Maybe one day we'll get to the point where the content is mostly commoditized, and we'll simple be paying for whichever aggregating service provides the best usability (such as searching, recommendation, shared watching with remote friends, etc) will be leading instead. I don't think it will be anytime soon though.

Not as long as people want to watch stories about particular IP.

I don't see how that is qualitatively different from wanting to listen to music from specific artists.

The music industry has been able to work with aggregators, movies can, too.

One big difference is the production costs. Much cheaper to procedure two hour record that a block buster movie. And people are happy to consume the same music content over and over again. With movies and series most people won't do that.

I'm happy to pay extra for content from Disney or HBO, but I just want a consistent user experience. I was a single app that will let me access all of this content.

That's the concept behind the "TV" app on Apple TV/iOS.

Also Roku.

Except every channel on Roku is a different app with a different experience - Netflix, Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, ... all provide similar functionality, bit with differences in UI.

Just give me a best-of-breed UI that lets me watch all the things.

True, it's not totally homogeneous. But it does support searching through them from one interface.

It's called fully-loaded Kodi.

I just subscribed to HBO through Amazon for this reason. It's really great. Amazon user experience and streaming capabilities seem better than HBO. But HBO is the only place you can get Game of Thrones. Win-win :)

I think Kodi has a decent shot at getting there - there is now a fledgling Netflix plugin. A big step towards providing content to the major streaming services (and local content) through a customisable UI.

Interestingly HBO just did this: They put HGO Go into Hulu.

$15/month is still a lot though.

Maybe, but they put out good content that I personally think is worth the price of admission.

For the most part, that has been TiVo for the last 4-5 years.

I think they're betting that many people will eventually drop Netflix and push their $10/mo towards Disney/etc.

Maybe you never used to spend more than $10/month on video, but most Americans have been spending an order of magnitude more than that.

People pay 10-20 times that for cable. It surprises me when people commenting think no one will pay for multiple services. Sure you will, but which ones will make the cut?

Ok, don’t get me wrong:

I pay for the basic tv package as well.

My point is I don’t watch enough on-demand video to justify another 2 Netflixes on top of that.

Some stats too back that up? More than 50% of USA population spend >$100 per month on video? A family of 4 would be spending $400+ on video??

Pricing is per household, so a family of four spends the same as an single individual.

free marketing lesson:

you (or the statistical significant you :) started paying for music because you aged. not because Spotify changed the game.

before and after Spotify and such, older demographics are the ones buying vinyls, cds, subscriptions, etc.

the business model is to bombard you with free exposure during your teens, and hopefully sell you concert tickets, to later cash in you buying media.

This used to be a thing. It was when you paid $60-120 a month for your cable TV package.

Did you really think everyone was gonna let you cut that down to $10 a month?

It is still more than they would get from many of us any other way. Before Spotify I'll buy less than a cd every second or third month maybe.

Now I'd probably just stop watching movies. Others will start pirating again.

Spotify also doesn't pay the artists enough for most of them to survive. Studios know this. They know that $10/month isn't enough to support the creation of all the original content that has been supported in the past by $100/month.

I have a hunch that studios will find a way to pocket about the same amount of money that Spotify already does. Just based on the reports of how they treat non-superstar artists already with hollywood acounting [0].

They want more money for the studio to survive, not artists. Artists are probably "a dime a dozen", and possible to manufacture from a studios perspective.

[0]: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100712/23482610186.shtml