What I want is a streaming service that operates as a consumer cooperative.

Subscribers vote, elect a slate of directors who each get a fraction of the content-budget to spend as per their campaign promises. Licensing content, buying it in perpetuity, producing it themselves or funding some group of creators -- none of this "how can we milk customers more", and no more fruitless community campaigns to save a beloved series, you just need some critical mass of subscribers to vote for the guy whose platform is "I will keep making more seasons as fast as possible until the sun boils the ocean".

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skeeter2020 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

isn't this essentially a state broadcaster? You might get one decent show but the committee and bike shedding mostly gives you terrible niche programming that's unsustainable without massive subsidies - and most still show adverts.

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TheCoelacanth 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, I don't that a cooperatively run streaming service needs to have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force in a given territory. There could easily be multiple competing cooperatives.

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cjs_ac 2 hours ago | parent [-]

There are plenty of criticisms to level at the BBC, but I don’t think the Director General has armed forces at his command.

	▲	TheCoelacanth a minute ago \| parent [-]
		Not directly, but ultimately its funding is non-voluntary and is backed by the state's monopoly on violence.

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limagnolia 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

State broadcaster are usually funded from state funds (taxes) not voluntary memberships. Furthermore, taxpayers don't usually get to vote directly on what content should be produced. With cooperatives, there could be multiple coops that focus on different groups. They could even join together on productions across coops. Sounds like a good plan to me.

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arjie 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

NFLX is publicly owned with only one share class and it only does video streaming so it does that.

Anyone motivated to do this for a smaller group would rather just run a private tracker. The overheads are enormous when you’re not negotiating in bulk.

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saalweachter an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Netflix isn't owned by its subscribers is the critical difference. You don't buy shares of NFLX to gain access to the service, and subscribing does not come with any shares/voting rights.

	▲	arjie 3 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		True, it’s a critical difference but perhaps shows what it’s like to be a minority participant in a shared enterprise.

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ricardobeat 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Netflix has "optimized" their app to the point where you're cycling between the same 30-40 recommendations on every screen, just grouped a little different. The catalog shrinks every year. And they invest large amounts into producing their own algorithm-based content instead of acquiring more.

	▲	arjie 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah that’s what it will look like if you have this kind of structure. No one is selling a perpetual license for a movie for anything less than top dollar. The proposed plan inevitably tends to this outcome.

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MisterMunchkin 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You would need a lot of subscribers to make that happen. Just to make a single show costs a fortune, let alone a whole catalogue.

	▲	saalweachter 20 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		You're not getting high budget shows without like a hundred million subscribers, sure, but there are bootstrapping options. Dropout does their original content on around 1 million subscribers @ $6/mo. There's also licensing existing content -- the mega corps building walled gardens aren't likely to play ball, but if you make it painless and have non-exploitative terms, there's countless smaller content producers who would happily upload their catalogue to another service. I think if the right group of founders (experience in streaming,v experience in content production, good professional network with existing smaller production companies) was able to kickstart it with a million subscribers, give or take, they'd have decent odds of providing enough value to start a more subscribers -> more content spiral instead of the reverse.