5 ms·

> This is what we all want price-wise, but would we really, truly want to turn Netflix into the equivalent of the iOS App Store for essentially all legal stream

• chipotle_coyote 7y ago
  Of the services you listed, to the best my knowledge, exactly zero of them are profitable yet. Tidal is eternally on the brink of bankruptcy. Deezer's situation has been so bleak they pulled their IPO a few years ago. Google Music and Apple Music are essentially loss leaders being subsidized by their owners. Spotify has always burned through money like it was going out of style. And artists are eternally complaining -- with cause -- that nearly all of them make less money under this system than they did under the old one. You know what Spotify thinks is the way forward for them? Exclusives. That's why they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars on podcasts. You may love it if they're functionally undifferentiated from their competitors, but they don't. Apple and Google can slide because they're Apple and Google, but services that actually need to pay their own way need to give you a reason to pay them, not Apple or Google. So, sure. Consumers love "pay $10 a month to whoever you want, eh, it's all the same, tomato, tomahto." But it's not at all clear to me that it's a sustainable model in the long run. And I'm pretty sure the reason the video streaming world didn't even pretend to take a stab at that business model is they don't think it is, either.