Netflix is now behaving like a channel, rather than a library. Originally, they had a huge library from which you could choose. Now, they announce "Here are some of the great and varied selection of films coming to our U.S. service in the next few months". Some of those films are decades old. Gradually, their back catalog has shrunk.
Ultimately, I'm afraid this is due to the difference in laws between owning a physical copy of a disk and having the rights to redistribute digital media. Once Netflix had a DVD of some old movie, it was effectively free for them to hold onto it forever, and older DVDs could be siphoned up from a zillion sources for pennies. Netflix would have to pay for new movies, but the maximum they could be charged would be retail price, and once they had the copies, they'd have them forever. Their catalog would only grow.
Digital redistribution, however, severely hampers them. They can't "buy" copies of movies anymore. Instead, they must pay for the right to stream a movie for a certain amount of time to a certain number of users.
It's an unfortunate outcome, and it's all but guaranteed by the way copyright law works. If there were a law change to allow the digital equivalent of "owning one copy" or, say, allowing the owner of a DVD to stream its contents to exactly 1 recipient over the Internet per DVD owned, I think Netflix's catalog would be an order of magnitude larger.
It's like a conspiracy to annoy the hell out of the average consumer. I'm not sure why Netflix would be proud of this.
How about we also get Spotify, iTunes and Google Play to step up the exclusives on their music services so I can never have a single place to go to listen to music.
This might be already happening - e.g. in the last few months Drake's album was released exclusively on Apple Music, Kanye's exclusively on Tidal. The back catalogs are mostly everywhere for now, but maybe this is the beginning and major releases from this point on will be exclusives.
It's a conspiracy to extract as much profit from consumers as possible. If everyone has Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, Prime Video, YouTube and iTunes subscriptions then large rights holders extract more money. It's been said before, but the premium cable TV channel model is what they're going for.
Conversely, the more market power netflix gains, the better they can negotiate with more rightsholders for more content while piracy -- as a free grey market alternative -- hopefully keeps them from abusing their position too much.
Still it's not much different from Hulu having exclusive rights to stream airing episodes of television shows. Someone has to be paid for all of this work.
Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login. If this were done on some other kind of service, then we might reasonably expect a backlash.
Cable is the worst. I shouldn't have to pay for channels I don't want. It should be à la carte.
Streaming services are the worst. I shouldn't have to subscribe to a half dozen different services. Someone should sell a bundle that gives me access to all of them for a lower price.
This explains why I still buy physical copies of music and TV shows when possible. If I can't actually own it then I don't own it. Can't fleece a sheep that won't come to the barn.
This is reminiscent of 'patented' in consumer literature.
In my mind, exclusive content is great for a business and bad for the consumer but for some reason people think its a good idea to market it to consumers. If you said Netflix has popular XYZ shows and they stopped being available elsewhere, it would avoid people realizing that Netflix is now playing the same games as the cable mafia did/does and instead people would just be happy that they could watch things fully on demand with all the conveniences of netflix.
I completely agree. Exclusive deals are anticompetitive.
I can understand why they would market it. If you love Disney, now you know that you need to have a Netflix account to watch it, so Netflix is using it to attract customers.
> for some reason people think its a good idea to market it to consumers.
I'm skeptical of the assertion that most people care, at all. Outside of specific circles (overrepresented on HN), I know vanishingly few people who are willing (able?) to tie company's actions to their market-level consequences.
Marketing this seems like a no brainer: allowing consumers to think this feature isn't exclusive to you just means that they're more comfortable switching to or picking your competitors. Being clear about exclusivity means that you're shifted well up the "must-have" spectrum for many consumers.
Why September if the deal started in 2016? It covers movies that premiere in 2016 or later, and September is nine months after the January 29 release of The Finest Hours[1], the first Disney movie expected to be exclusive to Netflix.
[1] — I earlier opined that Zootopia would kick it off, but The Finest Hours was Disney's first 2016 release and since 7-9 months is the typical wait for a pay-TV window, it seems Disney movies will be on Netflix 9 months after release.
> From September onwards, Netflix will become the exclusive US pay TV home of the latest films from Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar.
Does that mean we will have to pay to watch them? Makes sense from a market standpoint since they are likely to be highly sought after but this pay per movie looks like new turf for netflix.
Perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising given the ongoing spat between Amazon and Disney. Sad to see we are at a place where competition is high but rarely makes the best decisions for users.
I would think "Pay TV" refers to monthly subscription TV, as opposed to free over the air TV, and a generic term for cable/satellite. Pay per movie is usually called pay per view.
I would have assumed the US pay TV Home of the latest films from Disney and its subsidiaries would be the Disney Channel?
I agree it's a bit confusing but I think they mean "pay TV" in the sense that Netflix costs money. So these movies won't be available on HBO or Showtime or any other cable networks.
> Netflix will become the exclusive US pay TV home of the latest films from Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar
What does that even mean? Can someone who understands the lingo clarify this for me? Does that mean I'll have to pay per-view to see Disney content on Netflix?
"Netflix will become the only place in the US that you can give money ($8/mo for streaming-only, for example) to see Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar films. Not Comcast, Not Starz, Not HBO. ONLY Netflix. Woo! Go us! (They may still appear for free on Disney-owned-ABC over-the-air stations, but don't count on it.)"
No, "pay TV" means TV you have to pay extra (outside the cost of a basic cable package) to access. Usually this payment is made in the form of a monthly subscription fee. That category includes Netflix, but it also includes HBO, Showtime, Starz, etc.
Demonstrates the error of the "long tail" fad some years back. Dazzled by the prospect of everything being available online, pundits failed to grasp the value of content and the ensuing turf wars. Netflix was the prime example, hoping to carry every movie for a trivial flat fee; didn't work out that way. Closest we've got is the likes of iTunes, with a broad spectrum available $1-7 rental (vs the unfulfilled promise of Netflix, $8/month).
That's cause the movie/television television industry is valued at 150 billion dollars a year where as the music industry is 15 [1]. Multiply the music industry price standard by their relative sizes and you'd get a $100 dollars a month which is about the cost of your top cable prescription for having access to just about everything [2].
Did you think they were going to get the same value for 1/10 the cost?
There are two words OP omitted in the title from the quote in the article that make the scope of the statement seem bigger than it is: "Netflix will become the exclusive US pay TV home of the latest films from Disney, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar."
I know that companies want to set up exclusives and other things so consumers will feel “forced” to buy entire services just to obtain the killer apps (or movies, or games, or whatever). In reality, I am sick and tired of being expected to pay for stuff I don’t want just to get what I do want. I have been buying far less over time, and I have been discovering how little I care about movies and TV shows after all. Oh hey, it’s sunny outside! Oh look, there’s so much more to do in life!
Media companies have refused to learn from the $0.99 iTunes store years ago: people don’t want albums anymore, they want songs. They do want your TV show, they just want to download it from anywhere they damn well please. They do want your game, they just don’t want to have to buy an entire new console to get it. And so on. If you’re supposed to be in the business of selling X then sell it; don’t conjure up scheme after scheme to try to force consumers to get other crap. And definitely don’t complain when they see through it all and refuse to give you a dime.
I find it funny that when exclusivity is ever brought up it's talked about like some kind of conspiracy to take money from customers. It isn't a conspiracy and there aren't men in boardrooms laughing menacingly while smoking cigars. The truth is this is just the result of how the system works. That is capitalism and normal competition.
If all the streaming services offer the same content then none of them are special. And if one service ends up offering something you can only get from them then they have a leg up on the competition. Soon other services start trying to compete by getting exclusive content and eventually anyone who doesn't play the game is pushed out.
If we're serious about hating exclusive and if we want to move away from them then you need to talk about the system that causes it to happen.
It's easy to see why it's like that. For example, there's a market (a country) with 5 players. Each offers you 500 Euros for a run of your long-forgotten movie. That's 2500 Euros if you got them all to buy it. One of them says they will buy it, as an exclusive, for 5000 Euros. It's as simple as that. I work in this sector (not the business side though) and that's what I see each day. To add onto that, sometimes it's even that one (from our example here) offers you 2000 for exclusive, and that's what you take because others won't buy it, or one or two will. You get the idea.
This is I think the point where I am starting to get a little afraid of Netflix instead of rooting for them. They are becoming a monopoly that is going to be tough to displace. While they were producing their own original content, it was awesome. Now it seems like you'll basically be either subscribing to Netflix or torrenting content, but you won't have a third option. Having said that, this is a brilliant move on their part.
Yes. The article is as notable for the dreariness of the movies available before September as it is for the exclusive content available in September. The message seems to be, "If you can tolerate three months of Adam Sandler, obscure indie documentaries, a couple of oldies from 2001, and unheard-of Netflix originals, you get to watch Disney! And that's your only option!" Thanks Netflix.
This is big news but I'm not sure how big it will impact consumers because of Disney Anywhere i.e. When you buy any Disney movie from any platform and link it to DisneyAnywhere, it's available to watch on any major service e.g. Apple, Amazon, Vudu, Google
One thing people aren't mentioning is that this is 'pay TV'. So Netflix is starting to sell short term rentals?
That seems like a pretty low-key announcement for what sounds like a blockbuster (no pun) deal?
If I were Disney, I'd create my own service. HBO claims such a thing is hard but I don't buy it. Charge $50-100 for some ever-changing sub-set of the library. Profit. Still provides plenty of room to cut deals with all the movie services and maintain some artificial scarcity.
I'd like to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron, but as far as I can tell there is no way to rent it digitally. You can only purchase. If you want to rent it you have to rent a physical disc from RedBox.
Yet I can rent Deadpool and many other Marvel properties.
Does anyone know why Ultron seems to be singled out?
Essentially, Fox owns the rights for X-Men and Deadpool is an X-Men universe character. Fox and Disney have different views on rental and sale windows.
Age of Ultron is not available for rent because it is on Starz. This is similar exclusivity deal but with traditional premium TV channel. This happens with most movies. They are available for rent for a while on streaming sites, then can't be rented when on pay TV, and finally can be rented again after year or two.
Despite Deadpool being a Marvel property, the movie itself was primarily produced/distributed by 20th Century Fox, so it's probably just different licensing between different companies.
[+] [-] Animats|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CobrastanJorji|9 years ago|reply
Digital redistribution, however, severely hampers them. They can't "buy" copies of movies anymore. Instead, they must pay for the right to stream a movie for a certain amount of time to a certain number of users.
It's an unfortunate outcome, and it's all but guaranteed by the way copyright law works. If there were a law change to allow the digital equivalent of "owning one copy" or, say, allowing the owner of a DVD to stream its contents to exactly 1 recipient over the Internet per DVD owned, I think Netflix's catalog would be an order of magnitude larger.
[+] [-] stevecalifornia|9 years ago|reply
How about we also get Spotify, iTunes and Google Play to step up the exclusives on their music services so I can never have a single place to go to listen to music.
[+] [-] dcosson|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] darpa_escapee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Steko|9 years ago|reply
Conversely, the more market power netflix gains, the better they can negotiate with more rightsholders for more content while piracy -- as a free grey market alternative -- hopefully keeps them from abusing their position too much.
[+] [-] oh_sigh|9 years ago|reply
Is there any app like that but standalone, where you don't need a special speaker for it?
[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|9 years ago|reply
Still it's not much different from Hulu having exclusive rights to stream airing episodes of television shows. Someone has to be paid for all of this work.
Besides, ITS NETFLIX. Everyone has a Netflix account or a family member's login. If this were done on some other kind of service, then we might reasonably expect a backlash.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] baby|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxerickson|9 years ago|reply
I'm not real optimistic that people will ever come to see exclusive media deals as contracts designed to increase revenues.
[+] [-] partiallypro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] forrestthewoods|9 years ago|reply
Streaming services are the worst. I shouldn't have to subscribe to a half dozen different services. Someone should sell a bundle that gives me access to all of them for a lower price.
[+] [-] norea-armozel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] barbs|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmritard96|9 years ago|reply
In my mind, exclusive content is great for a business and bad for the consumer but for some reason people think its a good idea to market it to consumers. If you said Netflix has popular XYZ shows and they stopped being available elsewhere, it would avoid people realizing that Netflix is now playing the same games as the cable mafia did/does and instead people would just be happy that they could watch things fully on demand with all the conveniences of netflix.
[+] [-] Osiris|9 years ago|reply
I can understand why they would market it. If you love Disney, now you know that you need to have a Netflix account to watch it, so Netflix is using it to attract customers.
[+] [-] wutbrodo|9 years ago|reply
I'm skeptical of the assertion that most people care, at all. Outside of specific circles (overrepresented on HN), I know vanishingly few people who are willing (able?) to tie company's actions to their market-level consequences.
Marketing this seems like a no brainer: allowing consumers to think this feature isn't exclusive to you just means that they're more comfortable switching to or picking your competitors. Being clear about exclusivity means that you're shifted well up the "must-have" spectrum for many consumers.
[+] [-] zach|9 years ago|reply
http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2012/12/04/netflix-outbid...
Why September if the deal started in 2016? It covers movies that premiere in 2016 or later, and September is nine months after the January 29 release of The Finest Hours[1], the first Disney movie expected to be exclusive to Netflix.
[1] — I earlier opined that Zootopia would kick it off, but The Finest Hours was Disney's first 2016 release and since 7-9 months is the typical wait for a pay-TV window, it seems Disney movies will be on Netflix 9 months after release.
[+] [-] sdca|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marricks|9 years ago|reply
Does that mean we will have to pay to watch them? Makes sense from a market standpoint since they are likely to be highly sought after but this pay per movie looks like new turf for netflix.
Perhaps it shouldn't be too surprising given the ongoing spat between Amazon and Disney. Sad to see we are at a place where competition is high but rarely makes the best decisions for users.
[+] [-] toast0|9 years ago|reply
I would have assumed the US pay TV Home of the latest films from Disney and its subsidiaries would be the Disney Channel?
[+] [-] hsod|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NicoJuicy|9 years ago|reply
I'm not paying for 3-4 streaming services with all exclusive rights, nor i'm willing to constantly change apps for finding the right movie.
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] benologist|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r00fus|9 years ago|reply
What does that even mean? Can someone who understands the lingo clarify this for me? Does that mean I'll have to pay per-view to see Disney content on Netflix?
[+] [-] jachee|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smacktoward|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] superkamiguru|9 years ago|reply
What it doesn't bar is Disney movies showing up on channels that don't necessarily require a subscription, like ABC (Disney owned network).
[+] [-] ctdonath|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrep|9 years ago|reply
Did you think they were going to get the same value for 1/10 the cost?
[1]: first google search result :/
[2]: more googling
[+] [-] gdulli|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] makecheck|9 years ago|reply
Media companies have refused to learn from the $0.99 iTunes store years ago: people don’t want albums anymore, they want songs. They do want your TV show, they just want to download it from anywhere they damn well please. They do want your game, they just don’t want to have to buy an entire new console to get it. And so on. If you’re supposed to be in the business of selling X then sell it; don’t conjure up scheme after scheme to try to force consumers to get other crap. And definitely don’t complain when they see through it all and refuse to give you a dime.
[+] [-] saryant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] isaiahg|9 years ago|reply
If all the streaming services offer the same content then none of them are special. And if one service ends up offering something you can only get from them then they have a leg up on the competition. Soon other services start trying to compete by getting exclusive content and eventually anyone who doesn't play the game is pushed out.
If we're serious about hating exclusive and if we want to move away from them then you need to talk about the system that causes it to happen.
[+] [-] shmerl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Keyframe|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjvir|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jimjimjim|9 years ago|reply
It's still more expensive than monthly netflix but at least I own it rather than having anxiety over losing access to it.
[+] [-] wj|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IgorPartola|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] putzdown|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chaostheory|9 years ago|reply
One thing people aren't mentioning is that this is 'pay TV'. So Netflix is starting to sell short term rentals?
[+] [-] pbreit|9 years ago|reply
If I were Disney, I'd create my own service. HBO claims such a thing is hard but I don't buy it. Charge $50-100 for some ever-changing sub-set of the library. Profit. Still provides plenty of room to cut deals with all the movie services and maintain some artificial scarcity.
[+] [-] MBCook|9 years ago|reply
I'd like to watch Avengers: Age of Ultron, but as far as I can tell there is no way to rent it digitally. You can only purchase. If you want to rent it you have to rent a physical disc from RedBox.
Yet I can rent Deadpool and many other Marvel properties.
Does anyone know why Ultron seems to be singled out?
[+] [-] zrail|9 years ago|reply
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/90394
Essentially, Fox owns the rights for X-Men and Deadpool is an X-Men universe character. Fox and Disney have different views on rental and sale windows.
[+] [-] ianburrell|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbashyal|9 years ago|reply
I love the $1 SD or $2 HD rental VidAngel offers on latest DVD releases. Not sure how long this will last though.
[+] [-] CrazedGeek|9 years ago|reply