Streaming Exclusives Will Drive Users Back To Piracy

[dirk digler]

I thought this was a pretty good article and largely states what I believe is going to happen as well. I know we have talked in the past about how all these streaming options will cost just as much as cable or satellite in the end. Who wants 5+ streaming services that you have to buy to watch what you want?

These media companies never seem to learn.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...blivious.shtml

Streaming Exclusives Will Drive Users Back To Piracy And The Industry Is Largely Oblivious

As you probably have noticed, there's a growing tide of streaming video services popping up to feed users who want a cheaper, more flexible alternative to traditional cable. By and large this has been a very good thing. It's finally driving some competition for bumbling apathetic giants like Comcast, forcing them to at least make a feeble effort to improve customer service. It also reflects a belated admission by the broadcast industry that you need to compete with piracy (instead of say, suing the entire planet and hoping it goes away) by offering users access to cheaper, flexible viewing options.

But the gold rush into streaming has come with a few downsides. Studies have suggested that every broadcaster on the planet will likely have their own streaming service by 2022. In a bid to drive more subscribers to their service, said broadcasters are increasingly developing their own content, or striking their own content exclusivity deals, and then locking that content in an exclusivity silo. For example, if you want to watch Star Trek: Discovery, you need to shell out $6 a month for CBS All Access. Can't miss House of Cards? You'll need Netflix. Bosch? Amazon Prime. The Handmaid's Tale? Hulu.

Again, on its face this impulse makes perfect sense: you want the kind of content that drives users to your platform. And at first it wasn't all that noticeable, because there were only a handful of services. Even if you subscribed to four of them, you still probably were saving money over your traditional cable bill.

The problem is, as more and more companies jump into the streaming market, users are being forced to subscribe to an ocean of discordant services to get access for the content they're looking for. As users are forced to pony up more and more cash for more and more services, it's going to start defeating the purpose of ditching over-priced, traditional cable. But instead of going back to cable, back in March we noted how users are just as likely to consider piracy.

And of course that's already starting to happen, with BitTorrent usage seeing some modest but notable bumps, especially overseas. It's minor now, but if you've paid attention to several decades of piracy precedent, it's not hard to predict the outcome of this rush to cordon off everything into far too many exclusivity silos. Disney, for example, is preparing to pull all of its best content off of Netflix (Star Wars, Pixar, Marvel) and make it exclusive to its own streaming platform. In the wake of its acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T is contemplating doing the same thing with old episodes of shows like Friends. You may have noticed a trend:

"Before Netflix got into the Original series game, it made a name for itself by licensing content from other distributors like Warner Bros. TV, Paramount Television, and NBC Universal Television. Licensing deals are great for fans who don’t have cable or are looking to discover new series in full, but now that streaming is king, distributors and production companies have realized that they can make more money by consolidating their content on a single streaming service — hence why Disney, WarnerMedia, DC, and other media companies are creating their own platforms with original content."

You'd be pretty hard pressed to find many people in the streaming or broadcast sector who realize the pitfalls of this gold rush toward streaming exclusivity, even after all of the painful piracy and gatekeeper lessons learned thus far. After all, most industry executives are right that having must-watch exclusive content is necessary to drive subscriber adoption, and that developing original content in house is a better financial proposition than skyrocketing broadcast licensing costs. But few have paused, taken a step back, and considered how the rush to exclusivity at scale could come back to bite the sector at large.

That's thanks, in part, to the weird aversion among most journalists and analysts to even mention piracy in their reports or stories. Most reporters and analysts see even mentioning piracy as some kind of bizarre cardinal sin that implies they somehow advocate for the behavior. This tendency to ignore the elephant in the room is a major reason the industry has such a hard time learning that you have to compete with piracy, not engage in idiotic, counter-productive and often harmful attempts to "cure" it with legislation, lawyers, or an endless parade of terrible ideas.

The old adage that those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it will likely hold true here. If the current trend holds, by 2022 consumers will be forced to subscribe to an absolute universe of $10 to $15 per month services just to get all the content they're looking for, on the presumption the average household has an unlimited amount of disposable income.

If history is any indication, it will take another year or two for the industry to identify and admit this exclusivity parade is driving users back to piracy. At that point, they'll probably burn through a rotating crop of "solutions" (like waging war on password sharing), before coming to this central conclusion: that licensing your content to a sensible but not overwhelming crop of companies actually good at the technical and customer service aspects of streaming (like, Netflix) -- instead of everybody and their mother launching their own streaming product -- wasn't such a terrible idea after all.

[mr. tegu]

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan

I watch one or two Disney films a year. I'm not going to sign up for a monthly charge to the Disney channel to watch that, even if I have the option of cancelling after just one month.

So I wouldn't call the option of being able to sign up to just the Disney channel in order to watch a single film, being able to pay for just what I want.

I understand why Disney would rather have people directly subscribe as oppose to license their titles for rental on Netflix or rental/sale on Amazon.

It still sucks.

I'm not currently pirating any film watching, but I would certainly consider it just to give the industry the finger.

If sites like Disney allow one time watching for a few bucks, I will withdraw my complaint. Until then, screw 'em.

Surely new Disney releases will continue to be available to rent on Redbox or even Amazon, though that’s more expensive. Unless they’ve talked about not letting their movies be anywhere other than their service? That would seem odd but I don’t know.

[Baby Lee]

Originally Posted by mr. tegu

Surely new Disney releases will continue to be available to rent on Redbox or even Amazon, though that’s more expensive. Unless they’ve talked about not letting their movies be anywhere other than their service? That would seem odd but I don’t know.

I think mostly Disney has been pulling content from more direct competitors for their streaming service. So you can rent or buy DVDs, but won't find anything on Hulu or Netflix.

[Deberg_1990]

Originally Posted by Chief Pagan

Sure, people whine a lot and it was always better back in the good ole' days.

But sometimes that is true.

At the height of the VHS video rental market, you could go to Blockbuster and rent any major Hollywood movie a few months after it was released at theaters. And most cities would also have a few specialty rental stores with a really large selection of art house and foreign films. They might require a credit card number for a deposit but you didn't need no stinkin' monthly subscription.

At one point in time, Netflix served the same market. Yes, it was a subscription but it was pretty cheap and the movie list was really huge. I used to rent a lot of art house, old films and foreign films from Netflix. It used to be rare that I searched for a movie that Netflix didn't have. Those titles are gone. I had a movie list of a couple hundred titles on my Netflix account. At one time, probably 90% were available. Now that is maybe 20%.

Some films are available as a one-off such as the $3 or $4 purchase on Amazon, but a lot of titles are not.

I watch one or two Disney films a year. I'm not going to sign up for a monthly charge to the Disney channel to watch that, even if I have the option of cancelling after just one month.

So I wouldn't call the option of being able to sign up to just the Disney channel in order to watch a single film, being able to pay for just what I want.

I understand why Disney would rather have people directly subscribe as oppose to license their titles for rental on Netflix or rental/sale on Amazon.

It still sucks.

I'm not currently pirating any film watching, but I would certainly consider it just to give the industry the finger.

If sites like Disney allow one time watching for a few bucks, I will withdraw my complaint. Until then, screw 'em.

I am happy with Youtube TV allowing me to watch the NBA, Monday night Football, Hockey, and Kansas basketball games for a not outrageous fee.

And sometimes technology does make it cheaper for the same amount of entertainment. In the 90's you would pay $15~$20 for an album that maybe had a couple of songs you liked. Outside of a very few, music artist can no longer get wealthy on album sales. It is all about live shows.
Since you can legally get the songs far cheaper than that now. Stream free with ads or stream without ads for a pretty minimal amount. At least until every other artist decides they are going to have their own, separate, subscription site...

I don't think the cable/entertainment streaming industry is going to maintain the same level of revenue. We'll see.

you can do one time film watching. Stuff like iTunes and all the other various streaming rental on demand sites.

[TinyEvel]

Let’s all go back to books, people.