WarnerMedia may not have won over many in Hollywood but over time, Bertelsmann’s Napster deal & the subsequent missed opportunities may offer useful lessons.
After getting near the bull’s eye with Hulu, Jason Killar’s Vessel didn’t have the outcome he hoped for. But inside of Verizon, he learned how telcos think about media. Now, he’s using all of AT&T and WarnerMedia’s might to strike back at Netflix (remember Albania?) and Disney.
“Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service.”
I understand and empathize with all perspectives, especially when they’re as candid and hilarious as Christopher Nolan‘s. But removing the emotion and financial biases that shape human’s thinking, this has a Bertelsmann/Napster feel.
When the German media giant surprised its competitors to acquire Napster, many weren’t happy, a few sued. Ultimately, Napster 2.0 (1.0 being the finger-in-the air disruptor era) died.
The vacuum that created led to P2P belligerents like Kazaa. Once that genie was out of the bottle, it took the record labels a decade before finding their moorings.
Hindsight’s 20/20, but had the labels seen the long term writing on the wall, they may have been better served in own it and grow it. Instead, over time, the Kazaa’s died but in their place came Apple and Spotify, and more recently, YouTube.
Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t? Watch media and telcos make an odd couple, below:
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