Offer Better Streaming Plans

The New York Times ran this article and it has tapped into a personal grudge of mine, well, at least two grudges/concerns that I have been harboring against both HBO and Spotify (just two of the companies that offer streamable content online and one of two that I subscribe to).

With HBO GO it bothers me to no end that they will not abandon, or at least open up, their content in a similar way that Hulu, Netflix, and a variety of other companies will: on a subscription basis.  I would happily abandon Netflix at $7.99 a month to subscribe to HBO Go at $9.99/month or even $15 or maybe even $20.  I don't want to get cable, I would have to use Comcast and I give them enough money a month just to retain high speed Internet access.  I called Comcast and said, "Just give me HBO," and they said they wouldn't without a base cable plan, plus a premium attachment.  That's just total bullshit.  It's just a money grab.  Sure, I would love basic cable so I could watch C-SPAN, TLC, and The History Channel.  But I don't need the infotainment triumvirate of CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC, or the shitty sports and other "lifestyle" channels.  And I shouldn't have to have access to them simply to get to premium content.

But, alas, HBO doesn't want to build the structure to deal with the end result, and when you have something that people will break down and buy regardless of the personal distaste listed above, what do they have to lose?  What was more interesting in the NY Times article is that HBO seems to understand that rampant sharing of their content is occurring, and they are taking this approach:

They have little ability to track and curtail their customers who are sharing account information, according to Jeff Cusson, senior vice president for corporate affairs at HBO. And, he said, the network doesn’t view the sharing “as a pervasive problem at this time.”

According to HBO, 6.5 million of its 30 million subscribers have signed up for HBO Go. When I asked Mr. Cusson if the network would consider figuring out a way to capture and monetize those slippery users who were piggybacking on others’ accounts, he declined to speculate on what might be possible.

“The best business approach at the time is in the business model that we currently have,” he said.

I can't see how this is not a win/win for HBO.  Just a little over 20% of it's subscription base has activated the free HBO GO feature, so those 6.5 million who are giving out their passwords are just giving HBO a free way to tout its exceptional programming, that could lead to people either 1) subscribing to HBO via cable provider or 2) purchasing HBO content either digitally or through DVDs.  Win/win.

As for Spotify, I have a love/hate relationship with those bastards.  They charge me $9.99 a month so I can stream practically any music I desire, but the minute my wife or I try to listen to different music through Spotify on any platform, it kicks one of us off.  That's pretty shitty Spotify - even Netflix doesn't pull that kind of crap.  I'm unwilling to give Spotify $20 large so both of us can listen to music.  Even old Ma Bell has a family plan for it's customers.  Which leads me to why this article was such a great boon (and worth my subscription to the digital NY Times), this might be a solution to my Spotify problem.

In the long run the old mid-twentieth century business model concerning entertainment/media is falling apart.  If content providers want to fight piracy (and let's face it, that is what streaming cheap to affordable priced digital content is attempting to do) they need to get smart, realize that we all have access to the content already, some of us are still willing to pay for what we get, just don't gouge us, the old system of price fixing is fading.

A Supposedly Fun Thing

I always remember the first time that I watched Annie Hall, that existential crisis that Woody Allen's younger self has when he doesn't seem to care to move on with, I believe it was a homework assignment or some such thing, because he read that the universe was eventually going to explode, and he realized that it all didn't really matter.

Every morning I get up I feel the same way, only on a more finite scale, that is, what does it all mean, why do I care, why should I care, I'm just going to die either later today, tomorrow, two years from now, or twenty years from now.

I'm a real upper in the mornings (usually when my alarm on my phone is prodding me up at 5:30 a.m. to go running, which I need to do since I'm running the Portland Marathon later this year and am about 50-75 pounds over my goal weight for, hell, not even for running, just for living, yet I just hit snooze and laze in my warm blankets hoping that somehow I'll just magically show up on that cold October morning ready to run 26.2 miles, and then it starts... what does it matter, I'll just be dead someday soon).

Then, when I get going, feel good, like I have some control, I feel like Bart does in The Simpsons episode, "A Totally Fun Thing That Bart Will Never Do Again:"

The general uneasy feeling I have coursing through me at any given moment is my utter lack of preparedness of my 30's.  I blew my 20's in college and saying, "I'll get serious when I have X."  Well about fifty "x moments" have come and gone and I realized something - life is a blast.  It's a horrible, ugly, brutish and fun blast.  Sure I'm going to die, the universe will end, and my cruise is closing in on half over, but I'm still alive, and since I'm going to die and can't take anything with me, why worry?  I'm not one to believe in the immortality of the soul or an afterlife.  My position in this weird conscious state of life is it's one and done, so I'm going to make the most of it, I'm going to scare myself, try new things, like getting up at 5:30 a.m. and running, on a Saturday.