How the Presence of Streaming Services could be Structured

[KeldeoKitty]

I had this thought over the few years, new streaming services came up mainly dedicated ones from major studios. The thought was a major studio has it’s own service like Disney they can put all of their own content and didn’t need to pay licensing fees since they own the service. However then we see Disney, Warner Bros. and Paramount purge their own content because there still are residual payments to be made. And studios have been going back to licensing content to other services as it was before. It really begs the question the need for every studio to have their own dedicated streaming service.

If companies shift back to licensing to other services, there technically is no need for so many services. The amount of paid streaming services many dedicated to a single company’s catalog is really isolating the TV/Film industry.

Perhaps from the start there should’ve just been 3 or 4 major streaming services that have already been established and each service has major deals with at least 2 studios to offer more variety which would make a higher monthly price more viable. For instance Netflix could offer Universal and Warner Bros. content, Amazon Prime offers Paramount and Sony content, Hulu offers Disney and Fox content, and Crunchyroll offers Asian imports, while independent, acquired content can go to any of these. Not sure if this would be a good solution but the way the streaming landscape has been it needs to find effective ways to get on track.

 

[Marble]

I assumed they cycled content to avoid people just binging everything within a month, but yeah if residuals need paying then a lot of the more niche stuff is just going to get buried forever.

In terms of the amount of services, it's not just the cost but the fact that you need all these different proprietary apps installed, each with their own accounts and interfaces. Most PC gamers will tell you how annoying it is to have to install multiple launchers to access their content, even if those services don't cost anything. This sort of market is one of the exceptions (IMHO) to where a monopoly is bad for the consumer, or at the very least it does less harm than what we have now. Giving more choice hasn't stopped prices from going up, services from getting worse (ads!) and content selection from going down.

As a mid-point, transitional fix/improvement, I think there should be some sort of common standard these providers adhere to that allows for their content to be detached from their apps. For example, you could have a subscription to Netflix, Disney and Paramount but you only need one app. At the very least it'd make things far more elegant, I'd love to be able to integrate a Netflix subscription into my Plex!

Fortunately, from how things are shaping up, we'll probably go back to just a handful of services within the next few years, as (unless it's changed since I last heard about it) all of them except Netflix are losing money on these streaming subscription ventures. You'll see bundles become prolific and services merge and fold.

Personally I'd rather return to the a la carte model and fix that up. Let us buy our media DRM-free, with our purchase including the right to view in perpetuity, whether bought digitally or physically. DRM clearly does not work and only punishes legitimate customers.
I am not going to spend a cent on a "purchase" where it could potentially be yoinked away from me at any time. Frankly it disgusts me that this has become normalized.
Also, the cost of digital purchases is far too high, often exceeding physical releases, this needs to change as well. No 90's animated series is worth $25 a season!

 

[JMTV]

It's simple. Just go back selling off content to Netflix and Hulu (and counting Amazon Prime and Tubi), just like the way it used to be.

The problem for a lot of companies trying be the next Netflix is that they don't question the long term sustainability and focus on short term gains. Which results a lot of streamers started to collapsing in on itself.