@GTTVappliance If you mean in regards to infrastructure costs, then I agree entirely. But that is far from the only complication met from openly centralised and commercial services. Might I ask, why has Blust not ventured into music or literature content?
@GTTVappliance Netflix spent over $6 billion on content acquisition last year, and for this year, they've added an extra $2 billion onto that. This was including $60 million for War Machine alone. This was about 54% of their revenue, and ~58% of expenses.
@GTTVappliance They are matching Time Warner's expenses and are still continuing on a trajectory of expansion, and forgive me if I'm wrong, but Blust does not diverge too far from that same business model.
@GTTVappliance This is in addition to the initial need for Blust to either fork out for the capacity for global content delivery in much the same way that Netflix does, or rely on the customer base entirely for content propagation.
@GTTVappliance In circumstance A, you incur similar (but lower) costs to Netflix, despite a distributed model. You will also need to keep these running, unless you're 100% certain that you will be able to rely on your customers' connections in the future.
@GTTVappliance In circumstance B, you are dependent upon your customer base for any significant geographical expansion. So at least in the early stages, you'll expect them to pay for a less reliable stream & fewer titles, to support the necessary traffic.
@GTTVappliance This stands in contrast to 'pirate' services, which tend to lack the centralised capital that can easily be appropriated for content acquisition, hosting, marketing etc., but carry strong advantages by not operating in an official capacity.
@GTTVappliance If you wanted to expand into Nigeria, you would need the sufficient capital to provide a high throughput there. You'd need to review their national broadcasting regulations, and adjust your operations accordingly - and account for language.
@GTTVappliance If I wanted to share an album with my buddy in Lagos, I'd just need to shoot him a message and give him a temporary link to download it from.
@GTTVappliance If you decide that you need to either acquire programming or create some yourself to be able to penetrate these already-existing markets (not everyone wants English-language shows), then you'd better be prepared to make the necessary deals.
@GTTVappliance For the many millions of dollars a VOD would spend on writing, casting, filming, post-production, marketing or the acquisition of existing shows, I could spend a few dollars on a months' subscription and make copies of the entire series.
@GTTVappliance Decades of constructing a repository of media, negotiating content and broadcasting deals and creating 'unbreakable' DRM can be undone in moments by a single account that is registered to the service.
@GTTVappliance And what was perhaps the only real incentive to devote oneself to any particular service, original programming, has resulted in driving those users away entirely, to services that will never be stifled by the need to splinter their content.
@GTTVappliance If you're prepared to take on staff for i18n, to study & develop analytics and contextual bandit algorithms to measure and ensure user engagement (and that you aren't blindly wasting the marketing budget), hire cross-platform developers ...
@GTTVappliance ... so as to keep your potential userbase unrestricted, accommodate multiple payment systems and networks (e.g. cellular) for the same reason, all at the same pace as Netflix, you may be able to reach their current position within a decade.
@GTTVappliance If you expect a content distribution strategy that Netflix and other established VODs have already devoted to researching (archive.fo/gSmOH) and a novel incentive system to drive people away from the 10k+ titles of Netflix ...
@GTTVappliance ... or the 3+ million uploads of LimeTorrents, then you will end up rather disappointed. And if any of the ageing, monolithic gatekeepers of existing media content indexes expect the stagnancy of user organisation and development in the ...
@GTTVappliance ... 'pirate' community to last much longer, then they will face even greater surprise over the way the market will head. Because you aren't just competing with Netflix, you are competing with me. And I don't need to play by your rules.
