Julian Francis-Lawton

Comment Threads

• Robert Prior commented on A Storm Of Stories
  This leads me to suspect that there should be a niche for a rival to Amazon that focusses on curation and quality rather than price, at least in the soft goods sectors (books, games, videos, music). They would have to overcome the problem that bookshops and gaming shops have right now. People come and browse, get recommendations, then buy online because it's cheaper. (And bitch when the local shop goes under, because how will they know what to order now?) I'd love to see it. But when you pay a premium for an iPhone right now, you get different hardware...
• guthrie commented on A Storm Of Stories
  Which prompts me to say "You expect this market thingy to be rational?" in response to Charlie making the reaosnable point that there should be a niche rival to Amazon....
• icehawk commented on A Storm Of Stories
  but you know about the HUGE problem with the iOS (and to a lesser extent, Google Play/Android) app store and me-too games? Things called "Angry Boids" or "Angery Birds" Spotify is terrible for this. My kids wanted to listen to "Rudolf the Red-nosed Reindeer". The home speaker network is connected to Spotify. Should be easy! But I wasn't home to say "Gene Autry". So they gave up, because finding an actual decent version on Spotify was too hard - they didn't want to listen to any of the dozens and dozens of covers by no-hopers. To be fair, most...
• icehawk commented on A Storm Of Stories
  I'm not sure if anyone's still reading this thread, but the things said here don't add up. Richard Prior refers us to a NY time article that sends us to the OES of the BLA in the USA. That's the Occupational Employment Statistics of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It's written as a refutation of the claim from a decade ago that the interwebs would destroy creative jobs because piracy. What it shows is the the number of people employed doing creative stuff hasn't changed much. I don't quite get the BLS's categories system, and found their historic data hard...
• Graydon commented on A Storm Of Stories
  To the BLS, "employed" probably means "primary employment which we notice because of taxes". I'm not surprised that hasn't changed much; getting the majority of your income from a creative endeavour is difficult. Hardly anyone who self-publishes fiction is making their living at it, for example. (Not "no one", not "it's impossible", but hardly anyone in the "it's a lottery win" sense.)...