People (including me) complain about monopolies all the time for various reasons. At the same time, I’ve noticed a ton of complaints about the existence of multiple streaming platforms. But isn’t that a good thing at the end of the day? If streaming platforms consolidated into 2-3 companies, there wouldn’t be much stopping them from raising prices even more.
The issue is, there isn’t any real competition. I for example like to watch sci-fi series and there is exactly one streaming service that has Star Trek, one who has Star Wars, one who has The Orville… Similarly the newest Lord of the Rings series is exclusive to one service. And there always being “one” isn’t competition. It’d be if I were able to watch any of that on multiple services.
I mean if I go shopping, it’s not like oranges are sold exclusive in one store, bread in another and butter in a third and I have to drive to 5 different stores to get breakfast and they all want a membership fee from me. There, nobody can have a monopoly on oranges… Yet in the streaming world there is a monopoly on Disney content, and lots of other small monopolies on franchises.
So you’re right in complaining. Having more monopolies isn’t better than having a small amount of them.
I don’t mind multiple streaming platforms as long as all they do is stream content
My issue is each and every streaming platform produces their own exclusive content or they sign exclusivity contracts so only one platform streams a particular show or movie at once.
If Netflix and amazon video had the same content, you would just have to choose the service that is cheapest and has the best benefits like great user interface, customer support, features, and other stuff like that.
When there are 12 different platforms which each have their own library with barely any overlap you have to sign up for multiple all at once, and some that have terrible customer support or user interfaces if you want to watch one of their shows.
I used to subscribe to Netflix, prime video, and HBO max. I realized that I’m only consuming less than 5% of the contents they offer and I felt that I’m just wasting money. So I unsubscribed and went back to the high seas.
If they can offer one service for all the contents I’d gladly pay for the service.
As others have pointed out, the rules of competition don’t apply since there’s exclusive content at play.
As a metaphor, It’s not like one restaurant serving a popular type of food vs multiple restaurants doing so. It’s having one Italian, one Thai, one Chinese and one American restaurant being the only ones in 100 miles. Look! There’s competition, 4 restaurants! Unless you only want some pad Thai.
So now instead of fixing cables issue of $60-100/month, they made it more complicated by paying $60-100/month to 3-5 different companies instead of one.
As a real life example. If you have kids, or are a big Star wars/marvel fan, 9/10 you need Disney+. It may as well be a Monopoly now so they can raise their prices as much as they want. Parents and nerds will pay through the nose for it.
Source: am a parent and a nerd (but I pirate all my stuff anyway)
I dont think multiple streaming platforms is a problem. The problem is exclusivity. I dont want to pay for every subscription service to watch popular things. I want to watch any show I want on one platform that I choose. Much like I do for music. But no, with TV shows everyone has their own walled garden of exclusives. Fuck that.
I could only imagine if each record label had their own streaming service. People would go nuts.
No, they would put on a pirate hat and hit the seven seas again.
I mean, that is basically where we are coming from. And the record companies still remembering this is the reason we still have usable music streaming services. Might change again as time passes though…
Because the service is worse with multiple streaming services?
Everything is not in the same place, it’s more expensive, and it’s less convenient.
It used to be cheaper with one. It’s more expensive with multiple.
Piracy has become more convenient than streaming platforms. As least all the media can be consolidated to one place, one frontend.
Yeah, you rarely hear people complain about music streaming apps because they don’t have (as much of) an exlueitivy problem. Apple/Google/Spotify/etc. Are competing on service/cost/features.
