Quote:
Originally Posted by veritas
One thing I always thought would be a good addition to streaming services would be an option to scan your physical media and then add it to your streaming services catalog. That would give people a pretty large incentive to not churn subscriptions and it makes the studios a bit of money while costing the streaming services only a little to offer block buster films. its basically an evolution of vudus disc to digital but it seems like it would offer a lot of value to both consumers and streaming services.
Basically I could see some people either staying subscribed to a streaming services or being willing to pay a small subscription fee to stream their physical media for conveniences sake.
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I really don't see how that makes any sense with regards to
subscription streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Max, Paramount+, etc. (which are the kinds of services that I assume you are referring to since you specifically reference churning subscriptions).
The entire business model for subscription streaming is that whatever movies and TV shows they have available (whether that content is licensed from other studios, or is owned outright by the studio providing the service, as is the case with most of the content on Disney+, for example), those are available to watch to anyone who subscribes.
Going with Disney+ as an example, since they own most of the MCU movies (except for Spider-Man, which I believe they've licensed most of those movies from Sony for the time being), those are already available on Disney+. Even though I have them all in my physical collection, if I subscribe to Disney+ and want to watch them on that service, I don't need to scan my discs to do so. I just click on which ever movie I want to watch, and off I go.
Even when it comes to these services licensing content from other studios, as is the case with most of the content on Netflix, and the aforementioned example of the Spider-Man movies on Disney+, if they have the license for those movies to be an option to watch, then they will just be available for all subscribers.
And those licensing deals typically have expiration dates at which time that content will be removed unless the service opts to pay to renew the license.
For example, I just checked and currently Netflix does not have Back To The Future available to watch. In a hypothetical scenario akin to what you are describing, if I were to scan my copy of that movie (or the entire trilogy for that matter), Netflix would need to have a license from Universal to allow me to watch that movie, even if they limit availability to those who scan a disc and not just general subscribers. That is going to come at a (relatively speaking) hefty cost to Netflix to license if they don't already have a licensing arrangement for that movie/movie series to allow the handful of people who would even scan a disc to be able to watch it. A studio is not going to make some kind of arrangement where there is some kind of very small one-off cost to Netflix each time one person scans a disc. It would be a larger license overall that is more costly.
And even if they were to arrange a case-by-case licensing deal, how would they handle this in terms of charging the customer an affordable, nominal fee? What if someone with thousands of discs scans them all (at least the ones from studios who would agree to this)? Suddenly it is going to cost Netflix more money than they are getting from the customer, OR the customer will have a really insane monthly bill just to watch movies they already have on disc. For this to be worth it for the customer, Netflix would either have to charge no additional cost or a very, very, VERY minimal one. And just like most of the content that they have on the service now for all subscribers, these licensing deals would have expiration dates. So they would have to be renewed. There is NO WAY for Netflix to guarantee perpetual access to any movies or TV shows that they do not own outright (and most content they own outright likely doesn't have a physical release) at all, let alone just because someone owns a physical copy.
And if regular Netflix subscribers who are paying for the service find out there are movies available on it that they can only access if they already own a physical copy and scan it, they will be pissed since the whole idea of Netflix is for all content to be available for all subscribers.
And of course not every studio is going to agree to this. If you were to go to Netflix and scan Avengers Infinity War, for example, Disney is not going to allow Netflix to have that movie when they want the MCU movies on their own service to drive customers there.
If this even existed (which it never will), Netflix would have to supply a list of applicable titles (similar to Vudu's disc to digital list). But again, the existence and promotion of such a list would come to the attention of normal subscribers who would be pissed that Netflix has content that isn't available to all subscribers.
The reason why, for the applicable titles and participating studios, this works on something like Vudu is because they are not a subscription based service. The idea is that people are "buying" these movies. While there is still some degree of cost to Vudu to host and sell those movies, they are not paying licensing fees to the studios the same way Netflix is. The studio collects their money from each "purchase" someone makes through Vudu. With Netflix, the studios make money through Netflix paying licensing fees, and Netflix makes money by selling subscriptions that are priced in a manner that ultimately covers the costs Netflix pays for those licenses (and other business related expenses) while also bringing in profit.
-- and as a tangent, with a service like Vudu, technically the end customer is licensing/renting them for an ongoing, undetermined amount of time (rather than truly buying/purchasing them), since the Terms of Service specify that access can be taken away at any time for pretty much any reason... but in theory the idea is that people pay for the movies once and have perpetual access to them at no additional, ongoing cost (unless they choose to buy more movies or upgrade previous ones to higher resolutions where applicable). --
The disc to digital concept made sense because even if only paying $2 or $5 for each movie through that option, it is a way for both Vudu and the respective studios to make at least some amount of money by getting people who already own those titles physically to pay some amount of money for them again (when they otherwise might not have been inclined to pay the full normal price for the digital versions since they already have the discs). And with people taking advantage of that offer are probably doing so with most applicable movies that they have physically, it likely adds up in many instances for Vudu and the studios when people with sizable collections decide to go through the disc-to-digital process.
This would not work with a service like Netflix. Unless Netflix simply becomes something akin to Amazon where they offer a combination of subscription streaming (covered through the cost of Amazon Prime) AND digital "purchases," AND then also adopts something like Vudu's disc-to-digital as part of the digital "purchases" end of the business where movies can be bought digitally for a lower price for anyone who owns the disc (in which case they are just essentially Vudu at that point, and the only real benefit over Vudu would be if they make deals with more studios for this than Vudu has).
But then we are back to square one again. With Amazon, you don't need to have Amazon Prime to continue watching "purchased" digital movies. It is only needed to watch movies available through the subscription streaming end of the business. So even if Amazon were to adopt something akin to disc-to-digital, and/or if Netflix were to adopt a digital "purchases" business model in addition to subscription streaming and include their own version of disc-to-digital, those would strictly fall under the digital "purchases" end of the business, and would have no impact one way or the other on subscription "churn."
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