Netflix is big, that's sure, but as said in the thread, Netflix is like the big Three (ABC, NBC, CBS), and target the largest audience possible. And I am an avid client of Netflix too. They have an offer of African-American contents, even some African contents for sure. It's not complete. We have curated for one year some of the best and unseen African or African-descendant contents. Not only the Festival-sanctioned movies and series but also, the contents which are popular in local markets and that we are bringing to our customers. Seems to me that is more a segment than a niche, but I like to play a little with the words :)
Our vision here is double : to propose a large selection of african, african-american movies and tv series, first in France (I am French), and french spoken countries, in Europe and Africa, first. Netflix is not yet in Africa, so we have some technical challenges there, but we will be basically the first.
To propose the new african and african american positive characters to all : on that regards, our customers will not only be black
Do you know Drama Fever : the core of the Drama Fever is Asian contents, they have 3,5 millions active users. 80% of these users are non-Asian.
That's one of our goal : to let know that there is a diversity in movies, and that everybody could watch them with same pleasure
Basically, if you're successful, there's nothing stopping Netflix from licensing the same shows as you. Since they're Netflix, they'll probably negotiate better content deals, have better recommendations, better mobile apps, more supported devices, etc.
Another danger is that Netflix has experience making their own shows. If your target audience looks enticing enough, Netflix can produce exclusive content to woo them over. They've already started doing this with anime (Knights of Sidonia).
All-in-all, this seems like a really tricky business to be in. I wish you luck.
I personally don't think Netflix could be exhaustive in every way because the curation work is very important here, to satisfy every segment in the world. Netflix is not in Africa though,
Drama fever, Crunchyroll, viki.com did well in their segment. And we intend to be the best in ours.
Crunchyroll provides the immediacy of fansubs but with legitimacy and sees that license holders get paid something where they weren't getting paid anything.
Additionally, the type of content that Crunchyroll provides isn't necessarily something Netflix would go after, in that it is released on an episode by episode basis (in line with air dates in Japan) rather than all at once (as is the typical Netflix model) and that there is rarely dubbing (which most, though notably not all, Netflix anime has).
That said, Netflix has been seriously expanding their anime efforts. I really do wonder if Crunchyroll is going to be able to keep growing as Netflix expands its presence more and more.
All that said, the one thing I'm really not sure of is how long Netflix can continue to do more and more licensing deals and original content without increasing its subscription cost. In that respect, I think the iTunes model is a lot more stable (and I'm perfectly happy paying for close-to-airtime delivery I get for the shows I do watch through it).
My only gripe with paying for that content is that the price premium seems to be pretty high on iTunes given that the content has revocable DRM (then again, Apple is more likely to be around in this space for a long time than any of the other current players).
In summary: I think you might be right, but it's definitely a pretty dynamic situation. Hope it goes well!
That said, it's a good idea, a big bet, and I sincerely wish you the best.
The marginal value of content with a strong, dedicated, but niche following to Netflix -- whose branding is mainstream and not targeted to that niche -- may be less than it is to a provider specialized in targeting that niche, which means that the licensing fee Netflix could afford to pay is less.
Further, your argument presupposes that all streaming licenses are non-exclusive. That is, rather decidedly, not the case. If someone else secures an exclusive license, Netflix cannot license the same content and provide customers with a superset of what the niche provider offers.
> It's also unclear to me that Netflix is even lacking in this specific niche.
It probably isn't compared to any major provider that a consumer is going to find today. OTOH, it could be in the future, especially if a more targeted competitor exists that starts outbidding Netflix for exclusive licenses for content in that niche.
Yes, I had yummyfajita's question and this does make sense... a "niche" (this is pretty big to be calling "niche" really, but let me discuss the generic case) could afford to charge a bit more of interested customers and focus that stream on somewhat more pricy licenses.
Which, once again, just makes me think that Netflix is, if not "cutting itself off at the knees", at least hobbling itself with such a low flat-rate price. On the other hand it can hardly afford a complicated "full cable"-style offering, but some sort of middle ground may be something they're forced to do someday. Hulu, too, for that matter... even as a subscription service focused on TV it seems to me that the selection is limited by the fact the subscription price is just too low.
In the meantime, as a consumer I have no trouble mixing a nice Netflix subscription for flat-rate stuff and mixing in per-show fees from Amazon, but it's still money Netflix seems to be leaving on the table.
My family, for example, subscribes to Netflix, Hulu, HBO, and CrunchyRoll.
I suspect in the future there will be more and more niche channels like Afrostream (and CrunchyRoll).
Except that it airs orders-of-magnitude more content than HBO from a variety of sources. It's something between cable and a channel.
It's not HBO, it's Netflix.
We, Afrostream, have a bigger house to fill ;)
I would not be so quick to discount the difficulty of building a large number of commercial relationships in the long tail of African production. The mere time investment and tedium of dealing with producers who are not used to distribution channels beyond their local habits is a barrier to entry - and hence a valid strategic positioning.
"can" is always a problem with big companies, they have so many other works to do they rarely get time. Thats where small companies can win some niche market and do a better job.
I think individual channels will win out over cable style packages, though there might be room for an aggregator that offers discounts.
I'd rather pay for HBO and Netflix over cable.
To my knowledge the majority of cable channels are just content from a handful of producers divided up by "genre", since most people will have entire sections of unused channels that don't match their interest when paying for cable I think we'll move towards pick and choose — possibly really soon.
[1]Which is their quoted mission, "become HBO faster than HBO can become us".
Let's face it : Netflix could do that, but they have one year to catch up, fight is on
It seems part of your argument is that your content is so niche, Netflix would rather spend licensing money on content that has broader appeal, which is fine, except that its totally dependent on Netflix not changing its strategy, and that's a bad basis for a sustainable business.
African descent movies are so diverse. We have an African Diaspora all over the world which produce a ton of contents you never saw, you don't even know their existence and thant's our goal to diversify the point of view of a maximum of people. Yes Netflix has resources, a lot of resources but we know our market well. They need to catch up, that's my word for now, fight is on
We don't intend to be "Netflix for blacks" or "Netflix for African people only" too, that's a bizarre idea to me, in fact. We have some quality movies in our catalog, and we hope to make it discover to all of you people :)
It's also unclear to me that Netflix is even lacking in this specific niche. My ex-girlfriend loved browsing my netflix over a VPN because it had so much of her african american comedy. (Admittedly, what she - an African woman - considered a good selection might be different from what westerners consider a good selection.)
In a few cases, e.g. Parables ($NICHE=devout christians), I can see how they offer something different - they deliberately exclude content (e.g., movies that offend christian sensibilities) that their members don't want. But that doesn't seem to apply here.