These are tenuous times for the adult video industry. With XXX-rated YouTube knockoffs popping up like mushrooms all over the Internet, the need to pay for lusty thrills has practically disappeared, leaving the market for high-margin DVDs in ashes and their producers scrambling to repair the damage. Legal action, as with the recording industry, provides only temporary relief as the offending sites disappear for a day or two, only to re-emerge under another URL or set of servers in some unattainable country that either doesn't possess the law enforcement manpower to shut them down, or worse, turns a blind eye. As Vivid's Dave Peskin put it in a recent visit to our store, "I honestly don't know if I'll have a job in two to three years. It's that bad."
It's tempting to draw parallels with the movie and recording industries, as their revenues have been steadily declining over the last five years due to the same Internet pressures, but there is one glaring difference; where in porn the DVD is the main source of profit, the motion picture and music sectors have ancillary revenue streams to help keep them afloat. As an example, Van Halen's entire catalog of music can be had (for free) easily through Limewire or similar file-sharing services, and indeed their latest concert tour is up on YouTube in its entirely, yet the band still managed to rake in over $100 million (and counting) in tour revenue alone. This doesn't count concessions, parking or T-shirt sales, either, which could easily tack on another 30%. Being on the road grinding out a living may be more work than sitting back collecting royalties on their past albums, but it aint a bad way to put food on David Lee Roth's and Eddie Van Halen's tables. In porn, one could imagine a performer doing paid appearances (it's fairly common for female performers to hit the strip club circuit for extra cash, for example), but it's certainly not going to keep an entire industry in the black.
From our perspective as store owners, the reliance on porn as a profit center has diminished right along with the explosion of these freebie sites, as we shift our offerings more toward tangible goods (vibrators, dildos, books, lubes, etc.) and the market for these items matures toward mainstream acceptability, thereby creating more customers willing to visit our store. Indeed, Oprah, Tyra, Dr. Phil and the rest of talk television now regularly feature "sexperts" who tactfully manipulate language to promote sexual health and the need to keep things hot under the sheets. In late night, things get racier, with Talk Sex With Sue, and HBO's Tell Me You Love Me, among others, now popular staples across every demographic. This soft-sell approach to sexuality can be seen on the cover of just about every fitness and women's magazine in your supermarket checkout line, with bold cover captions claiming "10 Tips to Drive Him Wild with Ecstasy" and "Pump Your Way to Mind Blowing Sex." Even the insufferable Dr. Laura has added a few sexual topics to her radio program. Returning full circle, the Internet's number one search time continues to be "sex," with information on every topic imaginable now a simple click away.
In some ways, the porn industry has only itself to blame. With 200-300 titles per week being released, it was only a matter of time before the market became oversaturated, so the added pressures via the Internet might provide a great opportunity to re-evaluate their business models and plot a future course toward continued profitability. And let's not be totally pessimistic; there are some bright spots among the dark times. Blu-ray offers great promise to reinvigorate DVD sales, while cheap "gonzo" content is giving way to a return to features. Pirates from Digital Playground has proven you can produce a slick, high-budget adult movie - with hot sex scenes, of course - and become the biggest-selling adult title of modern times. Wicked, Vivid, Ninn Worx, Adam & Eve and Private are following suit by putting big-money, story-driven movies into production to (hopefully) duplicate DP's success.
In short, these are precarious, yet exciting times for the smut factories in Chatsworth. Let's hope they can respond with product worthy of our precious shelf space.
Ian Denchasy is the owner of Freddy and Eddy, a sexual health boutique in Mar Vista, CA. He can be reached at [email protected].
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