←back to thread

641 points shortformblog | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.533s | source
Show context
timmg ◴[] No.42949719[source]

I assume they get "monetization" from Youtube and they don't need to worry about hosting or discovery. Probably better than doing nothing with these films.

replies(5): >>42949781 #>>42949826 #>>42950060 #>>42957115 #>>42963845 #
bluedevil2k ◴[] No.42950060[source]

The only 2 companies that made money during the “streaming wars” were Netflix, which had the infrastructure in place already and didn’t need to build anything from scratch, and Sony, which decided not to build any streaming service and just license all its content out. Seems WBD is following the lead of a winner.

* https://www.yahoo.com/tech/sony-succeeded-becoming-powerful-...

replies(4): >>42950285 #>>42950752 #>>42953195 #>>42959225 #
827a ◴[] No.42959225[source]

Much like Spotify; it took them many, many years to achieve only a 7% profit margin. Meanwhile, UMG runs at 16%.

The only company that actually makes good money from being a content middleman is, somehow, YouTube. I don't know how they do it. YouTube is among the greatest businesses in human history.

replies(2): >>42960393 #>>42964894 #
1. yurishimo ◴[] No.42960393[source]

Because YouTube has found a way to monetize the work of it's content creators. Online influencers are incentivized to make videos to get paid and YouTube has reduced their costs enough to make it worthwhile.

In addition to that, whenever users are just starting out, their videos still get ad rolls but the creator doesn't get any money. That's millions of new videos every day that Youtube can monetize until those creators are eligible to collect the checks for themself (if ever).

Also, YouTube does aggressive caching of very old videos that have very few views. You might need to wait 10 seconds for YT to fetch the video from cold storage before watching, but in the grand scheme of things, it's worth it to them.