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Where the hits are streaming — historical view

Last week, I looked at how many 2010 box office win­ners were avail­able for legal stream­ing in the United States. The news was bad for Net­flix as it had less than 10 per­cent of the avail­able titles.

As a reminder, this is what the 2010 aggre­gate data looked like:

Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu DVD
Top 10 1 7 7 7 8
Top 25 2 14 14 14 17
top 50 4 25 25 25 34
Top 100 9 48 46 46 74

But one ques­tion that was left unan­swered was whether there was a bias in the data selec­tion as it pre­sented data that was spe­cific to a sin­gle year. So in order to assess the strength of the dif­fer­ent ser­vices, I decided to look at the data for the 5 pre­vi­ous years, hop­ing to dis­cern a pat­tern. How­ever, because it’s a lot of data to crunch, I decided to limit my research to top 10 over that time (in data point, this means a uni­verse of 60 titles or 240 data points.).

2009

So let’s start with the  2009 data:

Rank Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu
1 Avatar No No No No
2 Trans­form­ers: Revenge of the Fallen No No No No
3 Harry Pot­ter and the Half Blood Prince No Yes No No
4 The Twi­light Saga: New Moon No Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
5 Up Yes No Pur­chase only No
6 The Hang­over No No No No
7 Star Trek Yes Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
8 The Blind Side No No No No
9 Alvin and the Chip­munks: The Squeakquel No No No No
10 Sher­lock Holmes No No No No
TOTAL 2/10 rental: 1/10
pur­chase: 3/10		 rental: 0/10
pur­chase: 3/10		 rental: 0/10
pur­chase: 2/10

And here, some­thing inter­est­ing hap­pen­ing. Not only did Net­flix not fare that much bet­ter but all of the other rental ser­vices fared much much worth.

I was now very intrigued. Was 2009 an unusual year or was there a pat­tern here? Were older title get­ting less avail­able as time went on?

In order to answer those ques­tion, I decided to pull a lot more data, going all the way back to 2005 so I could have 5 year’s worth of data to look at.

2008

Rank Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu
1 The Dark Knight N Y Y Y
2 Iron Man N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
3 Indi­ana Jones and the King­dom
of the Crys­tal Skulls		 N N Pur­chase only N
4 Han­cock N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
5 WALL-E N N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
6 Kung-Fu Panda N N N N
7 Twi­light N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
8 Mada­gas­car: Escape 2 Africa N N N N
9 Quan­tum of Solace N N Pur­chase only N
10 Dr. Seuss’ Hor­ton Hears a Who! N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
TOTAL 0/10 Rent: 1/10
Pur­chase: 5/10		 Rent: 1/10
Pur­chase: 8/10		 Rent: 1/10
Pur­chase: 6/10

2008 seems to be marked by a depar­ture from the con­cept of rent­ing movies online, with only 1 title (the Dark Knight) being avail­able across all the ser­vices. Net­flix does not even have access to that one, end­ing the year with no box office top­per in its offer­ing. Apple has a clear advan­tage over its com­peti­tors in the sell­ing of titles.

2007

Rank Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu
1 Spi­der­man 3 N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
2 Shrek the third N N N N
3 Trans­form­ers N N N Rental only
4 Pirates of the Caribbean:
At World’s End		 N N Pur­chase only Y
5 Harry Pot­ter and the
Order of the Phoenix		 N Y Y Y
6 I Am Legend N Y Y Y
7 The Bourne Ultimatum N Y Y N
8 National Trea­sure:
Book of Secrets		 N Rental only Pur­chase only Y
9 Alvin and the Chipmunks N Pur­chase only N Pur­chase only
10 300 N Pur­chase only Y Y
TOTAL 0/10 Rent: 4/10
Pur­chase: 6/10		 Rent: 4/10
Pur­chase: 7/10		 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 7/10

The amount of titles avail­able for rent on non-Netflix ser­vices increases a lit­tle for the 2007 cat­a­log (Net­flix con­tin­ues to be a non starter) and the num­ber of titles for sales seems to be pretty con­sis­tent across all services.

2006

Rank Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu
1 Pirates of the Caribbean:
Dead Man’s Chest		 N Rental only Pur­chase only Y
2 Night at the Museum N Y Y Y
3 Cars N N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
4 X-Men: The Last Stand N Y Y Y
5 The Da Vinci Code N Pur­chase only N Pur­chase only
6 Super­man Returns N Y Y Y
7 Happy Feet N Y Y Y
8 Ice Age: The Meltdown N Y Y Y
9 Casino Royale N N Pur­chase only N
10 The Pur­suit of Happyness N Pur­chase only Pur­chase only Pur­chase only
TOTAL 0/10 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 7/10		 Rent: 5/10
Pur­chase: 9/10		 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 9/10

iTunes and Vudu have back-catalogs that allow for 90 per­cent cov­er­age when it comes to pur­chas­ing the titles. Ama­zon brings up the rear with a respectable 7 titles. What’s inter­est­ing here is that there seems to be a clear divide between sales and rental availability.

2005

Rank Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu
1 Star Wars: Episode III -
Revenge of the Sith		 N N N N
2 The Chron­i­cles of Nar­nia:
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe		 N Rental only Pur­chase only Y
3 Harry Pot­ter and the Gob­let of Fire N Y Y Y
4 War of the Worlds N N N N
5 King Kong N Pur­chase only N Y
6 Wed­ding Crashers N Y Y Y
7 Char­lie and the Choco­late Factory N Y Y Y
8 Bat­man Begins N N Pur­chase only N
9 Mada­gas­car N N N N
10 Mr. & Mrs. Smith N Y Y Y
TOTAL 0/10 Rent: 5/10
Pur­chase: 5/10		 Rent: 4/10
Pur­chase: 6/10		 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 6/10

2005 appears to be another equal­iz­ing year for non-netflix VOD ser­vices. How­ever, it doesn’t mean that they are great, in that only 6 out of 10 titles are actu­ally available.

Con­clu­sion

With all that data in place, we can get a clearer pic­ture of what’s available:

Title Net­flix Ama­zon iTunes Vudu
2010 1/10 Rent: 8/10
Pur­chase: 6/10		 Rent: 7/10
Pur­chase: 8/10		 Rent: 7/10
Pur­chase: 8/10
2009 2/10 rental: 1/10
pur­chase: 3/10		 rental: 0/10
pur­chase: 3/10		 rental: 0/10
pur­chase: 2/10
2008 0/10 Rent: 1/10
Pur­chase: 5/10		 Rent: 1/10
Pur­chase: 8/10		 Rent: 1/10
Pur­chase: 6/10
2007 0/10 Rent: 4/10
Pur­chase: 6/10		 Rent: 4/10
Pur­chase: 7/10		 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 7/10
2006 0/10 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 7/10		 Rent: 5/10
Pur­chase: 9/10		 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 9/10
2005 0/10 Rent: 5/10
Pur­chase: 5/10		 Rent: 4/10
Pur­chase: 6/10		 Rent: 6/10
Pur­chase: 6/10
Total for rent 2005–2010 3 25 21 26
Total for sale 2005–2010 N/A 32 41 38
Per­cent­age for rent 2005–2010 5% 41.67% 35% 43.33%
Per­cent­age for sale 2005–2010 N/A 53.33% 68.33% 63.33%

As far as Net­flix is con­cerned, the trend doesn’t get bet­ter as you head back in time. In fact, the data sug­gests that their stream­ing cat­a­log gets worse as time goes on. While it is true that the com­pany has only recently started get­ting into the stream­ing busi­ness, they will need to do a lot of work in order to catch up to their com­peti­tors. The fact that their busi­ness model is rad­i­cally dif­fer­ent (Net­flix takes a membership/all-you-can-eat approach while its com­peti­tors allow for a-la-carte pur­chases, more in line with tra­di­tional TV-based video on demand ser­vices) may also make life more dif­fi­cult for them.

On the bright side, it appears that 2009 was a strange year as far as the other ser­vices are con­cerned and there are more titles avail­able for rent as you go back in time, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of the Apple iTunes store, which tends to favor sell­ing over rent­ing. All the play­ers will need to do more work, how­ever, if they want to broaden their appeal as none of them could deliver half of the avail­able box office win­ners over a 6 year period.

Another inter­est­ing trend is the rel­a­tive con­sis­tency in terms of avail­abil­ity: Ama­zon, Apple, and Vudu all appear to have access to the same times and, for the most part, they also all seemed to be denied access to the same titles. I’m not sure whether this points to fair­ness in the mar­ket or some kind of manip­u­la­tion in the movie indus­try but it’s an inter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non worth noting.

All and all, if video on demand is to serve as a core com­po­nent of the cord-cutting phe­nom­e­non (the idea that peo­ple are aban­don­ing cable TV for online streams only), there is still much work that needs to be done.

Originally published on February 3, 2011 in Business, Media, Technology . You may find related thoughts pieces under the following terms: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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  • Daniel

    I am very appalled by the dis­trib­u­tors’ word­ing of rent vs. sell. If they were only the slight­est bit hon­est, the choices given to the user would be “Rent” and “Rent for a lit­tle longer”. I’m glee­fully await­ing the first of these ser­vices to go belly-up, and peo­ple start­ing to realise how far their def­i­n­i­tion of “own­ing” actu­ally went when they dis­cover that the 100s of dol­lars they spent on flicks they thought to have bought sim­ply dis­ap­pear into thin air.

    • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

      It is an inter­est­ing ques­tion but I sus­pect that the play­ers going away is equiv­a­lent in terms of risk to a tech­nol­ogy becom­ing out­dated (eg. video­tapes vs. DVDs).

      • Daniel

        It might, but if the busi­ness world is any­thing, it’s uncer­tain. It doesn’t need a com­plete bank­ruptcy, maybe just a hos­tile takeover or a merger (like when Wal­mart acquired Vudu and removed the adult sec­tion), or sim­ply a drop in sales. It has hap­pened in other dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion indus­tries, and I have lit­tle doubt that it will hap­pen for stream­ing movies.

        Some years ago, the Yahoo! Music store and the MSN Music store closed down, includ­ing their DRM acti­va­tion servers. I am cer­tain many of the peo­ple who spent a lot of money on buy­ing music there were not aware that their files would only be playable for as long as Yahoo! or Microsoft wished them to be. When the stores closed down, many peo­ple lost pretty expen­sive dig­i­tal music col­lec­tions, which they prob­a­bly wouldn’t have bought (or at that price) if they knew how soon they would all dis­ap­pear. A sim­i­lar thing hap­pened last year in the Casual games down­load mar­ket, when Reflex­ive Arcade closed down and, with 30 days advance notice as per their license, peo­ple were no longer able to acti­vate any games they once pur­chased from the store.

        As much as I feel sorry for all the peo­ple affected, I really think that these things hap­pen­ing sooner rather than later is a good thing in the long run. Peo­ple need to be bet­ter informed about what it is exactly they are get­ting when they are pur­chas­ing dig­i­tal goods.

      • http://www.tnl.net Tris­tan Louis

        Good point.