by thayne 12 hours ago
I want a separation between the streaming platform companies and the content making companies, so that the streaming companies can compete on making a better platform/service and the content companies compete on making better content.
I don't want one company that owns everything, I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content (scifi/fantasy, stuff for kids, old movies, international, sports, etc.) regardless of what company made it.
This is how it worked a decade+ ago, when there was still alpha to be had on providing better streaming service. It was great and we got things like the Netflix Prize and all sorts of content ranking improvements, better CDN platforms, lower latency and less buffering, more content upgraded to HD and 4K. Plus some annoying but clearly effective practices like auto-play of trailers and unrelated shows.
Now these are all solved problems, so there is no benefit in trying to compete on making a better platform / service. The only thing left is competing on content.
> I want several companies that are able to license whatever content they want. And ideally the customer can choose between a subscription that includes everything, and paying for content a la carte, or maybe subscriptions that focus on specific kinds of content
This seems like splitting hairs, it's almost exactly what we do have. You can still buy and rent individual shows & movies from Apple and Amazon and other providers. Or you can subscribe to services. The only difference is there is no one big "subscription that includes everything", you need 10 different $15 subscriptions to get everything. Again, kind of splitting hairs though. The one big subscription would probably be the same price as everything combined anyway.
It is worth noting that the Netflix Prize winner's solution was never meaningfully used, because Netflix pivoted from ranking content based on what you tell them you like to ranking content based on clicks and minutes watched.
To say that "we have solved ranking" because Netflix decided to measure shallow metrics and addiction is... specious at best. Instead the tech industry (in all media domains, not just streaming video) replaced improving platforms and services in meaningful ways with surveillance and revenue extraction.
> ranking content based on clicks and minutes watched.
I suspect they just push what they want you to watch, like their own content. Seems that way to me at least, based on their quite shitty "recommendations"
> I suspect they just push what they want you to watch, like their own content.
Having worked close to the recsys folks at Netflix, I can tell you that this statement couldn't be further from the truth.
Why do they care what you watch? I expect they pay a flat fee to license content (if not, how is that policed?) so the marginal cost to them is the same no matter what you watch.
I'd guess they push you to their content for the same reason they make that content in the first place: they believe you'll like it and keep watching it.
Ad placement is one wrinkle that would incentivize promoting their own content, but I don't get the impression that's big enough to make the difference at the margins.
>I expect they pay a flat fee to license content
I wouldn't tbh, though I'll admit I'm speculating solely on public information. During the 2023 strikes, SAG-AFTRA and the WGA negotiated additional residuals based upon whether 20% of the streaming services subscriber base viewed the content within 90 days of release.[1] So, streaming platforms are evidently willing to share subscriber viewership data with 3rd parties if it's a contractual requirement.
I would be surprised if content licensors haven't negotiated an as good or better deal for themselves.
[1] https://variety.com/2023/biz/news/sag-aftra-streaming-bonus-...
If people are watching their content, they can rely less on licensed content and drive those costs down. It's a similar value prop to any vertical integration.
If you mostly use Netflix to watch licensed content, you're more likely to cancel when all the licensed content is removed from the catalog.
If they successfully steer you towards Netflix produced content, you're less sensitive to what happens to the licensed content.
The story I heard about most Netflix content going for very long is that after two seasons a show's cast unionizes and they didn't want to pay up and they'd rather cancel shows, which seems awful penny-wise pound foolish of them.
I think they also used their metrics to figure out people liked kevin spacey (whoops) - and created house of cards - which catapulted netflix's production side.
https://medium.com/@danial.a/how-netflix-used-data-to-create...
Exactly. Nothing is really preventing a $200/month aggregator beyond paying a bunch of lawyers and people not wanting to pay that. I know I'll live with some service fragmentation in exchange for not paying for a bunch of stuff I'll maybe watch once in a blue moon. And I'll probably buy some discs for things I really want to see.
My solution with manufactured content is to just rotate services. I maintain netflix year round because they have enough, but I'll buy the special rate and cancel in the same day, giving me a month at a time of each of the different ones. It also gives them time to release the whole season, instead of dribbling them out over the course of months.
It's sports that really have driven me away. I like collegiate wrestling. This is by no means a mainstream sport. But to watch what I want, I need to subscribe to flowrestling, ESPN, B1G, and BTN. The last two are really mind blowing, because the big 10 seems to think I need two subscriptions to watch a single season for a niche sport.
It's just too much for me to bear -- not financially, but morally. I won't reward such behavior, so I just don't watch.
Then there are all the games that are on broadcast and could normally watch them for free, but unless you have an antenna, you need to subscribe to get your local channel.
Now these leagues need to contend with my family and all the others like it where the kids won't have the nostalgia for that game that was on every Sunday. We don't watch the games, so we don't go to the games, so they'll never grow into being fans themselves.
The NHL does seem to try putting their games in front of their fans as the lone exception.
Exclusive deals are preventing it. Media content is resistant to commodification, making it a durable value proposition, and this makes exclusive licensing deals highly desirable - lawyers hired by an upstart aren't going to make a dent in this.
Doesn't the ease and low risk of individual copyright violation place an upper bound of sorts. Sharing sites are still everywhere, and they were never very successful in making people confuse civil for criminal.
Don't disagree. Just paying lawyers was sort of a facile dismissal on my part. In video content, there's a lot of history that makes it hard to get closer to the way things are in music. Though there are also monetary incentives and practicalities as well.
Yes, that's the lawyers part. They are stopping you from just skipping the impossible licensing step.
They can charge that, but I won't pay it. I give myself like 20/month and rotate between services. Still barely worth it
You can actually mostly do that through Amazon Video (although...eww). Missing HBO and Netflix but you can get a lot of the others including Apple TV, AMC+, Paramount+, etc.
> there is no one big "subscription that includes everything"
You're right, but the switching cost is super easy, and _most_ of the time, these networks aren't putting out new content that I care that much about, so I've found it easiest to just swap services, keeping one subscription active at a time, and then switching again when I've finished watching everything interesting on the next.
> The only thing left is competing on content.
I don't know. Music streaming services do pretty much follow this separation of content and service. At least unless you really care about exactly which music you can access which I think most people don't.
(That's probably partly why music streaming services don't compete on content; most people don't care exactly which funky music they're listening to as long as it is funky, and had most of the popular stuff. But they definitely care if they want to watch Stranger Things and they can't watch Stranger Things but maybe you're interested in these other crap knock-offs?)
Anyway the point is music streaming services still find ways to compete. I guess they would prefer it if they could compete on content though.
> (That's probably partly why music streaming services don't compete on content; most people don't care exactly which funky music they're listening to as long as it is funky, and had most of the popular stuff. But they definitely care if they want to watch Stranger Things and they can't watch Stranger Things but maybe you're interested in these other crap knock-offs?)
Idk. I can imagine an alternate universe where Taylor Swift's new album was exclusive to Spotify. All the Swifties using Apple Music probably aren't interested in "Taylor Swift knockoffs".
It's not entirely obvious to me why this hasn't happened.
I think steaming just represents such a small share of revenue for professional musicians that negotiating over it isn't worth the headache for the most part. For Swift in particular, touring definitely represents the overwhelming majority of her income.
>Anyway the point is music streaming services still find ways to compete.
Some recommendations and playlists I guess. Most of us (outside of Spotify) get them because of a bundle with other offerings from a vendor. Spotify definitely has a following but I don't really care much and have an Apple bundle anyway.
And Spotify is barely profitable and its major competitors treat music streaming as just a slightly above break even feature to combine with other services.
Ah yes, today where they optimized out the recommendation algo to the point I haven't found something recommended to be watch worthy in years. The only thing worse than the video streaming recommendations is what's become of Amazon/Audible's book recommendations (though Spotify is trying hard to enshitify their algos to catch up).
Sad that we can't have nice things, but capitalism must be fed and I guess good, targeted recommendation algorithms are anti-capital.
This feels very much like "United Stats vs Paramount Pictures: The Sequel"[1].
Vertical integration was the key problem back then. Major studios owned major cinema chains. They made it hard for independent cinemas to show the films people wanted, and they made it very hard for independent filmmakers to get their films shown anywhere. It was highly anti-competitive.
I wouldn't expect the U.S. government to step in this time around though. It's very clear that competition and benefiting consumers are no longer priorities.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....
> I want a separation between the streaming platform companies and the content making companies, so that the streaming companies can compete on making a better platform/service and the content companies compete on making better content.
Exactly the correct solution.
We did something similar with movie theaters and film studios for decades, up until a couple years ago. Same sort of problem, same solution should work.
Not only movie theaters, but also movie rental and selling of VHS tapes/DVDs etc.
One could go to the favorite department store and get movies from all studios right next to each other, sorted by genre or title or similar.
Music publishing vs radio stations is a fascinating example - compulsory licensing, meaning radio stations are free to broadcast any music at all; even rules preventing radio stations and DJs from accepting payola from publishers to promote their records.
Compulsory licensing sounds interesting but isn't there a fundamental problem in terms of setting price? Music tends to not have big budget differences. Should a show with a budget of 10k get the same fee as a show with a budget of a $1mil? And who sets the price?
Do you pay a different ticket price to go see a James Cameron movie at the cinema than you do for a Wes Anderson movie?
How does that work?
Like vertical integration isn't always bad 100% of the time, but this particular case of marrying distribution and production seems to serve minimal beneficial purpose and inevitably the main outcome is high levels of rents-collection and squeezing the people doing the actual creative work. There's pretty much nothing but up-side to forcing the two roles to remain separate.
It's probably got something to do with copyright. Like the way it interacts with markets makes this sort of arrangement net-harmful pretty much any time you see it.
> It's probably got something to do with copyright. Like the way it interacts with markets makes this sort of arrangement net-harmful pretty much any time you see it.
I would say it is monopoly.
If you are a luxury brand you may sell your pen in a brand store only and limit access and will have some business.
But other companies will produce comparable pens and then your only moat is the brand identity but in all objective criteria the other pens are equal.
With intellectual work you got the monopoly. If I want the Taylor Swift song I don't want Lady Gaga, even though both may be good. If I want a Batman movie, I don't want Iron Man. These products aren't comparable in the same way. And another vendor (studio) can't produce an equal product in the same way as with the pen example.
You can still do that though, it's just less convenient than streaming and you need to go outside.
In my city people literally put boxes of DVDs on the street and I can get several months of movies to watch by just taking a casual stroll in my neighborhood.
We did that because the only way to see movies was in the theaters.
Exactly how do you pass a law in 2025 that no one is allowed to create their own content and publish it on the internet?
This should really be the end goal. We are worse off than cable right now with all these streaming services and worse , overlapping content.
Strong disagree on being worse off than cable. I now almost never see ads, that is a huge benefit in my book.
it is nice that if you pay enough you can avoid ads, but they are definitely coming to all the lower price tiers… and the premium tiers will of course get more expensive over time
At some point, the market will no longer be able to bear premium price hikes, and they'll just shove in ads instead - exactly as happened with cable.
There is a difference between a streaming platform and cable. Streaming platforms are on demand while cable is broadcast.
To have an ads/no ads option with cable, you need 2 distinct channels with different programming, as you need something fill what would be the ad breaks. With an on-demand platform, there is no fixed schedule, so you can insert ads at will without having to account for that.
So even if the market for no ads is small, it doesn't cost them much to provide that option, and they just have to price it above how much they get from ads to make a profit. Even the seldom used YouTube Premium is actually quite profitable for Google. Streaming platforms won't miss that opportunity.
Whenever a no ads tier is offered, a few ads always get shoved into the premium subscription eventually (see: spotify) because companies want to be able to reach the premium customers, who have more disposable income on average.
HBO never had a tier with ads when it was on cable, it was simply expensive.
Lots of things didn't have ads on the past (basic cable TV for example). Today the model has changed to being expensive and still collect data/push ads. This isn't a cable vs streaming thing, it's a then vs now thing.
This meme needs to die and was never true.
Cable TV started out as a means to broadcast network TV in areas where they couldn’t get it over the air. Those stations always had ads.
Then came nationwide rebroadcast of local “SuperStations” in Atlanta (TBS) and Chicago (WGN) with ads.
There has never been a time where basic cable didn’t have ads
True. People forget television itself is barely 100 years old. Business models don't grow on trees, they need to be invented and they evolve along with the technology.
Advertising was with us for centuries, but it took until last few decades for it to evolve into a social cancer it is today.
I'm really confused why this comment is downvoted to me. It's a pretty salient observation in my opinion. If it's because it's obvious to others, I think it bears repetition because it's an important distinction to the contrary.
That was 80s Reagan/conservative American. Those folks weren't as greedy as modern day companies and they cared about their product/experience, whereas nowadays caring about that is outsourced (see the Mad Men mess) and greed is king.
It's wild to long for the day of 'caring', 'sane', Reagan era corporate 'governance'.
Look up "corporate raiders" if you think business people weren't greedy in the 80s, or the dissolution of Ma Bell, that used to rent you your phone. In fact, the 80s era cable TV also started the box rental racket. You could not choose to buy, you had to rent.
Regan's politics are completely orthogonal to IP content today.
My understanding is that they already make more money on the ad tiers.
(So the price increases are about finding the revenue maximizing price for the ad free tiers, not about overall profit)
...and piracy will once again become rampant!
Where's the amazon prime tier where I don't get ads?
As far as I can tell there isn't one. Even when you pay extra for no ads the interface itself is infested with them. A truly ad free amazon prime tier wouldn't constantly push shows and movies you that you have to pay for on top of the higher monthly fee you're already paying for or show ads for shows and movies on other platforms.
They're clever with that, by offering subscriptions to various producers and other streaming platforms within Amazon Prime video UI. The Amazon subscription is very cheap, but then you end up sub-subscribing to SkyShowtime and MGM and Apple Video to get access to your favorite space shows, and suddenly it's cable 2.0.
Wouldn't be so bad if the player didn't suck. You'd think video streaming chrome would be a solved problem by now, but it's not, and somehow we're regressing on this front.
It is called: Prime Video Ad Free
Go to the Prime Video website, or check your settings in Prime Video on your device.
I have lived a video ad free life for decades. I am convinced video ads do bad things to our brains. In aggregate, beyond any individual impact they may or may not have.
Ad blockers, ad free YouTube, Kagi, … whatever it takes.
Two to five years ago. :P depending on how you feel about their cross-promotions (which are ads, but at least aren't inserted into the content)
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Cable was like $80/mo for me and the vast majority of the channels was absolute garbage. Now I pay like 25/mo and swap services every month or two. There’s always something new and interesting to watch - for my relatively minimal watching hours at least. I’m not sure how you feel worse off? You know you don’t need to stay subscribed to every service year round?
Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?
Streaming is infinitely better.
> Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?
On-demand cable content existed and was significant at the tail end of the period when cable was still dominant, so it is probably lost of most people's baseline (at least, those that didn't either abandon it early or never had it at all) in comparing to cable.
Steaming is slowly going back to that too. Netflix got popular for letting people binge shows that released but increasingly they are putting out shows one episode a week so that they can keep the hype up over a longer period and better monitor/control social media.
Netflix also hides a ton of their content and aggressively pushes whatever is new because it makes it easier for them to get immediate metrics on how popular something is.
Right now, you're pretty much stuck watching whatever is being "streamed in that moment" as it is. For example, netflix added the austin powers movies in October, but by Dec 1 they were removed. You had a window of just 2 months to watch and if you missed them you're stuck waiting for them to "rerun" just like regular TV. I expect that trend to continue with shorter and shorter windows as Netflix pushes people to watch shows when they want you to watch them.
growing up I always had on-demand and recording on the set top boxes
Certainly TiVo came in--as well as boxes from cable companies (though I only had TiVo). And, if you really want to go old school, you could program VCRs to record shows if you were off on vacation.
But there was a long period even after cable came in for more channels and potentially better reception when TV was largely on a set schedule.
Didn't the VCR still work with cable? (I haven't used one)
It did, but it was awkward.
Analog cable channels were on a wider range of frequencies than regular TV (radio broadcast) channels. So the VCR's tuner had to be "cable ready".
Some cable channels, especially premium channels, were "scrambled", which meant you needed a cable box to tune them. So the VCR, by itself, could only record the basic channels that came with all cable packages. To record something from a movie channel (HBO, Showtime, etc.), you needed the cable box to tune it in and provide an unscrambled signal to your VCR.
And that meant the cable box needed to be set to the correct channel at the time the VCR woke up and started recording. The simple method was to leave it on the correct channel, but that was tedious and error prone. As I recall, there were also VCRs that could send a command to the cable box to turn it on (emulating the cable box remote) and set the channel, but you had to set that up.
Later, when digital cable came along, you needed the cable box involved for every recording because the channels were no longer coming over the wire in a format that the VCR could tune in.
So yeah, you could do it, but it was a pain.
I was probably still using recordable VCRs when I had cable--though it was probably still composite video/audio input. But at some point I started using TiVo. Don't remember the whole tech evolution.
For a short time there VCRs and DVRs even came with ad blockers that automatically removed commercials!
How was that possible? Audio loudness?
I remember upgrading the tivo for this
Where I lived the local cable company boasted something like 250 channels on the base tier. But when your cable box arrived you discovered there were less than 50 actual broadcast channels, and the rest were pricey on-demand channels. I think it was about $5 for a movie, which is more than Amazon Prime today and much more in constant dollars.
Why is overlapping content an issue? Isn't that good?
Let's say I like Show A and Show B. Show A is available on Provider 1 and Provider 2, Show B is available at Provider 2 and Provider 3. Thanks to overlapping content, I can subscribe to Provider 2 and I can watch both of my favorite shows.
It depends on what you watch and how much you watch.
Cable in its heyday was expensive, even for a low tier package with CNN, TNT, MTV, Nickelodeon and other non-premium channels. Most people did not have premium channels like HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, etc. Even Disney was a paid add-on in the early 90s. Adding or removing those channels at the minimum meant calling customer service and in certain eras of cable technology could even mean waiting on a tech visit to provision physical descrambling equipment. And obviously TV was linear, not on-demand.
If you watch a series or movie here and there, and aren't a big TV viewer, the streaming era is much, much cheaper with greater choice. You can often even access what you want to watch through a free trial, a single-month subscription, or a free service like Tubi or Pluto. Movie rental options are much better, more convenient, and cheaper (often even before adjusting for inflation) than Blockbuster, and you have access to much better information before you pull the trigger on renting a movie you haven't heard of before.
Oh my god no. The content is much better and you can watch whenever you want.
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This is how it was with cable, and it was actually better for the content providers. They made shows and got fat checks from the cable companies every year.
Then they all copied Netflix, because the stockmarket was rewarding it, and had to start dealing with billing, customer retention, technology platforms, advertising platforms. And they all lost a ton of money a doing it.
Not quite the same. Cable had regional monopolies due to the high barrier of entry and economies of scale (building cable infrastructure). There is still some economy of scale for streaming platforms, but if you get rid of exclusive content and the difficulty of making license deals (especially for a small player), then it is a lot easier for a new startup to compete in the area then it ever was to compete with a cable company.
I'm more for requiring licensing to anyone and everyone for the same price, including yourself. No more exclusives. Streaming platforms compete on cost, features and availability of niche content. Even further, choosing to not license content to anyone creates an implicit license for everyone. No more lost content. But I don't think any countries are looking at legislation like this, with entertainment way down on everyone's agenda.
You can today no? You can buy or rent a single movie / tv series from apple tv, amazon etc. problem is most people don't want to buy each thing they want to watch.
You mean the "license while they feel like it" kind of purchase?
If I could pay for individual TV shows and actually own them I'd definitely prefer that over the disaster we have today. Buying a blue-ray and ripping it is not very practical and it's by design.
Sometimes you can. But there are also shows where the only (legal) way to watch it is on a particular streaming platform where it is "exclusive".
Netflix (notoriously) does not license most of their content this way. You can't rent/buy Stranger Things on Apple TV, no matter how much you're willing to pay. If Netflix acquires Warner Bros, I expect this restriction to extend to that content too over time.
You can have one middle man platform to stream everything but competition to get good movies to that platform, it's a shame that we have so many platforms now
This is how cable worked, no? And how streaming has been working. And it MIGHT be getting things cheaper, maybe? I guess?
But watching specific stuff you want is hell. The cognitive load of searching a bunch of services, or finding a site that tells you where to watch, then it’s not in that same service in your country, you might have to pay extra, or sign up for another streaming service or… Holy cow, it’s a terrible experience.
I’m not saying I have a better idea, or that it couldn’t be worse. But it’s terrible.
I agree with you that modern streaming service are a hassle, BUT - I'm old enough to remember Blockbuster, too. It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you drove to the video store, found a copy, paid $2 to rent it for 24 hours, tried to remember to rewind it and got it back to the store before it was late. Streaming services are _definitely_ more convenient.
Right now, you can pretty much rent any movie you want through Amazon Prime with not late fee or rewind penalty, but you have to pay a couple of (extra!) dollars to do it. This is, undebatably, a massive improvement over the way it used to be in every way, but it still bothers me even though I can't put my finger on exactly why.
An analyst friend of mine wrote that Napster was more about convenience than price (free). I disagreed with him at the time but, with the rise of various streaming services, I've come to view myself as at least partially wrong.
Maybe not the broke 20 year old per another comment. (Who doesn't have a lot of money anyway.) But a lot of people are happy and able to pay for a subscription that doesn't involve screwing around with a lot of dodgy stuff.
Gabe Newell (Valve/Steam) seems to agree with your analyst friend's take.
> The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...
I thought this conclusion about Napster was and is widely considered as true and most important lesson of that time. Success of YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and Steam and the near-demise of piracy are usually attributed to that.
I'm talking from at least a decade ago. There was a pretty wide assumption (including from myself) that the main attraction of Napster was piracy; it certainly was mine at the time as I replaced a bunch of old vinyl. The expansion of music streaming services are certainly a pretty good indication that convenience of getting mainstream content at prices that people historically paid for vinyl/CDs works pretty well.
Even Amazon Prime’s catalogue is only a third the size of what Netflix had 15 years ago.
Watching specific stuff you want to see is 1000x easier today than it was in the 1990s, when cable ran this whole industry, and anything you wanted came bundled with 100 things you didn't want.
It still works this way.
I agree that separation of concerns might bring better content but I can't afford buying multiple services in hopes of catching what I want.
(Actually, I can afford it but I'm ... frugal.)
I want all the movies for free without pirating
How do movies get made under that system?
Look at books: You can go to your local public library and borrow any book for free, yet new books are still made under that system.
Fair point! In many libraries, you can go to the library and check out DVDs as well.
That could be a way to make videos available for free but inconvenient enough that people would pay for a more convenient way, just as they do with books.
We could deliver to consumers over some sort of "cable". But what would we call it?
Let the market figure it out. There has never been an easier time to make content and there has never been an easier time to distribute content.
I want more than two parties competing to run the democracy, also.
The things you want arn't going to happen under the current operating procedures of the United States of America.
I hope that's clear.
This would be ideal. The cable model was inherently flawed; it was just a series of local monopolies that poisoned it. Give consumers a choice. But considering everyone operates like Disney anymore and is highly protective of its IP I doubt this world will ever exist without direct government intervention.
Honestly the biggest problem was/is copyright law. Make everything older than 10-14 years public domain and streaming services would have endless amounts of content always available. Independently operated streaming sites would be all over the internet.
That would also solve the problem of AI training data. Build a data set, wait 14 years, and it's guaranteed to be legal.