The current fragmentation of audio and video transmission platforms has its days numbered. In a future that will not be too distant, the companies that make up the constellation of the present —YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music Unlimited, Apple Music, Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Tidal, Hulu, Peacock and others— they will tend to ally or merge, as has happened before in other businesses and even in this sector.
This is the opinion of prominent analysts such as Adam Rumanek, at the service of the Forbes group, who points out that, to begin with, a maneuver like this would be highly beneficial for users, since the simplification of the existing panorama would favor notable savings in the money that today they are spending on various services.
In addition, their data and consumption details would not be so dispersed, which would make the advertising and content suggestions that reach them better tailored and more useful. These recommendations would be extremely adapted to the tastes and needs of the public, by drawing from a wide catalog of previous choices: on movies, series, records, songs, video clips, authors or performers.
Be that as it may, if this convergence occurs, it will not be because the companies have thought about the advantages that the audience would obtain, but rather about the profits that the main players in this industry would obtain, that is, themselves. For professionals and experts, since many firms offer both audio and video, they are admitting that the most sensible thing to do is the combination. The rest, they add, is a matter of time.
Some recent examples reinforce this thesis. Spotify's Canvas feature allows artists to create moving images that replace static album covers or singles that illustrate playback on phone, tablet, computer or TV screens. This digital giant, which already launched video podcasts in 2020, perfected its streaming offer in 2023 by adding short visual material, in the style of the popular social network TikTok.
What do these experiments mean? Well, entertainment multinationals such as Apple and, above all, Amazon, relevant in several of these areas, are serving as a reference for -initially- hyper-specialized companies. Without going any further, the executives of the company founded by Jeff Bezos gave free access to the music catalog to Amazon Prime members in 2022.
Eight years earlier, they had paid $970 million for Twitch, an almost insignificant amount compared to the $8.45 billion spent on the acquisition of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) movie and TV production and distribution studios.
It may sound like a joke, but platforms spend more on cloud storage fees, server air conditioning, and data transfers than they do on content creators. And both Silicon Valley commentators and Hollywood pundits are drawing the same conclusion: the merger would drastically reduce these costs.
