I'm sure you've seen the calls to break up Amazon, and now that it's starting to plow into the streaming of sports, a gargantuan move into the space once dominated by Disney (i.e. ESPN), it begs the question again. Is Amazon "too big to fail"?
So... what are your thoughts about working with Amazon? Are you pro-working with Amazon, but still feel like they need to be broken up? Are you boycotting them? Are you all for them?
Here's the latest from Variety: https://variety.com/2020/digital/news/amazon-nfl-playoff-game-viacomcbs-...
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If you follow my commentary, you know I am absolutely anti-Amazon. Largely due to ab abusive business model which essentially uses independent production which, they monetize only marginally, to bait and switch viewers to mainstream production which they monetize heavily. So independent production effectively subsidizes and leverages marketing for big budget and Amazon itself. That's bad. Their numbers are private and generated in-house, like YouTube you cannot not necessarily trust them (well... YouTube is proven absolutely its stats cannot be trusted. Amazon sells it's keywords and search results, so it's content is not on a fair playing field.... Just plain abusive. Break it up. Entirely.
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I was in publishing for many years – small, independent publishing. As with film, the key conundrum for publishing is distribution. You can always make it, but how will they find it and buy it?
The early Amazon years, way back, were great for small publishers. Then they started the strong-arm tactics. It quickly turned into a classic catch-22: you couldn't sell books unless you were on Amazon, but your chances of getting any money out of it were close to nil.
Christiane Lange Yeah, what everyone forgets is that Amazon, YouTube, et al are all private websites following the standard internet business model which is, basically, theft: provide a "platform", get everyone to bring you content for free, monetize that content every way you can for your own profit, don't share any income you are not forced to share. The whole Amazon structure is aimed at analyzing their stats and revising them before showing them to anyone. If you attend the trade/tech shows in Vegas and elsewhere (up to this year of course) you can even talk to Amazon and they will openly discuss that. Key word and search results are for sale (or for rent, rather, to the highest bidder), strategies to switch a purchaser from one listing to another, etc. They tell you these openly because, of course, they are selling these services to outside companies who are willing to pay them. Again, the mass of independent media content of any kind is a bait and switch. Amazon needs to be split up entirely. Won't happen though, unfortunately.
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Shadow Dragu-Mihai, Esq., Ipg Amazon bought one of the largest book distributors in the US, Baker & Taylor, which was notorious for late payments, demanding huge discounts, unexplained credit memos etc., and implemented those same tactics, plus added some twists of their own. End result: we would get statements from Amazon where in spite of having sold a bunch of books through them, we apparently owed them money or were owed a fraction of the selling price.
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There's always Vimeo for distro. Not as big, so the marketing has to be done by the filmmakers (as they have to do anyway), but so much more control over your projects.