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Isn't this kind of what they're doing on Google Play, or what was done with Mr. Robot, minus the torrent? The first episode or two are free, then you either pa
by heywire 11y ago
Isn't this kind of what they're doing on Google Play, or what was done with Mr. Robot, minus the torrent? The first episode or two are free, then you either pay per episode or watch via TV subscription. I frequently download free pilot episodes to see if there are any shows I might be interested in watching. I would say that Mr. Robot was a great example of this. I heard about the show by word of mouth (it might have been here, or possibly on Reddit). I do not watch any other shows on USA, so it is likely that I would have never heard of the show had I not had the pilot recommended to me and easily available to watch on YouTube. I think that last part is key. I probably would not have made the effort to download a "USA" app, or jump through hoops to watch it on a web browser. Having it easily available on my phone where I could watch it with the built in YouTube app was perfect.
- ocdtrekkie 11y agoGoogle Play does this occasionally, yes. I wish they did it a lot more often. Pilots of every series should just be free, everywhere, IMHO.
- z3t4 11y agoMy idea is that you share the whole season with "friends" on torrent and other file-sharing sites. Not only the free episodes. You download the entire season! This takes care of both distribution and most of the marketing. You of-course release it with the highest quality! And you do not need any infrastructure whatsoever to do this. As in the spirit of shareware, you let people watch some of the episodes for free, then charge for the rest. And that's the part some smart people has to figure out. An idea is to have the content encoded differently depending on the Internet routes. And some type of block-chain that would give you a key to decode the data, depending on a voucher code you insert to the chain.