Tools to Download Netflix / Disney / Apple TV Content

Lol, no way in hell that was the average. That was the high end dream consumer that very few of the people I knew matched even back in cable’s heyday.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/680645/number-of-cable-s...

In my family we would rent lots of movies each week with an 2-3 times a week ritual trip to the video rental store to pick something out for $2 or so.

Movies we liked were bought when they went on sale at the cheap DVD trough at Walmart for $5.

They had a moat that let them gouge consumers for years, but the moat dried up and now they're throwing a tantrum because they can't continue their outdated and overpriced business model.

Yes, and average cost and risk exposure that family sees is higher now, wages down or flat.

First order realization:

I've long maintained most families have a fixed entertainment budget. They have their monthly nut to crack, and entertainment falls into that somewhere, with a little flexibility here and there.

Say that's a few hundred dollars. Might be $200 or less, depending.

The various entertainment forms compete for those dollars, and sometimes compete to stretch the amount a little too. Something really special might displace some other spend, or warrant a draw from savings, use of credit, whatever.

This was my experience bringing up a family through the 90's and 00's. I had a few hundred bucks for entertainment, special spends, and that was basically it, unless there were very compelling reasons, say getting a new game console, or special event that warranted some other adjustment to allow for greater entertainment spending.

There is a near infinite demand for entertainment! Maybe not infinite, but it's a lot higher than the budgets would fund at the generally accepted market prices. This demand is both material, in that real, liquid dollars are there to satisfy the demand, as well as demand not backed by liquid dollars. (the latter being an opportunity to build relevance and sell through later, whether that is recognized as marketing efforts tend to be is another discussion)

Second order realizations:

The entertainment spend is made each month and every month overall, and that's true whether there is massive piracy, or not.

Additionally, content that is pirated hard also earns well. Content that is lightly pirated also tends to not do well.

Entertainment forms compete. Video game vs movie vs whatever. There is a little flexibility, but overall the dollars go where the value perception is highest. Basically max entertainment per dollar. How people see this is all over the map too.

Pricing up can be the right move, as can pricing down. Depends on value perception, relevance, and how that stacks up to the entertainment budgets out there and the different forms.

Third order:

Piracy =/= a loss.

Infringment is weird. It's not theft in that no one is denied property or rights. It's all about people doing or experiencing something they were not supposed to.

There is value created via infringement too. A lot of the sales opportunity boils down to personal relevance. When a content creator is irrelevant, they must somehow reach potential consumers, who then become opportunities for income.

Infringement builds relevance the same as licensed users do, and it all works the same, personal recommendations, sharing, all that stuff people do in order to trade on and participate in culture and relevance applies when people use the content whether it's infringing use or not.

All this suggests a strategy allowing infringement as investment in relevance which will deliver returns in the form of high value license rental or longer term media entitlement purchases later. Higher quality, greater availbility, as in "I'll buy this and share it with the others on my subscription.

Many people subscribe and share with parents, friends, family making good use of both the profile capability and device allowances. This is "infringement" in a similar sense to piracy, but different in that it's not a high priority for enforcement.

Finally, pricing / piracy / competition with other media forms tend to make pricing self-correct and settle in to maxima. There is a right price to capture more value with material demand backed by dollars. Too high, and other forms will garner more of the entertainment dollars, or other works in the same form may do that too. Too low, and value perception may be impacted as well as leaving money on the table.

Subscriptions / content distribution agreements are a way to leverage many works and secure a more consistent share of the entertainment spends without as much risk and costs associated with going solo against high value, easy access, players.

See HBO MAX and how it's basically owning the new release. Used to be going to a theatre or buying a first release media copy was the way to go on a new movie. HBO MAX subscribers get it on release day, and it's great, easy, you name it. Tons of revenue locked in, forecastable, and so on.

The more of this we see that adds value, the less piracy will matter because that will be satisfying demand not backed by liquid dollars, but will still contribute to relevancy and can be considered an investment in the future as those people may change socioeconomic status and be able to meet demand with real dollars in the future.

Where it does not add value, say exclusives to drive new subscriptions, like we see with Paramount+ carving out a new service for "Star Trek" essentially, piracy may well be a response as will other higher value subscriptions and purchases win out over the arguably crappy deal required to see what is compelling, but not worth the hassle production. Basically, the program was used to add value to the basic subscription tier, then elevated to a new / higher service level without adding very much other value.

As examples:

Our family loves HBO MAX for the no bull shit, flat fee get new movies deal. We watched the new Matrix movie on release day, as we have others, and gladly buy this service.

We hate the CBS games being played. Do not gladly buy. Would consider just waiting and pirating the Star Trek, because it's a PITA now, or too expensive / time consuming to sign up, watch, then cancel because there isn't anything else, blah, blah...

Prior to these common sense streaming services, our family would pirate quite a bit, while buying quite a bit with the problem being unable to buy in ways, and on time, to make sense. It was often unavailable, or painful, or way over the top expensive...

It's A Wonderful Life

A Christmas Carol

Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer (old animated version)

How the Grinch Stole Christmas (old animated version)

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Home Alone

Miracle On 34th Street

Elf

White Christmas

There's tons of GREAT Christmas movies. On any given Christmas season Netflix might have 1-2 of the greats. Same for Amazon Prime.

I'm confused because it seems like an easy win for these streaming services. Is licensing them really so expensive?

The fact that you only want to watch 1 movie out of their catalog is irrelevant. I do not find their content worth it, so I do not pay Netflix.

I find it better to just rent a movie from an online provider if/when I want to watch one, since I rarely watch. If I want to watch it over and over, I buy it (kids’ movies).

Theoretically the streaming services are more convenient, they're all lurking right there on my PS4, but... I never really touch the things.

Are there streaming rights issues? Are they holding back content to drip feed content drops for as long as they can? Did they determine that some content isn't worth digging up the tapes and preparing for streaming?

Its a few days because you can rent digitally just before you buy it. Back in the Hollywood Video days, you also had to make a special trip to the video store. Often this was done days in advance.

My absolute favorite song suffered from this. One morning I opened Spotify, and all the songs in that album was greyed out.

It returned a couple of months later, but it's an enough of a warning.

Sitting in a cafe Abu Dhabi now, a shop on the opposite side of the street has "$10 for 1000 MP3 Hitz"

I don't know who streams, when you can just download MP3s.

What I meant by competition is they won't be able to offer higher quality and availability. They will never achieve the ideal I proposed: everything humanity has ever created at the highest possible quality. They are of course masters at being just good enough for the average consumer. Honestly that bar is pretty low.

I will never forgive them for shutting what.cd down. I consider that a crime against humanity itself that vastly outweighs whatever little profits they thought they were losing.

If you want a really good example of where video games got it wrong in recent years: Metro Exodus was sold as a "pre-purchase" on Steam before it released for some time (at least a few months, could be a year). A few days before release it went exclusive on Epic Game store IIRC and you couldn't buy _or download_ it on steam anymore. After some well deserved outrage, people who pre-purchased on steam could play on steam, but you couldn't purchase it for about another year.

Metro: Exodus was the only title I pirated in the last 10 years because they took away the ability to purchase it (and I like the series and have the first two titles on steam, and I bought and read the books because of the first game).

> Games

Hmm.

I ensure that the "small" people benefit from my consumption- the people who will actually benefit from my $10/$20/$50. But I also have to keep my comfort and ease in mind.

the reason why linux users get lower bitrate versions of media is that companies with a bit too much power decided to try to abuse the entirety of the PC world in order to slow the efforts of a very few pirates.

it's a stupid untenable unwinnable arms-race that only results in poorer user experience and less and less user-liberty and choice across the board in order to slightly inconvenience a few bad actors, not stop them.

Meanwhile a 10 dollar video dongle setup and a pirated Windows copy will easily meet most DRM requirements and still allow for easy piracy.

These efforts (DRM schemes) are useless and anti-human, and most research from the 90s until now indicates that DRM enforcement does little for profit except for those that sell DRM solutions -- and that piracy increases social effect of released media; generally aiding sales and profitability.