Entertainment and the Cost-of-Living Crisis
Is entertainment a human right? If so, how can streaming prices keep surging?
Earlier today, I saw a piece published in the i newspaper (a publication that’s always a pain in the arse to refer to, thanks to autocorrect) claiming that Apple TV+ is the best streaming service and that you should drop your Netflix subscription. The piece, written by the i’s TV Editor Emily Baker, comes off the back of Netflix raising its basic package to a monthly cost of £6.99. Baker notes, of Apple’s model in contrast to Netflix that, ‘there are key differences between Netflix and Apple TV+. While the former brings its subscribers an obscene amount of content, the latter ascribes to the “quality over quantity” maxim.’
I saw this piece because it was tweeted out by my friend Huw, a sci-fi aficionado who works for the Radio Times, who argued that, actually, the streaming service that you want to subscribe to (if you’re only going to do one) is Disney+. This makes sense for someone who’s into sci-fi and fantasy, but actually Huw’s right: here in the UK, Disney+’s library of movies (for grown-ups who don’t want cartoons) is excellent and ever expanding.
That said, I immediately thought to myself ‘maybe the one I’d pick is Amazon Prime’. Amazon has the advantage of showing a ton of live sport (particularly tennis where, here in the UK, it’s the market leading broadcaster). I also like that Amazon has the flexibility to offer purchases and rentals of titles outside of its library – you can often get, for like £3, a rental of a movie that’s not available anywhere else. And their offering of quality TV and movies is definitely similar to Netflix, even if the latter has more exhaustive depth.
Anyway, the real takeaway from this exchange was that atomization is real and the choice facing consumers not a simple one. We now live in a world where, in order to get the optimal streaming experience, you need to subscribe to 3 or 4 different services, at a monthly cost of £20-30+. There is no simple answer to the question of what the best streaming service is, and market (and use) segregation means that the full experience requires a costly spectrum of products.
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