Why are a lot of Movies Not Available online?

[edwards_beard]

Funny, I just watched Up The Creek last month…streamed online, through Starz IIRC, if not Amazon itself

I have Amazon prime…but also pay $4 a month for Starz streaming through Amazon

They host quite a few smaller streaming outlets that have a lot of obscure titles (you can usually do a free 2 week or month trial) I usually check the Comi-Con or Tribeca add on’s for any new additions

[msmith537]

@CuriousCuriousCurious

Business 101. A great answer. Thanks. I understand that servers cost money and maintaining them costs money but if we eventually live in a world where only the Top 25 movies of the year are available to rent we’re going to eventually get tired of Robot and Superhero movies.

Hopefully as tech progresses there’ll be a location/market for movies from the past.

I kind of feel like we are already at a point where they can host nearly every movie ever if they wanted to from a technical standpoint. I suspect the real issue is in complex and convoluted licensing rights. Because even on TV, there are a lot of random movies that seem to get played repeatedly that maybe didn’t do so well in theaters. For example, why is Waterworld always on or Rocky IV is always on somewhere but never I, II or III?

[TriPolar]

@CuriousCuriousCurious

Thanks for your comment but it seems to not answer the itunes/Amazon question. I understand what you’re saying about Netflix and know that that’s part of the problem they have with their online selections being kind of weak. But your statement (if I understand it correctly) seems to point out that services like itunes and Amazon would be PERFECT places to host movies because they do offer individual one time (24hr) rental/viewings. As noted in my original post both movies I used as examples have indeed appeared on Netflix at one time and I believe Amazon also. (I have no idea about itunes but assume not because once they’re there they seem to stay. But I could be wrong about that. Forgive me if so.) I assume there must be negotiation reasons/costs that factor in. If a film costs $X amount to purchase the rights to but only generates $W in revenue it doesn’t become worth the investment. If that’s the case we might be looking at a bleak future.

@Bridget_Burke

Perusal of the obscure regions of Netflix’x & Amazon Prime’s streaming lists show some really dreadful pieces of crap. Surely nobody hopes to make much money from that garbage.

However, their rights are probably pretty cheap. And they may be part of package deals with companies offering movies people actually want to watch.

I think music and movies are quite different. Music doesn’t cost as much to produce and after initial popularity tends to be sold inexpensively. Movie rights owners have paid much more for their rights or to produce the movie in the first place and expect a greater return on each view if they can get it. Music also returns a lot of money over time from the royalty system, every time a copyrighted song is played on the radio or other venues a tiny royalty is paid but it can accumulate over time. Movies don’t get that kind of play volume.

I have Amazon Prime and the free movies definitely are mostly crap and looks like those will never sell anyway. But I really can’t explain why some obscure movies aren’t available, the owners aren’t making anything from them, even a cheap deal for NetFlix or Amazon systems would give them something back. If they think they’ll make $5 a view some day from the movie I think they’re being foolish, at $1 or $2 a shot they’ll probably make a lot more over the long run. But for the NetFlix and Amazon Prime models they might not make enough to cover the costs of just making the deal.

I think there’s also the question of enforcement on pay-per-view services, the music industry has a lot of union representatives out in the field making sure the royalties get paid from radio, television, live performances, sheet music, and every other way music is delivered, and they’ve been doing that for a long time. The movie industry doesn’t have such a system except in the theaters, otherwise they count on having a limited number of distributors of their products that the owners can keep track of themselves.

[CuriousCuriousCurious]

@TriPolar

I think music and movies are quite different. Music doesn’t cost as much to produce and after initial popularity tends to be sold inexpensively. Movie rights owners have paid much more for their rights or to produce the movie in the first place and expect a greater return on each view if they can get it. Music also returns a lot of money over time from the royalty system, every time a copyrighted song is played on the radio or other venues a tiny royalty is paid but it can accumulate over time. Movies don’t get that kind of play volume.

The itunes reference isn’t about music. Apple rents/sells their movies through itunes. This question is only about movies. Not music.

[Voyager]

@CuriousCuriousCurious

Thanks for your comment but it seems to not answer the itunes/Amazon question. I understand what you’re saying about Netflix and know that that’s part of the problem they have with their online selections being kind of weak. But your statement (if I understand it correctly) seems to point out that services like itunes and Amazon would be PERFECT places to host movies because they do offer individual one time (24hr) rental/viewings. As noted in my original post both movies I used as examples have indeed appeared on Netflix at one time and I believe Amazon also. (I have no idea about itunes but assume not because once they’re there they seem to stay. But I could be wrong about that. Forgive me if so.) I assume there must be negotiation reasons/costs that factor in. If a film costs $X amount to purchase the rights to but only generates $W in revenue it doesn’t become worth the investment. If that’s the case we might be looking at a bleak future.

I suspect that if you looked at demand for a title over time, you’d see a big spike in the beginning, and then a long tail where almost no one wants it. Plus, I suspect most subscription services get most viewers from original programming now or new content. So, the incremental benefit to them of having old movies on streaming is quite small compared to what they’d have to pay and the overhead.
DVD rights don’t have to be renewed, and the overhead is very small.

The NY Times had a big article on Netflix a while back, and one problem was that when Netflix was new the networks sold TV rights to them for almost nothing, not thinking they were valuable. When they turned out to be, they felt they had been ripped off and either jacked up the prices or did it themselves.

[ftg]

I agree that to some extent it also benefits the streaming services. If all your favorite movies were constantly available, you could sign up for Netflix, watch as many as you want, and then cancel after a month or two. By cycling movies in and out they’re encouraging people to keep their subscription since there’s always “new” stuff available next month.

I think they’ve probably exactly calculated how many “new” movies they need to swap in each month to minimize losing customers.

(The real question is why aren’t full movies generally available. When the credits start, the movie isn’t over!!! Why streaming services squeeze/speedup/overwrite credits is beyond me. What’s it to them? Run you’re crappy [del]ads[/del] informational announcements after the actual end of the movie.)

[Richard_John_Marcej]

@Chihuahua

FWIW, this is exactly what happened to Blockbuster. When they started losing revenue to Netflix, they increasingly focused on new hit movies to the neglect of older classics. So you would see a store with like 100 copies of The Dark Knight and nothing else. They were dying anyway, but this strategy turn into a death spiral that accelerated their demise. As others have mentioned, competing services means the different providers are fighting over exclusive rights to the new content and dueling with exclusive original content, so I suspect the problem will just get worse.

Yeah, but let’s not let Blockbuster off the hook. Back in the 90’s, long before Netflix and the idea of online streaming, Blockbuster would pick and choose what films to stock and not just because they were hits.

I recall quite clearly in '93 wanting to see the film Inherit the Wind. I went to my local Blockbuster and when I couldn’t find it asked the manager if any other stores had a copy. I was told that Blockbuster had a list of films that they would never stock because it was “abhorrent or was considered anti-Christian” and Inherit the Wind was one of those films.

Really???

[aldiboronti]

The real truth is that all of these movies are available somewhere on the net but many people would like to be able to view them legally. If the copyright holders however persist in sitting on obscure films and dealing only in huge blockbusters they should not be surprised if the number of people willing to watch unauthorised copies starts growing dramatically, especially if the media moguls manage to pressure governments to yet again extend the copyright on classic films. (God forbid Mickey Mouse should ever come out of copyright!)

[Sam_Lowry]

I agree with everyone that it’s about the cost of the rights to movies. But what should also not be ignored is how big original content has become for Netflix and Amazon. Netflix would like you to watch Saving Private Ryan and whatever other movies that it has, but it would prefer for you to watch House of Cards or other original programming, since they’ll make more money from House of Cards, and you’ll be watching longer for a TV show than for a movie.

@CuriousCuriousCurious

Hopefully as tech progresses there’ll be a location/market for movies from the past.

2043 will be here before we know it and if Lars and The Real Girl has vanished from existence that’ll be a shame.

I don’t think movies from the past will ever disappear, I think it will be like it’s always been where people are mostly interested in what’s current and just occasionally want to find things that are older. But I think we’ll be able to find more and more movies online, even if it’s not as easy or cheap as we’d like it to be. And I guarantee you that it will be easier to watch Lars and the Real Girl in 2043 than it would have been for me in 1998 to watch some random indie movie from 1962 like The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

@ftg

(The real question is why aren’t full movies generally available. When the credits start, the movie isn’t over!!! Why streaming services squeeze/speedup/overwrite credits is beyond me. What’s it to them? Run you’re crappy [del]ads[/del] informational announcements after the actual end of the movie.)

It is annoying to have the pop-up things on my Roku, but if I just click back (or something I don’t remember what button specifically) it goes to the regular credits. I’ve never noticed the credits being sped up, where does that happen to you?

[iamthewalrus_3]

@DrFidelius

I hypothesize that 99.97% of the good but not great popular fiction books of the past hundreds years are not available at your local library. Almost all can be retrieved by an interested person with a little effort.

I do not expect visual media to be any different.

My local library has shelf space limitations, which is a constraint that streaming media doesn’t have.

There’s really no reason all the movies ever theatrically released couldn’t easily be available streaming, except that the owners are withholding them and bundling them for negotiating leverage and platform competition.

[CuriousCuriousCurious]

@iamthewalrus_3

There’s really no reason all the movies ever theatrically released couldn’t easily be available streaming, except that the owners are withholding them and bundling them for negotiating leverage and platform competition.

I disagree. Others have said above that it’s about popularity/profit and I believe that’s true. Most big hits are available via streaming. I named two rather obscure titles in my original posting and out of further curiosity looked up another obscure one How I Got Into College (1989) and that one’s also not available anywhere legally.

The studios don’t care about bundling rights for a movie like that because no one cares about it.

Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and opinions. It feels like this is an issue with many different opinions but no concrete facts.

A journalist should do a piece on it. It’s interesting.

At this rate we’re going to be losing movies forever. When Netflix DVD eventually goes out of business, what then? A lot of movies are going to vanish.

Thanks again to all for your thoughts! :o

[E-DUB]

Down the same “memory hole” as the “B” sides of 45s.

[Dewey_Finn]

@CuriousCuriousCurious

I disagree. Others have said above that it’s about popularity/profit and I believe that’s true. Most big hits are available via streaming. I named two rather obscure titles in my original posting and out of further curiosity looked up another obscure one How I Got Into College (1989) and that one’s also not available anywhere legally.

As it happens, I bought a used DVD copy of that movie from Amazon a couple of months ago for a couple of bucks.

And I don’t think anyone mentioned how the first-sale doctrine means that the Netflix DVD-by-mail service, Blockbuster or anyone else can rent any title they’re able to obtain on DVD/Bluray/VHS without needing permission (or even cooperation) of the rights holder.

But in the case of streaming content, the streaming service (Netflix, Amazon Video, etc) needs the permission of the rights holder for each and every title.

Earlier, these rights were more freely given. For instance, in 2008, Netflix obtained the streaming rights to 2,500 movies and television shows from Starz for four years, at a cost of maybe $20 million. Since then, all of the rights holders have become much more sensitive to the value of their content, and are making more expensive deals, or are starting their own streaming services.

[ftg]

@Dewey_Finn

And I don’t think anyone mentioned how the first-sale doctrine means that the Netflix DVD-by-mail service, Blockbuster or anyone else can rent any title they’re able to obtain on DVD/Bluray/VHS without needing permission (or even cooperation) of the rights holder.

Blockbuster?

Anyway, while someone can technically rent out any legally bought DVD, in practice they need to cooperate with the studios for several other reasons. E.g., Netflix has agreed with WB and some others to delay renting out DVDs of new releases for 28 days after they go on sale. This makes the studios happy since they sell more of the DVDs and happy studios make better deals with Netflix on other matters.

Blockbuster also had similar arrangements.

Whether to make money on each viewing vs. make money on each disc sale is a no-brainer to the studio bean counters. Discs are dying, streaming is in. E.g., they stopped a while ago releasing seasons of The Simpsons on DVD. The latter seasons are streaming only.

[astro]

@aldiboronti

The real truth is that all of these movies are available somewhere on the net but many people would like to be able to view them legally. If the copyright holders however persist in sitting on obscure films and dealing only in huge blockbusters they should not be surprised if the number of people willing to watch unauthorised copies starts growing dramatically, especially if the media moguls manage to pressure governments to yet again extend the copyright on classic films. (God forbid Mickey Mouse should ever come out of copyright!)

This point by aldiboronti quoted above is really the central issue. A lot of them* are *available, just not legally. However, if someone can reach out and with relatively low levels of risk and the most minimal effort spend a few minutes downloading a copy of these second, third etc tier films via a public torrent or dark torrent what is the financial impetus for acquiring copyright on a film with (relatively) insignificant demand that people can get anyway of they are so inclined?

If I’m Netflix this is a questionable business investment if I’m competing with a low volume product that’s already being given away in most cases. .

[nearwildheaven]

@DrFidelius

I hypothesize that 99.97% of the good but not great popular fiction books of the past hundreds years are not available at your local library. Almost all can be retrieved by an interested person with a little effort.

I do not expect visual media to be any different.

Nonfiction too. I love interlibrary loan, and if you can’t find something online, chances are, they can get it for you this way.

The weirdest thing I’ve ever heard of someone obtaining this way? My brother got our 3rd grade teacher’s master’s thesis via ILL. I still don’t know how he found out this thing even existed in the first place. BTW, he said it was actually interesting to read.

[EllisDee]

@Voyager

We had a thread in Cafe Society about the dissatisfaction many people felt with Netflix streaming. Many have dropped it in favor of the DVD service.

I never had the streaming service, but I signed up for the DVD service last year for two reasons: It has vastly more titles to choose from than streaming, and DVDs include extras. I really enjoy extras, particularly commentary tracks. You just can’t get that on streaming, or at least I don’t think you can.

I absolutely love the DVD service.