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Joost failure had nothing to do with technology. Instead they fundamentally misunderstood movie business and had a wrong business model. They did solve half of

by gleb 16y ago

Joost failure had nothing to do with technology. Instead they fundamentally misunderstood movie business and had a wrong business model. They did solve half of the problem, cost of bandwidth, but they failed to solve the much harder half -- upfront cost of content. The story goes is that Joost came to studios with $40 mil to get rights to movies. They were told that that a prime movie rights were $10 mil prepay upfront, so they could choose 4 good movies, or a large library of junk. They chose junk, but neither option was viable. To do business the way they wanted to, Joost was undercapitalized by a factor of 100. YouTube and Hulu solved content problem differently. One through copyright infringement, the other though being owned by content owners.

pquerna 16y ago
Disclaimer: I worked at Joost. To be fair, I think there were some mistakes in technology, but I agree 100% that your main point about content acquisition was the real nail in the coffin. But using P2P, RDF, Proprietary Server Side Javascript, technology offices in 5 or 6 countries; These are all things that certainly didn't help. Building on P2P part was built around the premiss that bandwidth would stay expensive, but it didn't. But at the same time, when Joost started, every premium content owner out there wanted realish DRM, so you still would of had a thick client. Later we actually switched to Flash and HTTPS, because bandwidth was cheap, and content owners stopped carrying nearly as much, but the problem of content acquisition still meant we had zero unique content.
dotBen 16y ago
I agree it was about content. In addition to gleb's comments the other issue they ran into is that TV licensing (on a program and channel basis) is all about exclusivity deals. Joost couldn't license a TV series for distribution over IP because the producers always have exclusivity deals with networks in each geographic territory. And whole networks, such as HBO, have exclusivity deal with just a small set of cable and satellite distributors. It's really sad - delivery of shows over IP is exciting and the whole business is ripe for disruption but the broadcast media empire (the one that has the most to loose) is holding all the keys. Oh and don't tell me Hulu is the answer. It's just the very same networks doing their own take, on their terms and at their pace of innovation. Hulu Plus: $10/month AND ads? C'mon, if only we had competition.
- muhfuhkuh 16y ago
  It wasn't just about content. That Joost client was not only something a) you had to install, but b) was your typical bloated, buggy, and horrid interface, and the delay going from one piece of content to another was grating. Perhaps with all of these competing outlets for beaming and streaming content, there could be something of a "mechanical license" for rebroadcasting as they do in the music industry for song remakes. I mean, the content owners (I would think) want their work to be available on any medium willing to give them passive income and consumers obviously are willing to pay, either with money (iTunes) or time (Hulu). Content owners obviously wouldn't like this for their current "big hits" and blockbuster content, but perhaps a clearinghouse like what Getty or istockphoto does to handle all the "back catalog" content would be something begging for a "technical solution" that a startup could do. Use case: A person who wants to distribute/broadcast some back catalog content uses an automated system to negotiate and obtain the license for a master file (or one of several redistributable or streamable formats provided by the clearinghouse), then chooses the content. In that way, the creativity lies in the curating of content, and the content owner receives passive income on said content without pain of marketing. It's the resale of content. Yeah, yeah, it'd never work with those jealously guarded movies and TV shows. But you never can tell, really.

by gleb 16y ago

pquerna 16y ago

Disclaimer: I worked at Joost. To be fair, I think there were some mistakes in technology, but I agree 100% that your main point about content acquisition was the real nail in the coffin. But using P2P, RDF, Proprietary Server Side Javascript, technology offices in 5 or 6 countries; These are all things that certainly didn't help. Building on P2P part was built around the premiss that bandwidth would stay expensive, but it didn't. But at the same time, when Joost started, every premium content owner out there wanted realish DRM, so you still would of had a thick client. Later we actually switched to Flash and HTTPS, because bandwidth was cheap, and content owners stopped carrying nearly as much, but the problem of content acquisition still meant we had zero unique content.

dotBen 16y ago

I agree it was about content. In addition to gleb's comments the other issue they ran into is that TV licensing (on a program and channel basis) is all about exclusivity deals. Joost couldn't license a TV series for distribution over IP because the producers always have exclusivity deals with networks in each geographic territory. And whole networks, such as HBO, have exclusivity deal with just a small set of cable and satellite distributors. It's really sad - delivery of shows over IP is exciting and the whole business is ripe for disruption but the broadcast media empire (the one that has the most to loose) is holding all the keys. Oh and don't tell me Hulu is the answer. It's just the very same networks doing their own take, on their terms and at their pace of innovation. Hulu Plus: $10/month AND ads? C'mon, if only we had competition.

muhfuhkuh 16y ago
It wasn't just about content. That Joost client was not only something a) you had to install, but b) was your typical bloated, buggy, and horrid interface, and the delay going from one piece of content to another was grating. Perhaps with all of these competing outlets for beaming and streaming content, there could be something of a "mechanical license" for rebroadcasting as they do in the music industry for song remakes. I mean, the content owners (I would think) want their work to be available on any medium willing to give them passive income and consumers obviously are willing to pay, either with money (iTunes) or time (Hulu). Content owners obviously wouldn't like this for their current "big hits" and blockbuster content, but perhaps a clearinghouse like what Getty or istockphoto does to handle all the "back catalog" content would be something begging for a "technical solution" that a startup could do. Use case: A person who wants to distribute/broadcast some back catalog content uses an automated system to negotiate and obtain the license for a master file (or one of several redistributable or streamable formats provided by the clearinghouse), then chooses the content. In that way, the creativity lies in the curating of content, and the content owner receives passive income on said content without pain of marketing. It's the resale of content. Yeah, yeah, it'd never work with those jealously guarded movies and TV shows. But you never can tell, really.