i feel in many ways that the last half a decade or so of developments in the media/culture industry have been a bit of a misstep/progress trap.
there's been a glut of content, quantity over quality, yada yada – but, more importantly, without huge injections of VC cash or stock market floatations, these business models just don't work. netflix was the market leader and is surely the canary in the mine in this case. they've been leaking cash for years.
none of the services are very remunerative to the actual creators and creatives behind these productions, either. spotify is another great example. a great business model for minting massively overvalued billionaire founders, but it pays a pittance to the musicians and artists whose works, aka 'content', are being sucked down the tubes and streamed globally.
it's understandable that consumers, in an era of stagnating wages and rising living costs, have flocked to services that sell access to tv, movies, music, etc, at knockdown prices. but people in the main have become accustomed to paying far less for their music and movies that they are objectively worth. being able to access most of recorded mainstream music in history for $10 a month isn't really benefitting anyone in the long run, save a few tech geeks and early investors in these platforms who will make off with the bag of money. it's totally unrealistic.
i have a problem with the patterns of consumption that these streaming services promote, too. the evisceration of the album format; the death of sequencing and purposeful programming; the decontextualisation of songs or albums from wider bodies of work. the constant need to produce more and put out another album every 6 months, another series every year. and the passivification of television series and sheer aimlessness of netflix binging. who can possibly prefer this over the weekly HBO format where everyone is tuned in at the same time and focused on the same narratives?
it all ultimately leads to a tiktok world in which songs, and culture more generally, become no. 1 chart toppers based on a 15-second hook, and people don't even know the rest of the song its cut from, let alone the artist's wider body of work (this has literally happened with that r&b singer you posted in the music subforum, who had a giant tiktok hit and had to play sold-out shows to zoomers who were only there for that one segment of that one song).
there's been a glut of content, quantity over quality, yada yada – but, more importantly, without huge injections of VC cash or stock market floatations, these business models just don't work. netflix was the market leader and is surely the canary in the mine in this case. they've been leaking cash for years.
none of the services are very remunerative to the actual creators and creatives behind these productions, either. spotify is another great example. a great business model for minting massively overvalued billionaire founders, but it pays a pittance to the musicians and artists whose works, aka 'content', are being sucked down the tubes and streamed globally.
it's understandable that consumers, in an era of stagnating wages and rising living costs, have flocked to services that sell access to tv, movies, music, etc, at knockdown prices. but people in the main have become accustomed to paying far less for their music and movies that they are objectively worth. being able to access most of recorded mainstream music in history for $10 a month isn't really benefitting anyone in the long run, save a few tech geeks and early investors in these platforms who will make off with the bag of money. it's totally unrealistic.
i have a problem with the patterns of consumption that these streaming services promote, too. the evisceration of the album format; the death of sequencing and purposeful programming; the decontextualisation of songs or albums from wider bodies of work. the constant need to produce more and put out another album every 6 months, another series every year. and the passivification of television series and sheer aimlessness of netflix binging. who can possibly prefer this over the weekly HBO format where everyone is tuned in at the same time and focused on the same narratives?
it all ultimately leads to a tiktok world in which songs, and culture more generally, become no. 1 chart toppers based on a 15-second hook, and people don't even know the rest of the song its cut from, let alone the artist's wider body of work (this has literally happened with that r&b singer you posted in the music subforum, who had a giant tiktok hit and had to play sold-out shows to zoomers who were only there for that one segment of that one song).
Last edited by uziq (2022-12-14 20:13:58)
