For cinephiles and video enthusiasts, it is becoming increasingly difficult to track where specific movies and TV shows can be found online, if at all.
Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and other streaming services lately have been reducing their content libraries in a cost-saving move. Some of that content will be licensed to other services but much of it will go into the vault.
The days of “peak TV,” “long-tail content” and deep libraries at subscription streaming video services appear to be over. It was nice while it lasted.
Meanwhile, the number of video services consumers use continues to climb. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the average number of video sources consumers used reached nearly 12, according to Fierce Video. That’s up from about nine a year earlier.
Online services have sprung up to help video consumers keep track of shows and movies they’d like to watch and which ones they’ve already seen. They also point viewers to the services that have the specific movie or TV series they’re searching for.
These services include aggregators JustWatch and Reelgood. IMDb and Letterboxd are other useful services for film fans.
Review aggregators Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic also play an important role today because no subscription service is going to tell you which of their shows suck.
My biggest gripe is that these services don’t interoperate. I’m not going to create duplicate lists of movies I’ve seen along with ratings and reviews. The same goes for watch lists I’ve compiled.
There either needs to be more interoperability or consolidation or both.
Related reading:
The Reason So Many Favorite Shows Are Leaving The Big Streamers (Forbes; June 7, 2023)
Why are streaming services removing some of their own movies and shows? (NBC News; May 29, 2023)
The Streaming Purge: Behind The Wave Of Library Content Removals & Its Impact On The Creative Community (Deadline; Feb. 14, 2023)
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