Re:The entertainment industry: built on distributi (Score 2, Interesting)

One strange thing that I recently heard about from a friend is the practice of making ads on speculation. Some creative aspiring set of artist (directors, camera folks, etc) will get together and basically make an ad for free for some random company in the hopes of either selling them the rights to it after the fact or in the hopes of getting future gigs.

These ads tend to be quite a lot more interesting than those produced by your more conservative ad companies. For example, there was a speculation tampax commercial where a woman in goggles and pristine, white undies get hosed down with an firehose of blood -- very visually striking and much more creative than regular tampax ads. Yes, it's a commercial, but its very well done. And the folks putting these out are very likely to go on to more than ads as they get more funding, reputations, etc. The same might be happening in the music industry; don't know.

Still, the creators are starting to find ways to cut out some of the middlemen. There's bound to be better ways and creative minds are likely to find some. Don't give up hope yet....