Almost all of us have a subscription to an online streaming service or are mooching off someone else's account. Whether it be Netflix, YouTube Red, Hulu, or Amazon, streaming services have become a part of our daily lives.
Many are even ditching cable TV, deciding to rely entirely on streaming sites for their entertainment needs. Who can blame them? When almost every genre can be instantly reached at the touch of a button, why scroll through a TV guide for ten minutes looking for something to watch?
Streaming services are an amazing development in media that a lot of us, including myself, are in love with. But we need to watch out because there can always be too much of a good thing.
Once companies saw how successful Netflix and Hulu were becoming, they jumped at the idea of creating streaming services for consumers to see their own content on. The most notable of these being Disney, who is set to release their own streaming service titled Disney+ by the end of 2019. This platform will contain all Disney movies and Disney properties, including Star Wars, Marvel, and Disney Pixar.
\While this sounds like a great idea now, what does this mean for the future of streaming platforms? Only time will tell, but I can take a few educated guesses as to where this whole thing is going to go.
Disney is a trendsetter.
Disney is one of those companies that starts trends. When they do something, other companies watch and follow. When Disney releases their streaming service, I think other companies are going to be closely watching, seeing how successful it is, and trying to figure out if they can apply this to their own company. If Disney's service is as successful as I anticipate it will be, we are going to see a huge influx of companies taking their content off of Netflix and creating their own streaming platforms.
So what does this mean in the grand scheme of things? It means that with every company taking their content and putting it on their own streaming platforms, companies like Netflix and Hulu are going to have to rely almost entirely on their own original shows to gain income. With every company establishing their own streaming platform, it's going to get really expensive really fast to be subscribed to every single one.
This is going to end up costing us a lot of money.
For us, as consumers, we're probably going to have to make sacrifices when it comes to not getting the shows we want, simply because there are too many streaming services to be subscribed to.
Don't believe me? That's fine, I very well could be wrong about this. Maybe twenty years from now, Netflix will still be the hub for all of our binging needs. No one knows for sure what the future holds. We just have to wait and see and hope the result doesn't put a hole in our wallets.
When Amazon saw how successful Netflix and Hulu were with their streaming platforms, they jumped to get started on their own streaming platform. When they created it, it was almost exactly the same as Netflix and Hulu, with the only difference being each company had a few shows that were exclusive to just their platform.
I think when Disney launches their version of this, history is going to repeat itself. Companies like Universal will do the same. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe this whole thing won't blow up and maybe it'll just be a few companies that start their own streaming platforms. Maybe Netflix and Hulu will still reign king and queen.
I don't know what the future holds. I only know that companies are greedy and will do anything they can to earn an extra dollar.
