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Online Streaming As Profitable As TV, Disc Sales By Charging Just a $15 Flat Fee
Lucas123 writes "A new report shows that if movie production houses charged a $15 monthly fee to just 45% of the world's online subscribers, they could rake in just as much cash as they currently do through TV downloads and disc sales. That equates to $29.4 billion. 'Movie producers have little to fear from online distribution in the long term,' the report states. 'It is the distribution part of the movie business that should be worried because online distribution will replace a sizable portion of their current industry.' According to the report's hypothetical model, the $15 fee would offer open access to all movie content — meaning instant online access to all movies that have been ever produced, 'along with new releases as they come out.'"
That's the excuse MPAA will use now.
With this, then they can't double dip. They wouldn't be sell the popular ones, while dumping the unpopular ones on netflix for the fees. And there might be incentives other than spectacle and marketing in the development of movies, and we can't have that either.
They do this and I'll stop pirating!
the $15 fee would offer open access to all movie content — meaning instant online access to all movies that have been ever produced, 'along with new releases as they come out
That's not going to happen
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If movie producers got a flat, monthly paycheque, there would be zero incentive to make *good* movies.
So you're saying there's a way they can make even more money than they do now? $15 a month is laughably optimistic.
Out of curiosity, I looked into how much revenue a top rated network sitcom earns for a single broadcast. That amount was equal to how much revenue would have been generated by 1/10th of their viewing audience paying for the SD version of the episode on Amazon or iTunes.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Are people in China going to agree to this? 45% of the entire world's internet subscriber base strikes me as absurd.
Sure if Photoshop sold for $3 to every single person who owns a PC they would make way more money than if they sold their software for several hundred dollars. But it's not going to happen.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
I would gladly pay $15 per month to access all movie content. I don't think I know a single person that wouldn't pay that. It's considerably more than I pay to production houses right now. My only movie expense currently is Netflix. $8/mo and production companies have to split that with Netflix.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
for $15/mo I would pay but I want EVERYTHING. ANYTIME. ANYWHERE. For Decades. they won't give me that. They'll drop some shows, they'll only last for a while. they'll block it in Canada offer different choices in Europe. It won't work in Trinidad. And without all that I'm not paying.
Just another second banana
"Online subscribers" is defined by the article as everyone in the world with Broadband, and 45% of them are the 348 million broadband customers who would have to pay $15 annually to watch movies. Here's the problem. Of those 773 million people, 174 million are Chinese, which are 22% of the broadband users. I was just reading an article how China has not even been releasing Box Office revenue from foreign films showing at theaters. I don't think there's much chance of milking any considerable amount of money through video streaming out of that country at this point in time.
I think any studies like this can only realistically look at US and similar western broadband markets as potential customers for video streaming service, as opposed to this study which includes every single broadband customer on the planet.
Better known as 318230.
$5 for the owners of Pirate Bay, $15 for the media companies to split.
My check for this month's in the mail. Now, go away, **AA, and leave me alone.
"online subscribers" was exactly the weasel-word the needed defining, and parent did an awesome job of patching up the summary!
Thats OK if you have a (truly) unlimited internet.
If something like this happened, every ISP would have data caps/overcharges, and the price would go up for those that already do
it's called usenet. You can get an monthly unlimited account for around $15.
How can it be extortion? It's not like you will die if you don't watch movies and TV series.
the ./ post says "...if movie production houses charged a $15 monthly fee..." whereas the original post says "If movie producers charged a $15 monthly fee..." these are possibly two very different costs / month to the user. How would they regulate who gets what? I'm not saying this would actually happen as the production houses would probably never agree on who gets what percentage of your $15 (if it was a flat fee like netflix) and I don't believe they would let this fly as they make more than that from 2 people just going to one movie a month.
If I had access to every movie ever made for $15/month I would never have to pay $50+ for me and the wife to go to the movies. Instead I could just take her out to dinner then bring her home to watch anything she wants :)
But it's social death NOT to be up on the latest antics of Sherlock Zombie or Downtown Baby.
rewriting history since 2109
Since it's unlikely to get 45% of all internet subscribers, consider a reasonable subset of them such as just America/Europe subscribers. However, if it were $50 and I had access to every movie/TV show ever made, I'd pay that every month, and they would probably only need the America/Europe market. Maybe an extra $20/mo for access to 'new releases' provided they were available on the standard plan after maybe 60 (90?) days. They could even do an extra 'HD' surcharge of $20-$30/mo I used to pay more than that for cable and only got access to whatever the channels were running at that time (maybe time-shifted with a DVR, but still required them to run it at some point while my DVR was recording and still had to deal with commercials). I would definitely pay that for access to everything that I could easily search and select from a list and instantly start watching something.
Netflix Instant is nice and all, but it doesn't have the best selection. I've found most of the streaming sites (Netflix Instant, Hulu Plus, and Amazon Prime), all have about the same stuff. I stream a lot from home, but we always run the risk that the streaming provider could drop a show I like at any point. I think paying a premium to ensure it's always available and that everything ever made is available, is worth it.
Obviously, this is an amazing idea that would revolutionize media content for this new internet age, which means it will never happen.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
If this was deemed viable and studios signed up there'd be no consensus on how to run it. So, there'd be 2 or 3 (or more) different services, all offering you "all" of their movies for $15 a month. But you'd find Disney films only one one service, Marvel superhero movies only on another and so on...
It might be that it were possible to get all the back catalogs of movies all available to stream, but I'd strongly suspect it would take several flat fees to do it.
All those ultra-greedy, conflicting interests dividing up one multi-billion dollar pie? That'll be the day.
What I can't figure out is why they're not offering two downloadable, DRM-free versions of their content: one that's free-as-in-beer but contains ads, much like peole get from their cable subscriptions now, and a second 'premium' version that is ad-free for a nominal charge. Make both versions easy to access via a hosted torrent site, with value-added tools such as offering the ability to track new episodes of favourite programs, or notify / auto download when available for upcoming titles. Not only would the end-user love it, the distributors could track the popularity of shows/movies even before they're released and negotiate ad revenues accordingly.
Sure, the premium version will get shared around somewhat, but at least the average Joe has a place where they can go to directly support shows/movies they like, and in the end they have a useful commodity that they can actually say they own: can back up as often as they like, play on any device, can alter it if needed / desired, or can lend to a friend or family member without hassle. I would pay for such an unencumbered file in a heartbeat, if it were reasonably priced (say a buck or two for an episode, up to $5 for a movie...approximately $2 per hour of entertainment sounds about right), and I'd use the free ad-supported versions to review new shows and see if I'd like them...I would easily spend over $15 a month just on the shows I like now :)
The proposed streaming model is great...if your customer has access to reliable, unlimited broadband wherever they might want to watch your content, and is willing to only watch the content on devices that work with your particular streaming protocol. Thing is, with people getting more and more tech savvy, even the theoretical average Joe is starting to realize that they don't have to put up with that crap if they don't want to...
"I love animals! Some are cute, others are tasty, what's not to like?" - Betsy Schroeder, Jeopardy contestant
I don't think it is a good idea:
All content ever produced instantly licensed will provide income to a legion of Ewe Boll imitators to produce volumes of work.
I shudder as I glance at the size of $5 bin at Wallmart as it is.
How can it be extortion? It's not like you will die if you don't watch movies and TV series.
You don't know me! If I don't watch the new Hunger Games movie I will literally die! I had a friend literally die from not watching it.
OMFG! You are such an insensitive clod!!!!11!
And there's no way they'd allow downloads so this srtream-only scheme prevents most of the US from participating. I live in downtown Seattle and am paying $66.93 per month for less than 1 Mbps. I have a few friends that have 40 Mbps fiber from CenturyLink, but they're the exception. Also, Comcast doesn't cover all of the city and in a lot of places where you can get TV service, you still can't get cable Internet because of problems with the return signal. Since Netflix and HBO Go don't work in much of the Seattle area, they're certainly not going to work in podunk USA.
The World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is about to switch to this model on February 24th. With their new WWE network, subscribers will have 24/7 HD access to all their past content and pay-per-views for $9.99/month. This includes not only cable but also internet streaming to android and iOS devices. Since most of their monthly pay-per-views have cost between $40 - $50 each, an annual subscription of $120 would easily pay for itself. They are betting that the subscription numbers will more than make up for the current pay-per-view income. It will be interesting to see if their model is successful and if it is, will the studios see the light?
Correction, they are going entirely to an internet streaming model, no cable TV access. They're going to have their own little Wrestling Netflix.
Online Streaming As Profitable As TV, Disc Sales By Charging Just a $15 Flat Fee
Could you really not stretch for the extra three characters to put a more readable "and" in there?
You don't even see this in print nowadays.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
if they get enough people to pay up there won't be anyone sharing this stuff on p2p
sure someone might do it, but less than now
Yeah, sorry, I got carried away with what *could* be. Seriously, though, what's wrong with this? Share all you want for $20/month. No prosecutions, because all the studios/publishers/artists get their cut from the subscription fee.
Pirate Bay manages the site, keeps the books and distributes the shares to the various companies on the basis of the proportion their properties make up out of the total downloads. The companies give up the hassle of distributing DVDs and/or running a subscription service, but get fairly compensated. Pirate Bay operators collect a bit to support the operation.
Business will naturally maximize profit and all movies will just be SyFy-quality at best within five years.
The counter-argument to your point is that with just a flat fee, Netflix has managed to make a number of TV shows that are better than 95% of TV that exists today.
It's not like you would not still wish to make something with some quality, because there are still auxiliary sales from things like BluRay sets or merchandise that only come from enjoyable shows.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"they could rake in just as much cash as they currently do through TV downloads and disc sales" - come on... capitalism asks for "getting as much money as possible", not "making the same money as before".
In addition, you'll have access to the shows that play on cable, as well as terrestrial TV on the same day the networks get them, as opposed to just the back catalog and PPV's. Good deal if you're a fan.
Give me a monthly bill with:
$10 for Unlimited Music Streaming + $15 for Unlimited TV Show Streaming + $20 for Unlimited Movie Streaming = $45 Total
I would never feel the need to pirate and everyone would win. Throw in a $10 surcharge for multiple device / independent streaming.
Can someone please make this work?
Go to China, Indonesia, a middle eastern country, eastern European country. Now try to get that iTunes DRM free download.
Whoops, your whole fucking position just imploded under the weight of 5 billion people who your scenario ignores.
this MPAA shill likes to harp on iTunes DRM free options, no matter how broken the argument is, or even irrelevant to the discussion.
Seriously, I am just waiting to give HBO all my money as soon as they offer HBO Go without having to sign up for the TV channel. Why doesn't HBO want my money?
The big blockbuster movies are just advertisements for toys anyway. Sy-Fy quality movies don't sell merch the way that Disney/Pixar/Marvel/Star Wars movies do.
Forever retransmitting the same data over and over. And you have to have the ideal connection at the right times.
They really need to embrace file sharing if they want an advantage over broadcast.
I think that cost model totally forgot to include the cost of the servers & infrastructure to deliver that amount of content to the masses reliably and with high quality. They seem to assume almost every dollar goes to licensing.
I'll just stick with broadcast then.
This concept...the viability of a business model defined by "if X% of Y population buys this for $Z" is so classically suicidal that it is literally taught in management 101 in college as one of the most sure-fire signs that a business will fail. It is called "Chinese Marketing," as a lot of early examples involved pipe dreams of how much profit could be had with even modest market penetration within the Chinese population. Such a simplistic approach fails to take into account many things:
-how long it may take to reach that level of penetration
-currency valuation challenges
-IP law differences between countries
-how many of the world's online population has access to sufficiently high bandwidth
-how many of the world's online population has their own computer (as opposed to just using an Internet cafe...substantially increasing the cost of subscribing to those potential customers who are on the margins of affordability)
-who would be the clearing house/sole distribution provider that would distribute all of the movies on behalf of every movie company
The model falls apart quickly when you take these factors into account, and I am sure there are at least a few more that I don't even know about.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
If it was possible for me here in Australia to buy a reasonably cheap streaming account and watch the shows I want to watch when I want to watch them I would be very interested. Be much easier than trying to find copies on dodgy YouTube-clone streaming sites.
But as long as Rupert Murdoch and his Foxtel empire exist, it will never happen.