this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
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the only streamers were Netflix and Hulu? When anything you wanted to stream was on one or the other? Otherwise known as a duopoly. It's like how the PC gaming marketplace was objectively at it's best when Steam had a monopoly on selling games. Having everything in one place is better.
Streaming will get better, everything else will get worse as the monopolies get to full power again.
Netflix had a near monopoly on the streaming but not on the actual shows and movies. All the studios still owned their shows and movies and could unilaterally pull them off Netflix and make their own services, evidenced by the fact that that's exactly what they did. Importantly, the monopoly was not vertically integrated. Similarly, Valve makes very few of the games available on Steam.
Streaming will not get better as the studios fully monopolize it. Not without at the very least and most liberal an enforced ban on vertical integration in visual media and on exclusive licensing agreements. That won't happen under capitalism though, so the only real improvement will be in the resurgence of piracy.