Am I crazy for thinking these sorts of things are absurd and in 10 years we'll look back and wonder what the hell we were thinking?
I want music. I want a phone. I want cell phone service. I don't want Verizon selling me a phone. I don't want them selling me music. Or ringtones. I want them to provide me with quality, economical cell phone service. These multi-tier one-off annoying-to-negotiate media deals boggle my mind. It's the reason that despite having Amazon Prime, Netflix and more, I still can't watch half of what I want to, let alone where I want, when I want (actually, I'm on Linux, so I'm screwed either way).
It just reeks of absurdity and politics. Maybe I'm just naive.
Verizon and the other carriers/telcos/broadband providers are desperate to avoid becoming dumb pipes or a simple commodity. They lose pricing power, brand power, control, and profit. In that sense, it's easy to understand why they are doing this.
Unfortunately, by Verizon (and lots of other players with their own interests) inserting themselves into all of these deals and processes and platforms, it creates an absurd burden on consumers who just want to watch the damn movie/transfer media files between devices/get a phone or computer that's not preloaded with crap.
It's no wonder that consumers gravitate toward companies that minimize these pain points (Apple, Spotify) or continue to download pirated media content.
I want music. I want a phone. I want cell phone service. I don't want Verizon selling me a phone. I don't want them selling me music. Or ringtones. I want them to provide me with quality, economical cell phone service. These multi-tier one-off annoying-to-negotiate media deals boggle my mind. It's the reason that despite having Amazon Prime, Netflix and more, I still can't watch half of what I want to, let alone where I want, when I want (actually, I'm on Linux, so I'm screwed either way).
It just reeks of absurdity and politics. Maybe I'm just naive.