(From the “Better Late Than Never”) file: On the heels of the MPAA’s Indoctrination Piece on movie piracy, the movie industry again demonstrated their complete lack of competence in adapting to changing business models by screwing their customers. Last week, a story came out in The Consumerist where the movie industry wants to stimulate purchases of new release by having rental companies like Netflix delay renting of new releases for a month.
I love their thinking here: “People don’t want to pay an arm & a leg to see the movie in a theater, so let’s see if they’ll pay an arm & a leg to buy that movie they’ve never seen before.” I can only speak from experience, but I have never bought a new release movie if I haven’t seen it before in the theaters.
What makes things worse is that Netflix looks like it’s going tog with this. Mashable quoted their CEO, “if we can agree on low enough pricing for delayed rental, it could potentially increase profits for everyone”.
Look, I know they think they’re hemorrhaging money, but punishing your customers for wanting to see a new release is not the answer. You need to think outside of the box on this one. Make no mistake, pleasing customers is that last thing the movie industry is interested in. Nice business model. Then they wonder why people resort to piracy to view their content.