How is just the studios fault. Do any studios refuse to license? Or is Netflix not offering the fair value. 8 bucks a month doesn't buy as much content as it used to.
Perminute yes. The cost of producing all music ever has probably been higher than all movies ever just because of volume. TV is less clear would be interesting to see the numbers.
I'm not sure why total volume really matters that much. A more relevant metric would be production cost compared to sale price. A music album costs about $15 at the most, and I would imagine that the biggest pop records only cost a few million dollars at the most. A new movie costs around the same, but a few million dollars is very cheap for a movie with a wide release. Of course, I could just be way off on my estimates of producing a major pop music album.
Music is like 2 magnitudes less costly than TV and probably three less costly than movies. Spotify charging 10 should show you how much a full movie subscription would cost.
Eight bucks a month is supporting some good quality content they are developing themselves in addition to their third-party offerings. Much like HBO has done for many years now.
I would also say the market is a determining factor in the decision to make it eight a month.
Studios don't see Netflix as fair value no matter what they offer if they think they can go do it themselves. As if the market will support dozens of independent content channels at eight to fifteen dollars a month each. People are wanting to get away from cable, not find a way to recreate it.
I'm sure Netflix would be willing to bump up the price if they could get the content and the market would pay it. I have a feeling many studios would still say no as they explore their own options.
HBO supports a handful of shows and movies on double what Netflix charges. Netflix makes up a lot of that on increased marketshare, but still, I'm not sure they can afford to generate a lot of content.
>People are wanting to get away from cable, not find a way to recreate it.
But it's totally unreasonable to believe you'll get the same content as cable at a steep reduction in price. Sure you can take away cable profits and delivery expense, but you have to add in Netflix profit and delivery expense. It'll be cheaper, but not by a lot. Unless Netflix increases the subscriber base, but cable and networks already had a massive marketshare.
The value Netflix provides on 8 dollars is miraculous. But most of that pricing is hinged on netflix being a rerun service. Studios sell them stuff that is old and will never run on TV again. Netflix is sort of a parasite on cable and the movie industry.
If netflix actually kills cable and broadcast TV, then who is going to make all the shows for it?
As netflix becomes the normal way to consume media the expense of the content is going to shoot up. Because media is priced based on price discrimination. If netflix becomes the premium market, it'll have to pay premium prices.
If you are a cable subscriber there are ways to get HBO on a cheap monthly basis if you are willing to play the cable game. How many times have people called in threatening to cancel to get a deal? Cable treats full price as something for suckers and treats their customers as such. HBO Now is overpriced and I seriously doubt it'll make much headway unless they make some serious changes to justify it.
It is not totally unreasonable to expect Netflix, and similar services, to replace cable, because most of the content that cable provides these days is total rubbish. I've been a cable cutter for over five years now and every time I visit someone who has cable I scan the stations wondering why they pay so much for all that crap. Netflix has a lot of crap as well, but I don't pay $150 a month for it.
Although Netflix does offer a great deal of content that is considered old, but so does cable. A number of stations, that are not the traditional broadcast networks, features old content and a good number of stations that produce new content simple repeat it nonstop to fill in time.
I don't believe Netflix will necessarily kill cable by itself and broadcast is making a slow comeback. Although broadcast is still niche these days, much like vinyl. But as for content? I seriously doubt there will be a lack of new content in the new wild world of no cable TV. Especially since most of the content on cable today is not created by cable companies, just broadcasted by them. There's no reason any number of content creators couldn't make a deal with Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, or any future content broadcast method to show their stuff. They do it with Hulu now, which is how I watch my new content instead of waiting for it to show up elsewhere. Netflix has several deals with content creators now.
We no longer live in the world where someone with lots of capital is required to get a project started. There are several examples of people on low budgets making good content. Premium content will always have a premium cost, but that isn't necessarily just because of the cost of production. There are numerous reasons why one show would cost more than another show, not just the cost of creating the content in of itself.
