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Streaming services may be 'in control' but they're still as bad as, or controlled by, the studios they're replacing. In the UK, suppose I want to watch Forbidd

Streaming services may be 'in control' but they're still as bad as, or controlled by, the studios they're replacing. In the UK, suppose I want to watch Forbidden Planet, or Gone With The Wind, or Carry on Screaming. Show me a streaming service that has those films. I either wait 6 months and hope the TV shows them or.... hello bittorrent. Even more recent films. Suppose I want to listen to Louis Armstrong, or Ella Fitzgerald? Spotify, Apple Music, and Amazon Music all have those songs. It's just a shame we didn't have higher bandwidth in the Napster era to do to the studios what it did to record labels.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
That's a "controlled by" problem, not an "as bad as" problem. Region restrictions are primarily imposed by studios, so that they can make different exclusive licensing deals in different regions.
ghaff 6y ago
The other thing going on is that Netflix' DVD service drove Blockbuster et al out of business and now the Netflix back catalog is pretty terrible. So you increasingly can't rent a disc if something isn't available streaming--even a la carte. (In fairness, many films are available for Amazon pay-per-view that aren't on all you can eat subscriptions, including 2 of the films you mention.) But it's a mess generally. I don't know if it's Napster/bandwidth given that mechanical licensing for music is much older. In any case though, we've largely moved to a new medium but a lot of content hasn't moved over.
- skinnymuch 6y ago
  Blockbuster drove itself out of business Possibly more so than Netflix because of billionaire investor Carl Icahn.
- mistersquid 6y ago
  > The other thing going on is that Netflix' DVD service drove Blockbuster et al out of business and now the Netflix back catalog is pretty terrible. I subscribe to both Netflix DVD and streaming. I don’t much like serialized shows and maintain streaming mainly for my partner and the occasional one off. Netflix’s DVD back catalog is thinning and I’m sort of at a crossroads about what to do. I wish Netflix would spin off the DVD service and give it a chance to thrive.
  - ihuman 6y ago
    > I wish Netflix would spin off the DVD service and give it a chance to thrive. They were going to do that back in 2011, but then cancelled the plans https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-cancels-qwikster-spinoff/ https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-cancels-qwikster-spinoff/
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I canceled my DVD service a year or two ago because I was doing a lot of work travel and I'd end up with discs sitting by my TV for a month. I've renewed it for now during the pandemic. It's fine for recent movies but the back catalog has gotten pretty bad. I've mostly resigned myself to paying for streaming rentals plus buying a Blu-Ray every now and then if I think it's something I might want to rewatch. I suspect there isn't a critical mass for a robust DVD service any longer. RedBox skims some demand for current blockbusters and a lot of people want content right now.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      > RedBox skims some demand for current blockbusters and a lot of people want content right now. I really can't emphasize the right now enough. I'm never planning things I want to watch days in advance, so a by-mail service just doesn't work (plus there's the physical hassle of having to mail stuff all the time and dealing with the inevitable hassle of things going missing in the mail). I just can't imagine waiting for something to come in the mail when I could instead fire up BitTorrent and be watching it 30 minutes later. The music industry learned their lesson from piracy but the movie industry still hasn't. Things will hopefully change now given that theaters are a much-reduced experience; they did always have the benefit over music in that whether you buy the music CD on launch day or pirate it digitally, the listening experience itself is identical, whereas seeing a film in theaters on launch day is definitely still quite different than watching some shitty pirated cam version, assuming the shitty cam version is even out by launch day (it isn't always).
      - ghaff 6y ago
        As long as I'm around to watch them, I actually find getting DVDs by mail is a low effort way to catch up on the previous year's award winners; there's always a film I want to see sitting there. And I usually don't need to watch something in particular right now. It's just increasingly not a great way to watch older films.
readarticle 6y ago
Studios aren’t being replaced. This isn’t an article about streaming services replacing studios, it’s an article about streaming executive culture replacing studio executive culture.
dageshi 6y ago
You can rent all of these for sub £5 on amazon (probably itunes as well). There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever, the finances just don't work.
- leoedin 6y ago
  Why don't the finances work? As an example: I'm paying for Netflix and Amazon prime. I'm not going to pay for more services because I don't value watching TV more than that. We buy or rent a specific movie maybe once a quarter at most. So total expenditure on TV services is around $20/mo. Almost everyone I know is in a similar situation. Some swap one of those services for something else, many are sharing subscriptions with other households. So right now most people are paying a fairly fixed amount for access to a portion of TV and film. The total money flowing in seems to be enough to support the entire industry. If a service that cost $20/month for access to everything came out, I'd definitely switch. I imagine most of my friends would as well. Then the total money flowing into the industry would be the same, but everyone would have access to all the media.
  - dageshi 6y ago
    It's not enough to support the entire industry, that's the point of the article. $20 a month has never been enough, bearing in mind it's effectively replacing (in north America) cable which used to cost much more than that and those channels used to run ads as well!
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I suspect a lot of people buy or rent more than you and your friends. For example, many people have either a cable TV or online streaming subscription that's another $50-100/month. HBO would be another $15 or so. And so forth. There is an argument that, at some point, there are only so many hours in the day and a Spotify for video (i.e. most content for one monthly fee) makes sense but that's probably a $100-200/month fee in the US (assuming you could get most players to cooperate). YouTube TV alone is $65/month these days.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
chrisseaton 6y ago
> In the UK, suppose I want to watch Forbidden Planet, or Gone With The Wind, or Carry on Screaming. Show me a streaming service that has those films They're on Amazon UK. You can stream them right now. What are you talking about?
jp555 6y ago
Napster pitched a $10/month all-you-can-eat subscription, and the Music industry said NO WAY! Then they were crushed by reality and we got multiple suppliers of Napster's $10/month-for-all-music offer. Imagine if Napster had got what it wanted and became the only supplier of music? I doubt they'd still be seen as the good guy.
- solarhoma 6y ago
  The monopolies are always seen good in their infancy. You always forgive them for mistakes as they are new and fresh. Then they begin making significant mistakes as they age. And finally become too powerful and you realize they are truly a monopoly. See Google. Everyone ‘welcomed their new google overlords’. Now we see how awful they are for the world.
  - jp555 6y ago
    "in the case of Apple, the company’s strategy was doomed right up until it was illegal, or so it seems with the App Store." Ben Thompson (https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-epic-and-the-app-store/ https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-epic-and-the-app-store/) LOL
iwasakabukiman 6y ago
I feel like you are purposefully ignoring the fact that you can easily get all of those movies (and tons of others not on streaming services) on DVD or Blu-ray for relatively cheap. As another commenter said, you can also rent them from any number of services for $2-$4.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  What am I going to play a DVD on?
  - zxcvbn4038 6y ago
    Black box above the betamax and below the 8-track player - you may need to move all the floppy disk boxes on the floor first. ;)
  - ghaff 6y ago
    An external USB DVD player is about $15.
  - iwasakabukiman 6y ago
    I feel like you're purposefully making this hypothetical difficult and throwing up as many roadblocks as possible. The obvious answer is that either you own a DVD player or you can get one for next to nothing. Amazon has region free ones for $25.
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      ewaste ftw
  - bitwize 6y ago
    Eighth generation consoles (except the Switch) have a drive that can play DVDs and Blu-Rays.
- ghaff 6y ago
  While I don't love the current state of affairs, I dropped cable TV recently (which I hardly ever watched) and I sort of take the attitude that it makes sense to keep my monthly subscriptions down and periodically buy, whether disc or streaming, or rent a la carte things I want to watch--especially given that I don't really watch all that much.
dalbasal 6y ago
Even record labels came out unscathed, relatively. It's not like we live in a world where artists record songs, and get paid by streaming services. Record labels get paid, and they pay artists with hollywood accounting. All the control is still with them. They have much less control of what becomes popular. Recording has no need for upfront, risky capital anymore... Once upon a time, you needed a lot of money to cut & press a commercial album. A warehouse full of records, physical distribution, the advertising to make that work. The "record deal" was essential because someone had to fund an album. The record industry was built around this, with the portfolio of "signed artists" being their primary asset. Napster, Youtube & Spotify haven't really changed this... They've affected it, but the system survived irrelevance. The reality of content industries (and many other ones) is that centralisation is everything. The big hollywood studios, record labels & such will take the lions share. If they don't, it will be netflix, youtube, spotify & such. Someone will be in position to dictate terms, and it's not the artists.

JoshTriplett 6y ago

That's a "controlled by" problem, not an "as bad as" problem. Region restrictions are primarily imposed by studios, so that they can make different exclusive licensing deals in different regions.

ghaff 6y ago

The other thing going on is that Netflix' DVD service drove Blockbuster et al out of business and now the Netflix back catalog is pretty terrible. So you increasingly can't rent a disc if something isn't available streaming--even a la carte. (In fairness, many films are available for Amazon pay-per-view that aren't on all you can eat subscriptions, including 2 of the films you mention.) But it's a mess generally. I don't know if it's Napster/bandwidth given that mechanical licensing for music is much older. In any case though, we've largely moved to a new medium but a lot of content hasn't moved over.

skinnymuch 6y ago
Blockbuster drove itself out of business Possibly more so than Netflix because of billionaire investor Carl Icahn.
mistersquid 6y ago
> The other thing going on is that Netflix' DVD service drove Blockbuster et al out of business and now the Netflix back catalog is pretty terrible. I subscribe to both Netflix DVD and streaming. I don’t much like serialized shows and maintain streaming mainly for my partner and the occasional one off. Netflix’s DVD back catalog is thinning and I’m sort of at a crossroads about what to do. I wish Netflix would spin off the DVD service and give it a chance to thrive.
- ihuman 6y ago
  > I wish Netflix would spin off the DVD service and give it a chance to thrive. They were going to do that back in 2011, but then cancelled the plans https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-cancels-qwikster-spinoff/ https://www.cnet.com/news/netflix-cancels-qwikster-spinoff/
- ghaff 6y ago
  I canceled my DVD service a year or two ago because I was doing a lot of work travel and I'd end up with discs sitting by my TV for a month. I've renewed it for now during the pandemic. It's fine for recent movies but the back catalog has gotten pretty bad. I've mostly resigned myself to paying for streaming rentals plus buying a Blu-Ray every now and then if I think it's something I might want to rewatch. I suspect there isn't a critical mass for a robust DVD service any longer. RedBox skims some demand for current blockbusters and a lot of people want content right now.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    > RedBox skims some demand for current blockbusters and a lot of people want content right now. I really can't emphasize the right now enough. I'm never planning things I want to watch days in advance, so a by-mail service just doesn't work (plus there's the physical hassle of having to mail stuff all the time and dealing with the inevitable hassle of things going missing in the mail). I just can't imagine waiting for something to come in the mail when I could instead fire up BitTorrent and be watching it 30 minutes later. The music industry learned their lesson from piracy but the movie industry still hasn't. Things will hopefully change now given that theaters are a much-reduced experience; they did always have the benefit over music in that whether you buy the music CD on launch day or pirate it digitally, the listening experience itself is identical, whereas seeing a film in theaters on launch day is definitely still quite different than watching some shitty pirated cam version, assuming the shitty cam version is even out by launch day (it isn't always).
    - ghaff 6y ago
      As long as I'm around to watch them, I actually find getting DVDs by mail is a low effort way to catch up on the previous year's award winners; there's always a film I want to see sitting there. And I usually don't need to watch something in particular right now. It's just increasingly not a great way to watch older films.

readarticle 6y ago

Studios aren’t being replaced. This isn’t an article about streaming services replacing studios, it’s an article about streaming executive culture replacing studio executive culture.

dageshi 6y ago

You can rent all of these for sub £5 on amazon (probably itunes as well). There isn't a world where you can pay $20 a month and get everything, every movie, every tv show, ever, the finances just don't work.

leoedin 6y ago
Why don't the finances work? As an example: I'm paying for Netflix and Amazon prime. I'm not going to pay for more services because I don't value watching TV more than that. We buy or rent a specific movie maybe once a quarter at most. So total expenditure on TV services is around $20/mo. Almost everyone I know is in a similar situation. Some swap one of those services for something else, many are sharing subscriptions with other households. So right now most people are paying a fairly fixed amount for access to a portion of TV and film. The total money flowing in seems to be enough to support the entire industry. If a service that cost $20/month for access to everything came out, I'd definitely switch. I imagine most of my friends would as well. Then the total money flowing into the industry would be the same, but everyone would have access to all the media.
- dageshi 6y ago
  It's not enough to support the entire industry, that's the point of the article. $20 a month has never been enough, bearing in mind it's effectively replacing (in north America) cable which used to cost much more than that and those channels used to run ads as well!
- ghaff 6y ago
  I suspect a lot of people buy or rent more than you and your friends. For example, many people have either a cable TV or online streaming subscription that's another $50-100/month. HBO would be another $15 or so. And so forth. There is an argument that, at some point, there are only so many hours in the day and a Spotify for video (i.e. most content for one monthly fee) makes sense but that's probably a $100-200/month fee in the US (assuming you could get most players to cooperate). YouTube TV alone is $65/month these days.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chrisseaton 6y ago

> In the UK, suppose I want to watch Forbidden Planet, or Gone With The Wind, or Carry on Screaming. Show me a streaming service that has those films They're on Amazon UK. You can stream them right now. What are you talking about?

jp555 6y ago

Napster pitched a $10/month all-you-can-eat subscription, and the Music industry said NO WAY! Then they were crushed by reality and we got multiple suppliers of Napster's $10/month-for-all-music offer. Imagine if Napster had got what it wanted and became the only supplier of music? I doubt they'd still be seen as the good guy.

solarhoma 6y ago
The monopolies are always seen good in their infancy. You always forgive them for mistakes as they are new and fresh. Then they begin making significant mistakes as they age. And finally become too powerful and you realize they are truly a monopoly. See Google. Everyone ‘welcomed their new google overlords’. Now we see how awful they are for the world.
- jp555 6y ago
  "in the case of Apple, the company’s strategy was doomed right up until it was illegal, or so it seems with the App Store." Ben Thompson (https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-epic-and-the-app-store/ https://stratechery.com/2020/apple-epic-and-the-app-store/) LOL

iwasakabukiman 6y ago

I feel like you are purposefully ignoring the fact that you can easily get all of those movies (and tons of others not on streaming services) on DVD or Blu-ray for relatively cheap. As another commenter said, you can also rent them from any number of services for $2-$4.

rorykoehler 6y ago
What am I going to play a DVD on?
- zxcvbn4038 6y ago
  Black box above the betamax and below the 8-track player - you may need to move all the floppy disk boxes on the floor first. ;)
- ghaff 6y ago
  An external USB DVD player is about $15.
- iwasakabukiman 6y ago
  I feel like you're purposefully making this hypothetical difficult and throwing up as many roadblocks as possible. The obvious answer is that either you own a DVD player or you can get one for next to nothing. Amazon has region free ones for $25.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    ewaste ftw
- bitwize 6y ago
  Eighth generation consoles (except the Switch) have a drive that can play DVDs and Blu-Rays.
ghaff 6y ago
While I don't love the current state of affairs, I dropped cable TV recently (which I hardly ever watched) and I sort of take the attitude that it makes sense to keep my monthly subscriptions down and periodically buy, whether disc or streaming, or rent a la carte things I want to watch--especially given that I don't really watch all that much.

dalbasal 6y ago

Even record labels came out unscathed, relatively. It's not like we live in a world where artists record songs, and get paid by streaming services. Record labels get paid, and they pay artists with hollywood accounting. All the control is still with them. They have much less control of what becomes popular. Recording has no need for upfront, risky capital anymore... Once upon a time, you needed a lot of money to cut & press a commercial album. A warehouse full of records, physical distribution, the advertising to make that work. The "record deal" was essential because someone had to fund an album. The record industry was built around this, with the portfolio of "signed artists" being their primary asset. Napster, Youtube & Spotify haven't really changed this... They've affected it, but the system survived irrelevance. The reality of content industries (and many other ones) is that centralisation is everything. The big hollywood studios, record labels & such will take the lions share. If they don't, it will be netflix, youtube, spotify & such. Someone will be in position to dictate terms, and it's not the artists.