How would you start a streaming service?

A

Angelshare1

Well-known member
Meant to be a fun question.

How would you like to run Netflix? You would license content from others and create original programming as well.

How would start a company like this? Similar programming, tv shows, docs, movies, ect.

Would it start as a youtube channel with original content, then monitize, then go to the venture capitalists to launch the official streaming service? It's hard enough for a filmmaker to get one movie made, how would you get 20 made in a year???
 
The first question is what sort of content do you want to stream to where? This will determine the location of your servers and what jurisdiction they come under. Also where you incorperate your company.

With inexpensive broadband and the low cost of having server in a data centre it is trivial to set up a basic system. The trick is how to monitise and generate income.

For YouTube they have strict control's on what you can post and it is not a very effective way of generating income. You need a minimum of 1,0000 subscribers and 4,000 watched hours before you can even start to make money and that is money from adverts you don't control. Also YouTube can de-monitize you account at the drop of a hat. This happens quite often and people end up with zero income whilst the problem is sorted.

So Vimeo, which lets you upload a wider range of material and have a paywall might be a better bet if you have your own web site as a front end... but Vimeo costs money. so it is swings and roundabouts.

I would still come back to seeding trailers and samples in Youtube and Vimeo (and Facebook, linked in Twitter et al) as marketing for your main streaming service on your own servers.

It depends on the content you want to make. The most profitable low cost start up is porn. So it will be porn-hub instead of YouTube.

Otherwise you are going to need venture capital, lots of it. Unless.... you get a film makers co-operative to all chip in to your own servers and you push their films to [paying] subscribers or selling advertising. The advantage of this is you get YouTube's cut. If you run the hosting service as not for profit then the film makers will get a far bigger cut than you would with YouTube.

If you are looking for a way to get funding for films this is a very long way round of doing it.
 
Comedian Jim Davidson had this problem. He’s not the sort of comedy for all, but YouTube removed so much it became untenable. They even have a word filter, so words in common use, trigger the ‘ist’ filter, and I guess accidental viewers also click and complain. His ranty type trailers on YouTube have been watered down because even they got removed. He started his own pay channel and has decent numbers of subscribers. The issues are the server companies who can stream to substantial numbers are not cheap, so the big boys have to own their own, with the very expensive fibre backbones into them from the comms companies, and that is also geographical. No good expecting to run it from some locations as home users can’t get decent broadband. If you need wide and fast data you need to be where that’s possible, or you are mega stuck. A small server farm isn't remotely a cheap thing to own and run. Direct streaming from my ordinary, but decent edit pc in the studio was dismally poor and my broadband is ok for normal things, so it’s above my computer level to sort, so it really is a specialist area for proper advice.
 
I would argue that setting up your own hosting is not that expensive. You don't need a server farm just rent space or build your own and put it here https://www.telehouse.net/ There are other options.

When you are starting out you don't need a lot of disk space. 100TB? and build up as you get advertisers/subscribers.

JD is now on https://www.ustreme.com/ as a host so he hasn't got a server farm. I suspect neither has Ustreme.
 
It's not disc space it's parallel simultaneous streaming that clogs things up. I think setting up ustreme was a sensible thing to do, but I don't know who actually handles the streaming for them. Bandwidth is still really expensive - you can easily get charged £200 a month for 25Tb maximum in a year. start to pile on the subscribers and 25tb isn't very much.
 
Good points. If it was that easy "everyone" would be doing it.
Telehouse don't seem to publish a price list and you know what they say about having to ask the price...
 
I wouldn't.

Right now I think we're in the middle of the first streaming wars, and I think Netflix are the least likely victors, sadly. They're funded by debt, whereas Amazon and Apple are funded by the massively deep pockets of those companies. At some point the investors will require these things to start making money, and it's not clear where that leaves Netflix.

I have spoken to many people whose careers in various crew trades have been made by the OTT revolution, mainly people who were just stepping up to roles on single-camera drama at the right moment, and who've done very well out of it. Certainly in the UK at the moment, in this lull in the pandemic, we're very short of crew because of the (literally) billions being poured into high end production. Individuals and businesses are pouring resources into servicing this demand and seem very confident it'll continue forever.

I think we've a handful of years left until it rationalises.
 
Netflix 1Q profit was $1.7B and the annual revenues are expected to be in the $30B range. Its debt is around $15B. They say they expect to pay it off. They can also ease off their $17B programming spree.

As to the OP - there are paying streaming services.
 
DLD said:
They can also ease off their $17B programming spree.
Click to expand...

Well, exactly, which is going to leave rather a lot less stuff to make, considering this would enable Netflix's competitors to ease off a little too. It seems reasonable that they would choose to do that because one of the metrics of success for these organisations is the cost to attract new subscribers, which was, at least before the pandemic, rising with alarming speed. The reason I form the view I do about this is that the winner of this race will be the organisation which can keep spending money to grow its subscriber base, and of Netflix, Amazon and Apple, Netflix is clearly the least able to do that. That doesn't mean it's unable to do that, at least for a while, but considering the competition that's not saying much.

I think what's most important about this, or at least what would be considered more important about it by the businesspeople involved, is that the market cap of Netflix is 233 billion. Some would say it's overvalued, and that the spike in popularity is a pandemic-related windfall. Others would say that the value of the company is so much larger than its debt that the status quo can in fact continue for some time. I don't know. I'm not here to criticise Netflix particularly; it's just that there is significant reason to believe that the current absolute bonanza of high-end production is probably not sustainable in the long term.
 
I feel like we have TOO much content right now...

In any case, interestingly enough, for all the flack AppleTV+ caught a couple years ago they are likely going to be a dominant player within 5 years (probably much sooner). After years of them trying to get people onboard for a bundled streaming service package to revolutionize the way TV is delivered, it's like they threw in the towel and said "Welp, if you can't join 'em... beat 'em."

Point being, I think the huge players with deep pockets will be the ones to emerge. Pair big budgets (read: AAA production values + top talent + lots of room to experiment and fail) alongside an over abundance of content competing for consumers attention, trying to start a competitor doesn't even sound like a fun thought experiment. We already have YouTube which will host/co-monetize all the unfound talent.

But if this little thought experiment involves having a ton of money, well, I guess I would just do exactly what AppleTV+ has done.

If starting from scratch with money, I don't think anyone could have done a better job. Six months ago I would have cancelled my free 1 year trial after it ended July 1, but now I'll be keeping it. They are now consistently pumping out fresh, unique, high quality content and every month for the next several months there is something well worth my $5.

If starting from scratch without deep pockets, what is the point?
 
Phil, no one knows or can predict the future. Perhaps, the most worrying sign for Netflix is that it went from having 30% of all streamed hours down to 20%. But that was to be expected with their competition investing lots of money into their own programming. On the other hand, with $30B or so in revenues, it is a 900 lb gorilla. Maybe an overpriced gorilla - I think this is a grossly overpriced market all around - but an entrenched overpriced gorilla that is a top "content channel" for every streaming viewer.

And I agree with filmguy about too much content. But there will be even more for the next few years, as the big boys are jockeying for the position at the inside rail. With names like Disney, Apple, Paramount/CBS, Peacock (NBC/Universal), Amazon, etc., it's pretty hard to anticipate any early dropouts.

PS. I do believe that someone will start or add "home made" content to their rosters. In fact, I am shocked that a major streamer hadn't gone for Joe Rogan. His popularity is well worth his $30M/Y salary. And one can add all sort of sports/political/entertainment hosts and only pay them according to their viewing hours.
 
filmguy123 said:
If starting from scratch without deep pockets, what is the point?
Click to expand...

It depends what your goals are. Not everything is about making shareholders rich.
The op seems to be looking to assist a group of film makers having an alternative/additional route to market rather than becoming the next NetFlix or Apple TV.
Ian Davidson has managed to do it with out deep pockets.
 
filmguy123 said:
I feel like we have TOO much content right now...

In any case, interestingly enough, for all the flack AppleTV+ caught a couple years ago they are likely going to be a dominant player within 5 years (probably much sooner). After years of them trying to get people onboard for a bundled streaming service package to revolutionize the way TV is delivered, it's like they threw in the towel and said "Welp, if you can't join 'em... beat 'em."

Point being, I think the huge players with deep pockets will be the ones to emerge. Pair big budgets (read: AAA production values + top talent + lots of room to experiment and fail) alongside an over abundance of content competing for consumers attention, trying to start a competitor doesn't even sound like a fun thought experiment. We already have YouTube which will host/co-monetize all the unfound talent.

But if this little thought experiment involves having a ton of money, well, I guess I would just do exactly what AppleTV+ has done.

If starting from scratch with money, I don't think anyone could have done a better job. Six months ago I would have cancelled my free 1 year trial after it ended July 1, but now I'll be keeping it. They are now consistently pumping out fresh, unique, high quality content and every month for the next several months there is something well worth my $5.

If starting from scratch without deep pockets, what is the point?
Click to expand...

what do they have that's good? I got a free year of appletv+ with a purchase of a computer but I haven't watched anything on there yet. and I hate how all of the title photos and the site itself seem to have that glossy, edgeless apple aesthetic
 
ahalpert said:
what do they have that's good?
Click to expand...

At this point, it’s probably easier to ask which shows/movies are worth skipping. A few hidden gems outside the headliners are Tiny World, Becoming You, Home Before Dark. Most appealing is the next 6 months of content: Foundation, Invasion, Mr. Corman, Shrink Next Door, Problem with Jon Stewart, Coda, season 2 of Morning show & Ted Lasso, etc.
 
right on cue.... A YouTube diy video Build a Netflix clone with GraphQL, React and a NoSQL DB to tell you exactly how to code your own DIY Netflix.
All you need now is content, hardware and a fibre broadband link... :-)

I think almost anyone can do an entry level Netflix for a few $1000 but it is how to monetize, subscriptions, advertisers mech etc and how to scale the system. Not least how to get content. In the early days at least it won't generate enough to pay for original content.

Are you confusing starting a Netflix with starting a Vimeo?
 
I think you might want to look into what the bandwidth and international hosting would cost to create anything even vaguely like a Netflix.

Some special-interest channels have done it but it's not clear what sort of subscriber base they have.
 
Phil Rhodes said:
I think you might want to look into what the bandwidth and international hosting would cost to create anything even vaguely like a Netflix.

Some special-interest channels have done it but it's not clear what sort of subscriber base they have.
Click to expand...

Quite, a niche market system with small amount of content and subscribers/advertisers (compared to Netflix/Amazon etc) is fairly easy to do. You are not going to get to "the next level" without a lot of investment. The problem is that sort of investment normally comes form people who want return$ on their Inve$tment$ as a priority over anything else. that is where the rot set in. :-(
Some investors might also want to steer the content in a "suitable" direction for the good of the audience (ie the investors political, religious, moral or financial aims).
 
JAMedia said:
... Some investors might also want to steer the content in a "suitable" direction for the good of the audience (ie the investors political, religious, moral or financial aims).
Click to expand...

Rumble is the "latest" political streamer on the uprise. Then there's Locals. Quake seems to be doing only podcasts.

But I do think it's the next big thing until it gets swallowed by the existing big dozen.
 
Sort of on topic (and I didn't want to start a new thread or keep searching for a more suitable one, if it exists).

This is from the LA Times about a given "influencer". Which explains a bit of the YouTube economics.

In her June earnings video, she explains that of her $14,023 take-home pay that month, $8,723 came from her creator work: about $4,700 from sponsorships, $3,599 from YouTube ad revenue, $263 from affiliate marketing and $63 from TikTok.
Click to expand...

https://www.latimes.com/business/st...influencer-marketing?utm_source=pocket-newtab
 
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