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Comment by newscracker | Hacker News Reader

I need a cheap streaming service which has a huge catalog of movies and shows from other producers and distributors that doesn't keep vanishing regularly. Netflix seems to be less and less of this as time passes, and is relying way too much on original content (which is mostly great) to attract new subscribers and retain them. I don't think this party can last very long. With every content producer or distributor starting or wanting to start their own streaming service, the customer experience becomes very painful from two counts — high price and not knowing where to find a specific piece of content.

As much as I hate huge companies and consolidation of companies, this is one area where some consolidation could make it better for customers. I'm not sure if this is the right hope to have though.

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Netflix rightly saw that there was no independent end game if they continued licensing other owners' content.

Eventually, revenues go up and licensing deals expire. Then, either the owners increase the price for licensing their content, or they refuse to license it and start their own service.

Lose/lose

Netflix realized the only blue sky was owning a large catalog of their own content, ideally used to retain users and starve other services, and then license content when they have the upper hand.

That’s not how Spotify played it. Spotify bet the farm on discovery and won, with users marveling at how good their playlist selections are. When people are using Spotify recommendations, they become immune to content creators threatening to terminate deals because their users are listening to “Spotify” rather than going and specifically searching Taylor Swift.

Immune?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/01/ruling-raises-songwr...

That’s a coordinated action (through the courts) which is a good point... if the four major labels collude they can fuck over Spotify and the DOJ sure as shit isn’t going to care one whit.

Spotify has done well, but what is their moat? If another service becomes better at discovery, won't most of Spotify's users switch to it?

Their moat is that discovery is fueled by listener data, so it will be very hard to get better at discovery than them. Apple Music tried and failed: their success comes from device bundling and most evaluators of both agree that Spotify’s discovery is far better (I have not personally evaluated Apple Music).

Spotify doesn't have a moat. They're not profitable.

Most evaluators?

I have both, and for discovery spotify is way behind Apple Music, and i often find things on Apple Music that i cant get on Spotify. But one of those factors maybe my taste, but i have one friend with totally opposite taste to me that has had the exact same experience.

> i often find things on Apple Music that i cant get on Spotify

You are not using discovery really if you are doing the finding. It should be automatic in that just play one of the daily or weekly lists and music that you like (some old some new) should be played.

I tried Apple Music for its free trial and switched back to Spotify as I just can't be bothered to choose what I listen to myself.

I would believe what the parent is alluding to is that "sufficiently good" discovery is enough, in that if trusted, it turns music into a fungible good.

If Taylor Swift pulls out of Spotify, but Spotify's users are listening to "Discover" not "Taylor Swift", then Spotify is afforded with the opportunity to play "something that sounds like Taylor Swift." And god knows there are enough hungry and talented bands out there looking for a break...

Admittedly, it's been awhile since I was in grade school and marched in musical lockstep with my peers, but it seems as decent of an idea for disempowering major, advertising-heavy record labels as anything.

It's been heading the same direction. There have been a number of artists that pulled out after the Taylor Swift bit, and the Beetles albums are still iTunes only due to an exclusive deal.

You'll see there are quite a few bitter complaints online: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/WHY-do-yo...

The Beatles are not exclusive to iTunes. I can access a tonne of their albums on Deezer.

You're right, it seems they only ran some things exclusively temporarily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beatles_Bootleg_Recordings...

The Beatles are on Spotify. Taylor Swift has even rejoined Spotify, obviously it was worth it for her in the end.

There are only a few artists who are Apple Music or Tidal exclusive, in an attempt drive users to those platforms.

Tool is not on Spotify or Google Play Music. I'm not sure if they are on Apple Music or Tidal. If anyone knows for sure, please do comment, I'm interested to know.

Also, Spotify has 3 Volor Flex albums, but is missing the one I usually want - "Unlit". I'm pretty sure that specific album is on Amazon Music though, oddly enough.

This isn't a particularly substantiative comment, just some datapoints that irk me about Spotify's inventory.

Tool isn't on any streaming services. They don't believe in streaming or something. They're probably the last popular artist/band to eschew all streaming.

Spotify is a music service with the background of compulsory licensing. If we had compulsory licensing for motion pictures, the landscape would be a lot different.

Only the publishing is compulsory license. The performance is not — if Spotify wanted to carry Taylor Swift songs against her wishes, it would need to hire a musician to re-record the tracks.

Can't they carry anything that was released commercially under the non-interactive rules if they play it in the Radio portion, or a 'Taylor Swift Fan station? I agree they wouldn't be able to play it for on demand without a bilateral agreement.

I think they're already moving this way. Most of the things in my "Discover Weekly" for the last several months have been covers of popular songs. I haven't opened Spotify in weeks. When I want music these days, I go to Bandcamp.

> That’s not how Spotify played it. Spotify bet the farm on discovery and won

Spotify has a horrifically bad business. They're bleeding to death financially, having never earned a profit in their entire existence; they've burned through billions in financing and are still burning at a similarly high rate. Simultaneously Apple is likely to catch up in subscribers in the near future, diluting the leverage Spotify desperately needs to improve its bargaining situation. Apple can afford to burn billions to bury Spotify (likely force them into a sale/acquisition).

Spotify is in a no win scenario. They'll never have enough margin to earn a profit via licensing all of their most heavily listened-to content. The content owners will perpetually squeeze Spotify. This is the fate that Netflix understood to attempt to avoid, which Spotify has entirely failed to avoid. Meanwhile all of largest competitors to Spotify actually make money (Sirius as one example is very profitable). Spotify's only possible future is in the belly of one of the tech or media giants.

The real beauty that enables this blue sky opportunity is the personalized targeting Netflix can do AT GLOBAL SCALE! The old school Hollywood model for creating shows and movies is getting turned on its face.

Critics will hate a lot of what Netflix puts out, and it won't matter at all to the fans who can get exactly what they want in the comfort of their home free from judgement and peer pressure.

There's no personalized targetting in content. It's really one size fits all, or at least the regular S-M-L. It is, obviously, impossible to make different shows for millions of individuals.

What Netflix has is more detailed data of what people watch. So will its competitors is just a few years.

What matters in content is the content of that content. Ideas, emotions, excitement. Technology is irrelevant.

Can't we expect in a few years to dynamically change what actors have been cast as what charavters with a flip of a button? Deep fakes already look pretty convincing.

Also, insert some scenes, remove others, change the cut a little bit, change color grading, music mix – all these changes look like something modern AI could learn to do.

Absolutely not. None of this is possible or even desirable. We don't want to watch optimized video. We want to watch stories that move us, created by geniuses like Coppola, or whoever you think is good.

What if a story could be modified dynamically in order to maximize the chance that it moves you? Or to deepen its impact? I figured that’s what the GP post was getting at.

Just more tools for geniuses to use to move us and move us more deeply.

It makes a lot of sense, and though what I say may sound a bit ridiculous, I don't think most people are capable of making such decisions. They'd rather have some mindless entertainment than moving stuff (we already know this from what's shared on social media, and how TV news and reality shows thrive).

Why would you think that what we want, or, to be more exact, what we think we want, matters? The only thing that matters is what we end up watching more and not closing.

A lot of people say that they want long, challenging reading but they end up reading Buzzfeed articles. Don't ask people what they want to do - watch what they actually do.

The question is probably a bit different - if there is a place for a new genere that is not a linear, sequential narrative model.

There is, they're called video games.

This seems like a good idea on its surface (even to me). But in every case I can think of where an algorithmic approach was taken to producing "high-quality" "high-value" artistic content, it's produced things I have zero interest in that the greater population seems to dutifully consume and not even really enjoy all that much.

Youtube is positioned to take a similar approach, and it turns out the formula that works the best is sociopathic narcissists of a certain age with certain facial features producing 10-minute videos of rats getting tasered 7 days a week.

I think this might be a situation where the gap between what people want, and what people will consume, is very wide. And the algorithms know how to produce what people will consume, but they do not know how to produce what people want.

The problem is that people will end up paying for what they consume even if they don’t want it; but won’t pay (or at least continue paying) for things they want but don’t bother actually consuming.

I'd just like to add that Netflix's vision and foresight and courage has been consistently amazing for years at every stage of their phenomenal growth. Hats off to their leadership.

I agree. The expansion of Netflix to 130 countries was a great move! The content isn't the same in all locations, but it's better than incentivizing people to download from elsewhere by keeping content closed and restricted.

Hell, I don't even need a cheap service.

Take my money! I just want to be able to watch stuff.

"Let's watch X"

"Darn it. It's not on Netflix"

"Not on Hulu"

"Not on Google Video either"

"Try VidAngel"

"No, they got shut down by Disney"

"Oh, doesn't Disney have a service?"

"Not yet."

"Oh look it's on Amazon video!"

"Oh, but we have Vizio Smartcast. Can't get it from the phone to the TV because Vizio uses Google and Amazon has some sort of blood feud."

"F--- it, not worth the hassle. We're pirating this."

Caavo seems to have an interesting idea on how to solve that problem. Early reviews are mixed.

Looks interesting, but I'm not sure if people would want yet another box or yet another stick in their rooms just so they can watch what they want, what with all the apps for the streaming services already available on different hardware platforms. At $399, this is very expensive! I certainly don't want yet another box, and the TV app on Apple TV has kind of solved this problem (to the extent that services support the search).

If it's done correctly, the Caavo should effectively make your other boxes "disappear".

Right. When I said "cheap", I was actually referring to something reasonably priced, compared to subscribing to several services individually. Unfortunately, the industry seems bent on proving time and again that pirating content is still the easiest, most user friendly (and not user hostile), most device friendly (supporting almost all devices) way to get to content.

Music industry size is 47.5 billion a year and streaming services cost 10$ a month [0]. The movie and TV industry size is 287 billion a year [1]. Paying the same subscription price proportional to the industry size would be 60$ a month. Netflix + hulu plus + amazon prime come in under 30$ a month which leaves you with 30$ to rent the movies/shows that are not covered in those plans.

It sounds like you just don't like how much it costs to support high quality television/movies. Granted, one 60$ a month service that offered everything would be more convenient.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/topics/1639/music/

[1]: https://www.statista.com/topics/964/film/

Except if your taste is not right smack in the mainstream, those services have a terrible selection even combined.

I went to JustWatch and even pretended to be an American, just to make it easier on them.

First option, The Exterminating Angel. It's a classic, part of the list of 1000 best films by the NYT, and less than 60 years old. Nope, not even one service has it.

Second choice, Lore; still foreign, but it's a film from 2012, made already in the streaming era! Apparently I got to subscribe to "Fandor", so the price is now $40/month.

Third, let's give them an easy win: Missing, made in the US and owned by Universal! Yet another service, so called "Starz", for $9/month more.

Fourth, an American classic, they have to have Raging Bull... and no. Now it's something called "MaxGo", which from what I can tell costs another $10/m.

These were literally 4 of the 5 first movies I searched for, and we're already at your $60/month, and still missing one! It's not reasonable.

I'm not going to argue on the stats, but some assumptions you have made are that I (or anyone else commenting here) live or have a livelihood in the U.S. or that I (or anyone else commenting here) can afford the $30 or so a month. I won't go into details, but these three services alone are not adequate, and the remaining $30 as per your calculation wouldn't be enough. There are great shows from HBO, ShowTime, etc. For someone who likes good content from different sources, the current crop of services are not yet suitable (speaking solely for myself).

FWIW, I do have Netflix and Amazon Prime, but still don't get everything I'd like to have (and the bigger headache of knowing what's where adds to the frustration). Of course, I have seen people make the argument that one shouldn't wish for things one cannot afford. For digital content though, I believe the companies are leaving a lot of money on the table by not expanding their customer base and making it easier to subscribe and use (vs. say, downloading content from elsewhere).

Okay... But I'm saying the industry is losing money to far easier-to-use pirating.

I don't see how the current size matters for that.

This is why I'm still on private torrent trackers.

Any chance asking for an invite will work?

That never works. Just take RED's interview.

My work around is to subscribed to one service at a time for one month. Then I switch to a different and catch up on that service's shows.

Buy movies or shows you like on Blu Ray, and use Plex. It takes a few years to break even, but by that point you have hundreds of movies and shows you like. This really only falls down if you want to watch a show within a year of the season ending.

Discovery is good, works on every platform, offline sync with transcoding so you can decide how much space it takes up, hdhomerun for dvr-ing live OTA sports, camera backup on vacation in full resolution. It's amazing if you're a little patient on the ramp-up.

Or, you could just pirate them, and have it in 15 minutes.

FYI VidAngel is still in business. They run on a different business model though.

> As much as I hate huge companies and consolidation of companies, this is one area where some consolidation could make it better for customers. I'm not sure if this is the right hope to have though.

This is basically what Hulu is -- NBC, ABC, and FOX consolidating their online streaming content into a single service. (I don't think it would be better for consumers if any of the three corporations that own those networks actually merged.)

If you are into foreign and criterion collection movies, I recommend FilmStruck.

Netflix is popular and needs to cater to the popular tastes, in an environment of content owning launching their own streaming services.

Thanks for mentioning FilmStruck! It looks interesting, and getting foreign movies is not easy. So I see this as a great option (though yet another steaming service is something I'd rather not have at this point).

What we need is two tiered model. Use your favorite frontend, and subscribe to the content networks you want content from. I doubt we get there, but it's certainly possible.

Amazon have something close now in the form of their channels service, which allows you to subscribe to specific providers who’s content then becomes available in the same way as Amazon Prime Video

That still a kinda walled garden. What I'm imagining is like email. You choose your prefered frontend (email client), and pay for x vendors content (email providers). The communication between client and providers is standardized.

> not knowing where to find a specific piece of content

That bit is addressed by https://www.justwatch.com, which shows you where to legally watch any movie / show. Very useful.

Thank you for that resource, but I think it validates the parent's post. I just searched for Miami Vice (the original) and got 0 results. A few years ago Hulu had everything except the first season (??).

I use trakt.tv https://trakt.tv/shows/miami-vice looks like it’s on NBC.com for free. (At least in the US)

https://www.nbc.com/classic-tv/miami-vice

This comment nicely brings in the pain of geo-restrictions. There are services that would accept payments when done from the local country (say, with a billing address there), but wouldn't allow streaming for IP addresses believed to be somewhere else. And now the customer has to bother about getting a VPN service on top of streaming service subscriptions. This game that's being played, with "get this, and this, and this, and also that, plus something else", gets annoying quite fast.

There are several, including Amazon, that will stream most any movie for $3-5 a pop.

If you think that's worth it up to you, you can watch pretty much any movie at any time if you accept this price range.

Around holidays Google Play Movies usually has coupons that let you rent any movie for 99ct.

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