Grace Rudolph is a Youtube movie reviewer but she also has the pulse of the entertainment business. She has a video that I think nails the future of Netflix and the other streaming services. This is relevant as there are over 400 million people using the various streaming services and this is a large segment of the entertainment industry.
Netflix share price has crashed to about $214 from a peak of $701. Disney is down from $190 to about $120.
Grace forecasts that streaming services will contract to Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video and HBO Max. There will also be Apple TV which has the iTunes market to sell shows as well as subscription options. Youtube will also have its ad-supported service, subscriptions and individual movie or show sales.
All of the other streaming services will either go out of business, get bought out or shift into providing content to the major platforms.
Spending on content (producing movies and shows) will get more disciplined. Netflix spent about $17 billion making shows and movies in a single year and that has not resulted in a positive return.
Makers of movies and actors will be forced to be more efficient and produce maximum quality with smaller budgets. The technology is available to make highly entertaining content and effects without large budgets.
The Netflix Animation division has been cut.
SOURCES- Beyond the Trailer
Written by Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
We sorta got spoiled by the quantity of well produced content in the last decade, which also helped to both advance the industry (in terms of editing/post production) and bring a lot more performers into view. While that may have reduced some production costs, the viewers have gotten used to higher quality, so it's a lot harder to make content that goes above that bar.
Whether that means the collapse of the streaming industry into a few major combined studio/streamer platforms or not isn't clear yet (more specifically, streaming platforms who are paired or not paired with movie theater content studios). Netflix, Amazon Prime, and AppleTV being unpaired, while Disney and HBO are paired as examples. Not having to support legacy movie theater production verticals should be a competitive advantage for the new platforms, but they haven't materialized that completely.
There's still an opening for an indies/niche player, focusing on lower cost/quality content in a shotgun approach (with worse ratios then venture capital). Though that could just as easily be a subsidiary of the big platforms, to operate as a sandbox for new directors/producers/actors. It would be interesting to pair that with a crowdfunding platform of sorts with equity.
The future of centralized content production is doomed. Everyone got a cemera, Everyone can create globally distributed content. This is too true. Humanity got lost in the realm of content viewing.
I wouldn't include HBO Max in the list of streamers to survive, they've had two years and they're still not global. Why? Because their competitors have the distribution rights to all their shows overseas.
Cable companies and streaming services keep jacking up prices till it's back up to pre-streaming days.
What about Viki?