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The fact is that Disney is extremely savvy and knows how to produce content that sells with a nearly 100% success rate. They are simply a marketing and merchand
by dkrich 9y ago
The fact is that Disney is extremely savvy and knows how to produce content that sells with a nearly 100% success rate. They are simply a marketing and merchandising machine.
They use the vault the way diamond miners do- to restrict supply of extremely coveted goods so that they can charge premium prices for them. It's good business and it keeps things that are decades old in constant demand so they can charge higher prices for them.
Unfortunately for you and me that means that if we want access we have to pay more. While it may certainly be true that you don't place enough value on Disney products to pay a premium, there are lots of people who will and there are probably still going to be times that you want access to it and consider signing up. That's what they want- if they commoditized their content and you were able to get access to everything they own for $30 a month, that wouldn't serve their purposes at all. Companies like Netflix dream of having one franchise that's as successful as the countless ones that Disney has. Why on Earth would they just have a fire sale for all of their content when they can restrict supply and extract the most profit from it?
- tj-teej 9y agoExactly, a DVD of a new movie doesn't cost $12.99 because that's the price of the disk
- laumars 9y agoBecause Disney aren't just competing with Netflix and co; they're also competing with usenet services, torrents, Kodi streams and other illegal services. And because Disney keep fucking their own consumers about it's left a void where the illegal services have not only been able to raise the bar in terms of user experience, but also in terms of available content and video quality. In any other industry market forces would be in effect forcing business to either compete or go under. But because copyright laws give content owners a monopoly it means the only effective competition is illegal services. And the daft thing is they're literally better in every way. Which is why I know so many people who normally follow the letter of the law and who happily pay for expensive cable / satellite / Netflix / whatever subscriptions who also have absolutely no qualms in downloading or streaming movies illegally. These are customers who want to pay for services but end up pirating because there isn't any service available to them. It's completely bonkers. It shouldn't be like this but it is entirely the fault of the content industry. They created the void by monopolising their content and then failing to provide any practical services. And they created the demand by targeting their advertising at kids, by making it illegal to backup old formats like DVDs, and such like. So to answer your question, sure they can try to extract the most profit from it but customers are already angry, fed up and aware of better albeit illegal services so all Disney are going to do is drive more people to piracy. If they really wanted to extract more profit then they would trying to onboard more users instead of making their content harder to get hold of. It really feels like the whole FRAND patents situation where Disney are happy to become a critical part of pre-teen culture but don't want to licence their intellectual property in any reasonable way. And while I can happily make the decision not to watch any Disney movies again (I like Marvel but I can live without it), trying to explain that to my 3 and 6 year old is going to be much harder.
- djflutt3rshy 9y agoDisney probably took that into account, and decided that the demographic buying DisneyOnDemand (or whatever they call this) isn't going to overlap much with the demographic visiting yohoho.warez.se
- laumars 9y agoI'm not so convinced that true though. As I said in my post, I know plenty of people who have Sky / Virgin Media as well as Amazon Prime and/or Netflix subscriptions but who do also pirate content when they can't find what that want on the aforementioned. There are only so many video subscription services a person is willing to pay for. Maybe Disney have a compelling enough catalogue to convince people to switch away from an existing streaming service (which is what I think they're banking on), but I'm not so convinced that will happen at scale either.
- Intermernet 9y ago"DisneyOnDemand" is probably a better name than "TakeTheMickey".
- wolco 9y agoDisney was important in our time but kids growing up on netflix may never see disney content the same way.
- laumars 9y agoMaybe their traditional animated movies but Disney have expanded out quite a bit in recent year. The Pixar movies are loved by my kids and while they're still a bit young for the Marvel stuff the eldest is already a big superhero fan (particularly Spiderman) so I can see him really enjoying Disney's Marvel universe when he is older. And lets not forget how seminal Star Wars is even with the younger generation. So I'm not so sure I'm ready to write Disney off with regards to the Netflix generation.
- cableshaft 9y agoDisney is still crazy important. They own pretty much everyone's childhoods now between Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars. You can't say with a straight face that these properties aren't important anymore. If anything, Marvel and Star Wars have become even bigger since Disney's taken ownership.