Yeah, I feel the same, but I need to step back and think about it a bit more. It's odd to say that the consumer suffers from greater competition in the market-- there are definitely businesses where that's true, but is entertainment one of them?
Assume that the following were true. Streaming services were prohibited from producing content and/or owning it. Also, assume that content owners were prohibited from signing exclusive deals with a streaming service.
What would be the basis on which the streaming services would compete:
- Price
- UI (discovery, control, family profiles, suggestions)
- Quality
Price would either be based on scale (a larger player could negotiate better deals with content providers), margin or cutting quality (delivering at lower bit rates or resolution,
etc.).
The reality is that reality is that streaming services are just middlemen and for the most part, do not offer much inherent value. Having the large content producers directly deliver to the consumer, has the potential to lower the overall price, if they are able to reach the needed scale (something that all 5 big major studios should be able to do).
There's a few things happening here and I need to tease them apart. There appears to be more competition in streaming services and there's consolidation of the content generation-delivery system.
Actually a better way of looking at this is that the content producers are eliminating the middle level of distribution, which should eliminate waste and cut costs overall to the end user.
I'm frustrated that I can't just use one service to access all the content that I would like to, but is that because I'm limited or because there's so much more good content being created by this system that I'm forced to choose?
It is simply because $10 a month cannot pay for all the content being generated. People used to pay $50-$150 for a cable subscription. Eliminating the cable company only eliminates some of that cost, but people were spoiled (and misled) for the short time that Netflix had an unsustainable deal with many of the studios. While they were a small player, studios were just looking at them as incremental revenue. Once they began destroying the studios' larger revenue streams (home video, VoD, MSOs,
etc.) something had to change.
Maybe it's just a false assumption that if Netflix didn't try making content, I'd be able to stream Disney through their service, and if Apple didn't then I'd be able to consolidate Netflix into the Apple TV app.
Both assumptions are false. Netflix needed to start producing its own content because it knew that its role as a middleman did not generate enough value, and that, eventually, the content producers would understand this and not renew their deals.
Disney realized that Netflix was not paying anywhere near enough for the value it was receiving and decided that they had enough content to make their own streaming service.
On the other hand, Netflix is not in Apple's TV app because it does not want to be disintermediated. They wanted consumers to have to go to their app, and not let Apple deliver the content without the customer knowing who was delivering it, and not proving the demographic data they wanted/needed. Netfilx choose not to be part of the TV app before Apple started spending money on content.
It's probably good business because I feel pressured to subscribe to more than one service to get the content I want, which means I'm spending more than I would have otherwise, which means this sector is growing. I'm frustrated by the pressure to spend more or be disappointed that I can't see Game of Thrones, Stranger Things, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Monsters Inc, Star Trek Discovery and... I dunno, I'm sure TV+ will put something out worth watching...
I am still not sure how anyone thought that it would be possible to go from a cable subscription for $50-$150 to a Netflix subscription for $10 and expect to receive the same volume of content as before.
I'm trying to figure out if I'm actually frustrated by the consolidation or the massive wave of good content... And then I'm trying to think of what the end game is and whether we'll forever have this much good content or if the natural outcome is going to be two major competitors charging enough that I can't justify subscribing to both.
Expect to eventually pay about the same as a cable subscription for the same about of content as one would receive from a cable subscription, but being able to watch it all on demand, and be able to rotate through them, keeping only the services you need each month, based on which shows one wants to watch at that moment.
