7 ms·

How much would unlimited access to movies, books, magazines, and music cost?

50 points by lominming 12y ago

sgeisenh 12y ago
This is an interesting idea, but I suspect that most consumers are inclined to pick and choose services. Maybe Amazon can fill a niche with this type of offering. Beyond viability, I find the implications of this post terrifying. The line between licensing and ownership is becoming blurred. And the prospect of having so few personal assets is disconserting.
- toomuchtodo 12y ago
  > And the prospect of having so few personal assets is disconserting. Disagree. I want to live in a world where my major possessions are my clothes, my laptop, my cellphone, and that's about it. Books? All cut off, scanned in, and PDFs by 1dollarscan.com. CD's? All ripped and stored in S3. Maybe its just my bent as a tech professional, but I'd rather have the bits than the atoms.
  - nitrogen 12y ago
    Having the bits is fine as long as you actually have the bits, not a DRMed stream.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      Agreed. I strip the DRM off of all my bits. I paid for them, they're mine.
webmaven 12y ago
>> Even the most active readers with a full-time job get to read at most about 3-4 books per month. It is to laugh. I usually manage to read (or in some cases, reread) 5-10 novels a month. I have on occasion read as many as 15 novels in a month (admittedly older, and thus shorter, works).
- ajkjk 12y ago
  But you are (sadly, maybe) relatively rare in reading that much. I love reading and I still don't read more than 1-2 a month... and I read more than many of my friends.
  - mitchty 12y ago
    Same here, but the issue i have is that most books tend to be technical so that vastly limits the throughput. Regular books are pretty easy to get through. Unless they're written by Peter Hamilton.
    - webmaven 12y ago
      Or Neal Stephenson. ;-)
  - webmaven 12y ago
    That's not the point. I know I am unusual. but even if I am at the top end of 'most active readers' (which I actually know I am not), my example still points out a failure of imagination and/or analysis in this article. I'll also point out that restricting the analysis to people like myself (and presumably you) who have a full time job is also rather amusing, as I read much more when I was a teenager in high school (and in fact got a part time job in a bookstore to feed my habit / take advantage of an employee discount).
    - ternaryoperator 12y ago
      So, you are manifestly an exception and you chastise the author of the original post for not including you, an avowed exception, in his calculation of what most people need.
      - webmaven 12y ago
        I am chastising the author of the original post for setting an upper bound that is far too low. I may be unusual, but I am not a complete outlier, there are plenty of folks between myself and his upper bound.
largote 12y ago
I personally only care about the shipping. I'd gladly ditch all of the other tack-on services for $10 less a year.
- stock_toaster 12y ago
  > I personally only care about the shipping. I only care about the shipping as well. > I'd gladly ditch all of the other tack-on services for $10 less a month. I would even ditch the other tack-on services and keep the existing price if I could opt to "stop using OnTrac for anything"! OnTrac regularly delivers late, not at all, or with the package arriving in a condition that my friends and I have started to refer as "OnTrac condition". Maybe you have to pay extra to not get the "looks like it was kicked down several flights of stairs stairs and smells like it was rubbed down with cigarette butts" treatment?
GregorStocks 12y ago
It seems like the hardest part of providing these services is getting the content owners on board. I haven't seen much indication that Amazon is better at cracking that nut than anybody else.
- ebiester 12y ago
  That's because the pricepoint is ludicrous. If I buy two CDs a month, that's more money that both creator and music business will see than a month of Spotify. (Now, I happen to buy the CDs and use Spotify as a discovery service, but most people think their moral obligation is satisfied when their legal obligation is.) Further, free/cheap alternatives reduce demand for premium services. Why would content creators cannibalize their own revenue streams?
  - MarkPNeyer 12y ago
    i'd rather eat myself on my own terms than get eaten.
  - eikenberry 12y ago
    If you feel a moral obligation should come into play then you shouldn't be buying CDs or Spotify. They both serve to prop up the copyright industry with their perverted ambitions to retard human culture and development in exchange for short term profit.
    - ebiester 12y ago
      We have a fundamental difference of ethical concerns here. I'll be on board with your view once we reach post-scarcity, but right now humans still need to eat, and high quality production still requires money to produce. Every hour that a quality musician can afford not to work is an hour they can be working on refining their craft. It has already been shown that touring pays less than minimum wage (yes, including those fucking t-shirts) for all but the top acts, so the purchase of music is one of the few ways to stay afloat. The truth is, if we support the musicians that make the music which we want to hear more, then we will get more of that music. I'm an ardent supporter of Lessig et. al, but the proposed alternative revenue models aren't working.
pbreit 12y ago
It's interesting hat music now looks like the most enlightened industry given it's the only one with a meaningful amount of product available on a subscription basis.
beloch 12y ago
Note that all those nice features of Amazon Prime only apply to the U.S. version. The Canadian version is $79/year and only includes two-day shipping. I wouldn't be surprised if most other international versions of Prime are only shipping at present. Interestingly, after having had Prime for a year and not having renewed it, I've noticed that Amazon.ca seems to have deliberately downgraded their free super-saver shipping. It used to be that if you ordered something early Monday you could receive it by Friday. Not every time, but most of the time. Now super-saver orders arrive the following week reliably. They also make "standard" non-free shipping the default selection where super-saver used to be default if your order was large enough to qualify. I'm not a huge fan of companies that make their premium offers more attractive by making the basic offerings worse, and then make the worst possible option default. As for all-you-can-consume media... As a canuck I doubt this will ever come under one subscription within my lifetime. Media rights are a fustercluck up here. Even Canadian Netflix is a pale, pathetic shadow of U.S. Netflix.
- jmspring 12y ago
  As someone living in the US, I happen to have Amazon Prime + Netlix (disc + streaming) and Hulu Plus (keep meaning to cancel, but actually like some of the b-movies). None of the streaming services actually have decent content available on a regular basis. Want to see the original of Conan the Barbarian? It got replaced on Netflix by the crappy remake just after it's release. All three are mostly useful for assorted TV series viewing. Little, of interest, movie-wise is available on them on a regular basis. I'm actually reevaluating the whole Netflix/Hulu subscription thing.
- SCdF 12y ago
  And there are countries for which there is no Prime at all.
  - ollysb 12y ago
    I think that would be the majority actually, the list may be a lot longer but the only ones I've been able to confirm are USA, UK, and Canada (perhaps someone could fill me in).
brownbat 12y ago
There will never be one stop shopping for all copyrighted IP (absent some scheme like compulsory licensing). Once some service controls a significant user base, its priorities start to shift. It's cheaper to make additional investments in advertising to gain users (or convince existing users to consume content you already license) rather than continue to add content. If you go from 1000 to 2000 titles, your reputation for content increases proportionately. If you go from 1,000,000 to 1,001,000 titles, it's not clear anyone will notice. It becomes increasingly expensive to enhance the value of your service by acquiring new content. Sure, the most successful distributor can gain more bargaining power with some content owners, but at the same time, holdout IP owners can threaten enormous rents or go to other distributors out of a desire for a niche image. Upstart competitors can risk more to gain niche exclusives, hoping for a breakaway hit that will bring them into the game. If there's an oligopoly, like we sort of have now, the two lead services will compete for exclusivity, making content balkinized across services so no one can really get everything they want in one place. Neither Amazon Prime nor Netflix will ever provide everything people want to watch, and it will always be a little easier for them to provide just a little less than you want to try to build a broad common pool of cheaply satisfied subscribers (while making the costs higher for services that might try to cater to those with more eclectic tastes). Compulsory licensing could fix this, it's what we use for terrestrial radio stations and a few other arenas. Basically any radio station is allowed to play any song, they just tabulate royalties and pay lump sums at the end of the month. If we had this for streaming services, the distributors would actually have to compete on distribution, and we wouldn't have the quality of backroom deals determining winners and losers in the streaming space. We'd actually get a long tail, instead of ridiculously tiny fractions of critically acclaimed film lists actually becoming available for the public to watch. 13 of the AFI Top 100: http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/55041194/afi-100-movies-netflix-streaming http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/55041194/afi-100-movies... 40+ of 700+ Criterion films: http://criterioncast.com/netflix/ http://criterioncast.com/netflix/ 6 of Spike Lee's "Essential 86": http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike-lees-list-of-essentials-that-are-streaming-on-netflix http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike-lees-...
- Thrymr 12y ago
  > There will never be one stop shopping for all copyrighted IP (absent some scheme like compulsory licensing). That is a really sad state of affairs. When bookstores and record shops were where we got content, we didn't have to go to one shop for Random House (or Warner Brothers) and a different one for Harper Collins (or Sony).
cortesoft 12y ago
I already know the cost of unlimited access to books; A library card is free.
- agildehaus 12y ago
  Most libraries also have magazines, music, and movies too.
- blakesterz 12y ago
  How the heck are there only 2 comments on this that say "library"??!! Seriously, that is the only answer needed here. You want anything, ANYTHING, all that stuff listed there, just go to your local library and they'll find it for you. (This assumes you're in North America, may not apply to other places, not sure on that, also may assume your local library is not a tiny really broke library with no budget.)
- jerf 12y ago
  In all seriousness, this doesn't scale; if the number of Netflix users started watching all their movies this way, there would be a huge and swift move towards either changing the libraries an insanely large fee for content (on top of their current structure) or some other legislative move to block it. Libraries are shielded by their perceived social capital, but that only goes so far.
  - tmarthal 12y ago
    Honestly, the only thing that a local well-funded library does not give you is instant gratification like Netflix streaming. If you are willing to setup a queue and allow most content 2-4 weeks for delivery, you should not have to pay for any music, [hard|soft|comic] books, magazines, or movies on DVD. Granted, this is also for non-current releases. Also, you may be underestimating the legal protections that libraries have, and also the voting power (and uncanny monetary resources) of the common library patron. I am not an expert in the subject, but it would be interesting to see recent legislation for/against library systems (budget cuts notwithstanding).
  - ZenPro 12y ago
spaboleo 12y ago
I carry this idea around since a couple of months as well. And I would totally be willing to pay $100 per month for this, if it only would include literally everything: Paywalls of newssites, magazines, books, scientific papers, series, movies, music, audiobooks. Everything. - DRM / Region Code free. - With curated meta-data. - Accessible wordlwide. - Free choice of audio tracks, independent of the customer's location. - Available upon release (no delays). - Streaming and local download (well-established, non-proprietary file formats!). - All accessible from this one central "media hub". Most of the services have lost me as a customer, due to ridiculous limitations (Player), only streaming possible (no sufficient "download over wifi and playback offline" options) etc. What the content providers are missing...it is about convenience. I'd be willing to pay $1200 a year to have this convenience, freedom and feeling of not being "screwed over". Right now I am paying for none of those services and lent my media on DVD or BR from friends and colleagues. Or listen to free music streaming services and podcasts. I get audiobooks on CDs from the local library. I get books from friends or the library. I don't have cable or anything else. The content providers are missing out. Because my yearly spendings for media are below $100 and I pretty much can observe similar behavior amongst my friends and colleagues. It is a big opportunity, but it has to be done right.
Tloewald 12y ago
What's wrong with paying for what you use, assuming prices are reasonable? Why have a cornucopia of crap? In the US a fast net connection costs about $60. Once you've got that you can watch, say, 3h of whatever you like for $6 every night -- assuming you pay Apple or Amazon $2/h of content. Assuming 50% of your viewing is repeat viewing, that drops to $3/night. Movies cost more, maybe as much as $20. But you probably don't religiously watch 3h of TV per night. So let's say $120/month at the high end. If you read, books are cheaper per hour than TV unless you're a very fast reader. Magazines -- seriously who cares? Music is $20/h but almost all of it is repeat listening. That's pretty much the upper bound. In practice there's pointless friction and inconvenience. Some shows aren't available. Some shows have long delays (HBO, Showtime) before they can be (legally) downloaded. OTOH huge amounts of content are available much more cheaply. The only thing this model doesn't cover is watching TV as mindless background noise -- paying $2/h for reality shows is probably going to drive you broke. I think deliberately picking and paying for content is a better way to consume content, sends the right signals to the right people, and also wastes less time (don't watch stupid background noise shows, think carefully about what you watch, and only watch good stuff with no ads).
- icebraining 12y ago
  I agree, but on the other hand, people don't like having to be constantly making the economical decision about whether to watch something; it's mentally taxing, which is unwelcome when you're trying to relax by watching a movie or a TV show. It can also prevent one from discovering offbeat content, by making those bets more costly. For example, I quite liked Super[1], but if I had to make to choice to pay $20 beforehand, maybe I'd watch something worse but that I was guaranteed to enjoy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_(2010_American_film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_(2010_American_film)
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    Actually discovery and serendipity are great features of services like Netflix and Spotify, but it's also perfectly easy to put up free content (e.g. pilots are often free) on iTunes or Amazon.
WCityMike 12y ago
Library.
abalone 12y ago
Strange definition of "unlimited". E.g. For movies it's just what Netflix & Amazon offer. Sure, you can play those over and over as much as you want. Reminds me of those software bundles from yesteryear that offered 1,000+ fonts. In the end, you get what you pay for.
bigbugbag 12y ago
This is a poorly worded question as the op doesn't actually answer it. This is not a matter of cost as this fully negates the cost of the whole required infrastructure, but a matter of price tag. More like "In the US how much one could be charged on top of internet access to be granted access to a limited selection of limited online digital libraries of stuff". IMHO this is severely limited, us only, online only (mostly), broadband only (mostly), limited libraries, etc. this is subpar compared to what people2people file sharing can offer which is far from being unlimited nevertheless.
ZenPro 12y ago
This comment more than anything shows how divorced tech thinking can be from reality. >> In all seriousness, this [the concept of libraries] doesn't scale 1. It scaled perfectly well for 3 centuries with no reason not to continue scaling with the requisite funding. It could be argued that the concept of a library has scaled since 2600 BC. It scales for almost every town in the Western world and every single University, College and School worldwide. Beyond food/clean water sources and a medical centre the next municipal institution offered to struggling African and Southern American communities is often a School/Library with books. In the West, demand is tempered by the need to physically go to a Library to source the media for consumption. Some might see this as a barrier to entry for certain customers; good. It is not a barrier to scaling though, it is a net benefit that makes the customer flow manageable. A similar argument can be made against Amazon. You physically need to access the internet? You need a computer or mobile device? You need a payment card? You need an address? Ha. Too many barriers. The only barrier to a library is physically arriving at the library and in some cases mobile libraries will come to you with an RV packed with media for free consumption. Only a person blinded by the current SV-inspired business models can look at something in existence, already scaling and say according to me I do not believe this idea scales 2. Since it is impossible for any individual to consume the sum total of media at the same time the system has built in redundancy guaranteeing it scales effectively. IE You cannot physically check out and consume every piece of media therefore unlimited copies are not required to be stored. Data analysis yields the optimum level of media storage further improved by aggregating analysed lending habits. 3. Libraries are not weakened by greater public interest, they are strengthened by it. The demise of the social library has been largely brought about by the ubiquitousness of online content (including piracy). If those sources dried up overnight library use would explode in growth and Governments would double their budgets. The idea that if libraries suddenly gained too many customers they would be shut down is ludicrous with absolutely no credible reasoning. Source: History.

50 points by lominming 12y ago

This is an interesting idea, but I suspect that most consumers are inclined to pick and choose services. Maybe Amazon can fill a niche with this type of offering. Beyond viability, I find the implications of this post terrifying. The line between licensing and ownership is becoming blurred. And the prospect of having so few personal assets is disconserting.

toomuchtodo 12y ago
> And the prospect of having so few personal assets is disconserting. Disagree. I want to live in a world where my major possessions are my clothes, my laptop, my cellphone, and that's about it. Books? All cut off, scanned in, and PDFs by 1dollarscan.com. CD's? All ripped and stored in S3. Maybe its just my bent as a tech professional, but I'd rather have the bits than the atoms.
- nitrogen 12y ago
  Having the bits is fine as long as you actually have the bits, not a DRMed stream.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    Agreed. I strip the DRM off of all my bits. I paid for them, they're mine.

webmaven 12y ago

>> Even the most active readers with a full-time job get to read at most about 3-4 books per month. It is to laugh. I usually manage to read (or in some cases, reread) 5-10 novels a month. I have on occasion read as many as 15 novels in a month (admittedly older, and thus shorter, works).

ajkjk 12y ago
But you are (sadly, maybe) relatively rare in reading that much. I love reading and I still don't read more than 1-2 a month... and I read more than many of my friends.
- mitchty 12y ago
  Same here, but the issue i have is that most books tend to be technical so that vastly limits the throughput. Regular books are pretty easy to get through. Unless they're written by Peter Hamilton.
  - webmaven 12y ago
    Or Neal Stephenson. ;-)
- webmaven 12y ago
  That's not the point. I know I am unusual. but even if I am at the top end of 'most active readers' (which I actually know I am not), my example still points out a failure of imagination and/or analysis in this article. I'll also point out that restricting the analysis to people like myself (and presumably you) who have a full time job is also rather amusing, as I read much more when I was a teenager in high school (and in fact got a part time job in a bookstore to feed my habit / take advantage of an employee discount).
  - ternaryoperator 12y ago
    So, you are manifestly an exception and you chastise the author of the original post for not including you, an avowed exception, in his calculation of what most people need.
    - webmaven 12y ago
      I am chastising the author of the original post for setting an upper bound that is far too low. I may be unusual, but I am not a complete outlier, there are plenty of folks between myself and his upper bound.

largote 12y ago

I personally only care about the shipping. I'd gladly ditch all of the other tack-on services for $10 less a year.

stock_toaster 12y ago
> I personally only care about the shipping. I only care about the shipping as well. > I'd gladly ditch all of the other tack-on services for $10 less a month. I would even ditch the other tack-on services and keep the existing price if I could opt to "stop using OnTrac for anything"! OnTrac regularly delivers late, not at all, or with the package arriving in a condition that my friends and I have started to refer as "OnTrac condition". Maybe you have to pay extra to not get the "looks like it was kicked down several flights of stairs stairs and smells like it was rubbed down with cigarette butts" treatment?

GregorStocks 12y ago

It seems like the hardest part of providing these services is getting the content owners on board. I haven't seen much indication that Amazon is better at cracking that nut than anybody else.

ebiester 12y ago
That's because the pricepoint is ludicrous. If I buy two CDs a month, that's more money that both creator and music business will see than a month of Spotify. (Now, I happen to buy the CDs and use Spotify as a discovery service, but most people think their moral obligation is satisfied when their legal obligation is.) Further, free/cheap alternatives reduce demand for premium services. Why would content creators cannibalize their own revenue streams?
- MarkPNeyer 12y ago
  i'd rather eat myself on my own terms than get eaten.
- eikenberry 12y ago
  If you feel a moral obligation should come into play then you shouldn't be buying CDs or Spotify. They both serve to prop up the copyright industry with their perverted ambitions to retard human culture and development in exchange for short term profit.
  - ebiester 12y ago
    We have a fundamental difference of ethical concerns here. I'll be on board with your view once we reach post-scarcity, but right now humans still need to eat, and high quality production still requires money to produce. Every hour that a quality musician can afford not to work is an hour they can be working on refining their craft. It has already been shown that touring pays less than minimum wage (yes, including those fucking t-shirts) for all but the top acts, so the purchase of music is one of the few ways to stay afloat. The truth is, if we support the musicians that make the music which we want to hear more, then we will get more of that music. I'm an ardent supporter of Lessig et. al, but the proposed alternative revenue models aren't working.

pbreit 12y ago

It's interesting hat music now looks like the most enlightened industry given it's the only one with a meaningful amount of product available on a subscription basis.

beloch 12y ago

Note that all those nice features of Amazon Prime only apply to the U.S. version. The Canadian version is $79/year and only includes two-day shipping. I wouldn't be surprised if most other international versions of Prime are only shipping at present. Interestingly, after having had Prime for a year and not having renewed it, I've noticed that Amazon.ca seems to have deliberately downgraded their free super-saver shipping. It used to be that if you ordered something early Monday you could receive it by Friday. Not every time, but most of the time. Now super-saver orders arrive the following week reliably. They also make "standard" non-free shipping the default selection where super-saver used to be default if your order was large enough to qualify. I'm not a huge fan of companies that make their premium offers more attractive by making the basic offerings worse, and then make the worst possible option default. As for all-you-can-consume media... As a canuck I doubt this will ever come under one subscription within my lifetime. Media rights are a fustercluck up here. Even Canadian Netflix is a pale, pathetic shadow of U.S. Netflix.

jmspring 12y ago
As someone living in the US, I happen to have Amazon Prime + Netlix (disc + streaming) and Hulu Plus (keep meaning to cancel, but actually like some of the b-movies). None of the streaming services actually have decent content available on a regular basis. Want to see the original of Conan the Barbarian? It got replaced on Netflix by the crappy remake just after it's release. All three are mostly useful for assorted TV series viewing. Little, of interest, movie-wise is available on them on a regular basis. I'm actually reevaluating the whole Netflix/Hulu subscription thing.
SCdF 12y ago
And there are countries for which there is no Prime at all.
- ollysb 12y ago
  I think that would be the majority actually, the list may be a lot longer but the only ones I've been able to confirm are USA, UK, and Canada (perhaps someone could fill me in).

brownbat 12y ago

There will never be one stop shopping for all copyrighted IP (absent some scheme like compulsory licensing). Once some service controls a significant user base, its priorities start to shift. It's cheaper to make additional investments in advertising to gain users (or convince existing users to consume content you already license) rather than continue to add content. If you go from 1000 to 2000 titles, your reputation for content increases proportionately. If you go from 1,000,000 to 1,001,000 titles, it's not clear anyone will notice. It becomes increasingly expensive to enhance the value of your service by acquiring new content. Sure, the most successful distributor can gain more bargaining power with some content owners, but at the same time, holdout IP owners can threaten enormous rents or go to other distributors out of a desire for a niche image. Upstart competitors can risk more to gain niche exclusives, hoping for a breakaway hit that will bring them into the game. If there's an oligopoly, like we sort of have now, the two lead services will compete for exclusivity, making content balkinized across services so no one can really get everything they want in one place. Neither Amazon Prime nor Netflix will ever provide everything people want to watch, and it will always be a little easier for them to provide just a little less than you want to try to build a broad common pool of cheaply satisfied subscribers (while making the costs higher for services that might try to cater to those with more eclectic tastes). Compulsory licensing could fix this, it's what we use for terrestrial radio stations and a few other arenas. Basically any radio station is allowed to play any song, they just tabulate royalties and pay lump sums at the end of the month. If we had this for streaming services, the distributors would actually have to compete on distribution, and we wouldn't have the quality of backroom deals determining winners and losers in the streaming space. We'd actually get a long tail, instead of ridiculously tiny fractions of critically acclaimed film lists actually becoming available for the public to watch. 13 of the AFI Top 100: http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/55041194/afi-100-movies-netflix-streaming http://www.hollywood.com/news/movies/55041194/afi-100-movies... 40+ of 700+ Criterion films: http://criterioncast.com/netflix/ http://criterioncast.com/netflix/ 6 of Spike Lee's "Essential 86": http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike-lees-list-of-essentials-that-are-streaming-on-netflix http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/films-on-spike-lees-...

Thrymr 12y ago
> There will never be one stop shopping for all copyrighted IP (absent some scheme like compulsory licensing). That is a really sad state of affairs. When bookstores and record shops were where we got content, we didn't have to go to one shop for Random House (or Warner Brothers) and a different one for Harper Collins (or Sony).

cortesoft 12y ago

I already know the cost of unlimited access to books; A library card is free.

agildehaus 12y ago
Most libraries also have magazines, music, and movies too.
blakesterz 12y ago
How the heck are there only 2 comments on this that say "library"??!! Seriously, that is the only answer needed here. You want anything, ANYTHING, all that stuff listed there, just go to your local library and they'll find it for you. (This assumes you're in North America, may not apply to other places, not sure on that, also may assume your local library is not a tiny really broke library with no budget.)
jerf 12y ago
In all seriousness, this doesn't scale; if the number of Netflix users started watching all their movies this way, there would be a huge and swift move towards either changing the libraries an insanely large fee for content (on top of their current structure) or some other legislative move to block it. Libraries are shielded by their perceived social capital, but that only goes so far.
- tmarthal 12y ago
  Honestly, the only thing that a local well-funded library does not give you is instant gratification like Netflix streaming. If you are willing to setup a queue and allow most content 2-4 weeks for delivery, you should not have to pay for any music, [hard|soft|comic] books, magazines, or movies on DVD. Granted, this is also for non-current releases. Also, you may be underestimating the legal protections that libraries have, and also the voting power (and uncanny monetary resources) of the common library patron. I am not an expert in the subject, but it would be interesting to see recent legislation for/against library systems (budget cuts notwithstanding).
- ZenPro 12y ago

spaboleo 12y ago

I carry this idea around since a couple of months as well. And I would totally be willing to pay $100 per month for this, if it only would include literally everything: Paywalls of newssites, magazines, books, scientific papers, series, movies, music, audiobooks. Everything. - DRM / Region Code free. - With curated meta-data. - Accessible wordlwide. - Free choice of audio tracks, independent of the customer's location. - Available upon release (no delays). - Streaming and local download (well-established, non-proprietary file formats!). - All accessible from this one central "media hub". Most of the services have lost me as a customer, due to ridiculous limitations (Player), only streaming possible (no sufficient "download over wifi and playback offline" options) etc. What the content providers are missing...it is about convenience. I'd be willing to pay $1200 a year to have this convenience, freedom and feeling of not being "screwed over". Right now I am paying for none of those services and lent my media on DVD or BR from friends and colleagues. Or listen to free music streaming services and podcasts. I get audiobooks on CDs from the local library. I get books from friends or the library. I don't have cable or anything else. The content providers are missing out. Because my yearly spendings for media are below $100 and I pretty much can observe similar behavior amongst my friends and colleagues. It is a big opportunity, but it has to be done right.

Tloewald 12y ago

What's wrong with paying for what you use, assuming prices are reasonable? Why have a cornucopia of crap? In the US a fast net connection costs about $60. Once you've got that you can watch, say, 3h of whatever you like for $6 every night -- assuming you pay Apple or Amazon $2/h of content. Assuming 50% of your viewing is repeat viewing, that drops to $3/night. Movies cost more, maybe as much as $20. But you probably don't religiously watch 3h of TV per night. So let's say $120/month at the high end. If you read, books are cheaper per hour than TV unless you're a very fast reader. Magazines -- seriously who cares? Music is $20/h but almost all of it is repeat listening. That's pretty much the upper bound. In practice there's pointless friction and inconvenience. Some shows aren't available. Some shows have long delays (HBO, Showtime) before they can be (legally) downloaded. OTOH huge amounts of content are available much more cheaply. The only thing this model doesn't cover is watching TV as mindless background noise -- paying $2/h for reality shows is probably going to drive you broke. I think deliberately picking and paying for content is a better way to consume content, sends the right signals to the right people, and also wastes less time (don't watch stupid background noise shows, think carefully about what you watch, and only watch good stuff with no ads).

icebraining 12y ago
I agree, but on the other hand, people don't like having to be constantly making the economical decision about whether to watch something; it's mentally taxing, which is unwelcome when you're trying to relax by watching a movie or a TV show. It can also prevent one from discovering offbeat content, by making those bets more costly. For example, I quite liked Super[1], but if I had to make to choice to pay $20 beforehand, maybe I'd watch something worse but that I was guaranteed to enjoy. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_(2010_American_film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_(2010_American_film)
- Tloewald 12y ago
  Actually discovery and serendipity are great features of services like Netflix and Spotify, but it's also perfectly easy to put up free content (e.g. pilots are often free) on iTunes or Amazon.

WCityMike 12y ago

Library.

abalone 12y ago

Strange definition of "unlimited". E.g. For movies it's just what Netflix & Amazon offer. Sure, you can play those over and over as much as you want. Reminds me of those software bundles from yesteryear that offered 1,000+ fonts. In the end, you get what you pay for.

bigbugbag 12y ago

This is a poorly worded question as the op doesn't actually answer it. This is not a matter of cost as this fully negates the cost of the whole required infrastructure, but a matter of price tag. More like "In the US how much one could be charged on top of internet access to be granted access to a limited selection of limited online digital libraries of stuff". IMHO this is severely limited, us only, online only (mostly), broadband only (mostly), limited libraries, etc. this is subpar compared to what people2people file sharing can offer which is far from being unlimited nevertheless.

ZenPro 12y ago

This comment more than anything shows how divorced tech thinking can be from reality. >> In all seriousness, this [the concept of libraries] doesn't scale 1. It scaled perfectly well for 3 centuries with no reason not to continue scaling with the requisite funding. It could be argued that the concept of a library has scaled since 2600 BC. It scales for almost every town in the Western world and every single University, College and School worldwide. Beyond food/clean water sources and a medical centre the next municipal institution offered to struggling African and Southern American communities is often a School/Library with books. In the West, demand is tempered by the need to physically go to a Library to source the media for consumption. Some might see this as a barrier to entry for certain customers; good. It is not a barrier to scaling though, it is a net benefit that makes the customer flow manageable. A similar argument can be made against Amazon. You physically need to access the internet? You need a computer or mobile device? You need a payment card? You need an address? Ha. Too many barriers. The only barrier to a library is physically arriving at the library and in some cases mobile libraries will come to you with an RV packed with media for free consumption. Only a person blinded by the current SV-inspired business models can look at something in existence, already scaling and say according to me I do not believe this idea scales 2. Since it is impossible for any individual to consume the sum total of media at the same time the system has built in redundancy guaranteeing it scales effectively. IE You cannot physically check out and consume every piece of media therefore unlimited copies are not required to be stored. Data analysis yields the optimum level of media storage further improved by aggregating analysed lending habits. 3. Libraries are not weakened by greater public interest, they are strengthened by it. The demise of the social library has been largely brought about by the ubiquitousness of online content (including piracy). If those sources dried up overnight library use would explode in growth and Governments would double their budgets. The idea that if libraries suddenly gained too many customers they would be shut down is ludicrous with absolutely no credible reasoning. Source: History.