It's about volume. Sure the movie companies will be giving away their films for free. But if you give away enough films for free it becomes profitable!!
It's obviously implied in this suggestion that they would charge... an element of Popcorn Time's appeal is that it's easy to use and works, unlike virtually every paid movie streaming/download service in existence.
At various times, books, e-books, and kindle fires.
Amazon actually shifted the pricing on books and e-books by selling them at below what they were buying them at for prolonged periods of times, and drove rival book sellers out of business by doing so... and then didn't raise their prices.
Do we know if they still sell books at a loss? I'm guessing with their volume and many competitors killed off they have an insane control over their own buying cost and can force that price to now be profitable, but it'd be interesting to know either way.
Well, from their earnings reports, their gross revenue has grown dramatically but their profit margin remains near zero because they spend every additional dollar they make on growing the company.
Control of your audience, first and foremost: the mainstay of the movie business. If you can convince someone to sit still and watch your art for up to 2 hours at a time, you've got an audience. If you can't, you've lost the audience.
Its an artistic thing - do you have access to, and can you know about, your audience? This has got to be better than not knowing and not having any control whatsoever - or worse, allowing someone else to have your audience (which is what happens with piracy).
But of course, with lawyers and accountants running the show, where they haven't quite figured out how to rate eyeballs in a spreadsheet without having $$-signs around, its no surprise that they're missing this opportunity.
Imagine if Universal embraced Popcorn Time and called their fork "Universal Popcorn Time", and modified it such that their catalog was entirely available. They'd have a real chance against the iTunes/AppStore/Netflix's of the world. Alas, they appear to be asleep at the wheel here .. even though the extremely Great features of Popcorn Time as an app are wide open and available to them ..
First of all what does a "Popcorn Time" fork give Universal over putting their newer movies on Hulu. Nothing that I can see. They are going to have to put a decent amount of ads on it(especially if they offer recent releases like I guess popcorn time has) if they want to make any money on letting users view stuff for "free" (information on the audience is worth some things but mainly as targeting for ads(+theater and dvd sales to some extent) but this would help undercut dvd sales also how good is the quality of the information provided on the internet can be poor(for example see all the 90+ year olds on age gates)).
Also is there a way to prevent users from sharing in Popcorn Time? If not they would get massive lawsuits from other content providers for profiting for piracy. If yes then ads + limited content = why would people use their fork?
There is a lot of potential in the subscription model(ala netflix), I think there is a decent amount of untapped potential something like an expanded hulu free where newer just realeased stuff and older seasons or prime content is supported by a lot more ads, there is very little potential for giving stuff away for free without ads for most tv show/movie content.
>> "Imagine if Universal embraced Popcorn Time and called their fork "Universal Popcorn Time", and modified it such that their catalog was entirely available. They'd have a real chance against the iTunes/AppStore/Netflix's of the world."
What? iTunes, AppStore, and Netflix are stores. Universal isn't competing with them and doesn't need to. They exist to sell Universal's content.
Yes but if Universal did that they would then have to build a payment or subscription system into their app and spend a ton of money managing that and supporting it. Or are you suggesting they give their movies away for free on the app? If so then they're better off just letting the stores take a cut - that way they actually earn money.
If they were to give away their movies for free (if that's what you're suggesting) how - exactly - would they monetise that successfully? Unlike the music industry which can make up losses on record sales through concerts and merch their isn't really an equivalent for the movie industry.
