Netflix catalog size shrinks by 50% since 2012
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
It's worse than a chicken-egg problem because it's a triple-ended market: users, content sellers and content owners.
Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, Amazon, TPB, TV, theaters ain't the final word in content monetization (or lack thereof) and distribution (or also lacking). If say Netflix were to split up their business into b2c subscriptions and b2b2c fulfillment platform, more studios and others might opt to build their own marketplaces but use the fulfillment service... which strengthens Netflix's overall position and de-conflicts their interactions with studios because it turns them into potential customers instead of just adversarial vendors whom seem to want to charge too much for their catalogs. Let them find out how much it costs to build and promote a streaming subscription service, and then they may be more receptive to negotiating in reality.
Who cares about 100k old movies. Good stuff like House of Cards and Orange is the new Black and Stranger Things with no commercials?
"10 bucks a month for the knowledge that I can watch whatever movie I feel like right now" is a completely different value proposition from "10 bucks a month for access to new, well-made TV series, of which I might find 1 or 2 interesting at a time". Some people want the one, others prefer the other.
Since then, and particularly this year, Netflix is to the point where I can barely find anything to suit me except when one of the Marvel series launches.
Amazon Prime still has the old HBO stuff -- to which they've added a few seasons. And seem to be picking up a few non-original titles each month that I actually don't mind watching. Some of the stuff disappearing from Netflix seems to be showing up on Prime.
At the same time, they've lost a number of titles I enjoyed. But they seem to be doing better than Netflix.
As far as I'm concerned, all Netflix past rhetoric about streaming being the future, has proven to be crap.
I now kind of wish I had pirated, before everything started locking down so much. In lieu, I'm paying attention to my friends who have accumulated an amazingly substantial collection of discs. Especially if and where I can find them at bargain prices, it seems a better application of my money. I can rewatch at leisure, loan them to friends, and eventually rip them for durability/longevity.
P.S. If I ever move somewhere where the public library isn't so distant, like some other friends, I'll throw my active support (and not just tax dollars) behind it.
Netflix, predictably, did exactly what (e.g.) HBO did when the same thing started happening, and shifted resources to original content, while still filling the gap with other people's content.
> As far as I'm concerned, all Netflix past rhetoric about streaming being the future, has proven to be crap.
Streaming is, I think, still the future, its just that paying a monthly service fee for the universal catalog of all streaming content (which works if the vendor is a monopoly on the consumer side and a monopsony in their relation to content creators, but not otherwise) is not. Instead, there'll be places you buy long-term streaming rights to particular titles and places where pay monthly for the privilege of streaming whatever's currently in their catalog, for which the best quality stuff will usually be either first-party or exclusively licensed, but there will also likely be some lower quality (from the perspective of the broad consumer marketplace, not necessarily any individual consumer) non-exclusive filler content, as well. (And there may be outlets where you don't pay for streaming, but its advertising backed.)
IOW, just like Broadcast TV/Basic Cable + Premium TV + VHS/DVD/BluRay, but with streaming.
[0] A dramatic exaggeration, obviously.
For instance, I was thinking about some of the old History Channel shows that I used to watch 15-20 years ago, before it went all Hitler/Jesus/aliens/rednecks! Those have got to be out there somewhere, but damned if I can find them anywhere. Short of trying to track down DVD sets or hope that somebody out there is seeding a torrent of them, or maybe a non-taken-down Youtube upload, I don't know where to look. Certainly not on the official History Channel site. Same deal if I want to watch a non-classic old movie from the 30s-60s, or, say Loony Tunes cartoons.
It is a little reminiscent of the problem with availability of books - anything that was published early enough that it is in the public domain (pre 1920ish) can be found and mirrored easily, and works published in the last 10-20 years is generally available, but there is a vast gulf in between where only the most notable or film-related works are easy to get ahold of. Of course it is worse, since there is so little film and television that isn't suppressed by Mickey Mouse IP law revisions.
Will we continue talking about (and measuring) their dwindling library size forever? At what point do we accept that Netflix is offering different content than in the past?
They removed movie classics and replaced them with american stand up comedy gigs (i dont know a single person watching these). They added a lot of "international" movies which usually means subtitles. Their own series are often ok, but not amazing, some simply really bad.
For me who used Netflix for passive watching mostly this is a deal braker, and i am still left with no non-pirate way to watch movies.