Why the golden age of streaming could be coming to an end

“Nearly every company that makes video is finding its way into the streaming media business. Disney is planning its own Netflix competitor for 2019, backed by content holdings like Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Pixar,” Russell Brandom writes for The Verge. “AT&T plans to launch its own Time-Warner focused equivalent around the same time. Similar competitors from Amazon and Comcast are already taking shape. With the streaming subscription business growing this fast, everyone wants a piece — and they’re ready to fight for it.”
“That fight will have real implications for consumers as studios pull back licensed content and silo it into paid subscriptions,” Brandom writes. “Right now, a single Netflix subscription will get you Marvel movies and DC shows alongside in-house originals — but soon, both of those may leave for parent-company subscriptions at Disney and Time Warner respectively. It’s a kind of streaming Cold War, as each company tries to leverage its own franchises into a standalone subscription bundle.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, as far as feature-length films, there will always be some mechanism to rent specific titles (à la iTunes Store). If companies attempted to force monthly subscriptions to see certain films, they’d likely unleash a torrent of piracy the likes of which they’d rather not even contemplate.