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I am keeping an eye on Netflix and Amazon who are creating more and more content. They are looking to cut out the "middle" as it were and while their successes

I am keeping an eye on Netflix and Amazon who are creating more and more content. They are looking to cut out the "middle" as it were and while their successes are a bit hit or miss, my assumption is that they will eventually figure out how to get the best production companies on board and completely take people like Disney and Viacom/CBS out of the picture. Can't do it for pre-existing content but they can for new content going forward.

twblalock 6y ago
The pre-existing content is the problem. How many people would subscribe to Amazon and Netflix if the only content available was produced by Amazon and Netflix? In some ways the video/DVD business was better for consumers, because once you've bought the DVD you won't have to go pay more money next year to be allowed to watch it again. The problem is very few people can afford all the DVDs they might ever want to watch.
- CobrastanJorji 6y ago
  I think you could solve a lot of this problem by coming up with a legal framework for a digital first sale doctrine. If I buy a movie digitally, I need a way to legally sell it or, critically, rent it to someone else. Make that happen, and all of these digital rental services will suddenly increase their catalog a hundredfold. Netflix would do it overnight, since they already have a massive DVD warehouse and they'd just need to stop shipping the DVDs.
  - f1refly 6y ago
    I don't think that matters. Like really, at all. I think the first thing you'd have to come up with is a service that sells drm free, so people can actually get what they paid money for. When I "buy" digitally from either amazon or google, there's no way I'll ever see an mkv file or anything like that. When "buying" video digitally, I don't ever get the feeling that the stuff is really "mine". When I buy from bandcamp, I can download a flac and archive it. That music is mine. When I get it from google, I can view it from their website. That movie is not mine. And let's not pretend that sales would go down. Music is sold like this for a long time, just like copying without permission unfortunately didn't kill Hollywood all this time.
- _fizz_buzz_ 6y ago
  I think this also depends on your viewing habits. I very rarely rewatch movies/TV shows. So I could never really justify to outright buy DVDs.
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  I think this is actually a good point as to why streaming works so well. How often do people rewatch the same movies / tv shows? I know in my case those are in the single digits. There's also the convenience factor. You're over at a friend's house and decide to watch a movie? Better hope you grabbed the dvd with you or that he has one. Just discovered something you wanted to see? Have to wait a day or two or drive to the store to get it. Oh, not what you expected and get bored after ten minutes? Tough, you won't get your money back.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
    There’s always outliers. You’d be shocked to find out how many times I’ve watched Deep Space Nine since I subscribed to Netflix two years ago. It’s great because most of the episodes are utter garbage, but.. At least $3 of the AU$15 per month I pay could go directly to Andrew Jordt Robinson and the writers for their outstanding work on Elim Garak.
    - majewsky 6y ago
      3 whole dollars? But I'm just a humble tailor. :)
      - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
        That tickled me, thank you 8)
  - schwartzworld 6y ago
    now with streaming, I almost never rewatch things. but when I had a collection of DVDs (VHSs before that) I rewatched all the time.
609venezia 6y ago
> my assumption is that they will eventually figure out how to get the best production companies on board and completely take people like Disney... Disney is big - on the film side there's Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios On the TV side, ABC, 20th Century Fox Television, FX Networks, ESPN, and others I'm not saying Netflix and Amazon won't be able to produce more and more. But completely taking out Disney seems like a whole 'nuther ballgame I'd be curious to hear more of your reasoning
- Sabinus 6y ago
  I wonder if there would be a case for anti-monopoly action against Disney et al, if the US was into doing that kind of thing. If media libraries were split up they wouldn't be able to charge as much for the whole package. It would allow more nuanced negotiations between distributors and the studios.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    But that's what's happened, and the result is FAR worse. Instead of everything being on one app, now it feels like you "need" about 9 different services.
  - nickik 6y ago
    You can't. Because first they don't have monopoly on anything. Making the argument that only Disney can make Star Wars would be like arguing that only Tom Hanks can be Tom Hanks. Second, even if you could prove they are a monopoly 'to big' you would still need to prove that there is actual harm to consumers. If the Disney streaming service is reasonably priced its not clear how you would prove that. What would really make far more sense is simply to reduce Copyright laws back to former levels so that things get to be public domain.
  - NoSorryCannot 6y ago
    Monopoly is a high bar to reach and antitrust cases don't always have to reach that bar to be viable. There's historically a lot of discretionary space in antitrust law just based on the political climate of the time, which generally deals with the calculus of determining if there is harm to consumers. It's typical for harm to be argued along just one metric, prices for any particular individual, but I tend to think that's a mistake.
derbOac 6y ago
There's the reverse also, content companies introducing their own streaming. At some point does this just result in streaming from the content producers directly regardless of how that came to be in any given case?
- acheron9383 6y ago
  It is interesting that streaming content economically is pretty hard at scale. That was a big moat for Netflix for a long time, but every year it gets filled in a little more as other companies figure it out.

twblalock 6y ago

The pre-existing content is the problem. How many people would subscribe to Amazon and Netflix if the only content available was produced by Amazon and Netflix? In some ways the video/DVD business was better for consumers, because once you've bought the DVD you won't have to go pay more money next year to be allowed to watch it again. The problem is very few people can afford all the DVDs they might ever want to watch.

CobrastanJorji 6y ago
I think you could solve a lot of this problem by coming up with a legal framework for a digital first sale doctrine. If I buy a movie digitally, I need a way to legally sell it or, critically, rent it to someone else. Make that happen, and all of these digital rental services will suddenly increase their catalog a hundredfold. Netflix would do it overnight, since they already have a massive DVD warehouse and they'd just need to stop shipping the DVDs.
- f1refly 6y ago
  I don't think that matters. Like really, at all. I think the first thing you'd have to come up with is a service that sells drm free, so people can actually get what they paid money for. When I "buy" digitally from either amazon or google, there's no way I'll ever see an mkv file or anything like that. When "buying" video digitally, I don't ever get the feeling that the stuff is really "mine". When I buy from bandcamp, I can download a flac and archive it. That music is mine. When I get it from google, I can view it from their website. That movie is not mine. And let's not pretend that sales would go down. Music is sold like this for a long time, just like copying without permission unfortunately didn't kill Hollywood all this time.
_fizz_buzz_ 6y ago
I think this also depends on your viewing habits. I very rarely rewatch movies/TV shows. So I could never really justify to outright buy DVDs.
vladvasiliu 6y ago
I think this is actually a good point as to why streaming works so well. How often do people rewatch the same movies / tv shows? I know in my case those are in the single digits. There's also the convenience factor. You're over at a friend's house and decide to watch a movie? Better hope you grabbed the dvd with you or that he has one. Just discovered something you wanted to see? Have to wait a day or two or drive to the store to get it. Oh, not what you expected and get bored after ten minutes? Tough, you won't get your money back.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
  There’s always outliers. You’d be shocked to find out how many times I’ve watched Deep Space Nine since I subscribed to Netflix two years ago. It’s great because most of the episodes are utter garbage, but.. At least $3 of the AU$15 per month I pay could go directly to Andrew Jordt Robinson and the writers for their outstanding work on Elim Garak.
  - majewsky 6y ago
    3 whole dollars? But I'm just a humble tailor. :)
    - TheSpiceIsLife 6y ago
      That tickled me, thank you 8)
- schwartzworld 6y ago
  now with streaming, I almost never rewatch things. but when I had a collection of DVDs (VHSs before that) I rewatched all the time.

609venezia 6y ago

> my assumption is that they will eventually figure out how to get the best production companies on board and completely take people like Disney... Disney is big - on the film side there's Walt Disney Pictures, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, Searchlight Pictures and Blue Sky Studios On the TV side, ABC, 20th Century Fox Television, FX Networks, ESPN, and others I'm not saying Netflix and Amazon won't be able to produce more and more. But completely taking out Disney seems like a whole 'nuther ballgame I'd be curious to hear more of your reasoning

Sabinus 6y ago
I wonder if there would be a case for anti-monopoly action against Disney et al, if the US was into doing that kind of thing. If media libraries were split up they wouldn't be able to charge as much for the whole package. It would allow more nuanced negotiations between distributors and the studios.
- TylerE 6y ago
  But that's what's happened, and the result is FAR worse. Instead of everything being on one app, now it feels like you "need" about 9 different services.
- nickik 6y ago
  You can't. Because first they don't have monopoly on anything. Making the argument that only Disney can make Star Wars would be like arguing that only Tom Hanks can be Tom Hanks. Second, even if you could prove they are a monopoly 'to big' you would still need to prove that there is actual harm to consumers. If the Disney streaming service is reasonably priced its not clear how you would prove that. What would really make far more sense is simply to reduce Copyright laws back to former levels so that things get to be public domain.
- NoSorryCannot 6y ago
  Monopoly is a high bar to reach and antitrust cases don't always have to reach that bar to be viable. There's historically a lot of discretionary space in antitrust law just based on the political climate of the time, which generally deals with the calculus of determining if there is harm to consumers. It's typical for harm to be argued along just one metric, prices for any particular individual, but I tend to think that's a mistake.

derbOac 6y ago

There's the reverse also, content companies introducing their own streaming. At some point does this just result in streaming from the content producers directly regardless of how that came to be in any given case?

acheron9383 6y ago
It is interesting that streaming content economically is pretty hard at scale. That was a big moat for Netflix for a long time, but every year it gets filled in a little more as other companies figure it out.