Nobody Will Win The Streaming Wars 

If every company goes towards individualized streaming services, piracy will sail stronger than ever.

“The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates.” -Gabe Newell

Sony really benefited from Crackle failing years before the streaming wars began. It convinced Sony it wasn’t worth trying make a Sony streaming site. This allowed Sony to position themselves as the biggest 3rd party media seller/producer for other services at the perfect time. They are striking lucrative deals with Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and HBO. They also quietly became the dominant western anime streaming service (a rare profitable streaming service).

The streaming industry really differs from other industries when it comes to competition between companies. Usually, competition benefits customers because it incentivizes companies to bring down prices and dish out better products over time. But when it comes to streaming services, competition ruins affordability, accessibility, and convenience, which are the three main reasons why people subscribe to a streaming service in the first place.

Just a note here about Hulu, it doesn't exist outside of the US. As a Canadian I get everything on Disney+ instead so they already have merged all their content onto Disney elsewhere

It's weird how HBO Max was in a very good position and just destroyed itself overnight. Honestly the should have done the bundle thing with discovery like Disney plus and Hulu. Edit: I wrote this comment before he mentioned he would be doing a separate HBO Max video Edit 2: I personally believe that this merger should have never happened if they knew that this would lead them to be in debt

I used to work with Netflix as a customer service rep, and eventually handled more technical things for other customer service reps. Streaming Licensing is so absurdly complicated and unstable, pretty much everything is a limited contract with an expiration date and as stated there's a multitude of layers for each specific property being discusses. One of the best ways I can demonstrate this concept is with how "Netflix Original Anime" works because there are two types: Netflix Original Production and Netflix Original Dub. The former of which are productions like Devilman Crybaby which were funded by Netflix and premiered on the Netflix platform worldwide. The latter of which are productions like Seven Deadly Sins where Netflix did not fund the production, but did purchase the global distribution rights and would helm the English dub and translations for said distribution. This is also why some programs come with Dubs/Subtitles and others don't, because the job of dubbing and subtitling are typically outsourced and thus have separate licensing all on their own.

Despite who comes out on top, I hope we can ALL agree that no matter what Hulu is in last place. Absolutely inexcusable for any reason known to mankind that as long as we're paying a fee, we should NOT have to see ads.

I remember when everyone thought HBO Max was gonna become the best streaming service until the discovery merger happened. All good things have to come to an end I guess :/

Fun fact, in some countries (at least Denmark) we don't have Hulu, so all Hulu shows are on Disney+ by default.

DVD’s will always be my favorite thing ever. You get to own your favorite shows, you don’t have to go through millions of shows you don’t care about to get to them, you OWN the stuff you buy, you don’t have to pay monthly fees, and you never have to worry about losing the stuff unless you’re an abhorrent dvd collector lmao

I fully agree with your take on Netflix. People are way overexaggerating its downfall. They have too many successful originals for that.

Disney yet again took the magic out of everything

Netflix greatly reduced the amount of piracy back in the day. It was cheap and accessible, so users flocked to it. The studios saw this and decided that making a small amount of money off streaming was better than making no money, so they flocked to it too. Then the studios saw that it was potentially quite profitable, so they decided to withdraw their content and host it on their own platforms. Now the content market is divided and expensive again, piracy is back, and the studios are feeling the squeeze. I’m sure the next 5 years will be very interesting for the streaming companies. Only a few will survive this current era of wrangling for subscribers, and the market will be back to the status quo of 10-20 years ago.

This is an absolute gem of a channel. Glad I found it

This is the first video of yours I've watched, and I gotta say, your little outro music fucking SLAPS I was vibing hard to it. Also good video :)

This happened with music streaming services in the aftermath of torrenting. It happened with search engines. It's happened with gaming consoles, phone operating systems, and online retailers. It's going to happen with car manufacturers with the transition to electric, and I think you right to point it out here. Streaming will consolidate: it'll turn into growth by acquisition, or a bunch of them will just go bust. In any case, once a technology matures and companies start losing market share, a bunch of the players get shaken out and you are only left with a handful. Once this happens it will be marketing moreso than content that sorts the men from the boys.

The streaming wars has just pushed me into collecting more physical media.

Excellent video! I always look forward to your stuff keep up the fantastic work

This was fascinating. Thanks for sharing man! Keep up the great content and God bless you :)

Tyler hasn’t gone completely off his rocker in a while. I hope he’s ok

I think it’s weird that Netflix hasn’t tried to make a show like Friends or the Office for itself. Network sitcoms and procedurals are still very popular on streaming services and provide the comfort food for tv viewing. Plus those old network shows have tons of episodes. Netflix generally cancels shows after 3 short seasons, which then just fade from memory. They need to create shows that have lots of stand alone episodes and release them on a weekly schedule. This will keep the shows from fading and keep viewers coming back.

Ten Year old Tim is one of the best things to happen to TV since, well, Life and Times of Tim. Thanks for using some video from that show in hopes people will watch it.

I've already started watching popcorn time again. Hasn't touched it in like 8-10 years before that

Who'd've guessed that people don't want to pay more for streaming than they were paying for cable? 🏴‍☠️

I agree nobody will win the streaming wars. But, I can assure you I am confidant who will lose.

I love how as soon as he started talking about quantity vs quality, freaking Alf appeared lmao. That earns a sub

lol the its always sunny clip when you mention friends was nice

The collectors of physical media are the victors.

I've been getting more and more anti-streaming for the last few years. I've always been a DVD collector, but now I have extra incentive to head to the local buy sell trade store and find shows and movies to own physically because licenses expire. It's very frustrating to watch a movie on netflix and a year or two later go to show it to a friend and it's gone, or any other service. My only hope is that this doesn't revitalize the cable market, that ship has sailed, but I hope physical home media makes a bigger comeback and I'm not talking about buying a digital copy of something because SURPRISE those suck too

When ya said, “I donno why Hulu exists” let me tell ya why. Out of all the streaming services mentioned it is the only one that also has live tv. Also to get older shows it is basically the only game in town across various companies. Hulu is probably the best out of all the streaming services

I’m glad you like HBO’s Animals it would be cool if you made a video about it

So far as I can tell, streaming is at some point going to end up as "cable, but on your computer, tablet or phone and also slightly worse." Hooray for progress?

I feel like there's going to be a point where a lot of the individual streaming services end up combining something like what Disney pleasant Hulu are doing at the moment and you know either bundle with themselves or some sort of thing so they can keep themselves or just get bought out by exclusive rights. I'm definitely looking forward to the HBO Max situation I completely canceled my subscription renewal that was coming up after a lot of my shows just got removed without notice and on their survey I let them know that I hate their CEO as well as the fact that I no longer can access these shows at all

Oh man you were so spot on with this video its like you came from the future to warn us haha.

My mom always makes fun of my younger cousins for there lack of interest in cable TV and to be honest this just proves it’s becoming obsolete. I sometimes struggle finding shows that are even on cable TV anyways. Either way this was a good video and opened up a interesting discussion!

I think streaming will go through periodic expansion and consolidation cycles in terms of number of services and content being produced. We might be coming to the end of an expansion cycle as services that are just straight up unviable start to die. Though I don't think it's gonna be super drastic, as in every service that isn't Netflix and Disney's umbrella just up and die tomorrow; but will be a slow ebbing, and even big players (like Comcast [Peacock] and Viacom [Paramount]) might decide it would be best to re-enter into consortium with Hulu or Netflix again. But like Tyler says, the Golden Age is done, this is no longer a novel industry, it's just a young industry, and now it's time for the growing pains.

It’s more likely that everyone will lose, especially the consumer

Streaming Wars are like Nuclear Wars. There are now Winners, only Survivors.

I appreciate the joke of using the it’s always sunny friends intro when talking about it

It's the fragmentation that's the big killer. Netflix was reasonable priced then others wanted in and then they all got greedy. Fragmentation will ultimately ruin streaming services.

I'm reminded of a period in US history Where a certain group of people was banned from owning private cinema's showing only their products Totally different this time guys, i swear. We're not doing that same shit we did back then

Everybody loses, especially customers... unless you pirate 🧠 This applies to every industry but I would NEVER condone it!

Great video man and streaming is so not good as I thought when I got disney plus before :]

There is someone losing the streaming wars: Us, the consumers---From Daredevil to Friends, shows have been a fuckfest with these services. And with constant questions in quality---Hulu has The Great and Solar Opposites, but then it also has... Which leaves us wondering where are we going to go? We don't have the viewer-based incentives for shows anymore that can both support a show's cost and quality while also canceling unnecessary bullshit far prior to it being greenlit (vast majority of Netflix's animated shows). The hope/promise with streaming service wasn't the prospect of streaming---but consistency; you get these shows and movies whenever you want wherever you want---foregoing airing times for 24/7 accessibility. Except you don't; Daredevil's going to most likely be reset---despite the building the three Netflix seasons had already done in Disney's favor (the 13 episode season better be hour long episodes on god) Shows are constantly picked up/rebooted on different services; Seasons for a show often being split between services. It's all just stupid profits for them and lack of quality content for us.

I’ve noticed also that as there is a shift to more and more streaming services with higher prices, more people are going back to pirating, just streaming using places like putlocker or solar movies for free.

i love your editing, please teach me

I think the streaming platforms are still sorting themselves out. Maybe what HBO Max did will become the norm. Perhaps the platforms will periodically shed content to keep diverting people from their main content. If streaming platforms introduce widespread advertising then expect this to happen a lot more. With the smaller platforms, their long-term success will depend greatly on the health of their corporate parent who often will make decisions that are not in the best interest of an entertainment division.

What annoyed me about streaming Is the fact I can't buy a copy of the shows, I am not interested in renting (which streaming basically is), nor can expect to have internet all the time, and there are shows I want to watch on multiple different streams (and I can't afford to pay for that many).

How many times have you gotten the desire to watch a show, sat down and spent an hour and a half looking for something that seems good?

I feel like eventually there will be bundles just like cable now... For example a low tier bundle, mid price bundle and then the everything bundle that you pay for monthly and get to stream any show on any platform. Just not sure which company will offer these bundles. Maybe cable companies or one of the current streaming services

The always sunny/friends reference was perfect 😂😂 3:55

And the absolute worst part is don't expect any home media release for anything produced on the streaming platforms.

I like Hulu because it has Futurama, King of the Hill, and The X-files. Takes me back to my childhood when I would watch them every Sunday evening. And they are just great shows.

The streaming wars have taught me a valuable lesson. And that is that i honestly just dont need to see the latest thing that everybody is talking about. I have no idea whats happening on the baby yoda show... and thats fine.

Keeping hulu separate could also be a marketing thing. Like, hulu is a different brand with a different target audience, so maybe they're kinda worried that some people would jump ship if they merged it because they're not the target audience for Disney+ (albeit I kinda assume that the target audience for Disney+ is "everyone", so probably not)

I rather just collect blu-rays and DVDs at this point honestly.

On the topic of Hulu in Europe, Canada, New Zealand and Singapore they just added it to Disney + for no extra cost under the label “Star”. As far as I’m aware only the USA requires extra payment for Hulu.

I kinda feel like a good solution might be to have more joint ventures in streaming rather than individual ones? Rathr than attempt to solely have money all on one's own, these companies could pool together like with Hulu and attempt to share funding and content within one service, cutting down the burden of marketing or producing content or such. Paramount+ and Peacock are pretty weak on their own, but if they attempted to have a joint venture streaming service, it could probably turn out pretty well. Of course, I admittedly have very little knowledge of business, so whether this is even possible, let alone realistic in the face of typical corporate greed or even how these things work, I don't know.

"I Love Lucy" and "The Twilight Zone" are still popular, even though they were shot in black-and-white. Not every older television show is "Perry Mason."

I've found that Tubi TV, Pluto TV, IMDB TV, and a whole score of free-with-ads streaming services have just as good of a selection as the paid streaming services. *At that point, why bother paying for streaming?*

the sheer amount of streaming services means that any content people actually want is strewn about between too many different services. Because people don’t want to buy 5 services, this means that no service will prevail. If a streaming service wants to be on top, they need to consolidate all content into one place.

Interesting content will always be key to a streaming platforms existence.

This is truly a second golden age of piracy

Gotta say, I’m a big fan of Hulu just for its live tv option. Being able to use my Nintendo Switch as a cable box is pretty sweet

Regionally it gets confusing too. As a Brit, I just found out we don’t have Hulu. Also we have Prey, family guy and American dad on Disney+ and I had no idea certain regions didn’t as well despite hearing constantly about things like Australian Netflix being empty by comparison

This really reminds me of the Video Game Crash of '83. It is basically the same story with different characters.

ahhh i love cooperate burocrosy. its like watching two trains run at each other with every one you don't like, fighting one another on board. Sure you might be on of the the trains, but if your some who is not in management, like me. Then you already know what bush you are gonna land in when you jump the tracks.

The way you describe time slots makes so much sense to me. There is only so many shows that could exist on TV at any given time so the amount of importance and weight a good or legendary show could have on how you grew up and what you found interest in was way different. I feel like my generation was probably one of the last ones that'll ever experience media in that way since everybody now just can consume whatever they want and the level of attachment to shows is smaller as a result.

Who will win the streaming wars? The Pirate Bay

I think THE OFFICE and FRIENDS will still be relatable and watched by youngsters in 2032. The Office isn't about relatability, it's about telling ppl how an office should not be, thru jokes. Whereas, Friends is a feel-good show, a far-fetched fantasy that we all wanna live in.

One of the thing I found on Amazon Prime is that some of the movie and show require you to have another subscription from another stream service to watch it. Another thing they do is that they made the unknown movies or shows no longer prime meaning if you want to watch them now you'll have to buy all of the episodes even though the reason people watched them was because they part of prime.

This is exactly one of the reasons why I buy physical media

I love the fact that you put a parathesis about the HBO MAX dilemma.

Love that Mr. Show bit.

I currently just have Paramount and Hulu (though I'm about to pause the latter). Paramount has been a mainstay not because of their difficult to use interface, but because I love Star Trek and they've been putting out new episodes and series like crazy. I want to show my support for the franchise. But in general, I might subscribe long enough to watch the couple of shows that interest me on a service, then cancel when done. Since nothing is consolidated on a single service or two (and too many good shows get cancelled prematurely), it's harder and harder to justify paying monthly subscription fees.

1995 to 2015 I'd say was the Golden Age of the internet. That sweet spot where it was a wild west of content made with nearly pure motivations of creativity and very humble and small scale profit incentives. Once corporate smelled money in the water from stuff like Netflix and Google owned RU-vid, it was over. The Internet is getting dragged down from this novel space of fresh ideas to be more and more in line with what the dinosaurs of the media industry understand. Remember when Homestar Runner and Ask a Ninja was the hottest shit you could watch on the internet? That's the golden age. Not because of the quality of those shows, but because of the genuine, grass roots creativity behind it.

Streaming was at its peak in 2017, HD netflix was 9.99 a month and Hulu was about the same. If the prices didn't literally double, I wouldn't have switched to other... certain websites lol

Sony has also crackle. I'm fleeing this October when my credits go up.

One of my griped with traditional television is that shows never end, and if they do, it feels like they suddenly woke up one day to the news that they were getting cansled. So in traditional television, there are so few good endings to a show, and in storytelling, the ending is half the experience, if the ending suck, the show sucks. Its here i am hopeful in the future of streaming, since they only need quantity of shows, and the quality is a bonus, if you are only getting 12 episodes, you can plan around that, and get a good show, take Terminal List that just came out, it has a beginning, an middle, and an ending, and its a good show to boot. There is a time and a place for a comfort show where you can just pull up an episode and chew down on it, wihtout having to engage in the story as a whole, but that isnt who i am, and that isnt why i watch TV, am here for a story, and i dont wana slog trough 540 episodes of mediocre filler to get to the conclusion. But then agen, am not gona subscribe to 50 different streaming services to only see the good once, so i guess that is their loss.

I think Netflix will survive. I mean they started with DVDs, started making their own content when studios started taking their stuff off, and now they're doing an ad supported version. They continue to evolve so I think they'll survive. Also people like their original content like Arcane, Cobra Kai, Squid Games, etc. Hulu will survive, however I think Disney will eventually buy all the shares and merge it into Disney+. Why have two streaming services? I'm not sure if the smaller, newer streaming services will survive, but who knows. I think some of them will merge. There will probably be 4 major streaming services like how there was 4 major networks.

Truly an inspirational video from a modern philosopher of our times

These streaming wars remind me of the dominoes of alliances that turned a Austro-Serbian conflict into the Great War-they all jumped into the streaming ship because their competitors were doing so, fragmenting the market shares into smaller and smaller pieces for even relative winners. Everyone went for broke trying to Schlieffen Plan each other, leading instead to a war of content attrition. The only apparent winners are going to be the ones with the least to lose or have the deepest pockets: Hulu’s low operating costs, Netflix’s head start and reserves of shows, and Disney+ is quite possibly too big to lose. Peacock and Paramount Plus and almost all the others will be the Romania and Bulgaria, entering the war late and too small to withstand the attrition. Amazon Prime is probably America, where they’re not actually all-in like France/HBO Max so they’ll come out well.

Pretty much all of Hulu's shows are on Disney Plus here in the UK, mainly as not only does Hulu not exist here, they even IP block people outside the US from watching it. Netflix also lost all their BBC shows like Top Gear and Doctor Who to BritBox here.

6:20 Ah yes, the "Perry Mason" moment.

Pretty good analysis. I agree completely with prime. I'll just use one service and when I'm tired, cancel another and join yet another. I'm cheap, so I'll just watch content until I'm bored of it

Not only does Hulu have part of the Fox family like Disney+, but TubiTV is also Fox owned. So you've got 3 streaming services for Fox.

Firstly, the kind of advertising that these streaming services should be focusing on is self promoting the shows that they already have. Much of Netlflix's actions as of late seem to stem from thinking the original content they invested in such as their animated projects, many of which have been cancelled now, have been underperforming because not enough people are watching them and as such are not profitable even though they are very much at fault for not properly promoting said original projects along with the movies and shows they got licensed to stream on their service. Secondly, another reason why the streaming era is a bit of a mess right now is because of bull headed companies looking at Netflix's various successes and deciding they were going to want their very on piece of the pie and started saturating the market with all of these streaming services. All the while not comprehending that the entire point of people transitioning from cable to Streaming was so they no longer had to deal with all the problems of cable and as such these jokers are now trying to turn Streaming into the new Cable. How the heck are aspiring content creators and amazing projects ever going to get the attention they deserve when these jerks keep spreading the attention of the masses even thinner than it already is.

It’s amazing how they expect to win and remain having profits while every month they add more ads and jack up the price more.

I can see in the eventual future Disney will merge Hulu and Disney+ while keeping ESPN+ separate, Prime will probably make a move on Peacock or Paramount and the other will go to Netflix, if HBO can get it together and survive they will definitely be a big one once they get the DC content rolling on top of big Warner IPs, Netflix will fade out a bit but will be “the other option” due to their original IPs and good shows. I would hope the market consolidates but at the same time we get some smaller companies bring something new to the table in content or subscription models or something.

I didn't even realize I had Prime video until about a year after I started my Amazon Prime account. Glad I did though. Good Omens, Invincible, The Boys, Vinland Saga, and Reacher have all been enjoyable shows for me

Interesting points all around. In the end steaming will be the norm. I, a 25 year old, have not watched traditional television for about 15 years now. The lack of ads, a pause button, and being able to watch what I wanted when I wanted made all the other hastle worth it for me. I relied on mainly on RU-vid and sketchy sites that pirated their content back when I was in my tweens and early teens; then I started to use streaming services once they became more viable. Regardless of a golden age or not, cable television is not here to stay. It's taking longer than I thought it would to die, but it WILL die, it's just a matter of how much longer it has to live.

I hope renting stores come back. Quite a few have survived in my town so this may be their oportunity to be reborn, just like how the crash of TV has revitalized radio shows. I really hope physical makes a comeback, or a digital store kind of like Steam, I hate streaming services. I really want to have these shows on my fucking shelves and display them. What I mean is, Apple make a physical version of Prehistoric Planet, please. That show needs to be on my shelf alongside my old Walking with Dinosaurs disk that doesn't even work anymore.

I remember when Netflix first started streaming, if you wanted to watch a movie, you'd have to select a DVD as if you were going to rent it and them click the streaming option, but if you wanted to watch a TV show, since this was back in the age of "lets split one seasons into five volumes" you would have to search for all the volumes and switch DVDs when you wanted to go to the next one, and sometimes they didn't even have all of the volumes, let alone the entire show

I think tv stations, especially in smaller countries are going to have to end up reinventing strategies or fold if they don't produce enough of their own content. Here in Iceland we have two general tv networks; The national broadcasting association (RÚV) and Channel 2 (Stöð 2). While Rúv might be safe, I don't know if Stöð 2 will be. Thing is, both have to deal with a hell of a lot of broadcast rights for content they rent from content producers which are nowadays popping up with their own streaming services. While that's all fine and dandy, it'll undoubtedly influence smaller networks when they can't get content the viewers want anymore because the creators simply aren't subletting the broadcast rights anymore.

Another thing to keep in mind is "Hulu with Live TV." My mom still want to watch her cable TV channels but I'm tired of dealing with the cable box and the much higher price increases with traditional cable. So for the same price of a basic Spectrum cable TV package, we get Hulu on-demand, Hulu with Live TV and cloud DVR, and recently Disney+ and ESPN got added with the $5 hike. No need for a pesky cable box or having to call just to cancel or add channels. We're subscribed to it just like any online streaming service.

3:54 i love when he said Friends, it shows It's Always Sunny which isn't even on Netflix, it's on Disney+ (at least in my country)

One thing I would like to add about the hulu situation is that when this all began Hulu was big in Japan. Most people around me had hulu and Netflix wasn't really "a thing" in Japan. Hulu Japan seems to also now be mostly owned by a Japanese television station and is separately owned from Hulu US. Another reason to why it makes no sense to kill it off.

Peacock had a real come up though. I love the content on there.

I've been a Netflix subscriber since 2003 when it was a DVD home delivery service. I remember when they introduced streaming in 2007/08 and it was free with your subscription. And then it was an $1/mo. extra for streaming on top of DVDs. And now it's $20/mo. for the top-tier package with no DVDs at all. It's hard to believe I've been paying Netflix every month for nearly 20 years. 🤣🤣🤣