9 ms·

How MindGeek transformed the economics of porn

56 points by fraqed 11y ago

Mahn 11y ago
That's a pretty impressive monopoly, for some reason I always thought those "YouTube-like" sites were competing against each other. MindGeek may well turn out to be the Google of porn.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- erpellan 11y ago
  It's a bit like how all the casinos in Vegas are owned by something like 3 companies, or how all the detergents are owned by Unilever.
- mastermojo 11y ago
  I wonder if MindGeek will move to a more legal revenue split/share model as it grows the same way Youtube did.
  - jonnathanson 11y ago
    That seems like a distinct possibility. If Mindgeek can aggregate the majority of adult entertainment eyeballs on the internet, then studios basically become Mindgeek MCNs. In some ways that may be an easier transition than it would be for Hollywood studios, in so far as production costs are probably cheaper by several orders of magnitude.
    - notjaycarney 11y ago
      Can you tell me what MCN stands for?
      - jonnathanson 11y ago
        Multi-channel network. It's a term YouTube originally coined. Basically, a content publisher on someone else's platform who operates multiple channels within that platform. In the YouTube world, this is someone bigger than a one-channel YouTube star and perhaps smaller than, say, a premium content provider like NBC or CBS.
gizmo686 11y ago
>As a result, there’s little obvious reason to produce new porn: everything has already been done, probably better, by somebody else, and is already freely available online. Where does the author watch porn? Maybe it is just a curation problem, but I find the quality of most porn to be insufferable bad. Even the "good" stuff would be bad by the standards set by the mainstream film industry.
- technotony 11y ago
  Technology shifts may change things as well. I imagine wide spread adoption of VR viewers is going to create a new market for instance that might be 'premium'. Or some integration with internet of things devices (tele-dildonics anyone?)...
  - gizmo686 11y ago
    I suspect that we will see porn take advantage of these new technologies (in fact, I have seen internet controlled vibes). However, I doubt that the quality will be substantially higher. The one way I can see this technology leading to higher quality is by centralizing capital in a much smaller number of producers, who then have the resources to produce higher quality porn. However, they also would have much more of a monopoly, so I am not sure how well this will work out; and eventually production of new style porn will become more democratized. The bigger change we need to make is social/economic. Porn simply does not have the monitization avenues that film does. Mainstream advertisers don't want to touch it, and consumers are reluctant to pay for it. This puts us in a situation where, as the author describes, most porn is itself produced as an ad for other sex services.
    - meric 11y ago
      The next phase of democratisation of porn could be a proliferation of portable VR recorders that will be invented later this century.
      - soylentcola 11y ago
NickHaflinger 11y ago
Am I the only one here that see the pornification of the culture as so very very sad.
- medymed 11y ago
  NO. Wait, I changed my mind. Yes.
- kansface 11y ago
  > pornification of the culture What does this mean? Which culture and what is pornification?
smallerize 11y ago
Here's Stoya's epic rant against Manwin/MindGeek, including her plan to compete against them: http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethics-of-piracy http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethi...
abruzzi 11y ago
This article seemed to have a deceptively shifting focus, often conflating or confusing the incentives for studios with the incentives for performers. The ability to sell side services has limited impact on studios, for instance. Also, in a very simple answer to the opening question of why new porn continues to be made, it is important to understand how much novelty impacts the porn industry. There are lots of types of novelty, even the improvement from SD to HD productions can effectively obsolete older productions. And there are production style novelties such as the rise of gonzo type productions. But the biggest novelty that customers pay for is the novelty of the latest young woman that enters the industry. The entire genre of so-called amateur porn is built on that.
lips 11y ago
Relevant: Stoya on MindGeek (Text with SFW banner image): http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethics-of-piracy http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethi... It's worth remembering that the behavior of the market is essentially influenced by the stigma, and subsequent banning of porn (and sexually explicit material in general, art or otherwise) in many TOSs. For that matter, I wonder how iTunes-type availability of porn would even affect spam.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  DMM provides an iTunes like commerce market for porn in Japan. They are doing quite well and exploring ways to go public.
plonh 11y ago
All I see is a full page pop-up ads for their email list, with no escape control in view.
dev1920 11y ago
The article makes it sound like all company revenue comes from tubes sites. The company also owns hundreds of pay-to-access original content sites (ever hear of Brazzers?). This company was not the first to do tubes; they had to adopt the format because competitors did so first and their revenue suffered. Once again, a large part of the problem is users opting to not pay if someone else will illegally put it up for free. You want free tubes to go away? Stop watching tubes and go pay for a monthly Brazzers subscription.
- Mikushi 11y ago
  Not really, Pornhub was launched in 2007, at that time they were not that many other prominent tube sites, Youporn had been around for a bit longer but Brazzers was pretty much printing cash at that point and growing insanely fast. They did not do it to reply to the competition and revenue was sure as hell not suffering, they did it because it was the future and they saw it as such as well as a great way for them to funnel sign ups to Brazzers and other paysites such as Moviebox. By then they were already a dominant force in the market and moved on to acquire most other tube sites to apply the same model as they did on Pornhub. Also last time I heard advertisement on tube site were still the main revenue stream for them, might have changed now as I've been out for a few years. Source: Was Lead Developer on Pornhub and Back end dev on Brazzers before that.

56 points by fraqed 11y ago

Mahn 11y ago

That's a pretty impressive monopoly, for some reason I always thought those "YouTube-like" sites were competing against each other. MindGeek may well turn out to be the Google of porn.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
erpellan 11y ago
It's a bit like how all the casinos in Vegas are owned by something like 3 companies, or how all the detergents are owned by Unilever.
mastermojo 11y ago
I wonder if MindGeek will move to a more legal revenue split/share model as it grows the same way Youtube did.
- jonnathanson 11y ago
  That seems like a distinct possibility. If Mindgeek can aggregate the majority of adult entertainment eyeballs on the internet, then studios basically become Mindgeek MCNs. In some ways that may be an easier transition than it would be for Hollywood studios, in so far as production costs are probably cheaper by several orders of magnitude.
  - notjaycarney 11y ago
    Can you tell me what MCN stands for?
    - jonnathanson 11y ago
      Multi-channel network. It's a term YouTube originally coined. Basically, a content publisher on someone else's platform who operates multiple channels within that platform. In the YouTube world, this is someone bigger than a one-channel YouTube star and perhaps smaller than, say, a premium content provider like NBC or CBS.

gizmo686 11y ago

>As a result, there’s little obvious reason to produce new porn: everything has already been done, probably better, by somebody else, and is already freely available online. Where does the author watch porn? Maybe it is just a curation problem, but I find the quality of most porn to be insufferable bad. Even the "good" stuff would be bad by the standards set by the mainstream film industry.

technotony 11y ago
Technology shifts may change things as well. I imagine wide spread adoption of VR viewers is going to create a new market for instance that might be 'premium'. Or some integration with internet of things devices (tele-dildonics anyone?)...
- gizmo686 11y ago
  I suspect that we will see porn take advantage of these new technologies (in fact, I have seen internet controlled vibes). However, I doubt that the quality will be substantially higher. The one way I can see this technology leading to higher quality is by centralizing capital in a much smaller number of producers, who then have the resources to produce higher quality porn. However, they also would have much more of a monopoly, so I am not sure how well this will work out; and eventually production of new style porn will become more democratized. The bigger change we need to make is social/economic. Porn simply does not have the monitization avenues that film does. Mainstream advertisers don't want to touch it, and consumers are reluctant to pay for it. This puts us in a situation where, as the author describes, most porn is itself produced as an ad for other sex services.
  - meric 11y ago
    The next phase of democratisation of porn could be a proliferation of portable VR recorders that will be invented later this century.
    - soylentcola 11y ago

NickHaflinger 11y ago

Am I the only one here that see the pornification of the culture as so very very sad.

medymed 11y ago
NO. Wait, I changed my mind. Yes.
kansface 11y ago
> pornification of the culture What does this mean? Which culture and what is pornification?

smallerize 11y ago

Here's Stoya's epic rant against Manwin/MindGeek, including her plan to compete against them: http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethics-of-piracy http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethi...

abruzzi 11y ago

This article seemed to have a deceptively shifting focus, often conflating or confusing the incentives for studios with the incentives for performers. The ability to sell side services has limited impact on studios, for instance. Also, in a very simple answer to the opening question of why new porn continues to be made, it is important to understand how much novelty impacts the porn industry. There are lots of types of novelty, even the improvement from SD to HD productions can effectively obsolete older productions. And there are production style novelties such as the rise of gonzo type productions. But the biggest novelty that customers pay for is the novelty of the latest young woman that enters the industry. The entire genre of so-called amateur porn is built on that.

lips 11y ago

Relevant: Stoya on MindGeek (Text with SFW banner image): http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethics-of-piracy http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethi... It's worth remembering that the behavior of the market is essentially influenced by the stigma, and subsequent banning of porn (and sexually explicit material in general, art or otherwise) in many TOSs. For that matter, I wonder how iTunes-type availability of porn would even affect spam.

hkmurakami 11y ago
DMM provides an iTunes like commerce market for porn in Japan. They are doing quite well and exploring ways to go public.

plonh 11y ago

All I see is a full page pop-up ads for their email list, with no escape control in view.

dev1920 11y ago

The article makes it sound like all company revenue comes from tubes sites. The company also owns hundreds of pay-to-access original content sites (ever hear of Brazzers?). This company was not the first to do tubes; they had to adopt the format because competitors did so first and their revenue suffered. Once again, a large part of the problem is users opting to not pay if someone else will illegally put it up for free. You want free tubes to go away? Stop watching tubes and go pay for a monthly Brazzers subscription.

Mikushi 11y ago
Not really, Pornhub was launched in 2007, at that time they were not that many other prominent tube sites, Youporn had been around for a bit longer but Brazzers was pretty much printing cash at that point and growing insanely fast. They did not do it to reply to the competition and revenue was sure as hell not suffering, they did it because it was the future and they saw it as such as well as a great way for them to funnel sign ups to Brazzers and other paysites such as Moviebox. By then they were already a dominant force in the market and moved on to acquire most other tube sites to apply the same model as they did on Pornhub. Also last time I heard advertisement on tube site were still the main revenue stream for them, might have changed now as I've been out for a few years. Source: Was Lead Developer on Pornhub and Back end dev on Brazzers before that.