I will point out that while the cries of "it'll ruin us" (meaning, our business model) have been going on for some time, each time it seems to get closer to the truth. When the original business model was "people going to theaters", new technology options meant that fewer people might go to movies. And that does happen from year to year, and may be on a downward trend for a variety of reasons. Other markets open up but it can take time to adjust (and rather than adjust, big studios seem to just fight).
I do think they're pretty close to the mark on music these days. The cry of "radio will destroy us" is rather silly in hindsight because radio is still a physical limited system. I can only tune in X stations, signal isn't always good, and I'm limited by the realtime aspect of station X only playing Y songs per day. Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music. Bigger than most big companies are ready to deal with.
What I'd like? $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all movie content from X major studios. Another $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all OTA/Cable channels. When I say all I mean all - every movie in an archive going back to the dawn of time. Every episode of every TV show that was aired (and maybe some that weren't). I'd even be content with not having access to current stuff. I don't particularly care about being "up to date" with whatever the latest shows are - I much prefer going through entire series after the fact.
Index everything - make it searchable. Let me search up actor FOO, find the shows he was in, and go watch those scenes. We're close on some aspects of this, but still so far away.
All of this content exists, somewhere. Yes, it'll take time to convert it to online. But that's a one time expense (big as it may be). And the 'long tail' effect I believe would justify people spending a nominal amount per month to get at all the old stuff whenever they want. There's no value in movie X sitting in a vault.
> What I'd like? $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all movie content from X major studios. Another $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all OTA/Cable channels.
It's a simple, mathematical fact that the current people paying for films and television are paying much, much more than your hypothetical $30/month.
New content is simply not available at the present quality level for the price you are offering.
To put this in perspective, it'd be similar to telling Apple/iOS developers that instead of buying apps a la carte, you want to spend $1/month and get instant access to every app, both paid and free -- the math doesn't even remotely add up to compensate the people writing the apps.
Hollywood, both for feature films and for cable is insanely competitive, with massive downward price pressure every single year. There simply isn't the amount of overhead to be removed from the system that people not in the industry seem to think there is.
"It's a simple, mathematical fact that the current people paying for films and television are paying much, much more than your hypothetical $30/month."
"New content is simply not available at the present quality level for the price you are offering."
I'm not sure either of these statements hold up. People may be spending more than $30 a month on movie-related entertainment, but a large portion of those dollars don't end up in the pockets of the content creators. It's like saying that a $10 CD can't be less profitable for a musician than a $1 MP3.
A large percentage of the dollars that consumers currently spend on entertainment go to the channel rather than the creator. I'm sure if Louis CK had distributed his recent video via traditional channels, the total dollar volume of the purchases might have been 10x higher between pay cable, DVDs and downloads. But he, as the content creator, might have made less money (and certainly would have had less control.)
As for downwards price pressure, the average price of a movie ticket has been rising for years while studios watch ticket volumes decline. Where's the price pressure there?
Furthermore, while many people are paying high cable/satellite bills, many other people aren't - they're already priced out of that market. And many other people are dropping out of that too, whether for 'pirated material' or just other media/entertainment. A smaller monthly fee with greater access to more content on demand - even if there is some DRM attached to it - would bring people back.
Watching BBC programs, for example - or maybe 70s NBC dramas - there's huge vast collection of back catalog stuff that simply isn't doing anyone much good sitting in vaults. If I knew I had access to all of that stuff for a flat rate, it's be much less worth it to hit up pirate bay.
Yeah, we may not really be talking one flat rate, but I'd love to pay BBC $10/month to have access to all their back catalog. And NBC. And CBS. And ITV. And ABC. Wow - gosh, I might just be willing to pay $50/month for all that stuff. But yeah, that'd mean they'd have some work to do - one time work - to make continued ongoing revenue streams. Without even having to put up ads!
> Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music.
Once all the technical barriers are gone, there still remains limitation of one human's capacity and ability to cope with huge number of titles, artists etc.
Try as I might, it's not feasible for me to consume more than about 16h/day of music and movies, regardless of technological progress.
Moreover, it takes nontrivial amount of time and effort to just find music and movies matching your taste, limiting the theoretical 16h to way less. Back then all one had were his and his friends' LPs and a handful of radio stations. Now I /teoretically/ could access any music -- but I'll rather listen to something my friends, or (a business opportunity here!) an advisor recommends for me.
There is, and will be, a natural scarcity in multimedia in any foreseeable future, with our cognitive capacity being the ultimate limiter. And there will still be mad money to be made by picking the right track and show for the consumer.
"There's no value in movie X sitting in a vault."
I'm pretty sure Disney would beg to differ.
Also, digital preservation is not a one time expense.
I like the idea of a subscription model for a complete catalogue of content too, but it's not really feasible. Imagine if someone said "I want to pay $20/month to be able to download and install all software ever written".
It's not really feasible? It's eminently feasible, as is demonstrated by the fact that even with no kind of central coordination, people daily pirate most of the world's digital artifacts. To add insult to injury, it's often more convenient to pirate to stuff than to buy it, a big flashing sign that should indicate a business opportunity rather than a challenge.
The only thing preventing it is the content owner's attachment their obsolete business models. I'm sure many people in the media industry realize this, but they earn their bonuses in the present, not in the shiny future. But make no mistake: in the near future, we will have ubiquituous access to most cultural artifacts of the human race, regardless of the business model.
I think it's frustrating to everyone that it's more convenient to pirate content than it is to buy it. If creating a legal alternative to piracy were easy, someone would have done it by now and the folks in Hollywood wouldn't feel like they need something like SOPA.
However, delivery is only part of the puzzle. Divvying up the pie is orders of magnitude more complicated. One suggestion might be to take all the money brought in by a subscription system and distribute it based on what percentage of total views each piece of content got.
But... not all content is created equal. Think about it for my software by subscription example. If Angry Birds gets downloaded 100,000 times in a given month and AutoCAD gets downloaded 1,000 times, should Angry Birds get a 100x bigger piece of the subscription revenue? Also, the catalogue would never be truly exhaustive because the writers of ClarisWorks might be impossible to get in touch with, or might not agree to the terms of the marketplace.
When taken in its most general terms, Hollywood's business model is strikingly similar to that of venture capitalists: "spend a lot of up front money to make something now, and hope that it generates even more money down the road". There's nothing Hollywood would love more than to give up their bonuses in the present for a future where content created now will continue to bring in small amounts of money for the rest of their lives.
I probably come off as sounding too sympathetic to Hollywood. SOPA is pretty clearly the wrong answer to a question very few people were asking. But I think we do ourselves a disservice by downplaying the complexity of the problem.
I do think they're pretty close to the mark on music these days. The cry of "radio will destroy us" is rather silly in hindsight because radio is still a physical limited system. I can only tune in X stations, signal isn't always good, and I'm limited by the realtime aspect of station X only playing Y songs per day. Instant access to all music (or, a very large subset) all the time means ... a big shift in how people consume and think about music. Bigger than most big companies are ready to deal with.
What I'd like? $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all movie content from X major studios. Another $10-$20/month for instant streaming access to all OTA/Cable channels. When I say all I mean all - every movie in an archive going back to the dawn of time. Every episode of every TV show that was aired (and maybe some that weren't). I'd even be content with not having access to current stuff. I don't particularly care about being "up to date" with whatever the latest shows are - I much prefer going through entire series after the fact.
Index everything - make it searchable. Let me search up actor FOO, find the shows he was in, and go watch those scenes. We're close on some aspects of this, but still so far away.
All of this content exists, somewhere. Yes, it'll take time to convert it to online. But that's a one time expense (big as it may be). And the 'long tail' effect I believe would justify people spending a nominal amount per month to get at all the old stuff whenever they want. There's no value in movie X sitting in a vault.