zlacker

Commoditization is profits tending to fall. Which is why all the secompanies have to fight to maintain their profits. In this case by raising prices.

As for the streaming space, it honestly isn't that competitive. There aren't that many players. If anything, what we're seeing here is price leadership (which is price fixing and collusion but, you know, legal) Netflix raises their prices $2/month and weirdly Hulu, Disney and Max all follow suit. Strange how that works.

We saw the exact same thing with cable: bundling channels to maintain profits, channels charging more, increasing prices to counter losing customers, etc. And why were the channel prices going up to the cable TV providers? The exact same set of reasons relating to falling profits.

>>jmyeet+(OP)
Entertainment is also not fungible. Each show is basically a mini monopoly granted by the existence of copyright law. So anyone who wants a specific show has to follow where it goes...and what we've seen is rights holders withdrawing from a market (third party distributors) that was fairly setting the price to vertically integrate distribution and command a higher price.

There's something to be said about the idea of not allowing content companies to own distribution...