You have heard a lot about it lately, theres no doubt that Porn Valley is in distress. Product sales are half what they were two years ago and a quarter what they were four years ago. But up until recently talent costs have continued to sky rocket.
Not anymore. I am seeing emails to producers from agencies almost daily offering girls for 600-700 dollars for a boy girl, thats what the levels were in the 90s. With a huge influx of girls wanting to be the next Jenna combines with a slowdown across the board in production talent rates are bound to fall from the current bloated levels. Gonzo performers are the ones feeling the most heat, because those are the companies cutting back the most, many are outright closing their doors.
Male talent rates have risen even faster than female but those are now falling faster than the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Guys that were getting 900-1000 dollars a scene can now be had for 200. Many guys are offering to work for even less.
Just because a girl is new no longer gives her any intrinsic value, the agencies all have more girls than they can keep working with new ones coming in daily. The plain janes simply arent getting work at all, but the agencies continue to sign them up knowing they will shoot a few times then fall off the map. Only the really pretty ones can survive.
The industry is moving more and more towards the old school features and glamorous girls.
Some companies still pay their non contract girls the bloated rates but those days are coming to a close as well, I’m hearing of more than one big company offering the girls 800 for a b/g scene, take it or leave it and guys get 200.
Outside Porn Valley talent rates haven’t risen nearly as much, producers can shoot in Miami for example and pay the talent less than half what they have to in L.A. and this is yet another reason why the internet shooters are eating the gonzo companies lunches. Look at Bang Brothers for example, they shot the content for their websites, they capitalized it and monetized it till it had no more value, then they dumped it onto DVD and sold it again, all of that part being found money…Hard for a gonzo company shooting new content for DVD distribution to compete with that, and it isn’t just Bang Brothers…look at AVN most of the companies seeing success now in that market are websites cum DVD producers.
Porn Valley better stop worrying about who is giving away an ipod and start worrying about how they survive the next few years, hint…It wont be by giving away ipods.
4 Responses
Excellent post.
My only difference is with the phrase “artificially high rates”. What? There are some kind of natural or God-given rates for sex acts performed for the camera?
I know the term has a context among economists who’ve decided that something in the economy (stocks, real estate, hookers, whatever) isn’t being sold at the rate they think it should always be sold at (inflation-adjusted, of course) … but come on.
Things are bad enough without our adopting the value terms of the assholes who got us into this national economic mess in the first place.
Yeah, that word “artificial” sucks.
Yeah.
Or, we can apply it to everything we human beings do and rid it of any significance altogether.
Oh, why bother. Thanks for the po
Terri Redor
As a consumer of porn who grew up in the days before VHS, I’m a convert to Bang Brothers, Brazzers and Naughty America and their distribution method. I saw my first porn in a theater, back when everything was a feature and directors tried to tell stories. Even, then, before the fast forward button, I’d just sit there waiting for Veronica Hart to stop talking to her girlfriends about the meaning of life and get it on. And, let’s get real, even my wife doesn’t want to watch a Vivid feature for the story. I’d rather watch Jesse Jane in Jack’s Playground over Pirates II any day. I’m happy to pay Naughty America a modest fee for a month to download and burn a DVD with 9 Lisa Ann scenes that I can watch at my leisure than go to the store and buy a DVD.
“The industry is moving more and more towards the old school features and glamorous girls.”
Ya mean we’re seeing a return to competing on a (semi) creative level rather than simply a popularity contest? Instead of making the same product (gonzo and all-sex) that everyone else is making–over and over and over with little to distinguish it from its competition–we’re seeing a return to (appropriate amounts of) story-telling, production value, and porn stars who look like porn stars? Sounds great. That should mean 80% of directors, production companies, and talent have no future. One problem: There’s only a small handful of companies who make, can afford to make, or are willing to make, products like that.
Porn production being in the toilet isn’t just about tube sites and pirated content, it’s also about companies dumping (what looks like) the same product onto the marketplace and dumping it in unprecedented numbers. In fact, an awful lot of that same-looking product actually IS the same product, simply re-edited, re-titled, re-packaged, and recycled.
Skyrocketing talent rates aside, it’s never been cheaper or easier to make cheap porn. That’s a big reason guys like me had significantly more work when significantly less porn was being produced: There used to be a certain level of skill and know-how required. Today, none of that matters. It’s all auto-everything point-and-shoot which has put porn production in the hands of… well, of everyone and anyone.
When referencing Bang Bros, it’s key that you mention that they also own fling.com (an AdultFriendFinder competitor).
They plaster fling.com ads all over all the tube/torrent/rapidshare forums as well.
Also, they are part of the same corporation as Reality Kings.