Field Notes Editors weigh in on hot topics
As Variety’s Brent Lang reports in this week’s cover story, subscription service Moviepass is proving a classic example of disruption within the entertainment ecosystem. It’s a toss-up as to whether this fascinating venture is built for the long haul. But one thing’s for sure: Moviepass can teach us all a thing or two about doing business in innovative fashion.
Take the company’s latest promotion: a collaboration with iheartradio that offers consumers the ability to get discounted movie tickets and streaming music for three months at a cost of $30. It’s not exactly the most intuitive pairing of products, but these and other strange bedfellows starting to pop up lately in the subscription content market should prompt us all to do some fresh thinking on partnerships and price flexibility.
Just a few years ago, for instance, it would have been impossible to imagine fierce competitors like Comcast and Netflix in business together. And yet the nation’s largest cable operator disclosed last week that subscribers would be able to access Netflix via the Xfinity platform on which Comcast once attempted to launch a Netflix killer. (Remember Streampix? Me either.) Comcast could no longer afford to ignore a clear consumer desire to unite viewing experiences that previously required shuttling between HDMI ports on your TV.
And look at a deal announced earlier last week between Hulu and Spotify, marrying streaming music and TV in a compelling $13-permonth package. Consumers are going to want to see more of these kinds of combined options in the marketplace as they encounter more and more entertainment services holding out hands for their dollars; all that repetitive billing risks inducing serious sticker shock.
The confusion created by this multiplicity of content options would be greatly eased by reducing the number of bills to be paid, consolidating them into one, maybe two, centralized hubs. There’s going to be a lot of jockeying for position among some very big companies in technology and content distribution for the distinction of being one of those hubs. What Moviepass and its ilk are doing may end up as failed experiments, but they’re moving the industry down the road on an important journey that’s just getting started.
The strange bedfellows starting to pop up lately in the subscription content market should prompt us all to do some fresh thinking on partnerships and price flexibility.”