Sundance’s YouTube experiment didn’t do so well
It’s kinda sad. I use Google for just about everything and I love the company for all the great services it provides, but they have never done video right. When they bought YouTube in 2006, I was hoping that they were turning over a new leaf in their video offerings, but things have remained largely unchanged as other sites have taken over the market.
Last week, Google announced that they were getting into the video renting business and they were starting with Sundance, allowing people who couldn’t make it to Utah to rent for 48 hours one of five Sundance films: THE COVE, ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS, HOMEWRECKER, CHILDREN OF INVENTION, and BASS ACKWARDS. At only $3.99 per film, it seemed like a good place to start their new venture, but it hasn’t been the success they were probably hoping for.
The Montley Fool posted the number of times each movie had been viewed over the weekend, but the numbers have changed a bit since then. At the time of me writing this, THE COVE had 303 views, ONE TOO MANY MORNINGS had 258, HOMEWRECKER had 308, CHILDREN OF INVENTION had 301, and BASS ACKWARDS had 308.
Not exactly a success, as the numbers indicate. At $3.99, each movie only made a few hundred dollars “if Google is giving the filmmakers roughly two-thirds of the take,” which is the standard.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, only BASS ACKWARDS and CHILDREN OF INVENTION have disabled the ability for anyone to rate the movies, so the other three have received really low ratings from people who haven’t even seen them. This is an example of what happens when you introduce a pay model to something people are used to getting for free.
Google is planning on expanding their offerings over the next few months, but I wonder how the performance of these movies will effect their ability to attract more movie studios.
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