> You don't have multiple choices.
The comic depicts "Netflix" -> "Netflix Amazon Apple Disney+ Hulu YouTube", and you later implicitly say there are multiple choices, but, you don't think it works well. "If we had a mandatory-licensing regime, I'd expect multiple choices would work great."
> Services couldn't survive on "Only we have The Office/Game of Thrones/Bluey" alone and would have to differentiate based on other factors like "best discovery tools" or "built to better suit your specific devices"
I'm not sure how either of those are differentiators for people selling content, rather than people coding apps.
Let's avoid that simple argument.
Let us instead assume mandatory licensing exists, which I presume means that as soon as content is released, it is a right to be able to license it, i.e. pay the content creator to have it on your service.
I have a hard time understanding how that would lead to all content being on all services - surely, this adds up to some finite sum, but is that finite sum enough to mean its trivial to license everything, so there's no differentiator anymore?
And that's before we bring in that, presumably, we have some shared understanding that it's more expensive to license, say, Bluey Game of Thrones Edition, than, idk, hmmm...Karate Kid.
Let's set all those little things aside.
A screen is a piece of glass with pixels behind. A video takes up the pixels.
Is there room to "build to better suit your specific devices"?
Can we avoid an example that ends up creating exclusive content in the process?
Let's set that aside: what are discovery tools?
Are they differentiable? Or does it boil down to "a way of presenting N choices I might like"?
Streaming apps are like grocery stores. In both, there is very little value add besides that they aggregate products. And in both the customer wants to get to their product with the least amount of friction possible.
You will notice that in most places, grocery store market has stabilized to an oligopoly, where almost every where multiple grocery stores exist, all of whom offer more or less the same range of products with some variations.
I would imagine if any streaming-app could license any content, the market would evolve to a similar equilibrium. Largely similar products, with some minor variations (some stores offering discount/luxury items at cheap/higher prices). Margins would be fairly low. But most customers will be fine with going to exactly one store/app over and over again.
> Is there room to "build to better suit your specific devices"?
The obvious example would be ecosystem support. For example, (last I checked) Crunchyroll didn't have an app for my WebOS TV.
I could also see more technical choices, like encoding options that make sense based on the type of device and network you're targeting. One of the reasons YouTube is better than a lot of the alternative video hosts was that they could support a huge array of different connection speeds and device types.
Improved UX might also come into play. There's the "Jitterbug Phone" business model of making a product simple to use for less-technical and low-mobility users, or the ten-thousand-knobs options on every encoding detail and playlist management for enthusiast videophiles.
> what are discovery tools? Are they differentiable? Or does it boil down to "a way of presenting N choices I might like"?
I believe they're very differentiable. Some possible examples:
- Tradeoffs between length and complexity of the onboarding/profile management process versus precision of recommendations - Sophistication of the metadata and algorithms used to make the connections between "I liked A" and "I might like B" - Super-fine-grained ratings and filtering technology for sensitive audiences (this might not even be censorship but things like "flashing light warnings" or "PTSD trigger warnings") - Account siloing/combination (You might watch Final Destination alone, your kids might watch Caillou alone, but can it provide suggestions you'd like together?) - Smarter series management (I occasionally pull up a sitcom episode, but I don't want to systematically work through those from S01E01 onwards, I want a semi-randomized assortment like broadcasters running reruns do)
With regards to licensing costs and available content, it could pan out one of two ways:
- If the licensing meter only dings on consumption, there's negligible cost to listing ALL THE THINGS, especially if there are archives that can be pulled from on demand (i. e. "You want episode 11 of Samurai Catboy Locomotive Engineer (1977)? Please wait 30 seconds while we torrent it and package it for use in our service") - If there has to be some advance "catalog building" phase, you'd still end up with "most mainstream services have most mainstream selections".
It's like books. If you're opening a mainstream bookstore, you're probably going to sell the latest Stephen King novel. Nobody says "I HAVE to go to Barnes and Noble to get that specific book." Conversely, you might not carry the full range of Knuth volumes unless you're an academic/technical speciality store.