Comment by thayne
2 months ago
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 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.
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.
> 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"
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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.
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.
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.
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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.
They can charge that, but I won't pay it. I give myself like 20/month and rotate between services. Still barely worth it
> 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.
> 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.
> (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.
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>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.
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.
> 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.
Plex + VPN + Torrents is pretty low cost. The most expensive things are the TVs, the computer+os, and the network maintenance could be a problem for some.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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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.
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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?
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....
This should really be the end goal. We are worse off than cable right now with all these streaming services and worse , overlapping content.
Strong disagree on being worse off than cable. I now almost never see ads, that is a huge benefit in my book.
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
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Did people forget that on cable you could only watch what was being broadcast in that moment?
Streaming is infinitely better.
> 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.
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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.
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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.
growing up I always had on-demand and recording on the set top boxes
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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.
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.
Oh my god no. The content is much better and you can watch whenever you want.
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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.
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.
>>> 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.
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
That would also solve the problem of AI training data. Build a data set, wait 14 years, and it's guaranteed to be legal.
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.
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.
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.
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Even Amazon Prime’s catalogue is only a third the size of what Netflix had 15 years ago.
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.
It still works this way.
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.
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.
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.
I'm still upset with how quickly shows get cancelled nowadays, like the axed Altered Carbon and The Expanse and the endings of neither felt satisfying and the final seasons - rushed.
Whatever set of circumstances leads to that, it would be nice not to have that. Somehow it feels like a huge org owning both the content creation as well as distribution leads to that.
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?
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.)
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
I want all the movies for free without pirating
How do movies get made under that system?
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.
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We could deliver to consumers over some sort of "cable". But what would we call it?
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.