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I feel like we are moving towards a service/subscription based economy. Which definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable, and might be a mutually

I feel like we are moving towards a service/subscription based economy. Which definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable, and might be a mutually beneficial agreement between the producer and the consumer. But that does raise the question of ownership. Given that now some game companies are looking to turn even single player games into a subscription based model...

drewzero1 3y ago
Besides ownership, the problem I see with that is that (most) people can only afford so many subscriptions, and with recent fragmentation in the streaming market there are a lot of subscriptions. I want to see one thing on a streaming service, but I can't afford to pay monthly for that service just to watch that one thing. I would have bought the DVD and given them some of my money, but without that option I don't get to watch that thing and they get none of my money. I suppose overall they still get somebody's money every month, so they don't mind missing out on mine... but somehow it still feels like a step backwards for digital media.
- hcks 3y ago
  Except a single dvd back then was inflation adjusted more expensive than one month of these subscription? So how does your reasoning hold?
  - drewzero1 3y ago
    One month sure, but if I watch it more than once or take more than a month to complete a while season the subscription adds up. Plus a lot more was available to rent on DVD, which makes more sense for something I only want to watch once rather than signing up for a subscription service and hoping I remember to cancel before it renews. To be fair I bought (and buy) many of my DVDs at thrift stores and garage sales, so the media companies didn't see my money directly. But indirectly it did enable my neighbors to buy new DVDs to fill the space they cleaned from their sale. Perhaps I am being irrational, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the fragmented and rent-seeking streaming landscape. Some other people's comments here suggest I'm not the only one with strong feelings about this.
  - al_borland 3y ago
    Between new and bargain bin DVDs, let’s say it averages out to the price of a streaming service. I’m paying $25/month for Hulu/Disney right now, so that seems generous. Streaming started up around 2007. If I were to buy 1 DVD per month instead of going with a streaming service, I’d have a movie collection with 192 movies I probably really like. With many people now subscribing to 3 or 4 streaming services, that equivalent movie collection could be even bigger for the same cost. If I were to fall on hard times and need to cut back on spending, stopping the streaming services leaves me with nothing. At $10/month, I would have paid almost $2k and have nothing to show for it. With the DVDs, I could stop buying new ones, and still have a pretty solid library to pull from.
steve_rambo 3y ago
Accessible to whom? I'll bring the usual argument that most media is not available in my country, and many other countries. They simply don't sell it to us here, and services like Netflix are either unavailable (although Netflix itself works fine, most others don't), or give access to several percent of their library while expecting us to pay the same amount as any first grade consumer. It's especially bad with Japanese media. Last time I checked, crunchyroll wanted the same amount of cash every month as from Americans, while giving us access to maybe 30 or 40 old titles. And any one of those can disappear at any moment, which had already happened at least once. No, thank you.
Hamuko 3y ago
I have a trouble believing that everything can be a subscription when it seems like the current TV streaming subscriptions cannot even coexist with each other.
the_third_wave 3y ago
You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy. This is how our world could change by 2030. [1] Oddly enough the WEF removed the linked page, it now just says Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for. Maybe they are on to the fact that most people are not looking forward to their vision of the future? [1] https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/10153920524981479/ https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predict...
- happytiger 3y ago
  It was based on this essay. https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-own-nothing-have-no-privacy-and-life-has-never-been-better-ee2eed62f710 https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-ow...
  - userbinator 3y ago
    Discussed before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 (The original article has disappeared but the archive.org doesn't forget.)
al_borland 3y ago
>definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable I disagree on this bit. Media is only accessible as long as the rights holders decide to play ball with the streaming service(s) the user happens to subscribe to. Constant rug pulling is going on with no sign of it stopping. Just a few months ago I was watching Suits on Amazon Prime. I was 3 seasons in, and I went to watch (after just watching an episode the previous day) and it was now listed as needing to pay per episode. Netflix bought the rights and it was over there now. Another movie, I started watching and had to pause it halfway through, when I went back to finish it, it wanted me to pay for a rental, because their rights ran out. This is a horrible customer experience. VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside, if I buy a DVD it will play in my DVD player and no one can decide to take my rights to play it away mid-movie. The way streaming is today, it would be like needing to have a different DVD player for each studio, or if the VHS vs Betamax, or Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battles never ended. One of my big[] worries is that I will grow old and want to watch the movies from my youth and be unable to because the studio went out of business, or decided that movie wasn’t worth streaming, or one of countless other reasons why access would be lost. It’s the modern day version of the “Disney Vault”, which I always hated as a kid. They’d release VHS tapes for a limited time to create scarcity and drive up demand, then pull it and release something else. My sister’s favorite Disney movie never seemed to come out of the vault. I actually have a friend who has been messaging me pretty regularly lamenting that he wants to watch some movies from the early 2000s and can’t find them on the couple services he has. He doesn’t really know what to do. He wants to watch some movies, he is paying money every month to these companies, and he isn’t getting the content he is after. These movies are 20 years old, the studios and actors have made their money, there is no reason anyone should need to deal with these roadblocks to access. He has been talking about going back to DVD. What other option does he have? How is this accessible and equitable? [] it’s a big worry in the realm of media, I know in the grand scheme of things it’s a small theoretical problem at the moment.
- _cenw 3y ago
  >VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside That's a quite large thing to push aside. Physical media also suffered from "as long as rights holders play ball", with media availability varying wildly based on expected commercial success. At least streaming leads to faster and better availability outside complete legality and it is easier to argue abandonment when it's not available on streaming services vs technically available as low-run optical media.
solatic 3y ago
I'll contrast with other commenters here and agree with you. The notion that private ownership of the arts is a good thing is very much a modern idea born of mass production. Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. The best means of financing the arts has always been a membership or patronage model, which very much depends on recurring subscriptions. What streaming services have done is make patronage happen on a massive scale, the sheer volume of which ensures a stable stream of financing for content that has produced what many people call the Golden Age of Television. It's not all good; the fracturing of availability of content across streaming services impacts affordability, not to mention the return of regional releases impacts availability. Ideally copyrights would be shortened and there would be some kind of publicly funded streaming framework to provide free access to works that enter the public domain. But these are momentary challenges of what is a more widely successful model and improvement over what came before.
- snovymgodym 3y ago
  > Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. People aren't talking about personally owning a Wagner opera or a painting in the Louvre. People just want to be able to watch the movie or play the game that they already paid for, without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face.
  - drewzero1 3y ago
    > without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face. Or, increasingly, both!

drewzero1 3y ago

Besides ownership, the problem I see with that is that (most) people can only afford so many subscriptions, and with recent fragmentation in the streaming market there are a lot of subscriptions. I want to see one thing on a streaming service, but I can't afford to pay monthly for that service just to watch that one thing. I would have bought the DVD and given them some of my money, but without that option I don't get to watch that thing and they get none of my money. I suppose overall they still get somebody's money every month, so they don't mind missing out on mine... but somehow it still feels like a step backwards for digital media.

hcks 3y ago
Except a single dvd back then was inflation adjusted more expensive than one month of these subscription? So how does your reasoning hold?
- drewzero1 3y ago
  One month sure, but if I watch it more than once or take more than a month to complete a while season the subscription adds up. Plus a lot more was available to rent on DVD, which makes more sense for something I only want to watch once rather than signing up for a subscription service and hoping I remember to cancel before it renews. To be fair I bought (and buy) many of my DVDs at thrift stores and garage sales, so the media companies didn't see my money directly. But indirectly it did enable my neighbors to buy new DVDs to fill the space they cleaned from their sale. Perhaps I am being irrational, but I'm getting increasingly frustrated with the fragmented and rent-seeking streaming landscape. Some other people's comments here suggest I'm not the only one with strong feelings about this.
- al_borland 3y ago
  Between new and bargain bin DVDs, let’s say it averages out to the price of a streaming service. I’m paying $25/month for Hulu/Disney right now, so that seems generous. Streaming started up around 2007. If I were to buy 1 DVD per month instead of going with a streaming service, I’d have a movie collection with 192 movies I probably really like. With many people now subscribing to 3 or 4 streaming services, that equivalent movie collection could be even bigger for the same cost. If I were to fall on hard times and need to cut back on spending, stopping the streaming services leaves me with nothing. At $10/month, I would have paid almost $2k and have nothing to show for it. With the DVDs, I could stop buying new ones, and still have a pretty solid library to pull from.

steve_rambo 3y ago

Accessible to whom? I'll bring the usual argument that most media is not available in my country, and many other countries. They simply don't sell it to us here, and services like Netflix are either unavailable (although Netflix itself works fine, most others don't), or give access to several percent of their library while expecting us to pay the same amount as any first grade consumer. It's especially bad with Japanese media. Last time I checked, crunchyroll wanted the same amount of cash every month as from Americans, while giving us access to maybe 30 or 40 old titles. And any one of those can disappear at any moment, which had already happened at least once. No, thank you.

Hamuko 3y ago

I have a trouble believing that everything can be a subscription when it seems like the current TV streaming subscriptions cannot even coexist with each other.

the_third_wave 3y ago

You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy. This is how our world could change by 2030. [1] Oddly enough the WEF removed the linked page, it now just says Sorry, but we can’t find the page you were looking for. Maybe they are on to the fact that most people are not looking forward to their vision of the future? [1] https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/10153920524981479/ https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/videos/8-predict...

happytiger 3y ago
It was based on this essay. https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-own-nothing-have-no-privacy-and-life-has-never-been-better-ee2eed62f710 https://medium.com/world-economic-forum/welcome-to-2030-i-ow...
- userbinator 3y ago
  Discussed before here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25068820 (The original article has disappeared but the archive.org doesn't forget.)

al_borland 3y ago

>definitely makes some media more accessible and equitable I disagree on this bit. Media is only accessible as long as the rights holders decide to play ball with the streaming service(s) the user happens to subscribe to. Constant rug pulling is going on with no sign of it stopping. Just a few months ago I was watching Suits on Amazon Prime. I was 3 seasons in, and I went to watch (after just watching an episode the previous day) and it was now listed as needing to pay per episode. Netflix bought the rights and it was over there now. Another movie, I started watching and had to pause it halfway through, when I went back to finish it, it wanted me to pay for a rental, because their rights ran out. This is a horrible customer experience. VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside, if I buy a DVD it will play in my DVD player and no one can decide to take my rights to play it away mid-movie. The way streaming is today, it would be like needing to have a different DVD player for each studio, or if the VHS vs Betamax, or Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battles never ended. One of my big[] worries is that I will grow old and want to watch the movies from my youth and be unable to because the studio went out of business, or decided that movie wasn’t worth streaming, or one of countless other reasons why access would be lost. It’s the modern day version of the “Disney Vault”, which I always hated as a kid. They’d release VHS tapes for a limited time to create scarcity and drive up demand, then pull it and release something else. My sister’s favorite Disney movie never seemed to come out of the vault. I actually have a friend who has been messaging me pretty regularly lamenting that he wants to watch some movies from the early 2000s and can’t find them on the couple services he has. He doesn’t really know what to do. He wants to watch some movies, he is paying money every month to these companies, and he isn’t getting the content he is after. These movies are 20 years old, the studios and actors have made their money, there is no reason anyone should need to deal with these roadblocks to access. He has been talking about going back to DVD. What other option does he have? How is this accessible and equitable? [] it’s a big worry in the realm of media, I know in the grand scheme of things it’s a small theoretical problem at the moment.

_cenw 3y ago
>VHS, DVD, and BD were much more accessible. Region issues aside That's a quite large thing to push aside. Physical media also suffered from "as long as rights holders play ball", with media availability varying wildly based on expected commercial success. At least streaming leads to faster and better availability outside complete legality and it is easier to argue abandonment when it's not available on streaming services vs technically available as low-run optical media.

solatic 3y ago

I'll contrast with other commenters here and agree with you. The notion that private ownership of the arts is a good thing is very much a modern idea born of mass production. Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. The best means of financing the arts has always been a membership or patronage model, which very much depends on recurring subscriptions. What streaming services have done is make patronage happen on a massive scale, the sheer volume of which ensures a stable stream of financing for content that has produced what many people call the Golden Age of Television. It's not all good; the fracturing of availability of content across streaming services impacts affordability, not to mention the return of regional releases impacts availability. Ideally copyrights would be shortened and there would be some kind of publicly funded streaming framework to provide free access to works that enter the public domain. But these are momentary challenges of what is a more widely successful model and improvement over what came before.

snovymgodym 3y ago
> Most people prefer paintings and sculptures to be in museums, and the notion that live performers of theater or opera could ever be "owned" is abhorrent. People aren't talking about personally owning a Wagner opera or a painting in the Louvre. People just want to be able to watch the movie or play the game that they already paid for, without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face.
- drewzero1 3y ago
  > without being nickel-and-dimed or having ads shoved in your face. Or, increasingly, both!