zlacker

> Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers

This is a very common narrative to this news. But coming into this news, I think the most common narrative against streaming was essentially "There is not enough consolidation." People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service, but then everyone pulled their content and have their own (Disney, Paramount, etc.)

>>noneth+(OP)
Netflix was also still in the “grow users at all cost” phase. They have since moved to “grow revenue at all costs.”

Everyone likes a service when it’s subsidized by VC dollars. Until they inevitably start turning the screws.

>>noneth+(OP)
The problem is content exclusivity. It would be great if all the content or at least most would be available on all platforms. At least eventually. That would be great for consumers. Mergers like this typically not.

>>tim199+P3
Like we had for music on the radio, compulsory licensing

>>noneth+(OP)
> There is not enough consolidation

This is an absolutely wild (and incorrect) thing to assume. The problem of content lock-in is anti-competitive and it would be better solved without mergers

>>noneth+(OP)
Consumers don't care so much about consolidation as they care about not getting ripped off. When Netflix and Hulu were the only streaming platforms you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted. Now you pay more for a worse experience.

Netflix at least has technical chops. Other studios (looking at you, Paramount-) put out barely functional apps because they know consumers ultimately will pay for their content.

>>noneth+(OP)
People were happy because they only needed one subscription and one app. Buying Warner Bros won't bring that back. If anything, it makes it less likely.

>>yojo+Q2
>Everyone likes a service when it’s subsidized by VC dollars.

Netflix went public in 2002. It was +8 years later that the streaming-only service was launched in 2010. The digital streaming wasn't "subsidized by VC".

Netflix had more content from everybody back then because the other studios licensed their content for cheap prices to Netflix. But those studios then realized that Netflix was growing rapidly on the backs of their content. Once those multi-year contracts expired, studios like Disney didn't renew with Netflix and instead, started their own platform (e.g. Disney+).

>>noneth+(OP)
I think you're right, but I've always been a bit skeptical of that vision -- it implicitly relies on the assumption that "THE streaming service" will choose to make as much content available as technically and legally possible; they're imagining something like "Spotify but for movies and TV shows". But I was always worried about "Apple's App Store but for movies and TV shows": one company with ultimate gatekeeper status over what you can and can't legally watch. (The movie and television business is not like the music business; the financial incentives don't, as far as I can tell, support the same kind of distribution models.)

I'm not particularly thrilled about this kind of consolidation, but given that Warner was going to be bought by somebody, Netflix may be one of the least worst outcomes.

>>noneth+(OP)
As a rule of thumb, consolidation is never good. There are exceptions where consolidated services can improve (eg arguably physical infrastructure, healthcare), but in general this will not benefit the consumer.

>>jasode+w6
These content library contracts are only for a couple of years, and each time one lapses, some terms get negotiated. Nobody in the streaming industry is successful because they have a long term lock on someone else’s content. It’s all about eyeballs and margins.

>>noneth+(OP)
We just need to end all exclusives.

Make it like music streaming, where all services have the same catalog so you can choose on price, features, etc.

>>noneth+(OP)
People were happy when Netflix was cheaper that total sum of what they were paying on cable.

Lower prices is the last thing we'd expect from that deal.

>>MangoT+Qb
As a rule of thumb maybe, but in this case it might well.

>>noneth+(OP)
The assumption back then was that other companies would be making shows. Consolidating even more show production in one company is not something we should want.

>>eloisa+sd
That only happened because the content libraries decided to exit the music streaming game.

It also helped that the largest player in the music content library game (Sony) was not really as adept at software as Comcast, Disney, and NBCU were.

>>sherma+oc
Netflix had a 4 year deal with Starz, which is where a significant chunk of their early streaming content came from (Including all the Disney films).

>>aidenn+Cn
Sure, that was very early though. You could argue that was crucial for establishing their brand, but the industry has caught up and doesn't do that very much now.

>>noneth+(OP)
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.

>>duped+g6
>you paid a pretty low price to get virtually everything you wanted

Depends what you wanted.

Both a deep back catalog of TV and film more generally were always pretty lacking on all-you-could-eat streaming services. Frankly, my biggest complaint with Netflix is that they basically drove local video rental out of business and then shut their own rental down.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>cedill+m6
>People were happy because they only needed one subscription and one app. Buying Warner Bros won't bring that back. If anything, it makes it less likely.

Plus a cable TV subscription in many/most cases.

>>thayne+Ko
This should really be the end goal. We are worse off than cable right now with all these streaming services and worse , overlapping content.

>>noneth+(OP)
People want a single service to pay for that serves all content, not a single corporate entity creating the content the service provides access to. Like how people want a single payment method that works everywhere globally, not a single company that produces all products globally. Bizarre that you don't see a distinction between the two.

>>noneth+(OP)
the POV really is: for every 19 people who will pay $14/mo for their preferred, unbundled service, there's 1 person who would happily pay $300/mo for a bundled service.

premium subs are for people who BUY subs not for people who WANT subs.

>>throwa+Ws
Strong disagree on being worse off than cable. I now almost never see ads, that is a huge benefit in my book.

>>throwa+Ws
Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?

Streaming is infinitely better.

>>philip+Lf
How? This only means prices will go up.

>>Burnin+Eu
> 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.

>>chipot+p8
I think ideally you'd have 2-3 streaming services that all have all the content without exclusives? (So the spotify of movies and tv, the tidal of movies and tv, the bandcamp of movies and tv...)

>>chipot+p8
HBO owns Westworld and stopped streaming it to avoid paying residuals.

>>throwa+Ws
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.

>>mulder+1u
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

>>jasode+w6
You're not wrong, but that doesn't mean they weren't still in "growth" phase.

Their pricing, and their doubling down on account sharing policies over the last few years have shown that they are no longer in a growth phase.

I cancelled my Netflix account a few months ago because I had gotten the "You're not accessing this from your typical location" blocker. Even though I was trying to watch from my permanent residence and I was the account owner / payee.

The reason that happened was that my wife and I own two properties. We are happily married, not separated, but we just like our space... especially with two adult daughters who still live at home with one of their significant others also living in the house.

We are a single family "unit" but have two locations. Furthermore, my wife has sleeping issues and was using Netflix at night in order to fall asleep. To have to get me to check my email for an access code, was a total deal breaker since I would be fast asleep. So that cut her off from her typical usage of Netflix.

And the reason Netflix thought that I was accessing the service from a different location was that I hardly ever watched it. Every time I'd pull it up, I would spend more time scrolling for something to watch than actually watching anything.. and typically I'd just give up and go watch a 30m YouTube video instead.

So I was paying more, receiving less ... mostly had the account purely for my wife and daughters who watched it the most ... and then the final deal breaker was logistical barriers preventing me from being able to use what I'm paying for.

Fuck Netflix.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>Burnin+Eu
growing up I always had on-demand and recording on the set top boxes

>>noneth+(OP)
Netflix was still competing with blu-ray/DVD/cable at that point.

"why should I watch TV on the fiddly computer when I can just pop a disc in?" or "why should I turn on Netflix when there's clearly stuff on cable TV?" -- that was Netflix's competition in those days. Because there was competition, they had to lower prices and improve service to win consumers.

Now, that competition is being destroyed. Rest assured, Netflix will use this market power to extract more from the consumer.

>>throwa+Ws
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.

>>bakies+2y
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.

>>gspenc+Aw
Agree, but I think they moved away from growth to this not because they lost investor money / vc demands but because they started losing a lot of licensing deals and content, and had to shift from redistribution to making more and more originals with capital investment cost and etc.

Slightly different reasons for enshitiffication - if Spotify lost half of their catalogue suddenly they might move in the same way I guess.

>>MattRi+mw
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.

>>SpaceN+nA
HBO never had a tier with ads when it was on cable, it was simply expensive.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>mlsu+nz
Netflix is still "competing" with discs at this point, although I would accept that discs aren't exactly winning. Most of the content I watch comes from blu-rays, and with a few exceptions (The Americans, grr), most of the things I want to watch have been released on disc. In fact, there is a small community of film enthusiasts who continue to purchase media outright, e.g., https://www.blu-ray.com.

I started using Netflix in 2001 as a DVD subscriber. It was wonderful for nearly 20 years. I ended up canceling before the service officially ended because it was clear that the writing was on the wall and the service was going downhill fast. You used to be able to get nearly any movie or TV series, domestic or foreign. It's a lot more work to find good stuff now, even with streaming in the mix.

>>ghaff+Yp
This. I loved the DVD service and I don't think I was alone. Younger folks didn't perhaps use it as much as some, but for those who don't have the best internet speed or service, they were great.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>MattRi+mw
Where's the amazon prime tier where I don't get ads?

>>raddan+PB
I think the main reason they aren't competing as much now is that blu ray players / computers with disc drives / consoles with disc drives are getting more scarce?

I don't even know where I would get a good blu ray drive. The videophile subreddits keep suggesting very specific models with flashed firmware, which is not exactly accomodating to the public.

>>SpaceN+nA
...and piracy will once again become rampant!

>>malvim+4C
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.

>>thayne+Ko
We could deliver to consumers over some sort of "cable". But what would we call it?

>>thayne+Ko
> 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.

>>nemoma+6C
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)

>>noneth+(OP)
> People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service

That was also before they started aggressively pushing their own content. For a while, it looked like Netflix was going to be the place you go to stream any movie that ever existed (which was pretty much what they were with mail-in DVDs before the streaming service came along). Now it seems like they don't really want to be in that business either.

>>noneth+(OP)
I am happy to stream surf. Spend a month on amc+, the next month on paramount+, the next in Hulu. It keeps them wanting me back. Competition is good

>>nemoma+6C
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.

>>nemoma+uC
The causality might be backwards there. Blu ray and other disk players are likely becoming scarce because people are using them less rather than people using them less because the devices are scarce.

What happened to Netflix DVD by mail was that Redbox ate its lunch, which ultimately was also a failing business model.

>>lukesc+6B
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.

>>themer+Tv
Wow. That is dysfunctional.

I would be curious how the financial wires got crossed.

I would have assumed residuals were proportional to views, and views valued proportionally as contributing to subscription demand. And it would be a rare viewer to watch one show like that, over & over. I.e. only upside. Something went sideways.

>>malvim+4C
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.

>>nemoma+6C
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
I mean... did we really expect the content owners to roll over and let the streaming platforms capture the potential profits?

>>cactus+ix
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.

>>MangoT+2v
But if you don't need to pay for two subs, and the cost of two apps and two lots of infra goes away, that could be good value.

>>cactus+ix
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.

>>malvim+4C
It still works this way.

>>Burnin+Eu
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.

>>lukesc+6B
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'.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>bakies+2y
For a short time there VCRs and DVRs even came with ad blockers that automatically removed commercials!

>>phanta+qG
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
This idea doesn’t mean those people are correct.

Netflix was great when it was the only streaming service because all the legacy media companies licensed shows for cheap. They basically considered it bonus income like syndicated television.

Most of Netflix’s content at that time was very popular but was basically just reruns. The Office, etc. It was a time when you’d be hard pressed to find any movie resembling a blockbuster, just bargain DVD bin type of stuff.

If all the streaming services consolidate there will be less reason than ever to put effort into content. As long as most people stay subscribed the less they spend on content the better.

With an à la carte landscape that we have now, streaming services all have to fight it out in open competition to keep their service on your monthly bill.

It might be less convenient but it is better for content than having a market with just one, two, or three players.

>>jajuuk+0r
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.

>>comman+TF
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.

>>tim199+P3
We could do that by limiting copyright to just 10-14 years. All platforms could have all that content forever without paying a dime. New stuff and exclusives would still be a draw to attract people to one platform or another.

>>yibg+yL
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.

>>SpaceN+nA
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
I was happy when Netflix was a DVD service. Streaming turned everything to shit. Netflix in 2003-2008 was its golden era: any movie you could think of from the past century was available.

I will not lament the loss of visual mass media. I’ve already reduced my viewing to just Kanopy, but even they are reducing tickets.

Fortunately there are plenty of other fun and entertaining things to do than sit in front of a screen and drool at slop.

Unfortunately people will “suffer” with their first-world problems of not getting new Marvel movies every 8 months or Spider-Man reboots every 2 years, or having to pay $100+/month for drivel. Oh the humanity.

>>ghaff+NK
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.

>>raddan+PB
> Netflix is still "competing" with discs at this point

An increasing number of shows are never getting released on physical media to prevent this. The only thing streaming services are competing with in any meaningful way is piracy and I'm guessing piracy is going to get more and more popular the more greed/enshittification keeps making streaming platforms worse

>>themer+Tv
If they don't make their content available legally, then it should go into the public domain.

Don't want this to happen to your content? Then don't release it to the public.

We need to bring back explicit copyright registration and renewals.

>>duped+g6
Netflix may have the technical ability, but they don't deliver. Their UI just gets worse and worse in terms of usability and they keep cutting features on top of steadfastly refusing to provide features people have been asking for since they started steaming movies.

Basically every streaming app is minimally functional and obnoxious in their own ways. netflix isn't the worst of them, but it's no exception and getting worse all the time.

>>TeMPOr+FN
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.

>>autoex+3J
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.

>>bloomi+0C
Even when I had good service/speeds the DVD service was amazing because it had way more options than streaming does even now, including some pretty hard to find DVDs, and you got the extra features! It was also nice to regularly get something in my mailbox besides spam...

>>johann+ML
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.

>>yibg+yL
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.

>>autoex+AJ
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.

>>ghaff+TM
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.

>>johann+ML
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.

>>cactus+ix
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.

>>TeMPOr+HR
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.

>>autoex+nM
That would also solve the problem of AI training data. Build a data set, wait 14 years, and it's guaranteed to be legal.

>>comman+TF
Even Amazon Prime’s catalogue is only a third the size of what Netflix had 15 years ago.

>>joquar+SN
Hoarding is never good for society. It is wild that we've adopted laws to reward it.

>>Neverm+oJ
Thats how it used to work in the movie theater/cable days. Then Netflix said "I will pay you a ton of money up front to own everything" Creatives said amazing! Then the "war" for creative talent started because of the fragmentation of services, so you got people saying I will pay you X + a royalty regardless because you are so sought after, which eventually, as you see here, priced them out of their own content.

>>autoex+1N
Give 10 years of copyright for free, then a $1000 fee for the next decade, and make every subsequent decade 100x more expensive.

>>joelwi+WU
Nah, there's no reason why trillion dollar companies should be allowed to pay anything to keep our shared culture locked up. Doing so only hinders innovation and the creation of new works. 14 years was long enough back when global distribution was unimaginable and any distribution at all was highly expensive.

Today you can instantly distribute media to the entire planet at near zero expense. If you can't make money after a decade you have only yourself or your product to blame. Also, it's not as if once something goes into the public domain all income stops either. With even a small amount of effort creators can continue to successfully package and sell their stuff to the fans even when it's avilable for free. It's worked on me several times in fact.

>>SpaceN+nA
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)

>>_DeadF+lL
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.

>>ghaff+Xz
Didn't the VCR still work with cable? (I haven't used one)

>>autoex+LL
I remember upgrading the tivo for this

>>schnab+CL
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.

>>yibg+yL
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".

>>noneth+(OP)
Netflix was the STREAMING platform - it was not really making content until the House of Cards went supernova.

This is true consolidation and monopolization - regardless of the "narrative" in whichever news you happen to consume.

>>bakies+y11
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.

>>thayne+Ko
I want all the movies for free without pirating

>>TeMPOr+FN
Yes, that's the lawyers part. They are stopping you from just skipping the impossible licensing step.

>>throwa+Ws
Oh my god no. The content is much better and you can watch whenever you want.

>>tim199+P3
It would be great for consumers if it was just free

>>dangus+lM
We could get back to that world with anti-trust enforcement and mandatory licensing, while still keeping whatever positive effects competition has had on content production (which I think are debatable at best: it seems like no one outside of low-budget stuff like Dropout is making anything interesting in the US right now.)

>>ghaff+NK
They can charge that, but I won't pay it. I give myself like 20/month and rotate between services. Still barely worth it

>>thayne+Ko
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.)

>>noneth+(OP)
I think it would be more accurate to say there was not enough cross-licensing. The generally preferable model seems to be service platforms that compete with each other, but with access to all the same production companies that also compete with each other. Vertical integration is an obvious win for the owners, but this fight has been going on since the earliest days of mass media with radio and motion picture studios.

Netflix was the early beneficiary of broad licensing because the draw bridges hadn't been pulled up yet.

>>johann+ML
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.

>>bakies+2y
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.

>>noneth+8l1
How do movies get made under that system?

>>phanta+yP
> 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.

>>autoex+3J
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
With a lot of competition you might have 20 great shows spread across 10 streamers. People will complain because they’d have to subscribe to 10 streamers to get everything.

Consolidation reduces the number of streamers, but reduces the competition too. The number of great shows will go down faster than than the number of streamers too.

The endpoint would be one streamer, with maybe 0-1 great shows. The vast majority of content will be low risk and cheap to produce.

With one big streamer it will be easy to manage your subscription, but the price will still be at least as high as subscribing to half a dozen small streamers, and the shows will be worse.

(Hope you like repetitive, formulaic shows, which, at best, are a rehash last year’s mildly entertaining show. That’s what you can look forward to.)

>>ghaff+NK
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.

>>TeMPOr+FN
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.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>Subicu+TG
for me it is pirating everything since since the video stores closed down and never giving any money to any of these companies

>>noneth+(OP)
Watch Netflix keep HBO Max as a separate service

>>roguec+0p1
I think a great copyright compromise to the insanely long copyright periods would be if certain types of content had standardized licensing costs that kicked in after a certain amount of time.

It would be a very interesting concept if after 10/20 years, anyone could grab any copyrighted content and redistribute it as long as they paid the copyright owner a license fee determined by copyright law.

>>j2kun+NT
> 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"

>>GuB-42+nN
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.

>>Neverm+oJ
I think that a show like Westworld is a great example of the realities of the streaming era. If HBO kept streaming it on HBO Max it probably costs them $2-4 million in residual liabilities. HBO removed dozens of scripted shows during that phase, and had a mandate to cut around $3B in post merger costs.

After Year 1, WGA/SAG residual formulas decrease: Year 2: ~80% of Year 1 Year 3: ~55% Year 4+: sometimes stabilize at a “floor” rate

So what did they do? They ran it for a few years, ran the numbers, realized that Westworld was no longer profitable on the platform. (Profitable would have to mean draws enough new subscribers to the platform). AND THEN - Warner Bros. Discovery made new deals with other platforms with ads. I think you can still find Westworld on Tubi and other ad-supported platforms that actually pay Warner licensing fees.

>>sokolo+4v1
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.

>>philip+JK
We already know prices will go up considerably-- they always do after a merger, and you'll lose the option of subbing for one or the other only when they have something you want to watch. Most people are not keeping two subs going constantly and are just alternating when there's something worthwhile.

>>cactus+ix
> 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.

>>jamesh+0T
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?

>>gizzlo+IF1
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...

>>noneth+(OP)
That's caused by consolidation. Compare with music: a bunch of different companies make music, a bunch of different companies stream music, but they're not the same companies, so approximately everybody's music is available on every platform.

With video, many platforms are also creators, which leads to exclusivity, and fragmentation.

Combining everything into a monopoly would also fix this problem, but would have downsides.

>>cactus+ix
> 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.

>>bakies+y11
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.

>>autoex+LL
How was that possible? Audio loudness?

>>noneth+(OP)
People want consolidation in the sense that they want to just have a service that has everything instead of having to juggle multiple competing channels around. The problem is that this service would have to be very expensive. The glory days of streaming had 10 services all selling more or less the same product.

The kind of consolidation on offer here just means having to pay for two streaming services at once. That is, at some point HBO Max will get rolled up into Netflix, and Netflix will increase their prices to make sure you don't save any money from it. Because let's be honest here: the only reason why the glory days of streaming were so glorious is that nobody knew what anything was worth and everything was being subsidized by the suckers still paying for cable.

The problem is once you run out of suckers, you have to start charging what the show actually costs to make (or license). Once you account for that plus margin you have a cable bill again[0]. Except since there's like five major services they can split the content and bill five ways. They have to charge about the same as the others to maintain this equilibrium, but with fewer services there's less alternatives and they can raise prices higher.

What people really want out of their streaming service is a free ride, no more and no less. Either that, or they're going back to physical media because one time payments are the only fair and consumer-friendly way of paying for creative works.

[0] Yes, I know most of that was actually sports. For everything else, there was a second layer of subsidy involved: ads. Most of the stuff that didn't charge carriage fees were getting shittons of ad revenue, and that subsidy has also largely vanished.

>>MattRi+mw
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?

>>ghaff+NK
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.

>>IshKeb+PP1
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.

>>IshKeb+PP1
>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.

>>phanta+qG
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?

>>autoex+3J
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

>>eloisa+sd
So does that mean if I ever create a video I just allow anyone to have it?

>>bouncy+LK1
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.

>>roguec+0p1
So should Disney be forced to license Avengers at the same price I license my cat videos? Should every content creator be forced to license everything? Why stop at video? What about books? Software?

>>diab0l+pH
I didn't even realize that Redbox had shut down. I only used them once or twice.

Ultimately there was just so much content available with a click for people (who collectively are mostly not that fussy) for "free" (subscription) or at most by a payment from their TV rooms.

>>thayne+Ko
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.

>>gizzlo+IF1
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
I dont mind disconsolidation. The main downside is price as you have to pay for multiple services. Having all the services is "the one service".

>>nemoma+Sv
That would be ideal. It's my (very limited) understanding that the costs of making television and movies makes that kind of scenario unlikely, though.

>>thayne+Ko
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

>>IshKeb+PP1
> (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.

>>ghaff+TM
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-...

>>dmurra+4X1
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
That crazy thing is that a knee jerk reaction can still be right

This IS bad for consumers - we are slowly inching towards the pre streaming world of only a handful of studios who run Hollywood, except now it’s pretentious tech companies

>>dmurra+4X1
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.

>>dmurra+4X1
>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-...

>>gizzlo+IF1
> 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.

>>thayne+Ko
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....

>>Wowfun+d02
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.

>>grayfa+6N1
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?

>>chucks+n72
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.

>>noneth+(OP)
This isn't just two streaming services being merged, it's two giant media companies now becoming one media company.

>>phanta+yP
Imo, vertical integration is always great in the short term but it's a problem because in the long term it prevents competitors from getting a foothold.

The thing to understand is that the benefits of competition isn't price. It's innovation. Sometimes that innovation is how to make a component cheaper but other times it's new components. The iPhone was not the cheapest phone when it was released.

>>raw_an+fT1
There absolutely was. I was alive when it happened. It was a major selling point of the service. The only ads you'd ever see were promotions for shows that would later be shown on the same channel. Those ads were only shown after one show had ended and before the next show started. Even then, at first they were nothing but title cards showing static text. Sometimes there was also a countdown clock telling you when the next show would start.

After that came ads for what was going to shown on other channels as well, but again they'd never interrupt the programs you were watching and there zero ads for things like cars or laundry detergent.

Then slowly, a few channels started adding them in various formats until eventually there was little difference between ads shown on cable and ads on broadcast TV

Here's an article from the 80s talking about ads slowly but surely encroaching on what was essentially an ad free space: https://web.archive.org/web/20180120172105/https://www.nytim...

some choice quotes:

> When cable first came on the scene, one of the most important points it made was that it was a non-commercial alternative to television,'' she says. ''Now advertisers are saying, 'Here's another place to think of on a costper-thousand basis.' ''

> A much-cited - and widely disputed - study by the Benton & Bowles advertising agency found that the public would accept advertising if it meant a reduction or a holding-of-the-line on subscription fees

> The bottom-line assessment of cable advertising is that it is too good to turn down. ''Who wants advertising on cable?'' Mr. Dann asks rhetorically. ''Anyone who wants to make money.''

>>autoex+Mo2
You’re suffering from the Mandela affect. How was your cable ad free when it was rebroadcasting ABC, NBC, CBS, TBS (1976), and WGN that were all over the air with ads they were the first national “cable stations”.

MTV was also an early cable station and it launched in 1981 - with ads. USA, CNN, ESPN and Nick also came around in 1979-1980 - with ads from day one.

This is an article from 1981 in the NYT.

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...

BTW, I’m 51.

If retransmitted broadcast TVs had ads - the first content on cable - and the superstations, and the first pure cable channels, how could there have been a time without ads? There were never national basic cable stations that weren’t trying to sell ads from day one.

The article said people thought there wouldn’t be ads as cable got more popular - ie as cable channels popped up and cable became more than just a way to rebroadcast OTA TV.

This argument comes up all of the time on HN

>>38778167

>>10459839

>>38782923

>>33177470

>>raw_an+wp2
Broadcast TV stations weren't considered "cable channels" even though they also came over the wire. Cable channels were those channels you got that your neighbor who didn't have cable couldn't see. Ad free cable channels were way before MTV. Even the national cable stations were late to the party.

At your age, if you never saw ad free cable you were either a late adopter or you just had a terrible local cable provider.

>>thayne+Ko
I wish that'd happen, but instead what we have is that everybody is making terrible new content, and getting any of the old content is a nightmare too because there are 28 or so subscriptions needed, which are constantly increasing prices (yeah, they are supposed to be competing, but somehow...) and constantly shuffling their lists, so you can just lose access to a series in the middle of a rewatch. I hope eventually it will organize into something resembling normalcy, but it's not happening so far... There's of course other solution (ahoy, matey!) but I'd rather just pay reasonable sum for a subscription. I know Netflix buying everything is not a solution either, but so far it's only getting worse.

>>mochom+J72
I have a difficult time trusting their recommendations when those come along with more and more difficult to even know what exists in the rest of the catalog. It seems pretty obvious they want de facto scroll feeds instead of the streaming style they started with.

>>Wowfun+d02
They do compete on content. How many billions did Spotify spend on Joe Rogan? And it happens with music too, some bands moved away from Spotify in rage recently and at least one person switched to Tidal to keep listening to KGLW https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/jul/26/king-gizzard-a...

That said, my interpretation is that bands don’t really make a lot of money from streaming, it’s more of a promotional platform for them so it makes sense to just be everywhere to be seen. This is not true for tv/films.

>>autoex+6r2
Again what were these stations? Are you referring to local access TV?

Basic cable delivered in order

- broadcast TV stations - with ads

- “Superstations” - with ads and your neighbors couldn’t get TBS unless they lived in metro Atlanta

- MTV, Nickelodeon, ESPN, USA, CNN etc - with ads and informercials

Everything I find was that HBO was first. But not basic cable in 1972. CSPAN in 1979 (well admittedly that didn’t have commercials). Then TBS

By 1983, I remember I had about 20 channels - two each of NBC, CBS, ABC - CNN, MTV, TBS, Nickelodeon, USA, some medical precursor to Lifetime, CBN, WGN, the weather channel, are the ones I can remember

>>thayne+Ko
>>> 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 sounds fine in theory, but how would it work if the content were continuously changing? For example, the final straw that made my cut the cord of cable-tv was getting locked into a 3yr plan for cable TV only to get the Disney channel for the kids -- only to learn that Verizon/Disney had a fight and I lost the channel. https://deadline.com/2018/12/disney-warns-verizon-fios-custo...

Now, i'm still locked into the 3yr plan with Verizon but dont have the content I wanted. I know people complain about paying $10 or $15 for a streaming service, but imagine paying $100 for cable TV and being locked into a 3yr contract. I'd much, much rather have a la carte services I can pick and choose and cancel as desired.

However, if you're talking about the Amazon Prime TV model, then I'd totally agree with you. I think that is the ideal model -- Prime is a nominal cost (for now) and you can add/remove channels as you wish.

>>Burnin+Eu
You could plan ahead and record and time shift. This isn’t as convenient, but no-one was removing content you didn’t get to watch. BTW, in countries like the UK recording TV - especially over Christmas - is still a way to build a legal personal archive. Streaming is better today, but don’t rely on it being better forever.

>>nemoma+uC
Amazon will happily ship you a Panasonic player (and you can get one of those that the firmware flashing people talk about). The current batch that would play 4K Bluray discs is really nice and as a side effect upscale DVDs to something that’s almost acceptable for normal TVs. No need to flash the firmware if you’re good watching content from your region and don’t mind skipping restrictions. The region problem is mostly about wanting to play American discs in Europe.

>>mochom+J72
I noticed that for the last few years, my recommendations are almost the same for every category. 'Top picks' is 60% the same as 'We think you'll love this' which is almost the same as 'Your Next Watch' which is similar to 'Award-winning movies', 'Chilly thrillers', repeat ad-infinitum. If there is a new Netflix-owned movie it will definitely be in there.

Then on top of that, similar to YouTube, half of that content are things I have already watched. HBO and Amazon are even worse in this aspect but it just drives me crazy, feels like seeing the same 100 movie options over and over for months. Has the catalog shrinked that much over the years?

I started keeping a separate list of films to watch on IMDB, but 6/10 times they are not available on any service except for rent in AppleTV.

>>raw_an+5u2
Local cable providers would broadcast shows on local cable channels. It was mainly movies. Only a few cable channels, plus regular broadcast TV.

The sales pitch was that cable channels didn't have ads because your fees paid for those channels instead, but obviously broadcast TV would still include ads because the ads were just part of the broadcast. Cable programing was very limited, but the promise was it would get better and it was still ad free and looked better than TV over rabbit ears and you got access to broadcast TV in that same quality. It was a pretty easy sell! I doubt many people would have paid for cable if it only offered broadcast TV which most people were already getting for free. I mean, the quality jump was nice, but it's not like most of us hadn't been putting up with it just fine. For people who couldn't get a decent signal I could see it though.

At some point the number of channels expanded to include national channels. Which national channels you got and when depended on your cable provider and whatever agreements they reached for those feeds. Then all you had were national channels. You might even remember ads on some of those channels asking you to call your cable provider and demand certain other national channels that weren't yet avilable in your area.

Eventually cable TV sort of homogenized and everyone pretty much everyone had access to the same set of channels no matter where they were even as some channels changed or went away entirely. Channels were split between premium and basic, then split again to basic, expanded basic, and premium and then split again to multiple package tiers etc. That's how I remember it anyway.

>>johann+tv1
I don't understand your point, though. Yes, you want stuff.

Do Porsche dealerships have a monopoly on Porsches because only they sell Porsches, and you want a Porsche from somewhere else?

>>derekt+h82
Yes I read once that Spotify just makes you famous enough to book gigs.

If your song is streamed 10 million times chances are a festival will call your manager. The money is in concerts not albums.

>>autoex+IG2
It’s in every history write up of cable that the main draw of cable pre 1979 was the ability to get broadcast TV clearly and HBO. It wasn’t like these local channels - that I can’t find anything about anywhere - had first run content or “pay 1 window” movies as they left the theatres that was HBO.

>>noneth+(OP)
Isn’t that mixing up library size with market power?

Consumers are going to pay for this consolidation through higher subscription prices because the cost always goes somewhere.

What you’re seeing now is the same consolidation and ad loading that drove the old piracy waves.

>>bouncy+LK1
The _vast_ majority of book sales are to private individuals, not libraries.

>>cactus+ix
Look back in history. Studios used to own/control exhibition. That system was broken up and theaters made independent.

What we see now is that old system reforming around streaming.

>>noneth+(OP)
Our family loved Disney+ from the outset and then to see consolidation into the service was amazing. I can watch Aliens and Avengers in the same place? Now I’m just waiting for somebody to fold Paramount into either Netflix or Disney+ so I’ll have Star Trek as well.

>>mochom+J72
I also have some firsthand knowledge here and I can assure you that promo-driven culture will not result in optimization for the consumer.

>>sa-cod+O5
As a consumer, I feel that consolidation is wonderful because it is one less account and password and charge on my credit card that I have to think about.

>>cactus+ix
> This is how it worked a decade+ ago, when there was still alpha to be had on providing better streaming service. […] Now […] there is no benefit in trying to compete on making a better platform / service. The only thing left is competing on content.

A large profit margin is not something that a business is owed.

>>thayne+Ko
Mostly agree, but I’d advocate for a carve-out for DropoutTV; maybe; exempt if (1) only hosting your own content and (2) that content can be licensed by other services?

>>noneth+(OP)
People were happy when Netflix was the streaming service and it cost $7.99. People will be unhappy if Netflix is the streaming service and it costs $159.99. The glory days were only possible because the streaming market didn’t matter.

>>noneth+(OP)
The availability of exclusive content should not be the point over which streaming services compete. The same content should be available on all streaming services, and they should compete on the quality of their delivery and discoverability technology.

Content producers must not be vertically integrated with content distributors.

>>autoex+AJ
Hulu "no ads" is even worse.

Live TV? Ads. Shows available as part of streaming packages for channels included in live TV? Ads. Random other stuff "due to streaming rights"? Ads.

At this point I pretty much assume any non-Disney programming that isn't a Hulu original will have ads, and access it by other means, partly as a minor act of civil disobedience, but mostly because I'm impatient (i.e., never in my life have I actually watched television advertising, even when forced to sit through it).

>>derekt+h82
All the more reason to offer some real money in exchange for exclusivity, no? Because it would be relatively cheap.

>>grayfa+6N1
I think it is fine for thr content maker to set the price ... as long as everyone gets the same price, and the content maker isn't also the distributor (streaming service).

>>philip+jM2
The physical world equivalent would be if Porsche didn't sell their cars, they only leased and rented them, and the lease terms didn't allow subleasing or renting it out, or even letting someone else drive it. And there were no wholesale or reseller agreements to allow other dealerships or rental companies to lease or rent them out.

If Porsche were to do that, a lot of customers would probably switch to BMW or Audi instead. But with Movies and TV, competing products are less fungible.

>>ricard+GE2
i have no idea how to even display a complete list of movies

>>chrz+iQ3
On the native interface(s), surely, you can't.

>>nemoma+6C
It's called Flixer.

>>rightb+BR1
On possibility is that there are a few black screens before and after the commercial block is inserted. I know there was talk about using it. Don't know how much it actually was.