Amazon vs Netflix vs YouTube

Amazon vs Netflix vs YouTube

For independent filmmakers, online streaming is now our primary channel in terms of reaching a mass audience. I’m a filmmaker myself and have my films on both Amazon and YouTube.

Getting films on Netflix is a completely different task to getting them on YouTube or Amazon. With the latter 2 services, anyone is free to upload content. Although, with Amazon there are stricter requirements such as captions, certain sized graphics and cast and crew details.

But whereas YouTube and Netflix are dedicated streaming video services, Amazon is a sprawling e-commerce and tech empire trying to cover a number of activities. And that’s where it’s biggest problem as a Netflix-style film and TV provider derives.

What’s happening with Amazon?

Amazon studios – a television and film production distributor that is a subsidiary of Amazon – was founded in late 2010. Around that time, Amazon Studios twitter account starting following me. I think they even said hi.

At the beginning, Amazon went for an open house philosophy, doing what major studios have long since stepped away from – accepting scripts from the general public.

For decades now, major studios attitude to the general public has been: “Don’t send us anything. If you send us a script, we reserve the right to use it without compensating you or crediting you.” You get the message, right?

So, when a company as wealthy and high profile Amazon said, “Send us your scripts” they opened the floodgates to the masses. Was this a clever ploy or simple tech-world naivety about the film industry?

The idea was filmmakers would submit their scripts online and would be read by Amazon. I remember you could also submit a movie pitch in video or animated form. Some submitted whole feature films depicted in still images with actors doing the voices.

Various amounts were awarded to the best pitches and scripts. I used to chat to one writer online who received over $100,000 from Amazon for one of his scripts. Suffice it to say, this script went nowhere. And neither did the scheme.

In April 2018, Amazon Studios announced that they will no longer accept open submissions of screenplays.

Prime Video Direct

Amazon have been one of the major forces of self publishing and self-distribution. CreateSpace is a self-publishing service owned by Amazon. The company was founded in 2000 in South Carolina as BookSurge and was acquired by Amazon in 2005. Apart from allowing writers to self-publish and self-distribute books, they also have a DVD self-distribution service.

CreateSpace DVD evolved into Prime Video Direct, where anyone could upload their video material and have it distributed via Amazon Prime Video. You set your price and you have the option to include your video as “free” content for their Prime subscribers. There’s a similar option with Amazon’s digital book publishing service where you can include your book in Amazon Unlimited for which Kindle users pay a subscription.

This was seen as an attempt to compete with YouTube.

It often appears as if Amazon are trying to do everything. You can picture Bezos running between spinning plates, trying to prevent any accidents.

So while Netflix and YouTube have clearly defined markets, which don’t interfere with each other too much, Amazon stood is in the middle trying to take them both on.

So, how are they getting on with that?

Early last year, presumably in an attempt to close the door on the general public, Amazon dramatically cut the payments to self-publishing filmmakers. But hey – they are trying to compete with YouTube, so they can’t close the door completely.

Then, in the last month or so, Amazon have started deleting self-published videos from their service. I had one of my videos deleted, without explanation. They have not replied to my email asking if I could know what the reason was – even though they have previously responded quickly to other enquiries.

Interestingly, the video deleted was shot with a professional DoP and 2 assistants, a Black Magic camera and lenses and a truck of lights and other kit. Whereas the one they left was shot on a camcorder with no crew.

Why?

Well, I think it all comes down to Amazon not knowing who they are. You see, Amazon Prime is trying to compete with Netflix as a streamed video service. Meanwhile, they’re trying to compete with YouTube by pulling in content from the general public. But Prime subscribers generally believe they’re subscribing to Netflix level content and not YouTube.

The thing is, this content merely adds extra viewing options which wouldn’t otherwise be there. Prime subscribers lose nothing from having this extra content available to them. But it’s all about perception.

Early last year, I suddenly got a huge spike in views to this video which has now been deleted. For some reason, Amazon’s algorithms were promoting after a high profile series. And you could see from the comments and 1 star reviews, many people were angry. One commenter said he thought he was about to watch the next episode of this big budget scifi show, and instead got my microbudget scifi pilot (not that he had any idea what he was watching).

Others commented as if they thought Amazon had produced my film. So they were annoyed when it wasn’t a highly polished production full of name actors. Meanwhile, most people watching YouTube know nearly everything on there is made on tiny budgets.

So it seems to me this new action by Amazon, closing the doors on indie filmmakers a little more, is an attempt to put out a fire they themselves created by trying to grab viewers from 2 quite different platforms.

An algorithm problem

While Netflix and Amazon can fine tune their services and slowly improve them. I know YouTube annoyed a lot of creators when they set the monetization level to min 1000 subscribers, but this is quite a small change compared to Amazon blowing hot and cold on it’s creators.

You’ll notice, for example, that Netflix has stopped showing star ratings for its content. At first, Netflix had star ratings created by the viewers – like Amazon does now. Then they changed the star rating to reflect the algorithms opinion on how suited the film or show was to you – based on your previous choices.

You can understand how seeing a star rating based on your own preference might be confusing, when you are used to them representing viewer opinion. I certainly did – “How can they rate it 1 out of 5 – it’s a classic?!” So now the stars have been replaced by a number – a rating from 1-100 indicating how suited the algorithm thinks the movie or show is for you.

Meanwhile, Amazon is still trying to suit everyone at the same time with its rating and recommendation system. For example, if you check a titles reviews you will often see people giving the film a 1 out of 5 because the DVD didn’t work or was delivered in a broken package. And this rating gets carried over to the Prime Video service…

You might think this is trivial, but as filmmakers this is how our films eventually get presented to a potential audience. Should you care if your movie is recommended to people who are not likely to appreciate it – absolutely.

Add to that, the confusion between the paid Netflix-style service and the YouTube style self-distribution scheme and you a mess created by a company trying to own every market it can lay a finger on. Of course, who are we to argue with the most valuable public company in the world, ahead of Apple and Alphabet?

“Amazon’s content spending was estimated at $4.5 billion last year, and considering video streaming is a free add-on of Prime, it derives little direct revenue.” If You Think Netflix Has Cash Flow Problems, Wait Until You See Hulu and Amazon

What can we do as filmmakers uploading our films to Prime Video Direct?

As it appears the Amazon door is slowly closing on self-distributing filmmakers, what can we do to avoid having our work removed?

One thing – I would think carefully before checking the box which includes your video in the “free for Prime subscribers” category. Why? Because the problem we have seen is that Amazon’s recommendation algorithm sucks. So your movie could be shown to the wrong audience who then, expecting an Amazon-funded high budget production, blast you with 1 stars. You are also less likely to get random frustrated viewers, who are scouring Amazon video looking for movies to watch because Amazon doesn’t have enough content to keep its subscribers happy…

Apart from that, there’s a buyer psychology which means when you pay for something you perceive it as having a higher quality than if you got it for free. If you have to pay – even $0.99 – you will be much more careful when selecting something.

18 months ago, of course you would want to have your movie available to millions of Prime subscribers. But now – since Amazon are giving a slap in the face to filmmakers, to fix an issue they they themselves created – maybe not.

Although your video might get a lot less views, it has a greater chance of sticking around longer. That is, until Amazon decides to close the door completely…

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