12 ms·

"For months now, journalists, industry insiders, and consumers have opined on who will “win” the streaming wars and why." The more streaming services there wil

by illuminati1911 7y ago

"For months now, journalists, industry insiders, and consumers have opined on who will “win” the streaming wars and why." The more streaming services there will be, the more likely it is that only thepiratebay and torrents will win.

anonytrary 7y ago
I think it depends on the distribution of content amongst the services. If it's a Pareto distribution where the top few services own the majority of the content, then I think people will pay for the top services. On the other hand, if the good content is highly fragmented amongst dozens of services, then the torrents will win. It also depends on the business models. Right now, Netflix is "all or nothing" e.g. you can't pay 50 cents a month for a grab-bag of the content you want; you pay the full monthly subscription for all of the content. If every service was like this, and the content was highly fragmented, I don't see why people would overpay for content they don't even want.
- lvturner 7y ago
  I feel like this story has played out before but with a slightly different technology set...
- flyingpenguin 7y ago
  The obvious solution seems like some kind of service which tracks all of the shows you watch and are interested in, and changes what service you subscribe to every month. If there is a new season/show coming out on one service that you are interested in your next subscription will be that service, otherwise it is some kind of random/RR and you get a notification of which app to use this month. All the shows are available to watch when you want, why bother to have all the subs always?
  - thenewnewguy 7y ago
    Because the argument for streaming services is _convenience_. And that's especially true when we're comparing them to piracy. Having to switch streaming apps/programs every month is not convenient. Having to wait up to a month to change services if I learn about a new show I like is not convenient. Having to pay for multiple streaming services if I happen to like content by multiple producers is not convenient (or cheap). The streaming industry honestly seems like a "prisoner's dilemma" like scenario. Each streaming company (presumably) benefits over their competitors by having exclusives and limiting where certain shows can be watched. But the streaming market as a whole is held back by this.
- Retric 7y ago
  The issue is there is very little good content out there. Cable before video games and the internet could charge a huge premium, but spread things out and you end up with a ‘History’ channel showing cheap ‘Ancient Aliens’ crap. Similarly, break modern content among 5+ services and the content will be worse and simply not worth paying for. Just look a Hulu which has been free on PC and they still can’t compete with Netflix. In the end my retired 70+ year old mother has Netflix, Amazon prime, and a premium Cable subscription, yet mostly just watches YouTube videos. For people with less free time and less disposable income their not going to maintain a subscription unless their watching something every month.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Hulu is only available in the US. It has 28 million subscribers compared to 60 million US Netflix subscribers. Hulu is also not racking up a ton of debt trying to stay relevant like Netflix is.
- 1123581321 7y ago
  It also depends on whether content quality/quantity develops to where 1-2 services can satisfy someone by providing closely tailored content. Right now, a few streaming services can provide more than a person has time for, but only if they watch somewhat indiscriminately. This could satisfaction could be achieved with a power law distribution or perhaps a 3-4x increase in spending per service if the market grows sufficiently.
- sujNansnam 7y ago
  The mistake you’re making is thinking there is a such a thing as “50 cents a month” of content. HBO was never going to sell you Game of Thrones for 50 cents. Netflix was never going to sell you House of Cards for 50 cents. They are selling you [your favorite show] for $10 and throwing in the rest of the catalog. Digital content has zero marginal cost. That means that a provider would rather sell you every show in their catalog for $11 then just the one show you want for $10. Turns out most consumers prefer that option too. If they don’t, they can still buy the individual unbundled seasons.
  - gnicholas 7y ago
    > Digital content has zero marginal cost. In Netflix’s case, I’m not sure this is true. I’ve heard that some of the content is paid based at least partly on usage.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      That has never been true. Just take a look at all of their announced content deals.
prawn 7y ago
Especially because torrenting was once slow and painful, so Netflix and co compared very favourably. Now, torrenting is fast and chances are you've watched almost anything worth watching on Netflix already. Paying for a few of them might appeal to people who've historically paid for cable (or Foxtel/etc in Australia), but it's a noticeable cost otherwise. We currently subscribe to Netflix and Stan, but have dropped Stan in the past and may again.
- xiphias2 7y ago
  I happily pay for Netflix, but actually I travel a lot and don't always have Wifi, so I like to download the movies. My problem with Netflix is that its download function is very unstable, so actually I'm thinking of going back to torrenting just because there's no payed option for watching movies offline easily.
  - Oletros 7y ago
    Here in Spain, HBO doesn't even have the option to download for offline watching.
- hocuspocus 7y ago
  > Especially because torrenting was once slow and painful, so Netflix and co compared very favourably. Maybe in Australia... but here torrenting has never been slow and wasn't particularly inconvenient when Netflix first came out.
  - prawn 7y ago
    Will take your word for it. I'd guess that in the past here, you'd wait a day or so for a torrent to finish. Now I'd guess they take minutes.
alain94040 7y ago
It's amazing how we have gone full circle in the last 15 years or so. In the old days, people complained about their cable tv bill: why do I have to pay for 250 channels when I only watch 5 of them? Let me pay only for what I watch. Now that the future is here, people are complaining that they need to sign up for too many streaming services. Why can't I just pay once for a bundle and get everything I need? I'm just as guilty as everyone else, I don't have a good answer...
- BurningCycles 7y ago
  >why do I have to pay for 250 channels when I only watch 5 of them? Let me pay only for what I watch. But that is still the case. If I could only pay for the shows I watch, I would not complain. But if I watch one Netflix show, I can't just subscribe to that show, I must pay for a ton of stuff I'm not remotely interested in. You still have Netflix, Disney+ and all the cable channels you need to subscribe to if you want their shows, how is this better for the consumer ? An actual 'A la carte' situation is that of the consumer being able to actually handpick the shows they want and only pay for those. This will never happen due to the industry being absolutely hostile to the idea, second best from a consumer standpoint is a single huge distributor like Netflix where you would pay larger fee but have access to practically everything you want, that is now pretty much a pipe dream since every major player wants to run their own streaming platform. This is not the way to beat piracy.
  - CivBase 7y ago
    > But if I watch one Netflix show, I can't just subscribe to that show, I must pay for a ton of stuff I'm not remotely interested in. When I want a song, I've always just bought it. I still do. I can do basically anything with the file other than redistribute it. I can even play music while offline! I only use streaming services like Spotify and YouTube for songs I don't regularly play. I'm very frustrated I don't have the same option for movies and TV. Sure, I can buy the physical media, but there's all sorts of legal shinanigans when it comes to ripping blurays and such. My ideal solution isn't one big streaming service that has everything. I want an "iTunes for movies".
starky 7y ago
Yup, I got rid of Netflix because they often didn't have what I wanted to watch, and only have Amazon Prime Video because I don't pay any extra for it with my Prime subscriptions. Not to mention that not every streaming service is available in Canada. If I have to worry about where to find the show I want to watch or whether it is available in my country, then I may as well just go straight to a source that I know will have it.
- Lammy 7y ago
  > because I don’t pay any extra for it with my Prime subscription. I see their advertising is effective. The price of Prime was even increased recently to help fund video production.
  - OJFord 7y ago
    Advertising or not, you can't get Prime without VoD, so if GP likes the deal just for shipping, or for shipping and music, then fine. Personally I have it mainly for shipping, and get good value out of that (especially since here it's next day by default, some items same day), and stream occasionally.
    - Lammy 7y ago
      I meant advertising in the sense that GP now thinks of Prime Video as a $0 extra and not Prime as a bucket that contains all these things and is priced accordingly. In reality all Prime customers are paying for Prime Video even if they don’t use it.
  - starky 7y ago
    Amazon Prime price is still $79CAD as it has been since I signed up and I definitely get my money's worth. I actually didn't even realize it came with Prime Video when I signed up. Additionally, I make use of Amazon Photos unlimited backup for ~250GB of the raw files from my camera, any other cloud backup service would cost a similar amount every year.
    - 7y ago
fdsa_1234_0000 7y ago
Man I really don't get the cost / inconvenience arguments against having a few distinct streaming services. Cost: If you can't afford ~$15 / month for unlimited streaming stop watching TV and find a higher paying job. Seriously, you've got much bigger problems than your entertainment bill. Inconvenience: Really? Pretty much any device -- desktop, mobile, TV -- can support these services with a quick login. That's a level of lazy I can't get my head around. Reminder to everyone (especially you younglings): You're entitled to exactly fucking squat. Stop being worthless, whiny consumers. Go get a real job and you won't be worried about your microscopic entertainment bill. Having said that: I will pirate if the parent company won't sell me their content because of geo bs. That need has dropped almost to zero now. I actually pay the highest available price for services that have options (Tidal, Netflix) because really, if you watch an episode or two a night you're talking pennies to consume something that cost 7-8 figures to create. That's insane. The economics of these services seem to fare better than the economics the internet forced on music. If you care about production quality as well as artistic quality the best days of music are in the rear view mirror (barring some kind of renaissance). The storytelling in good tv and film is one of my favorites things about being human. If you think production budgets magically appear out of thin air you're an idiot. Pay for the things you enjoy or else they'll disappear.

anonytrary 7y ago

I think it depends on the distribution of content amongst the services. If it's a Pareto distribution where the top few services own the majority of the content, then I think people will pay for the top services. On the other hand, if the good content is highly fragmented amongst dozens of services, then the torrents will win. It also depends on the business models. Right now, Netflix is "all or nothing" e.g. you can't pay 50 cents a month for a grab-bag of the content you want; you pay the full monthly subscription for all of the content. If every service was like this, and the content was highly fragmented, I don't see why people would overpay for content they don't even want.

lvturner 7y ago
I feel like this story has played out before but with a slightly different technology set...
flyingpenguin 7y ago
The obvious solution seems like some kind of service which tracks all of the shows you watch and are interested in, and changes what service you subscribe to every month. If there is a new season/show coming out on one service that you are interested in your next subscription will be that service, otherwise it is some kind of random/RR and you get a notification of which app to use this month. All the shows are available to watch when you want, why bother to have all the subs always?
- thenewnewguy 7y ago
  Because the argument for streaming services is _convenience_. And that's especially true when we're comparing them to piracy. Having to switch streaming apps/programs every month is not convenient. Having to wait up to a month to change services if I learn about a new show I like is not convenient. Having to pay for multiple streaming services if I happen to like content by multiple producers is not convenient (or cheap). The streaming industry honestly seems like a "prisoner's dilemma" like scenario. Each streaming company (presumably) benefits over their competitors by having exclusives and limiting where certain shows can be watched. But the streaming market as a whole is held back by this.
Retric 7y ago
The issue is there is very little good content out there. Cable before video games and the internet could charge a huge premium, but spread things out and you end up with a ‘History’ channel showing cheap ‘Ancient Aliens’ crap. Similarly, break modern content among 5+ services and the content will be worse and simply not worth paying for. Just look a Hulu which has been free on PC and they still can’t compete with Netflix. In the end my retired 70+ year old mother has Netflix, Amazon prime, and a premium Cable subscription, yet mostly just watches YouTube videos. For people with less free time and less disposable income their not going to maintain a subscription unless their watching something every month.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Hulu is only available in the US. It has 28 million subscribers compared to 60 million US Netflix subscribers. Hulu is also not racking up a ton of debt trying to stay relevant like Netflix is.
1123581321 7y ago
It also depends on whether content quality/quantity develops to where 1-2 services can satisfy someone by providing closely tailored content. Right now, a few streaming services can provide more than a person has time for, but only if they watch somewhat indiscriminately. This could satisfaction could be achieved with a power law distribution or perhaps a 3-4x increase in spending per service if the market grows sufficiently.
sujNansnam 7y ago
The mistake you’re making is thinking there is a such a thing as “50 cents a month” of content. HBO was never going to sell you Game of Thrones for 50 cents. Netflix was never going to sell you House of Cards for 50 cents. They are selling you [your favorite show] for $10 and throwing in the rest of the catalog. Digital content has zero marginal cost. That means that a provider would rather sell you every show in their catalog for $11 then just the one show you want for $10. Turns out most consumers prefer that option too. If they don’t, they can still buy the individual unbundled seasons.
- gnicholas 7y ago
  > Digital content has zero marginal cost. In Netflix’s case, I’m not sure this is true. I’ve heard that some of the content is paid based at least partly on usage.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    That has never been true. Just take a look at all of their announced content deals.

prawn 7y ago

Especially because torrenting was once slow and painful, so Netflix and co compared very favourably. Now, torrenting is fast and chances are you've watched almost anything worth watching on Netflix already. Paying for a few of them might appeal to people who've historically paid for cable (or Foxtel/etc in Australia), but it's a noticeable cost otherwise. We currently subscribe to Netflix and Stan, but have dropped Stan in the past and may again.

xiphias2 7y ago
I happily pay for Netflix, but actually I travel a lot and don't always have Wifi, so I like to download the movies. My problem with Netflix is that its download function is very unstable, so actually I'm thinking of going back to torrenting just because there's no payed option for watching movies offline easily.
- Oletros 7y ago
  Here in Spain, HBO doesn't even have the option to download for offline watching.
hocuspocus 7y ago
> Especially because torrenting was once slow and painful, so Netflix and co compared very favourably. Maybe in Australia... but here torrenting has never been slow and wasn't particularly inconvenient when Netflix first came out.
- prawn 7y ago
  Will take your word for it. I'd guess that in the past here, you'd wait a day or so for a torrent to finish. Now I'd guess they take minutes.

alain94040 7y ago

It's amazing how we have gone full circle in the last 15 years or so. In the old days, people complained about their cable tv bill: why do I have to pay for 250 channels when I only watch 5 of them? Let me pay only for what I watch. Now that the future is here, people are complaining that they need to sign up for too many streaming services. Why can't I just pay once for a bundle and get everything I need? I'm just as guilty as everyone else, I don't have a good answer...

BurningCycles 7y ago
>why do I have to pay for 250 channels when I only watch 5 of them? Let me pay only for what I watch. But that is still the case. If I could only pay for the shows I watch, I would not complain. But if I watch one Netflix show, I can't just subscribe to that show, I must pay for a ton of stuff I'm not remotely interested in. You still have Netflix, Disney+ and all the cable channels you need to subscribe to if you want their shows, how is this better for the consumer ? An actual 'A la carte' situation is that of the consumer being able to actually handpick the shows they want and only pay for those. This will never happen due to the industry being absolutely hostile to the idea, second best from a consumer standpoint is a single huge distributor like Netflix where you would pay larger fee but have access to practically everything you want, that is now pretty much a pipe dream since every major player wants to run their own streaming platform. This is not the way to beat piracy.
- CivBase 7y ago
  > But if I watch one Netflix show, I can't just subscribe to that show, I must pay for a ton of stuff I'm not remotely interested in. When I want a song, I've always just bought it. I still do. I can do basically anything with the file other than redistribute it. I can even play music while offline! I only use streaming services like Spotify and YouTube for songs I don't regularly play. I'm very frustrated I don't have the same option for movies and TV. Sure, I can buy the physical media, but there's all sorts of legal shinanigans when it comes to ripping blurays and such. My ideal solution isn't one big streaming service that has everything. I want an "iTunes for movies".

starky 7y ago

Yup, I got rid of Netflix because they often didn't have what I wanted to watch, and only have Amazon Prime Video because I don't pay any extra for it with my Prime subscriptions. Not to mention that not every streaming service is available in Canada. If I have to worry about where to find the show I want to watch or whether it is available in my country, then I may as well just go straight to a source that I know will have it.

Lammy 7y ago
> because I don’t pay any extra for it with my Prime subscription. I see their advertising is effective. The price of Prime was even increased recently to help fund video production.
- OJFord 7y ago
  Advertising or not, you can't get Prime without VoD, so if GP likes the deal just for shipping, or for shipping and music, then fine. Personally I have it mainly for shipping, and get good value out of that (especially since here it's next day by default, some items same day), and stream occasionally.
  - Lammy 7y ago
    I meant advertising in the sense that GP now thinks of Prime Video as a $0 extra and not Prime as a bucket that contains all these things and is priced accordingly. In reality all Prime customers are paying for Prime Video even if they don’t use it.
- starky 7y ago
  Amazon Prime price is still $79CAD as it has been since I signed up and I definitely get my money's worth. I actually didn't even realize it came with Prime Video when I signed up. Additionally, I make use of Amazon Photos unlimited backup for ~250GB of the raw files from my camera, any other cloud backup service would cost a similar amount every year.
  - 7y ago

fdsa_1234_0000 7y ago

Man I really don't get the cost / inconvenience arguments against having a few distinct streaming services. Cost: If you can't afford ~$15 / month for unlimited streaming stop watching TV and find a higher paying job. Seriously, you've got much bigger problems than your entertainment bill. Inconvenience: Really? Pretty much any device -- desktop, mobile, TV -- can support these services with a quick login. That's a level of lazy I can't get my head around. Reminder to everyone (especially you younglings): You're entitled to exactly fucking squat. Stop being worthless, whiny consumers. Go get a real job and you won't be worried about your microscopic entertainment bill. Having said that: I will pirate if the parent company won't sell me their content because of geo bs. That need has dropped almost to zero now. I actually pay the highest available price for services that have options (Tidal, Netflix) because really, if you watch an episode or two a night you're talking pennies to consume something that cost 7-8 figures to create. That's insane. The economics of these services seem to fare better than the economics the internet forced on music. If you care about production quality as well as artistic quality the best days of music are in the rear view mirror (barring some kind of renaissance). The storytelling in good tv and film is one of my favorites things about being human. If you think production budgets magically appear out of thin air you're an idiot. Pay for the things you enjoy or else they'll disappear.