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?

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).

A bedroom produced song versus a major-label, famous-studio song can have insane differences in price.

It’s always been a requirement to make it up in volume of spins. I don’t see how this is any different.

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.

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?

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.

Competing products are far more fungible. Different vehicles have different uses: some can allow you to go on a tour of Europe; some can help you move house; most can drop 3 kids at 3 different schools and then get you to work; some can let you moonlight as a taxi driver efficiently. All movies and TV do very similar things to your life: let you spend some time staring at a screen.

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.

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?