Eventually, revenues go up and licensing deals expire. Then, either the owners increase the price for licensing their content, or they refuse to license it and start their own service.
Lose/lose
Netflix realized the only blue sky was owning a large catalog of their own content, ideally used to retain users and starve other services, and then license content when they have the upper hand.
Critics will hate a lot of what Netflix puts out, and it won't matter at all to the fans who can get exactly what they want in the comfort of their home free from judgement and peer pressure.
Youtube is positioned to take a similar approach, and it turns out the formula that works the best is sociopathic narcissists of a certain age with certain facial features producing 10-minute videos of rats getting tasered 7 days a week.
I think this might be a situation where the gap between what people want, and what people will consume, is very wide. And the algorithms know how to produce what people will consume, but they do not know how to produce what people want.
What Netflix has is more detailed data of what people watch. So will its competitors is just a few years.
What matters in content is the content of that content. Ideas, emotions, excitement. Technology is irrelevant.
Also, insert some scenes, remove others, change the cut a little bit, change color grading, music mix – all these changes look like something modern AI could learn to do.
Just more tools for geniuses to use to move us and move us more deeply.
A lot of people say that they want long, challenging reading but they end up reading Buzzfeed articles. Don't ask people what they want to do - watch what they actually do.
Spotify has a horrifically bad business. They're bleeding to death financially, having never earned a profit in their entire existence; they've burned through billions in financing and are still burning at a similarly high rate. Simultaneously Apple is likely to catch up in subscribers in the near future, diluting the leverage Spotify desperately needs to improve its bargaining situation. Apple can afford to burn billions to bury Spotify (likely force them into a sale/acquisition).
Spotify is in a no win scenario. They'll never have enough margin to earn a profit via licensing all of their most heavily listened-to content. The content owners will perpetually squeeze Spotify. This is the fate that Netflix understood to attempt to avoid, which Spotify has entirely failed to avoid. Meanwhile all of largest competitors to Spotify actually make money (Sirius as one example is very profitable). Spotify's only possible future is in the belly of one of the tech or media giants.
You'll see there are quite a few bitter complaints online: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Content-Questions/WHY-do-yo...
There are only a few artists who are Apple Music or Tidal exclusive, in an attempt drive users to those platforms.
Also, Spotify has 3 Volor Flex albums, but is missing the one I usually want - "Unlit". I'm pretty sure that specific album is on Amazon Music though, oddly enough.
This isn't a particularly substantiative comment, just some datapoints that irk me about Spotify's inventory.
If Taylor Swift pulls out of Spotify, but Spotify's users are listening to "Discover" not "Taylor Swift", then Spotify is afforded with the opportunity to play "something that sounds like Taylor Swift." And god knows there are enough hungry and talented bands out there looking for a break...
Admittedly, it's been awhile since I was in grade school and marched in musical lockstep with my peers, but it seems as decent of an idea for disempowering major, advertising-heavy record labels as anything.
I have both, and for discovery spotify is way behind Apple Music, and i often find things on Apple Music that i cant get on Spotify. But one of those factors maybe my taste, but i have one friend with totally opposite taste to me that has had the exact same experience.
You are not using discovery really if you are doing the finding. It should be automatic in that just play one of the daily or weekly lists and music that you like (some old some new) should be played.
I tried Apple Music for its free trial and switched back to Spotify as I just can't be bothered to choose what I listen to myself.
Take my money! I just want to be able to watch stuff.
"Let's watch X"
"Darn it. It's not on Netflix"
"Not on Hulu"
"Not on Google Video either"
"Try VidAngel"
"No, they got shut down by Disney"
"Oh, doesn't Disney have a service?"
"Not yet."
"Oh look it's on Amazon video!"
"Oh, but we have Vizio Smartcast. Can't get it from the phone to the TV because Vizio uses Google and Amazon has some sort of blood feud."
"F--- it, not worth the hassle. We're pirating this."
It sounds like you just don't like how much it costs to support high quality television/movies. Granted, one 60$ a month service that offered everything would be more convenient.
I went to JustWatch and even pretended to be an American, just to make it easier on them.
First option, The Exterminating Angel. It's a classic, part of the list of 1000 best films by the NYT, and less than 60 years old. Nope, not even one service has it.
Second choice, Lore; still foreign, but it's a film from 2012, made already in the streaming era! Apparently I got to subscribe to "Fandor", so the price is now $40/month.
Third, let's give them an easy win: Missing, made in the US and owned by Universal! Yet another service, so called "Starz", for $9/month more.
Fourth, an American classic, they have to have Raging Bull... and no. Now it's something called "MaxGo", which from what I can tell costs another $10/m.
These were literally 4 of the 5 first movies I searched for, and we're already at your $60/month, and still missing one! It's not reasonable.
FWIW, I do have Netflix and Amazon Prime, but still don't get everything I'd like to have (and the bigger headache of knowing what's where adds to the frustration). Of course, I have seen people make the argument that one shouldn't wish for things one cannot afford. For digital content though, I believe the companies are leaving a lot of money on the table by not expanding their customer base and making it easier to subscribe and use (vs. say, downloading content from elsewhere).
I don't see how the current size matters for that.
Discovery is good, works on every platform, offline sync with transcoding so you can decide how much space it takes up, hdhomerun for dvr-ing live OTA sports, camera backup on vacation in full resolution. It's amazing if you're a little patient on the ramp-up.
Practically, speaking, yes. What are you going to do about it? You can keep railing about the morality of piracy but it's been 17 years since Napster and still nobody cares.
Thanks to Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube, I don't know anyone who pirates music anymore. The solution is right there.
You just gave two comments about exactly that.
My point is that I think these people are leaving money on the table, because weak humans will wind up pirating rather than wait weeks for a DVD to arrive.
This is basically what Hulu is -- NBC, ABC, and FOX consolidating their online streaming content into a single service. (I don't think it would be better for consumers if any of the three corporations that own those networks actually merged.)
Netflix is popular and needs to cater to the popular tastes, in an environment of content owning launching their own streaming services.
That bit is addressed by https://www.justwatch.com, which shows you where to legally watch any movie / show. Very useful.
If you think that's worth it up to you, you can watch pretty much any movie at any time if you accept this price range.
As much as I hate huge companies and consolidation of companies, this is one area where some consolidation could make it better for customers. I'm not sure if this is the right hope to have though.