Because nobody knows for sure how much a show will be worth in the future and everyone is afraid of losing or wasting potential money.
this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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Piracy
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Because profit. And weak consumer culture just accepts it as normal. Smart consumers are left to look for other means, or are left to sail the high seas.
I was a huge supporter of Netflix when it launched. Easy to use, affordable, and lots of selection. As the streaming service has splintered and shows disappear without warning I find myself back on the high seas.
As Gabe once said:
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue,
If you make it harder to stream and keep up with what's where then piracy it's no surprise people will ultimately choose the latter. Though the price thing has gotten crazy too. Multiple streaming services can now equal or eclipse cable TV prices... And yeah, you can come and go but again that comes back to the service issue. I don't know about you but I don't want to have to evaluate monthly which streaming services I need then drop the ones I don't and add the ones I do.
Because the goal of capitalism is to chase infinite profits and raze the earth in the process. Providing you with convenience or value or helping any human is not a part of this process.
Be honest and accurate please.
Razing the earth is not a goal of capitalism.
Capitalism does not give a fuck about processes. Its goal is simply money/wealth/value above all else. The consequence of the goal is not the goal.
If your statement became the new message of an anti-capitalist movement, and that would be awesome please do it, it would give the masses an easy lever for the powers that be to utilize against you.
A truth I hold is that the masses can make changes. It happens all the time by tacit approval. Simply not acting against something enough allows it to continue. But it takes numbers. Where when and how much changes, but the amount needed is always the same: enough IS enough
We the people only have power in numbers. Thats the only tool we get. If you get enough of us acting in unison we become a mob. And that is as much power as we will ever have against the powers that be. If the mob exceeds enough by enough it wont stop until it dissipates or is destroyed.
What im getting to(admitedly probably badly, apple oh geez) is that messy messages with inaccurate inclusions gives opponents to the message an easy tool to get people to dismiss it. Dont give them that tool. Because people can be very great, but en masse we are simple.
It takes people who dont understand a subject, acting for or against it, to make a change from the people. And if you dont know about something on your own, you are unlikely to trust a message that someone points to and says "you are wrong here, why should they believe you?” simple people have a pass or fail mentality when it comes to things they dont know enough about. It is why its so hard to keep people from breaking away from a movement.
Another truth i hold is that conservatives will always have an advantage because of the nature of that which i know vs that which is new. If the message never differs people will fall in line with accepting it eventually. And being conservative that means they will always have the advantage of the devil you know. New things will have unpredictable consequences. (Also predictable ones!) And thats enough of a barrier to keep people away from them until its been known long enough to be less risky.
First, contracts in perpetuity rarely hold up. They always have an end, or at least regular off ramps that parties can take with no particular (legal) reason.
Second, contracts are complicated, and depend on countless other contracts that are in place. Netflix wants to stream a show? They have to negotiate a contract with the production companies (however many were involved). Each of those has contracts with the actors, writers, set designers, etc. They also negotiated some licensing from Sony records for the song used in S03E05, Paramount for the movie they imitated in season 2, Apple for all of the product placement (fun fact: the "bad guys" are never allowed to use Apple products), etc. Each of these had extensive terms and expiration dates, and have to be renegotiated when circumstances change. This is especially needed because....
Third - every contract is written in an attempt to screw the other parties out of as much income as possible. They say the most creative people in Hollywood aren't the actors or the writers, but the accountants. For instance, have you ever noticed how actors always get a percentage of gross instead of net? It's because on paper, nearly everything loses money to avoid paying on these contracts. Once the interest is established (i.e. the show is created and people like it, and we can say with confidence how much they're willing to pay for it), everyone now wants a bigger piece of the pie. You often see shows where the soundtrack changes in certain versions, because the record label wanted too much for the new license.
Yes, it's absolutely insane. But I don't really see any solutions that treat everyone fairly.
Your third point isn't as sound as the other two. Paying out on gross instead of net is more commonly done with movies. In fact, many tv series die around the season 3 mark because that's when conditions usually kick in on the regular casts contracts and they start making bank and the studios simply don't want to pay that much.
It actually sounds like you're agreeing with me- they cancel the show to avoid paying out. The contracts are written in a way that it can be used to screw them.
Season 6 is more common, since that's when contracts typically come up for renegotiation. Friends famously almost ended because the actors demanded what they were worth. The studios launched a smear campaign by "leaking" how overpaid the actors were.
TV shows do have a fundamental difference from most movies in that it's an ongoing operation. With movies, nearly everything has to be completed before release. There is more of an element of risk, since you don't know how popular it will actually be. Once it's been released, or you're 6 seasons into a show, that's pretty well known. Everyone wants their cut, and they know exactly the pie is.
Same end result, the money doesn't come from the gross though. Well, it does indirectly cos the studio has to get the money from somewhere, but their contracts usually aren't written in such a manner as they directly get the gross percentage straight to their bank account like a movie actor would (if movies ever actually made any money on the books). Which is all rather simplified, but I think it illustrates what I mean.
As for the contract length, yes the standard sign on time is 5yrs, but those contracts are renegotiated at the end of every season. There is a term for the conditions kicking in I referred to earlier but I've forgotten it and my google fu is failing me. Not every actors contract has them, but many do. To follow the friends example, kinda a moo point though, the point is that they get screwed if the studio can get away with it.
Because the content creators have the upper hand for now. If you won't agree to their terms, they go to the next streaming service or start their own.
It all stems from corporate greed Loan out the cash cow until you can learn how to make your own cheese. I genuinely thought Disney+, peacock, and paramount streaming would fail but the problem is also people willing to pay for their fragmented service. Even HBOmax, which I genuinely liked, becamejust MAX because they started loaning out their OWN IPs for money. So dumb.
At least we got to enjoy the early Netflix era around 2010 before it all became crap.
Buy up used DVDs and Blurays and set up a Jellyfin instance at home. Instantly transported back to 2010 era Netflix.
and where is the office for streaming now? why can't they at least all have the same shit, like with music streaming, and compete on features and price, rather than this absolute transient hell where it's ridiculously stark how none of anyone involved cares for art or culture
Peacock
Why can't they have the same shit? Because each studio is trying to monopolize their best properties instead of playing ball on neutral ground again. The last time they did that it was Netflix and they lost out on enough profits to make Netflix one of the biggest studios in Hollywood.
My hot take is that you don't actually want fewer streamers. As it stands, pirates benefit the most from content wars because the services are paying more to produce shows than they are receiving in subscriptions.
The obvious losses are legacy content and access to it. I don't know that there's a good solution. A streaming service benefits most from surfacing content that will keep you on the platform, meaning either a modern series with promised future seasons, or older content that's still popular. Any old obscure media is going to lose money for rights holders on a $/stream deal because they could potentially make more $ from a single physical media sale than any amount of streaming would net them (if it's $/stream, and only 2 people stream it, that's very little return). And nobody subscribing to these services is going to shell out more money for specific titles because to them, that's why they're subscribing in the first place.