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I think Spotify handles this pretty well. You have a central service that license holders contribute content to. The central service negotiates prices with the

by bthrn 7y ago

I think Spotify handles this pretty well. You have a central service that license holders contribute content to. The central service negotiates prices with the license holders and charges a fee to cover its aggregate expenses. Although music is a different product than video content, I'd really like to see a model like this going forward. Right now to watch the shows I want, I often have to: (1) Download and keep (multiple) apps installed / updated (2) Have several bills each month for each service (3) Wait a period of X days before the content is available post-airing (4) Watch ads before and during the content I don't have any of these issues using a service like Spotify. As long as the single price of Spotify-but-for-video is less than the sum of all the services I want, I won't feel like I'm paying for things I don't need. Honestly people loved to pay $50+/month for cable before. If I could do that, except able to watch whatever I want, not have to suffer through ads, or be fixed to some viewing schedule, it would be pretty compelling.

godelski 7y ago
I think the difference is that Spotify has the market cornered. What the alternative? Pandora[0]? YouTube? All three also aren't producing good original content. Prime, HBO, and Netflix all have great shows to watch. Hulu even is getting in there. Now Disney will be soon. So the market is saturated, but there's also better content. [0] I use Pandora because while I was paying for Spotify premium the interface broke on Linux and my phone. Not allowing me to create new stations. They told me to fuck off so I stopped paying them. Pandora isn't that much worse.
fivre 7y ago
Spotify is pretty imperfect at this also. Issues over rates paid aside, albums disappear seemingly at random (presumably failures in license negotiation, but users aren't provided any information about why an album is no longer available) and metadata is a mess. Spotify duplicates albums in my library, indicates that albums are not available when they've instead been replaced with a new version (which is identical aside from Spotify's internal references), and track info changes constantly (old Soviet albums seem to shift between translated English titles, Russian titles transliterated into Latin script, and the actual proper Russian titles on a monthly basis). The single provider aggregating content from many rightsholders model seems stymied by rightsholders' inability to provide standardized information about their content on a consistent basis.
dwild 7y ago
> Watch ads before and during the content Which service does this? That seems quite crazy and you even define that as "often"! > Honestly people loved to pay $50+/month for cable before. That's the price of 3 services and more... people start complaining when they have to pay for 2... Netflix screwed people perception of content value.

by bthrn 7y ago

godelski 7y ago

I think the difference is that Spotify has the market cornered. What the alternative? Pandora[0]? YouTube? All three also aren't producing good original content. Prime, HBO, and Netflix all have great shows to watch. Hulu even is getting in there. Now Disney will be soon. So the market is saturated, but there's also better content. [0] I use Pandora because while I was paying for Spotify premium the interface broke on Linux and my phone. Not allowing me to create new stations. They told me to fuck off so I stopped paying them. Pandora isn't that much worse.

fivre 7y ago

Spotify is pretty imperfect at this also. Issues over rates paid aside, albums disappear seemingly at random (presumably failures in license negotiation, but users aren't provided any information about why an album is no longer available) and metadata is a mess. Spotify duplicates albums in my library, indicates that albums are not available when they've instead been replaced with a new version (which is identical aside from Spotify's internal references), and track info changes constantly (old Soviet albums seem to shift between translated English titles, Russian titles transliterated into Latin script, and the actual proper Russian titles on a monthly basis). The single provider aggregating content from many rightsholders model seems stymied by rightsholders' inability to provide standardized information about their content on a consistent basis.

dwild 7y ago

> Watch ads before and during the content Which service does this? That seems quite crazy and you even define that as "often"! > Honestly people loved to pay $50+/month for cable before. That's the price of 3 services and more... people start complaining when they have to pay for 2... Netflix screwed people perception of content value.