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Netflix Wants 50% Of Its Library To Be Original Content (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Netflix is looking to shift its content mix even further towards original TV and movies, with a goal of achieving a 50 percent mix between its own programming and stuff licensed for its use by outside studios. The 50-50 target was revealed by Netflix CFO David Wells at the Goldman Sach's Communacopia conference on Tuesday, and Wells added that they'd like to hit that mix sometime over the course of the next few years. As for its progress so far, Wells said Netflix is already about "one-third to halfway" to that ratio, having launched 2015 hours of original programming in 2015, and with the intend of achieving a further 600 hours by the end of 2016. The benefit for Netflix with a shift to self-generated content is that the licensing situation is much simpler, and the investment made represents a cost that continues to deliver value long after the initial spend. Licensing arrangements with outside TV and film distributors have a fixed term, and thus represent a recurring cost if you want to continue offering their content in your library.
Make television and movies like music with compulsory licensing? Say anything five years and older gets put into the pool of things that can be broadcast/streamed as part of your service as long as you pay the base royalties. Have the same sort of setup as music does but with a much finer grained reporting. That way everyone that should get paid, is paid.
While five years seems a bit long, that's so streaming and rebroadcast doesn't cut too deeply into the DVD/BluRay sales. That should be plenty of time for that to go through the fans that really want their personal copy at release or to wait for the price to fall or discounted.
And this doesn't stop anyone from making separate deals to get it before the five year date and/or add extras to their service like trivia, blooper reels, and so forth.
Again, the point of copyright was to give people a chance to spread culture around before it is outright given away. Seeing as how locked up it's become, anything that speeds and ease of dissemination is a good thing.