Technology

I think having new content in production at all times to keep your audience satisfied is a lot more expensive than maintaining a platform. Just open the end credits of any movie. Those people all had to be paid to make that one piece of content, and that's just the labor cost.

The problem is that there tends to be a gap between what people are willing to pay for what's essentially an expensively produced video file and the income that's needed to sustain production. The exclusivity model is, for better or worse, just a strategy to keep people from running away to the competition in case of a price hike or a new rule against account sharing.

My prediction is:

• The streaming platforms continue enshittifying because they can't sustain the losses (except for Netflix; they're just doing it because they can)
• People start torrenting more
• Streaming platforms lose more income
• They shift towards cheaper content like reality shows, alienating another part of their viewership

That's not even taking into account all the controversy around poor working conditions for writers or actors being required to grant the production company the right to re-use AI recreations of their face.

With viewers turning against streaming services, writers/actors saying they're not treated fairly and most streaming services turning a loss, I'm not sure how much of this industry will still exist 10 years for now. Who knows, maybe it will all be AI-generated.