4 ms·
The missing piece here is that streaming was not profitable for a very long time, and all the studios and content producers cannibalized their existing profitab
by sbarre 3y ago
The missing piece here is that streaming was not profitable for a very long time, and all the studios and content producers cannibalized their existing profitable businesses to make equally unprofitable deals with Netflix, just to be where all the users were going.
Now that industry is stuck in a situation where they wrecked their own income streams, expectations have been set with customers about what streaming costs, and they are scrambling to figure out how to re-gain that income but no one wants to go back to those pre-streaming prices.
This whole problem was one of the foundational issues behind the recent writer and actor strikes.
- 0xParlay 3y agoThe people who write the movies, build the sets and act in the films are in guilds. Surprised there wasn’t a more direct-to-consumer avenue to explore. Maybe they could bootstrap a production and distribution guild.
- sbarre 3y agoI've wondered this as well.. I think Netflix, Amazon and Apple were sort of that for a while, with all the deals they were cutting with production companies.. But in the end it was just Meet the new boss, same as the old boss..
- ethbr1 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Artists At the end, it's the startup problem. Would you rather gamble all your money and get all the winnings? Or get a salary regardless of how things turn out?
- bitsandbooks 3y agoThis was the original idea behind United Artists from its formation in 1919 until it got bought out by Transamerica in 1967.