How Many Photos Have Ever Been Taken?

There are some questions that are unanswerable. What is love? How do you make a hit? How many people have inhabited out planet from the beginning of time? How much water is in the oceans of the world?

While we don't know exactly, we do have a fair idea regarding the number of pictures that have been taken in the history of photography. How is that? Well, considering that the art has only been around for about 200 years or so, it's a pretty recent development in human history, and fairly well documented. That said, with the proliferation of cameras in just about every camera, picture taking has grown exponentially, and I'll show you some graphs that will blow your mind in a minute.

First, here are some interesting stats to set the stage:

• From all the photos taken up until about 1960, it's estimated that 55% of the photos were of babies.

• The 20th century was the golden age of analog photography, peaking at an amazing 85 billion physical photos in 2000, which turns out to be an incredible 2,500 photos per second.

• It's estimated that 2.5 billion people in the world today have a digital camera (out of 7 billion).

• If the average person snaps 150 photos this year, that would amount to a staggering 375 billion photos.

• People will upload over 70 billion photos to Facebook, suggesting around 20% of all photos this year will end up there.

• Facebook’s photo collection has a staggering 140 billion photos. That's over 10,000 times larger than the Library of Congress!

• It's estimated that we humans have now taken over 3.5 trillion photos!

• Ten percent of all the photos we have were taken in the past 12 months!

The point here is that picture taking is so easy these days, you should never hesitate to take one. The number of times I wish I had a picture of something in the past is way too frequent, and it's usually something I could've used in a book to illustrate a point.

Below are a couple of graphics that will blow your mind. For more info as well as the references for the figures above, click here.

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What People Spend On Entertainment

Digital Music News had an article the other day on the average amount of money that people in the U.S. spend on entertainment. The following charts came from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics and they're very revealing.

The first chart shows that the average person in the US spends almost as much on entertainment (5.2 percent) as on healthcare (6.6 percent) and quite a bit more than on clothing (3.5 percent).

The second chart shows that the average consumer spent less on entertainment in 2010 than any of the last 4 years (no surprise there). While the rest of the numbers seem kind of bogus to me, what stood out was how much people actually spent on musical instruments and instrument repair on average. It's a huge part of American entertainment.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Hashtags And The Most Effect Promotional Tool

Here are a couple of different articles posted on some great blog sites that recently included a thing or two from yours truly.

First of all, the excellent Hypebot blog just posted an article called "Hypebot Readers Share Their Top Music Industry Hashtags." It's a good insight into the hashtags that work for a number of bloggers, including myself. Check it out here.

The second is an article by the first lady of musical social media, Ms. Ariel Hyatt, that was posted on another great blog - Music Think Tank. This one's called "Music Marketers FAQ – What's most important as a promotional tool: Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube?" In it, Ariel (from Arielpublicity.com), Rick Goetz (from musiccoaching.com), Corey Dennis (of TAG Strategic), Carey Lynn Hall, Cassie Petry (of crowdsurf.net) and moi give a brief overview of which of the social media tools we find most effective. You can access the post here.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

What People Will Pay For Online

Here's an interesting chart from research and consulting firm Magid Advisors, a unit of Frank N. Magid Associates, that outlines the attitudes of consumers toward paid content online and mobile.

The most recent studio in April shows the group most likely to buy paid mobile or online content is 25-to-34-year-olds, and the second most likely group is 18-to-24-year-old users, followed very closely by 35-to-44-year-olds.

What's interesting is that the Napster generation of Web 1.0 -- the one where all content is free -- has evolved to see paid content as a reasonable alternative to advertising-supported content or pirated content.

It seems that iTunes has led the way in teaching people to pay for and download digital content -- movies, games and TV shows, since all of these are big with the teenage and young adult populations.

The studio also found that many older people, particularly middle-age women, are also big buyers of movies, shows and games, like social games and Web games.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.

Wow! Do We Text A Lot!

The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project recently did a study on texting and the results are shocking, at least to me.

Here are some very interesting texting stats:

• 83% of American adults own cell phones and three-quarters of them (73%) send and receive text messages. 

• 31% said they preferred texts to talking on the phone, while 53% said they preferred a voice call to a text message. Another 14% said the contact method they prefer depends on the situation.

• 55% of those who exchange more than 50 messages a day say they would rather get a text than a voice call.

• Cell owners between the ages of 18 and 24 exchange an average of 109.5 messages on a normal day—that works out to more than 3,200 texts per month!

• The typical or median cell owner in this age group sends or receives 50 messages per day (or 1500 messages per month).

• Text messaging users send or receive an average of 41.5 messages on a typical day, with the median user sending or receiving 10 texts daily – both figures are largely unchanged from what we reported in 2010. 

• Cell owners make or receive an average of 12 calls on their cells per day, which is unchanged from 2010.

There's a whole generation that doesn't text a lot, but the younger the person, the more they text. Clearly this method of communication is not going away, even if it is a windfall for the phone companies.

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You should follow me on Twitter for daily news and updates on production and the music business.

Check out my Big Picture blog for daily discussion of music, recording, and production tips and tricks.