[aganders3]

Regarding the RIAA one: I find it interesting how similar the streaming services are to the system of Voluntary Collective Licensing advocated by the EFF starting in 2003 [0].

Video content is moving in another direction with more walled gardens supported by original content. Maybe it's because of the costs required to produce quality content, or the size of the total library. Maybe it has something to do with how we watch video vs. listen to music (i.e. I may listen to a song or album 100x, but rarely watch any movie even twice).

[0] https://www.eff.org/files/eff-a-better-way-forward.pdf

[ghaff]

There was also a fairly long-standing set of licensing and royalty practices in the music industry that you could more or less use whatever you want so long as you pay the appropriate royalties for it. Of course, this could have all broken down with the shift to digital but it didn't. I expect the market position and determination of Apple and Steve Jobs played at least some role in this.

Of course, the dollar amounts involved are a matter of ongoing debate. But, for the most part, if you want to setup a music streaming service or store, you could probably get access to at least a very large library at rates comparable to your competition.

The basic problem with video seems to be that the content owners by and large aren't jumping to broadly license content, even much of their back catalog, at rates that would support an all-you-can-eat subscription service. So all the services are basically doing original content that they pad out with the mostly mediocre stuff that they can license for a reasonable rate.