Nobody Will Win The Streaming Wars

If every company goes towards individualized streaming services, piracy will sail stronger than ever.

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.” -Gabe Newell

Sony really benefited from Crackle failing years before the streaming wars began. It convinced Sony it wasn’t worth trying make a Sony streaming site. This allowed Sony to position themselves as the biggest 3rd party media seller/producer for other services at the perfect time. They are striking lucrative deals with Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and HBO. They also quietly became the dominant western anime streaming service (a rare profitable streaming service).

The streaming industry really differs from other industries when it comes to competition between companies. Usually, competition benefits customers because it incentivizes companies to bring down prices and dish out better products over time. But when it comes to streaming services, competition ruins affordability, accessibility, and convenience, which are the three main reasons why people subscribe to a streaming service in the first place.

It's weird how HBO Max was in a very good position and just destroyed itself overnight. Honestly the should have done the bundle thing with discovery like Disney plus and Hulu. Edit: I wrote this comment before he mentioned he would be doing a separate HBO Max video Edit 2: I personally believe that this merger should have never happened if they knew that this would lead them to be in debt

Just a note here about Hulu, it doesn't exist outside of the US. As a Canadian I get everything on Disney+ instead so they already have merged all their content onto Disney elsewhere

DVD’s will always be my favorite thing ever. You get to own your favorite shows, you don’t have to go through millions of shows you don’t care about to get to them, you OWN the stuff you buy, you don’t have to pay monthly fees, and you never have to worry about losing the stuff unless you’re an abhorrent dvd collector lmao

I used to work with Netflix as a customer service rep, and eventually handled more technical things for other customer service reps. Streaming Licensing is so absurdly complicated and unstable, pretty much everything is a limited contract with an expiration date and as stated there's a multitude of layers for each specific property being discusses. One of the best ways I can demonstrate this concept is with how "Netflix Original Anime" works because there are two types: Netflix Original Production and Netflix Original Dub. The former of which are productions like Devilman Crybaby which were funded by Netflix and premiered on the Netflix platform worldwide. The latter of which are productions like Seven Deadly Sins where Netflix did not fund the production, but did purchase the global distribution rights and would helm the English dub and translations for said distribution. This is also why some programs come with Dubs/Subtitles and others don't, because the job of dubbing and subtitling are typically outsourced and thus have separate licensing all on their own.

I remember when everyone thought HBO Max was gonna become the best streaming service until the discovery merger happened. All good things have to come to an end I guess :/

Fun fact, in some countries (at least Denmark) we don't have Hulu, so all Hulu shows are on Disney+ by default.

Despite who comes out on top, I hope we can ALL agree that no matter what Hulu is in last place. Absolutely inexcusable for any reason known to mankind that as long as we're paying a fee, we should NOT have to see ads.

I fully agree with your take on Netflix. People are way overexaggerating its downfall. They have too many successful originals for that.

Netflix greatly reduced the amount of piracy back in the day. It was cheap and accessible, so users flocked to it. The studios saw this and decided that making a small amount of money off streaming was better than making no money, so they flocked to it too. Then the studios saw that it was potentially quite profitable, so they decided to withdraw their content and host it on their own platforms. Now the content market is divided and expensive again, piracy is back, and the studios are feeling the squeeze. I’m sure the next 5 years will be very interesting for the streaming companies. Only a few will survive this current era of wrangling for subscribers, and the market will be back to the status quo of 10-20 years ago.

This happened with music streaming services in the aftermath of torrenting. It happened with search engines. It's happened with gaming consoles, phone operating systems, and online retailers. It's going to happen with car manufacturers with the transition to electric, and I think you right to point it out here. Streaming will consolidate: it'll turn into growth by acquisition, or a bunch of them will just go bust. In any case, once a technology matures and companies start losing market share, a bunch of the players get shaken out and you are only left with a handful. Once this happens it will be marketing moreso than content that sorts the men from the boys.

This is an absolute gem of a channel. Glad I found it

This is the first video of yours I've watched, and I gotta say, your little outro music fucking SLAPS I was vibing hard to it. Also good video :)

Disney yet again took the magic out of everything

I think it’s weird that Netflix hasn’t tried to make a show like Friends or the Office for itself. Network sitcoms and procedurals are still very popular on streaming services and provide the comfort food for tv viewing. Plus those old network shows have tons of episodes. Netflix generally cancels shows after 3 short seasons, which then just fade from memory. They need to create shows that have lots of stand alone episodes and release them on a weekly schedule. This will keep the shows from fading and keep viewers coming back.

I've already started watching popcorn time again. Hasn't touched it in like 8-10 years before that

The streaming wars have taught me a valuable lesson. And that is that i honestly just dont need to see the latest thing that everybody is talking about. I have no idea whats happening on the baby yoda show... and thats fine.