Video streaming services: it’s time you get your shit together

Ever since Spotify was released, my life has never been the same.

I remember the old days of having to buy physical discs of entire albums, which I did not necessarily need. Then came some applications to download music peer to peer, but those were mostly illegal.

Unfortunately, we had not much of an alternative. So you had to endure mediocre quality, fake music, viruses, hard time getting them to your MP3 devices and such. Also, it did not pay songwriters nor artists, not very fair, to say the least. It was shitty all the way through.

Yet that’s how I rolled, I managed to avoid the fakes and viruses, have my songs somewhat organized into little folders, trying to get the best quality as much as possible.

One day, though, Spotify happened, oh fateful day, I remember being a student and working on the side to get some pocket money, I was ready to spend it.

I downloaded the app, looked through the nice dark-by-default interface, typed one of my favourite song in the search bar, and clicked the distinctively green play button. That was it, in a matter of seconds, my eardrums were vibrating at the rhythm of my dearest tune.

No fakes, no viruses, no doubles, excellent high quality stream, immediately accessible, beautifully organized, thumbnails and all. Suddenly, I had access to one of the biggest music library in human history. Available at my fingertip, on all my devices, online and offline. And of course, artists and songwriters were finally getting paid !

I remember thinking: “This is powerful”.

I’ve been a Spotify customer since 2013 and a recurring paying customer since 2015. I upgraded to a family plan when it appeared.

I never looked back.

Why did I switch ? Convenience.

Users want convenience, I wanted convenience.

It was far easier, and still is, to use their streaming platform than any other alternative.. And it was legal ! And it paid the artists ! This came almost as a byproduct from my customer point of view. I always wanted to pay, nobody was taking my money. They did. Many thanks to them.

Do you see where I’m getting at ?

At around the same time Spotify was launched, in 2007, a decade old american company, that was doing DVD selling and renting by mail, pivoted. Netflix decided it was not enough to get your DVDs home delivered. It was better to stream them online. They were right.

And thus began the incredible ascension of the biggest online video streaming provider that exists today. In April 2011 Netflix had more than 23 million subscribers in the US. At Q4 2019, they had more than 167.09 million paying subscribers worldwide.

In the first half of 2019, Netflix accounted for roughly 12.9% of the total downstream volume of traffic across the entire internet. That’s huge.

To meet the technological needs of their operations, they started relying heavily on the cloud, delivering your streams blazingly fast on both sides of the Atlantic, creating one of the most modern and efficient compression algorithm for videos. Providing you with entertainment for hours on end, until you’ve fallen asleep, after having satiated your needs of binge watching the latest season of your favourite TV show.

Only then would your TV pause your content and display a message: “Are you still there ?”

Netflix & Chill became a thing, they started Netflix Studios, producing their own Original Content Netflix TV Series, all the while making partnerships with big studios to have their movies and series available through their platform. All unicorns and butterflies.

Living the dream, ain’t it so ?

Almost.

Things got too good to be true, didn’t they ? Somewhere along the way their partners realized that they weren’t getting enough money, they grew greedier, others even had some obscure reasons to explain it, but the point was, they realized they should instead go and create a competitor, an exclusive platform for their content.

Wait, what ?

Well competition is good, isn’t it ? Usually. But not here, not like this.

HBO went: “Well, we will create our own platform cause we have good content, and for good measure, we will make it exclusively available on our platform.” Removing them from the others.

Disney thought: “Hmm, we do possess lots of movies we’ve made along the years, why not make a streaming platform out of that ?” And of course making them unavailable from their competitor’s.

Apple’s declining sales of hardware forced them to transition to services, App store sales, in-app purchases, Apple Music and now… video streaming ! Why not make a platform ? “This is genius, how innovative are we !”

And all others followed suit.

This is great for each individual company for sure. But they forgot one little important detail:

Their customers. You and I. We got screwed.

You greedy bastards ! Putting revenue ahead of customer satisfaction and convenience.

Well let me tell you something, and I will make it very clear to all video streaming platforms:

I will never pay for a second streaming platform, ever.

If I wanted to watch Game of Thrones I would have to subscribe to HBO. If I wanted to stream Casa de Papel I would need to pay for Netflix. If kids wanted to sing along “Let it go” we’d have to part with 6.99 euros per month for Disney+. To think that anyone would agree with this, is simply insane. And I will not put up with it, that’s not the way end users envision things.

I don’t need to switch music streaming platform to listen to different artists or albums or songs. Why, oh why, would I need to switch video streaming platform to watch different content ? This makes no sense.

And there is only one way to tell content providers: with your money. Or lack thereof.

Do not pay multiple of them, even temporarily, because otherwise you are letting your money vote to accept this.

So yeah, I want one platform for all my content, that shouldn’t be too much to ask for. And I don’t care how you do it, I don’t care what kind of deals or agreements studios and such have to make, I don’t even care if it’s a little more expensive. All I care about is my own convenience as a paying customer. And so should you.

One last time, video streaming services: Get your shit together !