What you’re proposing would lead to a terrible market structure. It would eliminate the most important differentiating factor: content. Subscribing to multiple streaming services might be somewhat less convenient, but it also allows competition based on producing and distributing quality content.
Subscribing to many services because each offers some exclusive stuff is inconvenient and taxes the user with the overhead of each service. People want to find more in their favorite stores.
If creators would have been independent of distributors, this wouldn't have been a problem to begin with. Each creator would distribute in each store. But all this integration causes exclusivity that only inconveniences the end user. Netflix isn't any better in this sense, since they have tons of exclusives too. Competition on exclusivity is not good in the end and only benefits the distributor.
In this sense, the idea above is spot on. How are these fragmented services (with DRM to boot) going to compete with torrents that offer everything without DRM through unified hubs? Film makers need to pull stuff together and fix it.
The whole spiel about DRM is that you don’t truly own the content you buy and the inconvenience of not being able to use the content on the device of your choice.
When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access. As far as convenience, the major streaming services are all on the web for computers and they all have apps for everything imaginable. Netflix, Hulu, et. al. are much more convenient that piracy. Besides they said the same thing about iTunes back in 2003. I stopped pirating music when the iTunes Misic Store was introduced. I definitely wouldn’t worry about pirating now over paying $15/month for the family Apple Music plan.
> When you subscribe to streaming services you aren’t paying for ownership, you are paying for access.
I personally prefer to avoid DRMed services and buy DRM-free. It's reasonably good with music and games for example, but with films you barely can find anything that way.
The reason for renting digital goods is usually presented as an option to get it for lower prices, even though there is no scarcity like with physical goods. That's fine, people might want to rent something and pay less. But why does it mean there should be no option to buy (for higher price)? That is already not right, i.e. forcing renting only approach. That's why I quite dislike DRM attached to renting services as well.
It’s not about “scarcity”. Content costs money to make. Should developers not get paid because once they create a piece of software it can be infinitely reproduced?
How much would you be willing to pay for all the content you can get on Netflix, Hulu, etc.
Renting for physical goods has scarcity involved. To make a new item, you have constant expenses, thus when you rent it, avoiding that expense allows lower price.
With digital goods, you have fixed expense, which after it's paid off has no constant expense involved. So the above renting logic isn't applicable. The remaining reason for renting to be cheaper is artificial, i.e. its limited nature, that prevents you from making backups and etc. That crippling of the product makes it cheaper, but the whole crippling is artificial to begin with.
> How much would you be willing to pay for all the content you can get on Netflix, Hulu, etc.
Depending on the film, may be different prices. Definitely more for something I'd watch more than once.
> Does that mean every single software as a service company business model is invalid?
I'm OK with someone offering digital renting, if there is an option to buy the same thing (though I wouldn't use it if it has DRM). I'm not OK with it, if renting only is mandated.
Software as a service isn't exactly the same case as buying books, films, music, games and etc. For instance Web search is software as a service and I'm OK with it running remotely (though decentralized search is a way to improve it in theory). But when I listen to music and the like, I want to have a backup of it and run and use it on any device I want, and not on what some DRM authorized it for on condition of some existing account.
How is Netflix, Hulu, etc. not the same? You pay $10.99 a month and get unlimited access to an entire library of content. What device that you own can’t play Spotify music?
As I explained above, their problem is offering renting only video which you can't buy.
> What device that you own can’t play Spotify music?
Anything they didn't think about? DRM-free formats can be accessed anywhere, you can re-encode them in any codec and etc. For example I can take my audio files and play them in RockBox on my portable Sansa player. How would Spotify help for that? Benefits of DRM-free are quite self explanatory.
They are getting paid. I've never suggested pirating media. The streaming media companyed pay the creators. Netflix alone pays billions per year for Netflix.
All purchased digital music has been DRM free for a decade.
Netflix says we watched about 60 hours last month and my son watched 5 seasons of "Everybody Hates Chris" on Hulu - combined price of both services was $23 a month. How much would that cost to buy?
Price usually depends on many factors of the market. But if it's not available at all, it doesn't matter how much you would be willing to pay - you can't buy it, period.
> All purchased digital music has been DRM free for a decade.
So if music can be sold DRM-free in parallel to renting services, what problem is there with video that prevents it?
Commercial video for the most part has always been copy protected even in the analog days with Macrovision.
From a historical reason, the only reason we have DRM free music sells is because of Apple. In 2008, the music industry was trying to pressure Apple into licensing its DRM scheme so that competitors could sell music compatible with iPods. Steve Jobs countered saying that if the music industry would sell all of their music DRM free, there would be cross platform compatibility [1]. The movie industry didn’t make the same mistake the music industry did. They allowed multiple companies to buy and rent movies so Apple wouldn’t have the same power they had over music over movies.
As far as the cost to buy movies, you don’t have to guess. Most popular movies cost $14.99 to own and the less popular movies are $9.99.
The box set for “Everybody Hates Chris” is $110.00 on Amazon. So to buy all of the content we watched between Hulu and Netflix would be at least $700 - as opposed to $24.
We are talking about buying DRM-free digital films. Who sells them now at scale? I doubt you can draw pricing parallels with sales of physical legacy media (optical disks).
And there is no valid reason for them lacking, all reasons are invalid and crooked. The last major push for that was from GOG, and it didn't go far because of backwards thinking lawyers:
We are talking about buying DRM-free digital films. Who sells them now at scale? I doubt you can draw pricing parallels with sales of physical legacy media (optical disks).
Why do you think that making them DRM free would cost less? Today the cost of digital movies is between $9.99 and $14.99 and the cost of a season of Everybody Hates Chris is $20 on iTunes.
Digital product should cost less than physical, since there is no expense of printing physical disks. But if it already costs so for DRMed digital, then sure, price won't likely be less.
Digital product should cost less than physical, since there is no expense of printing physical disks. But if it already costs so for DRMed digital, then sure, price won't likely be less.
Music seems to have no trouble competing on quality content despite the nearly identical catalogs of the various streaming services. You just allocate subscription money based on plays (or whatever other metric approximates “how much the paying customers like this”) and it works fine.
TV production has typically been tied to consumer channels, but movies certainly haven't. Back in the day, we'd go to the video store and find tapes (and later DVDs) from all the major studies. Today, you'll find them all on places like the iTunes store. Throughout that time, theaters have carried movies from many different studios. It seems to work fine, and I don't see why subscription services would be different. (Netflix did a DVD subscription service for years, still does, with a broad catalog.)
Content distributors don't need to take risks. Theaters do a bit, because screens are limited. Stores do a tiny bit, because shelf space is limited. Online services don't have to at all. The producers take the big risks, but I don't see why that should imply that streaming services have to involve exclusivity agreements.
That would be true if each of these services had enough unique content to stand on it's own. Netflix does, Amazon does, and HBO does if you take their entire historical cannon into account. The rest of the services (Starz, Cinemax, Hulu, Showtime et al) have 1-2 great exclusives and a bunch of old so-so content.
I shouldn't have to pay for 5 additional instances of Netflix to get one instance of Netflix worth of quality content. You were late to market and lost, deal with it and list your content on Netflix or Amazon, band together to form a joint competitor, or service a niche market like what Crunchyroll did with anime.
If you don’t want to subscribe, then don’t. But these services are cheap compared to what they’re replacing. The average cable bill is over $100. These streaming services are the a la carte channels everyone was always saying they wanted in the bad old days when content was bundled together in cable packages.
What we have today is far from a la carte. Yesterday: if you want shows 1, 2, and 3, you have to purchase cable bundles A, B, and C, even if you don’t watch 99% of the content in those bundles, since the shows were spread across those bundles. Today: if you want shows 1, 2, and 3, you have to subscribe to streaming service A, B, and C. There is almost no difference, except now you’re paying three separate companies instead of one for 99% of content you don’t watch.
You can buy shows and movies a la carte on iTunes and Amazon Video if you want. Perhaps a company should create a $9/month streaming service where each customer gets to choose their catalog personally.
Most of these services are the same a la carte premium channels that already existed 10 years ago for roughly the same price (HBO, Starz, Cinemax, and Showtime). Little has changed except the content delivery mechanism and availability of content on demand.
> Little has changed except the content delivery mechanism and availability of content on demand.
What? You don't need to pay $100 for cable anymore, how is it that nothing has changed? Anyway, I think arguing with you is pointless, pirates will always find a way to justify their behavior.
A. I've never advocated for piracy anywhere here, so I'm very confused as to where you got that from. If my intent was to pirate, why would I even be a part of this discussion? Please engage in honest discourse or don't bother posting.
B. If I have to pay for a live sports package and 5 streaming networks to watch what I want, then I'm not really saving much money (if any). A move to a la carte content should result in a substantial cost savings, not a marginal cost savings. Netflix has set the bar at $10 per month for access to a massive catalog of content across networks. By default, this means no one (except maybe HBO) should be charging anywhere near this amount of money for access to their content library which is not nearly as deep or as high quality.
Right, now you spend for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, Stars, CBS, and soon Disney. Plus Crunchyroll if you like anime, plus a sports package for sports.
If this keeps going $100 will seem like a bargain, and piracy will surge.
I also think it’s rude and out of line to tell someone that arguing with them is pointless. Do the mature thing and just stop responding, or the even more useful thing and actually try to have the conversation.
>Right, now you spend for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, Stars, CBS, and soon Disney. Plus Crunchyroll if you like anime, plus a sports package for sports.
And why are you subscribed to every single streaming platform? Do you actually need to watch every single show you might possibly like?
I’m not, but neither is that the point. Obviously no one needs any of this, it’s always a matter of want. The question is how much it costs to get it, today, yesterday, and tomorrow. People crowing about the downfall of cable packages while ignoring splintering subscriptions for the same content are missing that point, don’t you think?
The point is that it seems media companies, in their greed, have forgotten that streaming only works when it offers something better than piracy. A dozen subscriptions that cost more than a cable package did is offering less, with more impediments to use than a Kodi box. The model will, as a previous poster said, fail. The attempt turn everything from software to hardware into a subscription service, because it’s the easiest way to milk money isn’t some god-given right of corporations either.
Now you can yell about entitlement and whatever else, and I’m not wading into that mess, just explaining how it is based on past precedent.
I think he is simply addressing the argument that today’s environment (multiple streaming services each with exclusive content) is any different than yesterday when it was multiple cable bundles each with exclusive channels.
You're speaking as if there are only two models: pay a lot for everything or pay for individual channels or shows. I want neither of those things. I want the Spotify model, where I pay 9.99 per month and I get 80% of all music across genres. I'm willing to pay for 1-2 of such services but not 5-6.
