Streaming, Sharing, Stealing: Big Data and the Future of Entertainment

Description

Traditional network television programming has always followed the same script: executives approve a pilot, order a trial number of episodes, and broadcast them, expecting viewers to watch a given show on their television sets at the same time every week. But then came Netflix's House of Cards. Netflix gauged the show's potential from data it had gathered about subscribers' preferences, ordered two seasons without seeing a pilot, and uploaded the first thirteen episodes all at once for viewers to watch whenever they wanted on the devices of their choice. In this book, Michael Smith and Rahul Telang, experts on entertainment analytics, show how the success of House of Cards upended the film and TV industries―and how companies like Amazon and Apple are changing the rules in other entertainment industries, notably publishing and music. We're living through a period of unprecedented technological disruption in the entertainment industries. Just about everything is affected: pricing, production, distribution, piracy. Smith and Telang discuss niche products and the long tail, product differentiation, price discrimination, and incentives for users not to steal content. To survive and succeed, businesses have to adapt rapidly and creatively. Smith and Telang explain how. How can companies discover who their customers are, what they want, and how much they are willing to pay for it? Data. The entertainment industries, must learn to play a little “moneyball.” The bottom line: follow the data. Contents......Page 9 Acknowledgments......Page 11 Personal Acknowledgments......Page 12 I Good Times, Bad Times......Page 15 1 House of Cards......Page 17 2 Back in Time......Page 31 3 For a Few Dollars More......Page 45 Extracting Value......Page 50 Enabling Information Discovery......Page 56 Controlling Competition......Page 59 4 The Perfect Storm......Page 61 II Changes......Page 75 5 Blockbusters and the Long Tail......Page 77 6 Raised on Robbery......Page 93 Does piracy harm producers?......Page 96 Does piracy harm consumers?......Page 100 Appendix......Page 112 7 Power to the People......Page 117 Artists......Page 119 Consumers......Page 125 Business Partners......Page 126 Distributors......Page 128 8 Revenge of the Nerds......Page 131 Consumer Search Costs and Switching Costs......Page 142 Platform Lock-in......Page 143 Information Bundling......Page 144 Platform Development......Page 145 9 Moneyball......Page 147 You can’t use data to make creative decisions. If you do, you’ll interfere with the creative process and destroy the business.......Page 162 These companies rely on us for content. If they get too powerful, we’ll just stop licensing our content to them.......Page 164 All we have to do is open our own streaming channels, and we can get all the customer-level data we want.......Page 165 III A New Hope......Page 167 10 Pride and Prejudice......Page 169 Product......Page 179 Place......Page 181 Price......Page 182 Promotion......Page 184 11 The Show Must Go On......Page 189 Chapter 1......Page 201 Chapter 2......Page 202 Chapter 3......Page 204 Chapter 4......Page 205 Chapter 5......Page 206 Chapter 6......Page 207 Chapter 7......Page 210 Chapter 8......Page 213 Chapter 9......Page 216 Chapter 10......Page 218 Chapter 11......Page 220 Index......Page 223