(Photo courtesy of NPR) “Streaming services have simultaneously multiplied in numbers and gotten more expensive, leading to consumers having to make the choice of which ones to keep.”
Maxwell Valin
Connector Editor
The rise in streaming services over the better last decade has completely changed how entertainment across film, television, and music is consumed. Whereas before, seeing your favorite movie required actually going to the theater or purchasing a physical/digital copy, streaming has made it an easier process by allowing companies to package massive amounts of content together for a monthly fee that, in theory, would save consumers money in comparison to the amount they’d be spending on each individual product, or on cable packages.
In the early days of this new form of distribution, the convenience factor was undoubtedly appealing to the masses, as platforms such as Netflix quickly took over households all across the country. The impact of this rise was felt heavily throughout the industry, with previous titans such as Blockbuster being forced to go out of business due to the inability to compete in the changing times. By all means, streaming was here to so stay. But have things panned out in the long-term the way they were intended to? My answer is no, and quite frankly, that if entertainment companies want to hold onto streaming as a viable platform, serious changes are going to need to be made.
The problem began when, inevitably and predictably, each film production company wanted its own piece of the streaming service pie. Whereas before, people were able to get access to most of the content they wanted with just Netflix and Hulu, which, altogether was less than 20 dollars a month for a time. Now people are paying roughly that same price for ad-free Netflix alone, which has far less content on it due to losing so much of the library it once had to other companies’ own services. Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, MAX, Paramount+, and many others have put in great effort to make sure that you can only find their parent company’s content on their respective services, and nowhere else.
If you want all of those services without ads, the total cost would set you back over 90 dollars a month, at least. Wasn’t the point of this whole thing to be a cheaper, more convenient alternative to cable? Well, here’s the thing. For a time it was, but in the long run, it was never going to be that. And it seems as though the unforeseen consequences of streaming are finally catching up to these companies.
What I call the “streaming service paradox” has to do with the effect these services have had on both the business and creative sides of the film industry. Since the big breaking of streaming into numerous platforms, each company has been in a rush to produce content that would be exclusive to their service, to entice people to come and buy. The problem? Well, a lot of this content simply has not been that good, due to rushed production cycles and the sheer volume of projects that makes quality control go right out the door.
As a result of this, platforms are losing customers in droves. Some will return for certain projects, but generally speaking, the reliability of customers sticking around consistently long-term is seriously hurt. And when these profits don’t turn up as companies had hoped, what is the only solution? To rely on the theaters? Well, it seems as though attendance there has been on a general decline too, so the only real way to go is to keep the dial cranked up and pump out more content in hopes something will stick.
Here, we find the “streaming service paradox” taking shape. Companies want to draw customers in by pumping out content in hopes of making their service profitable. But because much of this content is disliked due to low quality, people cancel their subscriptions, and they can’t rely on theaters or DVDs anymore to make as much profit as they once did. So now, they find themselves painted into a corner where the only options are cranking up the production machines or dialing back content and losing pace with the huge investment they made in the first place.
It seems as though there are effectively two ways out of this: the first, is the consolidation of the streaming services into fewer platforms that host wider amounts of content that people will be willing to dish out their money for. And if that doesn’t work? Well, then that second option would likely be a failure of the streaming service as a business model and a return to the old ways of film production and distribution. But can anyone seriously say that would be such a bad thing, given where things stand now?
