Disney needs to be listening to will care. Personally, 95% of the people I know haven’t bought a CD in probably two years.
And face it, my friend, CDs are obsolete. They will be disappearing over time. Tell me, when is the last time you saw a video cassette on sale? I expect the same thing will happen to DVDs too. You know what they say, “Keep moving forward.”
I have to take odds to the economic issue, as other films and franchises are being produced.
“By the way, I would also like to point out that PATF and Tangled are musicals”
I am sorry, did not realize Tron was such a hot musical.
Actually, I think the real reason is possibly the ITunes issue. Which means… that last post of mine is all the more meaningful except to those with a corporate mentality that the consumer is not so important. Which flies in the face of the direction/philosophy Disney has been espousing to be for their consumer base.
Tron had its entire score done by famous techno band Daft Punk, the Tron soundtrack is like just another of their CDs. Its not targeted at fans of the movie, so much as it is to fans of the band.
And I still can’t tell if you like the score or not, if it loses the oscar than that just shows that the music really wasn’t that marketable, and will make disney justified in not releasing it. Losing isn’t going to make your situation better.
So, you want Disney to keep pointlessly distributing an obsolete technology because a few buyers want it? …Alright, then.
You keep making this point that Disney is supposed to be catering to their consumers but I keep asking you: is most of the consumer base really going to care? Disney can’t cater to every little groups wishes. That is what us tropers like to call Pandering to the Base (tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M … gToTheBase) and arguably worse things happen when you do that. I’m sorry, but until you show me those numbers, that the majority of their consumers are buying Pixar soundtracks on CD, I won’t be convinced.
Well, to quote the Senior VP of Disney marketing:
"As far as music goes, digital sales still represent only 5 percent of Disney’s revenue–the other 95 percent results from physical album sales. But the virtual side of the business is growing fast. Digital album sales were up 52 percent last year; and digital tracks were up 122 percent, according to Whiteside.
While digital is popular, it represent a minority of sales, certainly not a valid reason to discount producing CDs. So, each time I shoot down a point suddenly it does not matter and lets go to the next argue point? Each new valid point has no validity any more? Again, typical corporate elitist thinking with a total disconnect from the fan/consumer base. A consumer want is now pandering??? Wow, you really need to read that book I noted above. As well understand the past management mistakes and when Disney has been successful in the past.
I never said that. All I said is that I wanted to see actual numbers–which, by the way, thanks for finally giving me. Until you gave me those numbers to prove that what you were saying wasn’t pandering, I was going to keep questioning you. So, because I asked you to back up your claims with facts, that means I don’t know how business works? BTW, if you actually read the wiki page I posted, you would see that it was not saying that giving into any kind of fan request is pandering. It becomes Pandering to the Base when it caters to a small but vocal group of the base.
I can still understand why they would keep the digital sales if Pixar albums (which sports a much different audience then Disney’s overall revenue–is that only movie soundtracks, or does that include say, for example, Disney Channel albums or pop star albums, which again, are aimed towards a younger audience?) if Pixar albums specifically sold better in digital, which I can see happening.
Look, I’m just going to end this on one last post, because now this is just getting repetitive: Disney means no personal offense to their consumers by not releasing the soundtracks on CD. The best way they know their main audience is by their sales patterns. We may not understand why, but the best way for a business to survive is to do what pulls in the money, and yes, they make stupid decisions when attempting to do that, but that’s not something we can really change. I’m not the only one who wanted to chew through the side of their executive headquarters, not caring what nightmares it did to my teeth, when they canceled traditional animation, but they did, and they had a reason for it. There is a reason for everything they do–its not just spite of Pixar.
And you know what? Princess and the Frog underperformed. So sometimes giving into requests doesn’t always work.
I never noted it was a personal issue, I am sure Disnety did not want to tick off just me. But either Disney felt that the potential award winning Pixar soundtracks were not going to make money, OR that someone with Apple influence is making the releases only available for ITunes. Either way, if the the fan base is going to ever get these on CD, they have to stand up and shout it out to Disney to change their minds. That is how consumerism works and how companies like Disney do realize that they may need to change a policy they have.
More over, it is the corporate mentality Disney has endorsed for yeasrs, to listen to thei consumer base. I am noting such an showing that it is a bad decision to make as it stands now.
The Frog Princes is an example of how they release music that obviously would not do as well as TS3’s soundtrack, which proves the point again, that its not the music that is an issue, that is it s corporate decision and a poor one at that regarding Pixar.
Shouldn’t the title of the thread be changed to better suit the topic being discussed? I think I’ve heard the TS3/Oscar issue mentioned only briefly.
This really blew up fast, and frankly I don’t see why it’s such a big issue. Just do what I do and what many others have already suggested to you: Buy it on iTunes, and burn it on a CD. Or, if you don’t like iTunes, they have the soundtrack on Amazon, I checked. Then you’ll still be able to have a physical, tangible copy of the soundtrack for your own personal use. It’s just the way things are done nowadays and I guess we just have to keep up with the times, which I find nothing wrong with.
That’s what I do, anyway, now that a lot of these guys have stopped producing soundtracks on CD. shrug
My question based on the thread title is: If it is that good, WHY would Disney hold back on what they know 95% of the consumer base WANTS TO BUY on CD disk instead of the digital format. This data come direct from the Disney VP on music distribution. If you answer because Steve Jobs wants to promote the digital conversion and is forcing the issue, that stinks for the average consumer. The only other alternative is that they don’t have the confidence it would sell. If that is the case then they don’t deserve the Oscar.
If it is a Job’s agenda, then post like this may be the only way to get their attention as every other nice fan base method did not work for Pixars previous film UP. I HATE taking what appears to be a destructive method of getting the attention on this, but if it is the only way to do so, then they get a virtual slap to think about it.
One word marketing. The Disney company is just going with what sales and what sales is digital. I think it’s very smart because you can buy it on iTunes then burn to a cd that simple so you can have a actually physically copy it makes perfect sense and it’s a smar business strategy so I’m glad they do it this way.
Easy there, OP. Lee Unkrich said on Formspring that the soundtrack was uneligible for an Oscar because it reused some of the themes from the first two films. Why would it matter if the soundtrack was released on CD or not if it was nominated for an Oscar?
In another forum int si interesting to note some one remarked:
Did you guys know Disney is NOT making a DVD screener of TRON for the academy? They know that THAT is when a movie is most pirated. So they just aren’t making one. Apparently that has some academy people snubbing the movie and soundtrack even more than they would have. (that’s what I’ve heard anyway)"
Another poster noted George Lucas did the same thing with Episode one and got ignored.
This is a case of when you ignore who you produce for, that it can have ramifications to your marketing and public relations.
Something that Disney normally pay incredible attention to…but not in this case.
to note a correction, someone also noted my 5% stat is from 2008. Now digital sales are at 27.4%
Still 72% pf the consumer base seems to be a high number to still ignore. And also to note I am stating an opinion on issue of getting an award, based on a consumer perspective.
I really think they did deserve the oscar for best picture, but the Academy doesn’t take animated movies seriously. One day an aminated (surely a pixar movie) will win best picture!
