IMO there needs to be more content available on itīs own merit, not tied to tons of other content people have absolutely no interest in... If i want to watch the german Bundesliga (soccer) i have to pay a package that basically contains 95% content i have no interest in, but have to pay for anyway.
I also think that to a certain degree a couple things could and should be done about certain content being difficult to legally obtain. You wouldnīt believe how often i am ready to buy something only to find out that iīm not allowed to, since they allready sold the right to sell it to someone else who may or may not ever use that right ...
I actually think the music industry is doing a halfway decent job with this nowadays and the combination of legal preview streams, give-aways and much lower prices in online shops (when buying whole albums, not the per-song deals) has not only given me access to tons more content than ever before but has also made money off me.
If an album or a song is available anywhere on the world, chances are pretty good that i can buy it the second i find out about it.
With all the different interests that go with movies but especially Television content, i donīt feel anybody has any real idea of what to do with the whole problem though. There are a few things they try (like offering content that aired in other way, like rewatching on the website or mobile devices) but itīs just a very, very complex business model that depends on so many different factors and has so many different interests in the background.
And it doesnīt end in the US, either, but continues on to Europe where there is a whole other group of interests (i donīt have a number, but if i had to guess iīd say that 75-80 % of the content on german TV isnīt produced in germany).
A good example is american TV shows for Europeans (Game Of Thrones is actually an ecellent example, there was a big discussion on it recently), especially globally. I would gladly pay the producer/creator money to watch the shows, but since german companies
might (eventually and years down the line) pick them up for their own programs, i canīt . And even if they do pick them up, itīs not available in english (let me tell you that comedies are not translating well). For that i have to wait for the DVDs (again, maybe eventually and if so then a while down the line), before that i am not
allowed to become a paying customer.
I
want to pay the producers and the artist, but often i only get to pay the "middleman" in a sense without knowing what iīm actually going to receive (or when iīm going to receive it). I donīt really want to go to the supermarket and buy "food for 40 bucks" and donīt get to choose what food that is
And i get that i am not entitled to entertainment content and that it isnīt nescessary for my well being, i do. But in the global environment we live in nowadays, it does strain my patience a lot if i have to wait months and years for certain content to be available for me. Especially when i see that in different areas i can do that (like music)
That wasnīt a problem 10 years ago when every new show on german TV was new to me but today it is. Not an essential problem in the bigger picture, but itīs there
Also, i have friends working in big electronic stores and the sales of series DVDs especially has gone up a lot in recent years (and the number of series available as well, meaning it pays well enough to be worth the cost) and it wouldnīt be the case if it werenīt for people being able to see them (and get to know them) beforehand. Game of Thrones for example was the most sold series when it came out, depite the fact that it never aired in Germany and to my knowledge got no exposure outside the internet.
Doesnīt it stand to reason that the sales wouldnīt be that high if it werenīt for people downloading it and then either still buying it or getting their friends interested via word of mouth (or word of the internet) ?
Another example that irks me personally : Iīd actually expect that if i buy a book that iīd at least get a seizable discount on the e-book version over someone who didnīt buy the physichal copy. I mean, it is merely a secondary product of the same content, no ? I understand paying for the process of digitalizing it and i also get that the price isnīt that much cheaper compared to the print edition because the content is the same. But the reason i have to pay twice is plain and simple that they want to make more money and itīs not a whole ton of different people making money off it but basically the same group of people simply making more money.
Heck, even some film studios by now offer a digital copy of their product to go with the physichal one (Warner Bros f.e.)