Comments on: Digital Economics and Industrial-Era Font Foundries. http://www.fullstopinteractive.com/blog/2009/12/digital-economics-and-industrial-era-font-foundries/ A weblog from Full Stop Interactive Sun, 15 Jan 2012 03:16:14 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 By: We Are Full Stop. http://www.fullstopinteractive.com/blog/2009/12/digital-economics-and-industrial-era-font-foundries/#comment-245 We Are Full Stop. Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:32:21 +0000 http://www.fullstopinteractive.com/blog/?p=295#comment-245 [...] meet them. It’s true you have a website when all is said and done, but we trust the lesson in digital distribution does not go [...] [...] meet them. It’s true you have a website when all is said and done, but we trust the lesson in digital distribution does not go [...]

]]> By: Devan http://www.fullstopinteractive.com/blog/2009/12/digital-economics-and-industrial-era-font-foundries/#comment-7 Devan Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:45:12 +0000 http://www.fullstopinteractive.com/blog/?p=295#comment-7 I think here of the gradual move, beginning just over a century ago (I think), from music composers' live performances (expensive, unreproducible) to published sheet music (i.e., relatively cheaply reproduced performances, except for the requirements of talent and a piano or orchestra) to recorded music (i.e., even more cheaply reproduced performances, requiring only a phonograph) to digitally recorded music and so on. At each stage, the industry adjusted to the new technology and attendant changes to consumers' expectations. At each stage, everyone still made their money. To wit: People still shell out cash for musical performances; those experiences cannot be reproduced—unlike the eminently reproducible studio recordings. Similarly, I'm sure Hoefler's and Frere-Jones's (and maybe even Buivenga's) appearance fees would make us all blush. A classic, disorienting essay on these matters: Walter Benjamin's "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," itself widely reproduced in <cite>Illuminations</cite>. (The title of the essay is sometimes translated differently, for what that's worth.) I think here of the gradual move, beginning just over a century ago (I think), from music composers’ live performances (expensive, unreproducible) to published sheet music (i.e., relatively cheaply reproduced performances, except for the requirements of talent and a piano or orchestra) to recorded music (i.e., even more cheaply reproduced performances, requiring only a phonograph) to digitally recorded music and so on.

At each stage, the industry adjusted to the new technology and attendant changes to consumers’ expectations. At each stage, everyone still made their money.

To wit: People still shell out cash for musical performances; those experiences cannot be reproduced—unlike the eminently reproducible studio recordings. Similarly, I’m sure Hoefler’s and Frere-Jones’s (and maybe even Buivenga’s) appearance fees would make us all blush.

A classic, disorienting essay on these matters: Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” itself widely reproduced in Illuminations. (The title of the essay is sometimes translated differently, for what that’s worth.)

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