Is it reasonable to expect an all-in-one streaming service? There is a lot of media, old and new, local and foreign. I don't know if a single provider can give you all the access a person wants for a price that the consumer is willing to pay.
And the media companies did it to themselves...
Convenience has value. Even if tpb is easy enough, there's still friction. So long as streaming services stay convenient and cheap enough, they will keep customers. The interesting dynamic is that the more players enter the space, the less convenience there is. Justwatch.com is already trying to add that convenience back, but the fact that we need that meta step is already frustrating.
> The interesting dynamic is that the more players enter the space, the less convenience there is.
This is exactly what happened to me. When Netflix had literally everything, it was the only place I looked. Now that it doesn't have everything, I'm not going to go through the litany of Hulu, prime, etc, I just go straight to tpb. So I cancelled Hulu etc. And because tpb is second nature and it always has what I'm looking for, I just go there first... so I cancelled Netflix.
It's like watching the 2000 p2p shift all over again. The media companies don't understand how to build a business model that fits seemlessly into society.
That's only because they're allowed to have exclusive deals. If and when streaming services will get commoditized, this won't be a problem - much like having more grocery stores around you doesn't make shopping more inconvenient.
I know there are other torrent sites and probably private groups that are well curated, but I imagine you have to maintain some seed ratio to be in there and I'm not sure I could get away with that.
What hasn't increased? An individual's time and attention. There are a finite number of hours in the day.
Static demand, increased supply and an unwillingness to pay the asking price. That sounds like pretty simple economics to me.
If I really want to watch, say, Star Trek movies and Continuum TV show, then if CBS decides to pull the Star Trek movies from Netflix and spin off their own streaming service doesn't mean I'll just find something else on Netflix, or that I'll subscribe to CBS too; I'll keep watching Continuum on Netflix and head to TPB for the missing movies.
If movie studios want to stop piracy, they have to stop being so greedy. Streaming services shouldn't be allowed to get exclusive licensing deals on movies/shows. The market would sort itself out and people would be able to watch all they needed from one or two services whose UI they most like.
(And honestly, UI should be unbundled too. Streaming service's crappy four-button player can't beat VLC.)
I don't buy that argument. Its analogous to saying if Windows was not available on pirate platforms people would "just" switch to Linux.
People making content are very very good at keeping people hooked. It partially explains all the people who binge watch on Netflix..
So if we want to make their content compulsory, are you okay with making software licensing compulsory?
There is no reason that the licensing would only apply when you do not choose your shows or movies. Internet radio stations currently pay 22 cents for every 100 "plays" by those paying a subscription fee. And the system works well, creators are compensated, streaming companies can run a successful business, consumers do not need to subscribe to 5 different services to listen to the music they want.
Movies cost a lot more than music and the price you site isn’t for on demand music - only for services where you can’t choose your songs.
https://www.vox.com/2017/6/15/15807382/spotify-revenue-2016-...
creators are compensated,
Not really:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/26/how-spotify-apple-music-can-...
https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2018/12/25/streaming-music-...
streaming companies can run a successful business,
Not really...
https://venturebeat.com/2019/02/06/spotify-posts-second-cons...
Internet radio, and streaming music companies pay billions in royalties each year. For a variety of reasons about 75% of this does not go to artists and goes instead to record labels and other intermediaries, but this does not mean that creators are not compensated, or that they would be better off without internet radio and streaming.
Spotify becoming profitable amid a competitive industry is a great example of a successful business.
You can look at the different published Netflix deals and see how much they are borrowing to license content to get an idea of how much it costs.
You have a central service that license holders contribute content to. The central service negotiates prices with the license holders and charges a fee to cover its aggregate expenses.
Although music is a different product than video content, I'd really like to see a model like this going forward.
Right now to watch the shows I want, I often have to: (1) Download and keep (multiple) apps installed / updated (2) Have several bills each month for each service (3) Wait a period of X days before the content is available post-airing (4) Watch ads before and during the content
I don't have any of these issues using a service like Spotify.
As long as the single price of Spotify-but-for-video is less than the sum of all the services I want, I won't feel like I'm paying for things I don't need.
Honestly people loved to pay $50+/month for cable before. If I could do that, except able to watch whatever I want, not have to suffer through ads, or be fixed to some viewing schedule, it would be pretty compelling.
All three also aren't producing good original content. Prime, HBO, and Netflix all have great shows to watch. Hulu even is getting in there. Now Disney will be soon. So the market is saturated, but there's also better content.
[0] I use Pandora because while I was paying for Spotify premium the interface broke on Linux and my phone. Not allowing me to create new stations. They told me to fuck off so I stopped paying them. Pandora isn't that much worse.
The single provider aggregating content from many rightsholders model seems stymied by rightsholders' inability to provide standardized information about their content on a consistent basis.
Which service does this? That seems quite crazy and you even define that as "often"!
> Honestly people loved to pay $50+/month for cable before.
That's the price of 3 services and more... people start complaining when they have to pay for 2... Netflix screwed people perception of content value.
By and large, people will obey when they consider it to be affordable and fair, and they won't when they don't. Just like every other rule in the world.
Unfortunately it might be an uphill battle because Disney just won a huge lawsuit against VidAngel, who was providing a similar service. They are still fighting, and I think I'm different enough that I could survive even if they don't.
Really the issue is an issue of frontends. If there were a frontend that transparently handled all the different providers and let you pay for what you wanted to watch when you wanted to watch it, that would be much more pleasant to navigate.
But media companies want to control the frontend, for both lock-in and advertising potential. And don't forget DRM!
No it is not. I don't have to buy a separate car or a separate gas cap or whatever to go fill up my car with gas. There's a standard that car manufacturers follow and a standard that gas stations follow that allow them to interop without issue. I can stop at a Diamond Shamrock, a Wawa, a 7-11, a Sinclair, a Texaco, or a Phillips 66 and get gas at any of them.
And while I'm filling up that gas, I have to pay for it. At most places I can use my Visa, my Discover, my MasterCard, or walk inside and pay cash. American Express is of course the outlier here.
Competition can exist and flourish despite agreed upon standards. A standard to watch all your video from one app despite buying/renting/subscribing to multiple services does not mean an end to competition. To the contrary it would make me significantly more likely to try new services.
In fact Amazon's model for this proves it can work. It's just that their frontend is tied to their subscription service, rather than being its own entity. But I watched Ash vs Evil Dead on Amazon by buying a Starz subscription. I watched Game of Thrones by buying an HBO subscription on Amazon. It was seamless from my perspective and I was able to watch in my favored player.
Now we just need something that can do that but is not tied to a specific service. We'll call it MetaPlayer. I open up MetaPlayer and search for Stranger Things. Since I have a Netflix subscription, I watch it and that's it. I then search for The Simpsons. I don't have Hulu, so I'm prompted to sign up, preferably with one click, and then I can watch the Simpsons the exact same way I watched Stranger Things. And so on.
I have 4 or 5 grocery stores within a short walking distance of me right now. I can buy roughly the same stuff in all of them. I usually go to whichever is cheapest for the stuff I want to buy. They differ in sizes, so they don't stock all the same things, but there's nothing stopping any of them to sell any of the products the others do. This is how healthy competition works.
There's friction in the market that prevents all grocery stores in the area from having the same set of items at the same prices, but the situation is an order of magnitude better for consumers than what you have with video/music/game distribution.
You see this happen not just with movies and shows but any digital media that can be distributed across multiple platforms.
Philosophically, yes. Vertical integration reduces competition, reduces standardization, leaves less room for innovative newcomers, and is ultimately bad for consumers.
Economically, it's plausibly more profitable to play the bundling and siloing games.
Sure, if you're willing to pay $200 per month. (Which, frankly, would be a fair price to access all movies and TV ever made.)