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It's like a conspiracy to annoy the hell out of the average consumer. I'm not sure why Netflix would be proud of this. How about we also get Spotify, iTunes a

It's like a conspiracy to annoy the hell out of the average consumer. I'm not sure why Netflix would be proud of this. How about we also get Spotify, iTunes and Google Play to step up the exclusives on their music services so I can never have a single place to go to listen to music.

baby 10y ago
It's dumb, but monopoly is another way to have everything available at the same place.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  That's not the right solution. The right solution is opening up intellectual property and copyright laws so that unfair and anti-competitive market conditions stopping forming everywhere around them. Because the companies that profit off our extremist copyright laws control the media, they don't talk about this very much, but copyright, as currently implemented, is extremely unfair for the consumer, to the extent that many consumers break copyright laws several times a day and often don't even know they've done anything illegal. We need serious intellectual property modernization and reform.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Why shouldn't content creators get to choose where they sell their content? Should Tesla be forced to sell its cars through GM and Ford dealerships so you don't have to go to more than one place to go car shopping? Anyway, the alternative would be worse. If there was no reason to pick one streaming provider over another on the basis of content, one would quickly become a monopoly, which would be bad for both content creators and consumers.
    - cookiecaper 10y ago
      >Why shouldn't content creators get to choose where they sell their content? Should Tesla be forced to sell its cars through GM and Ford dealerships so you don't have to go to more than one place to go car shopping? This is addressed by something called the "first sale doctrine", which states that IP holders only have control over the direct sale between themselves and the other party, and cannot exert control over second, third, or later sales. Tesla, of course, is not obligated to offer their cars for sale in any particular venue. They cannot, however, stop someone else who possesses a Tesla car from offering it for sale either as a private party or through a third-party dealer. This is why you can go to the Ford dealer and leave with a used Honda. Honda didn't give that car to Ford, but it legally came into the dealer's possession through an intermediary, and thus, the Ford dealer has every right to sell it on their own terms. The difference here is that we're discussing direct physical goods that may contain intellectual property, whereas Netflix and the internet remove the necessity of the physical medium. This is really where our existing technology access laws begin to fall down. They just do not adequately contemplate a world that does not require transactions of hard physical tokens to exchange substantial sums of information. Of course, the very fact that computer networks don't require that is what gives them their power. >Anyway, the alternative would be worse. If there was no reason to pick one streaming provider over another on the basis of content, one would quickly become a monopoly, which would be bad for both content creators and consumers. I don't think this makes sense. Just the opposite is true. If everyone could license the content at a reasonable price and show it on their streaming service, the best streaming service in terms of actual quality would be able to win. Under the current regime, if you don't have both the capital and the clout to spend months in secret meetings with the big media companies, your video streaming startup will simply never gain steam at all. It's much better for the competitive landscape if everyone is legally allowed to show the content.
      - jimbokun 10y ago
        And of course, this is why Netflix DVD's still offer far better selection than Netflix Streaming.
      - snowwrestler 10y ago
        > This is really where our existing technology access laws begin to fall down. They just do not adequately contemplate a world that does not require transactions of hard physical tokens to exchange substantial sums of information. You are the one who is trying to mis-apply a legal doctrine developed for physical objects (first sale doctrine) to digital files.
        cookiecaper 10y ago
        I was replying directly to the poster's analogy, when he said Tesla isn't obliged to go through a Ford dealer. While the first-sale doctrine isn't directly applicable in this case because there is no direct sale and no physical good transferred into the buyer's possession, the principle should be, and we should make laws that respect that. The old adage is "possession is 9/10ths of the law". We need to think about how that applies in the digital age, when much of what we "own" is only represented by a relatively small handful of bits on a drive in a datacenter somewhere, and not in the legal owner's direct physical possession. I have season pack DVDs and I have season packs I've bought on Amazon Video (I also have over 200 games on Steam, where this issue is probably much more salient). Ideally, the medium wouldn't matter, legally speaking; what would matter is that I owned a copy of something. As it stands, I have substantially more rights with a DVD than with a bit assigned to my user profile in Amazon's database somewhere. We need to find a way to port the first-sale doctrine to the digital world, and otherwise update our arcane technology access laws. Separately but relatedly, we also need to weaken copyright protections substantially to grant a more even balance between the financial interests of the rightsholders and the cultural interests of the public at large, and to correct the economic inequities that flow from government's grant of a practically-eternal (since most copyrights that come into being today are not going to expire until most or all of us are dead), almost-unlimited (since copyrights allow the rightsholder to squash almost any use and since it requires millions of dollars to fight the media conglomerates and establish as valid just one single, isolated usage as legally fair) monopoly to the rightsholder.
  - ddorian43 10y ago
    What about people saying "Fuck you I won't pay". I understand that some things like with internet/cell-phone which are utilities is hard, but maybe it shouldn't be the same for entertainment ?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
darpa_escapee 10y ago
It's a conspiracy to extract as much profit from consumers as possible. If everyone has Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Prime Video, YouTube and iTunes subscriptions then large rights holders extract more money. It's been said before, but the premium cable TV channel model is what they're going for.
- partiallypro 10y ago
  If you account for all the content discrepancies between each online video provider...ditching cable doesn't actually make much economic sense. The one reason I think many people -are- ditching cable is not because it's cheaper (when you're actually paying for it) it's that people are sharing accounts and don't bear the full brunt of the cost.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    On demand shows and no ads.
  - jethro_tell 10y ago
    Or because I don't want ads, I want stuff on demand, I want my accounts to be independent of my physical location, I can pick and choose the services I'm subscribed to, and finally I want to use a streaming box for everything not a cable box, and streaming box, and a dvd player.
    - takno 10y ago
      Well, that was why I got Amazon Prime, and then they introduced ads. Albeit only ones for their content, but I didn't want to get constantly "informed" about a series I'd already completely watched between every damn episode of the thing I'd chosen to watch. If I run out of stuff to watch on Netflix I doubt Amazon will be my next port of call
      - jethro_tell 10y ago
        Yeah, I won't get everything with all of these providers, but I try to prioritize my spending toward the companies that match the closest to what I want. Netflix tends to be at the top.
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
Shhh! Don't give them any ideas! Still it's not much different from Hulu having exclusive rights to stream airing episodes of television shows. Someone has to be paid for all of this work. Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login. If this were done on some other kind of service, then we might reasonably expect a backlash.
- treehau5 10y ago
  > Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login. Everyone?
- timlyo 10y ago
  At best that's going to create a monopoly.
- josteink 10y ago
  > Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account How about no?
- losteric 10y ago
  > Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login That's hilarious, where did you get that idea? Netflix has roughly 35 million accounts in the US, out of a population of over 300 million. It's the most popular streaming service, but stream isn't that popular yet... internet denizens always forget we are a tiny minority of the US population.
  - jerf 10y ago
    More relevant: 35M accounts in ~125M households in the US. ~25% penetration into households (throwing in a fudge factor for overlap). Certainly easy for an HN poster to be in a situation where everyone they know has it.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > or a family member's login Which accounts for both those who are using a relative's login, or multiple family members in a household. There's five people in my house using my account, all immediate relatives. A bit more than a year ago, household penetration of streaming was 40% in the US[1] (combined Netflix, Hulu and Amazon). The original statement was obvious hyperbole, but I wouldn't be surprised if well over 100 million people had access to Netflix through those ~35 million accounts. 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/business/nielsen-reports-2-in-5-us-households-subscribe-to-video-streaming-services.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/business/nielsen-reports-2...
oh_sigh 10y ago
That's one thing I really like about the sonos app - you can put dozens of music services into it, and it gives them a unified interface. Is there any app like that but standalone, where you don't need a special speaker for it?
- p_eter_p 10y ago
  Roku?
- Nullabillity 10y ago
  Tomahawk.
forrestthewoods 10y ago
Cable is the worst. I shouldn't have to pay for channels I don't want. It should be à la carte. Streaming services are the worst. I shouldn't have to subscribe to a half dozen different services. Someone should sell a bundle that gives me access to all of them for a lower price.
- drgath 10y ago
  Sling[1] is the closest we can get right now. Eventually, channel subscriptions will be available through something like an App Store and just as easy to manage as an recurring subscription app. [1] https://www.sling.com/ https://www.sling.com/
- drgath 10y ago
  Sling[1] is the closest we can get right now. Eventually, channel subscriptions will be available through something like an App Store and just as easy to manage as an recurring subscription app. [1] https://www.sling.com/ https://www.sling.com/
- partiallypro 10y ago
  Unpopular, but without cable subsidizing costs of various networks through packages, we wouldn't have tons of cable channels that grew up to be great, like AMC and FX. The one exception to this is the ESPN subsidy, which is insane. If ESPN could actually be opted out of cable bills would be fairly cheap.
  - rjvir 10y ago
    Why is ESPN an exception? Their price is a reflection of how much people want it. ESPN (and sports as a whole) are a big driver of cable subscriptions, which helps all cable channels.
  - forrestthewoods 10y ago
    Unpopular? That's simple fact! Here's a NYTimes article from 2012 titled "The 'Mad Men' Economic Miracle". http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-economic-miracle.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-econo... AMC was making $30 million per MONTH off 80 million subscribers despite Breaking Bad having less than 3 million viewers.
partiallypro 10y ago
iTunes and Apple Music exclusives are the worst, they sort of are the ones that got the ball rolling on this.
maxerickson 10y ago
Yeah, except they put exclusive in the headline because it draws positive attention. I'm not real optimistic that people will ever come to see exclusive media deals as contracts designed to increase revenues.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  Or that they wanted monopoly power so badly they paid extra for it.
Steko 10y ago
> annoy the hell out of the average consumer Conversely, the more market power netflix gains, the better they can negotiate with more rightsholders for more content while piracy -- as a free grey market alternative -- hopefully keeps them from abusing their position too much.
- lliamander 10y ago
  We can only hope.
- _puk 10y ago
  I thought that had already happened, but not with that outcome. A few years back [0] Netflix was getting too strong, and fearing the iTunes effect the studios pushed back and stopped licensing their best stuff to Netflix. 0: http://www.dailytech.com/Hollywood+Executives+Fear+Netflixs+Impact+on+Film+Industry/article21075.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Hollywood+Executives+Fear+Netflixs+...
  - Steko 10y ago
    Yeah, but everything's part of an extended negotiation process. How strong was Netflix really a few years ago with 20% of HBO's subscriber base? Even today they are still smaller although perhaps equal in revenue.
dcosson 10y ago
This might be already happening - e.g. in the last few months Drake's album was released exclusively on Apple Music, Kanye's exclusively on Tidal. The back catalogs are mostly everywhere for now, but maybe this is the beginning and major releases from this point on will be exclusives.
- gnopgnip 10y ago
  Both of these are available on google play and other streaming services now.
  - darkstar999 10y ago
    Beyonce - Lemonade
- booleandilemma 10y ago
  Regarding Kanye's album, he went back on what he said about keeping it exclusively on Tidal. It's also available on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11343526/kanye-west-life-of-pablo-spotify-itunes http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11343526/kanye-west-life-of...
barbs 10y ago
I agree, it's quite frustrating. Oh well, back to torrents I guess!
norea-armozel 10y ago
This explains why I still buy physical copies of music and TV shows when possible. If I can't actually own it then I don't own it. Can't fleece a sheep that won't come to the barn.

baby 10y ago

It's dumb, but monopoly is another way to have everything available at the same place.

cookiecaper 10y ago
That's not the right solution. The right solution is opening up intellectual property and copyright laws so that unfair and anti-competitive market conditions stopping forming everywhere around them. Because the companies that profit off our extremist copyright laws control the media, they don't talk about this very much, but copyright, as currently implemented, is extremely unfair for the consumer, to the extent that many consumers break copyright laws several times a day and often don't even know they've done anything illegal. We need serious intellectual property modernization and reform.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Why shouldn't content creators get to choose where they sell their content? Should Tesla be forced to sell its cars through GM and Ford dealerships so you don't have to go to more than one place to go car shopping? Anyway, the alternative would be worse. If there was no reason to pick one streaming provider over another on the basis of content, one would quickly become a monopoly, which would be bad for both content creators and consumers.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    >Why shouldn't content creators get to choose where they sell their content? Should Tesla be forced to sell its cars through GM and Ford dealerships so you don't have to go to more than one place to go car shopping? This is addressed by something called the "first sale doctrine", which states that IP holders only have control over the direct sale between themselves and the other party, and cannot exert control over second, third, or later sales. Tesla, of course, is not obligated to offer their cars for sale in any particular venue. They cannot, however, stop someone else who possesses a Tesla car from offering it for sale either as a private party or through a third-party dealer. This is why you can go to the Ford dealer and leave with a used Honda. Honda didn't give that car to Ford, but it legally came into the dealer's possession through an intermediary, and thus, the Ford dealer has every right to sell it on their own terms. The difference here is that we're discussing direct physical goods that may contain intellectual property, whereas Netflix and the internet remove the necessity of the physical medium. This is really where our existing technology access laws begin to fall down. They just do not adequately contemplate a world that does not require transactions of hard physical tokens to exchange substantial sums of information. Of course, the very fact that computer networks don't require that is what gives them their power. >Anyway, the alternative would be worse. If there was no reason to pick one streaming provider over another on the basis of content, one would quickly become a monopoly, which would be bad for both content creators and consumers. I don't think this makes sense. Just the opposite is true. If everyone could license the content at a reasonable price and show it on their streaming service, the best streaming service in terms of actual quality would be able to win. Under the current regime, if you don't have both the capital and the clout to spend months in secret meetings with the big media companies, your video streaming startup will simply never gain steam at all. It's much better for the competitive landscape if everyone is legally allowed to show the content.
    - jimbokun 10y ago
      And of course, this is why Netflix DVD's still offer far better selection than Netflix Streaming.
    - snowwrestler 10y ago
      > This is really where our existing technology access laws begin to fall down. They just do not adequately contemplate a world that does not require transactions of hard physical tokens to exchange substantial sums of information. You are the one who is trying to mis-apply a legal doctrine developed for physical objects (first sale doctrine) to digital files.
      - cookiecaper 10y ago
        I was replying directly to the poster's analogy, when he said Tesla isn't obliged to go through a Ford dealer. While the first-sale doctrine isn't directly applicable in this case because there is no direct sale and no physical good transferred into the buyer's possession, the principle should be, and we should make laws that respect that. The old adage is "possession is 9/10ths of the law". We need to think about how that applies in the digital age, when much of what we "own" is only represented by a relatively small handful of bits on a drive in a datacenter somewhere, and not in the legal owner's direct physical possession. I have season pack DVDs and I have season packs I've bought on Amazon Video (I also have over 200 games on Steam, where this issue is probably much more salient). Ideally, the medium wouldn't matter, legally speaking; what would matter is that I owned a copy of something. As it stands, I have substantially more rights with a DVD than with a bit assigned to my user profile in Amazon's database somewhere. We need to find a way to port the first-sale doctrine to the digital world, and otherwise update our arcane technology access laws. Separately but relatedly, we also need to weaken copyright protections substantially to grant a more even balance between the financial interests of the rightsholders and the cultural interests of the public at large, and to correct the economic inequities that flow from government's grant of a practically-eternal (since most copyrights that come into being today are not going to expire until most or all of us are dead), almost-unlimited (since copyrights allow the rightsholder to squash almost any use and since it requires millions of dollars to fight the media conglomerates and establish as valid just one single, isolated usage as legally fair) monopoly to the rightsholder.
- ddorian43 10y ago
  What about people saying "Fuck you I won't pay". I understand that some things like with internet/cell-phone which are utilities is hard, but maybe it shouldn't be the same for entertainment ?

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

darpa_escapee 10y ago

It's a conspiracy to extract as much profit from consumers as possible. If everyone has Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Prime Video, YouTube and iTunes subscriptions then large rights holders extract more money. It's been said before, but the premium cable TV channel model is what they're going for.

partiallypro 10y ago
If you account for all the content discrepancies between each online video provider...ditching cable doesn't actually make much economic sense. The one reason I think many people -are- ditching cable is not because it's cheaper (when you're actually paying for it) it's that people are sharing accounts and don't bear the full brunt of the cost.
- serge2k 10y ago
  On demand shows and no ads.
- jethro_tell 10y ago
  Or because I don't want ads, I want stuff on demand, I want my accounts to be independent of my physical location, I can pick and choose the services I'm subscribed to, and finally I want to use a streaming box for everything not a cable box, and streaming box, and a dvd player.
  - takno 10y ago
    Well, that was why I got Amazon Prime, and then they introduced ads. Albeit only ones for their content, but I didn't want to get constantly "informed" about a series I'd already completely watched between every damn episode of the thing I'd chosen to watch. If I run out of stuff to watch on Netflix I doubt Amazon will be my next port of call
    - jethro_tell 10y ago
      Yeah, I won't get everything with all of these providers, but I try to prioritize my spending toward the companies that match the closest to what I want. Netflix tends to be at the top.

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

Shhh! Don't give them any ideas! Still it's not much different from Hulu having exclusive rights to stream airing episodes of television shows. Someone has to be paid for all of this work. Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login. If this were done on some other kind of service, then we might reasonably expect a backlash.

treehau5 10y ago
> Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login. Everyone?
timlyo 10y ago
At best that's going to create a monopoly.
josteink 10y ago
> Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account How about no?
losteric 10y ago
> Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login That's hilarious, where did you get that idea? Netflix has roughly 35 million accounts in the US, out of a population of over 300 million. It's the most popular streaming service, but stream isn't that popular yet... internet denizens always forget we are a tiny minority of the US population.
- jerf 10y ago
  More relevant: 35M accounts in ~125M households in the US. ~25% penetration into households (throwing in a fudge factor for overlap). Certainly easy for an HN poster to be in a situation where everyone they know has it.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > or a family member's login Which accounts for both those who are using a relative's login, or multiple family members in a household. There's five people in my house using my account, all immediate relatives. A bit more than a year ago, household penetration of streaming was 40% in the US[1] (combined Netflix, Hulu and Amazon). The original statement was obvious hyperbole, but I wouldn't be surprised if well over 100 million people had access to Netflix through those ~35 million accounts. 1: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/business/nielsen-reports-2-in-5-us-households-subscribe-to-video-streaming-services.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/12/business/nielsen-reports-2...

oh_sigh 10y ago

That's one thing I really like about the sonos app - you can put dozens of music services into it, and it gives them a unified interface. Is there any app like that but standalone, where you don't need a special speaker for it?

p_eter_p 10y ago
Roku?
Nullabillity 10y ago
Tomahawk.

forrestthewoods 10y ago

Cable is the worst. I shouldn't have to pay for channels I don't want. It should be à la carte. Streaming services are the worst. I shouldn't have to subscribe to a half dozen different services. Someone should sell a bundle that gives me access to all of them for a lower price.

drgath 10y ago
Sling[1] is the closest we can get right now. Eventually, channel subscriptions will be available through something like an App Store and just as easy to manage as an recurring subscription app. [1] https://www.sling.com/ https://www.sling.com/
drgath 10y ago
Sling[1] is the closest we can get right now. Eventually, channel subscriptions will be available through something like an App Store and just as easy to manage as an recurring subscription app. [1] https://www.sling.com/ https://www.sling.com/
partiallypro 10y ago
Unpopular, but without cable subsidizing costs of various networks through packages, we wouldn't have tons of cable channels that grew up to be great, like AMC and FX. The one exception to this is the ESPN subsidy, which is insane. If ESPN could actually be opted out of cable bills would be fairly cheap.
- rjvir 10y ago
  Why is ESPN an exception? Their price is a reflection of how much people want it. ESPN (and sports as a whole) are a big driver of cable subscriptions, which helps all cable channels.
- forrestthewoods 10y ago
  Unpopular? That's simple fact! Here's a NYTimes article from 2012 titled "The 'Mad Men' Economic Miracle". http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-economic-miracle.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/magazine/the-mad-men-econo... AMC was making $30 million per MONTH off 80 million subscribers despite Breaking Bad having less than 3 million viewers.

partiallypro 10y ago

iTunes and Apple Music exclusives are the worst, they sort of are the ones that got the ball rolling on this.

maxerickson 10y ago

Yeah, except they put exclusive in the headline because it draws positive attention. I'm not real optimistic that people will ever come to see exclusive media deals as contracts designed to increase revenues.

prodigal_erik 10y ago
Or that they wanted monopoly power so badly they paid extra for it.

Steko 10y ago

> annoy the hell out of the average consumer Conversely, the more market power netflix gains, the better they can negotiate with more rightsholders for more content while piracy -- as a free grey market alternative -- hopefully keeps them from abusing their position too much.

lliamander 10y ago
We can only hope.
_puk 10y ago
I thought that had already happened, but not with that outcome. A few years back [0] Netflix was getting too strong, and fearing the iTunes effect the studios pushed back and stopped licensing their best stuff to Netflix. 0: http://www.dailytech.com/Hollywood+Executives+Fear+Netflixs+Impact+on+Film+Industry/article21075.htm http://www.dailytech.com/Hollywood+Executives+Fear+Netflixs+...
- Steko 10y ago
  Yeah, but everything's part of an extended negotiation process. How strong was Netflix really a few years ago with 20% of HBO's subscriber base? Even today they are still smaller although perhaps equal in revenue.

dcosson 10y ago

This might be already happening - e.g. in the last few months Drake's album was released exclusively on Apple Music, Kanye's exclusively on Tidal. The back catalogs are mostly everywhere for now, but maybe this is the beginning and major releases from this point on will be exclusives.

gnopgnip 10y ago
Both of these are available on google play and other streaming services now.
- darkstar999 10y ago
  Beyonce - Lemonade
booleandilemma 10y ago
Regarding Kanye's album, he went back on what he said about keeping it exclusively on Tidal. It's also available on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11343526/kanye-west-life-of-pablo-spotify-itunes http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/1/11343526/kanye-west-life-of...

barbs 10y ago

I agree, it's quite frustrating. Oh well, back to torrents I guess!

norea-armozel 10y ago

This explains why I still buy physical copies of music and TV shows when possible. If I can't actually own it then I don't own it. Can't fleece a sheep that won't come to the barn.