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Comment by zer00eyz | Hacker News Reader

> If Netflix remained the sole streaming platform of significance it would be lumped in with the monopoly talk....

Spotify, Google, Amazon, Apple, Tidal all manage to have almost comprehensive music catalogs for me to stream. It's rare that I find something on one platform that isn't on another (Some artist exceptions exist, and are rare).

Pick 10 random films off the AFI top 100 list and tell me how to stream them. How many services do I need to watch them "for free".

Consumers want a single point of access to content. If I want to listen to a song I go to my music platform, if I want to watch content I go to the web to find out who has it... That friction is what consumers dont want or need.

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That's because music costs barely anything to create vs tv/movies and the digitally distributed track is basically just advertising for the music creators merch, sponsorship deals, live gigs where they make their real money.

You can tell that's the case because practically every piece of music created has been put on youtube while nobody puts tv/movies on youtube for free.

So your spotify equivalent for tv/movies is going to cost $100+ a month, perhaps more because tv/movies are that much more expensive to make and that's what you were paying for cable back in the day.

But people think everything could cost $20 at most, so that's why we're going to have 10 or so streaming services and frankly that's way better than the old cable days.

CD's used to cost 20 bucks, artists used to make money on their sales.

Now they don't.

There are movies that "don't make money" because of shady accounting practices.

And I paid 100 bucks for cable for the same reason that you pay 100 bucks for internet now, lack of competition.

> while nobody puts tv/movies on youtube for free

There are plenty of people creating content on YouTube for what YouTube is willing to give them... and that isn't much. They have a working model because they keep creating content, not trying to squeeze every drop from the juice (over and over).

You might want to go back and look at the Paramount Decree. We would not be here if it was extended to streaming rather than allowed to expire.

No, that's because music licensing has been collected together into one or two monopolistic licensing schemes in every country. Most countries do it via a government agency, the US does it with BMI and ASCAP. It's actually kind of surprising the US hasn't broken up BMI & ASCAP with anti-trust, but they've got special dispensation just like the NFL.

Legislatures could bring in a compulsory licensing scheme for movies similar to BMI and ASCAP.

I am no expert on licensing schemes, but I've seen major artists like Taylor Swift remove their catalogues from Spotify and the like, which tells me they're not that compulsory when it comes to online streaming?

Taylor Swift has unusual market power.

    > music costs barely anything to create

I think you overlook the cost of studio time, producers, and A&R. Pop music is pretty expensive to make.

And yet, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sl6en1NPTYM

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