The answer was quite complex but slightly concerning for those of us who like to stream music, films etc.
The problem seems to be that so many companies are now in the market, all wanting to be leaders and have a major part of a pie that is fast running out of pastry.
There is only so much pie. The answer to the question suggested that the golden age of streaming is coming to an end. It goes on to explain that for some time Netflix was the major and indeed only player in the business of movie streaming. Then the likes of Amazon and numerous others realised that there was money to be made (and lets face it that is the primary reason for being in business), so they joined in the race.
I saw an example of this a few days ago. When I took out a new mobile phone plan before Christmas I received six months of free access to Disney Plus. Now I see that Disney is branching out into movies.
So the market is being flooded by more and more companies, thus becoming confusing and watering down the whole idea. I find searching for movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime confusing enough without adding goodness knows how many others.
The same has happened in sports broadcasting. Take football. It used to be on the BBC. Then ITV got involved and then Sky came in. Now we have Amazon Prime, BT Sport and probably a few more. For the listener/watcher this fractures and confuses everything, not to mention necessitating the need to subscribe to more and more channels if you want to keep up a specific watching output.
The article had the following to say: "The thing about all this is that these providers want exclusive content. The more stuff you have that no one else does, the better you’re able to retain customers. That means that the body of available shows and films is being progressively divided between this increasing number of services."
But of course that could have a detrimental effect on the companies. There has to be a limit to how many customers are willing to subscribe to (I refuse to pay extra for Britbox for example) and existing companies such as Netflix will find customers dropping away as their content becomes watered down.
This is a vicious dog eats dog world and, in many ways, a manufactured situation where the strong survive and the weak go under. Disney looks like becoming a major player in all this as the article states:
"Disney getting into the market is a HUGE deal, because they own a vast library of films, many of which they’ve been licensing to Netflix. Now they’re withdrawing all of those to use on their own service. That means no other platform is going to have any of them, and that includes Marvel, and the other studios that Disney owns."
There is one positive side to this. Netflix and Amazon for instance have seen this coming for some time which is why they've started producing original content and it is becoming increasingly clear that the only content they can be 100 per cent sure of is that which they own and not that which they licence. This could of course lead to more and more original content being produced which could be viewed as good news but could also lead to second rate material being put together in too short a time.
Ultimately there is only one loser (or should that be winner) in all this and that is the consumer. The only thing we can be sure of is that the situation will continue to be volatile and virtually change from day to day.
Being a Media-centred person this kind of thing intrigues me. The pace at which we see technological changes is phenomenal. We are now flooded with information which young people growing up will just take as the norm.
The transverse of all of this flooding of the market is to turn us older people back to the past as we decide just to stick with three or four channels and ignore the hundreds of others. I still like to watch the BBC news at a set time - it gives an anchor to my life.
Wow that was all rather serious stuff for me.
As anticipated the Beast From The East returned overnight. Now labelled Beast From The East Two, I include a few photos. The ones of Wymondham were taken by my cousin Belinda and the ones of Hethersett by myself on a very quick march round a mile or so as it was very very cold.
I still love pictures taken in the snow - it gives them a kind of nostalgic 19th century look. Unfortunately after a few hours of pristine white snow everything started to turn to mucky brown slush.