Hollywood Backs Swedish Movie Streaming Site 156
paulraps writes "Forget Spotify and Skype: the latest strangely-named-but-hey-it's-free service from Sweden offers users streamed on-demand movies free of charge, has deals with two major Hollywood studios, and is called Voddler. Since its launch two weeks ago, the service has signed up a quarter of a million users and has almost the same number queuing for an invitation. After signing deals with Disney and Paramount, the company provides access to thousands of films, which are shown uninterrupted after a barrage of ads. The target is the file-sharing generation: 'Our customers can be sure that Voddler is totally legal, secure, and that there are no risks of computer viruses infecting their machines from downloaded files,' says executive vice president Zoran Slavic."
barrage of ads; been to the theater lately? (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the reasons I stopped going to theaters to watch movies was that after I paid to get in, I was sitting through commercials (not just trailers, but commercials). I decided that I might as well stay home and wait for the movies on non-premium cable.
Re:Interesting story (Score:1, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but your post was almost indecipherable gibberish.
First you say something about Americans being too insular, then you try to segue into commenting on the site's business model. These things have nothing to do with each other.
>We are quick to glom on to any sort of thing that we find even somewhat pleasing without fully understanding all the consequences. How will the movie companies make money from this type of site? Who is actually paying for the movies you see?
Why should I care? There is no conceivable way that they can get money from me unless I give them a credit card number - and I really hope you're not stupid enough to give them a credit card number. If their business plan works, it works. If it fails, it fails. I have no money invested in their stock, so why should I care who's paying?
>Yes, the commercials are played before the movie now, but as that becomes unprofitable where are they going to start putting them?
The answer to this question, which you seem to think is so deep, is: "If they aren't profitable they will either attempt to make more money by putting commercials in the middle of the movie, which TV networks have done for decades, or they will go out of business." Either of these options harms me not at all.
>We all want free access to premium content. Is the price worth it?
You haven't made any argument for what the price is. What *do* you imagine the cost is? So far you've just rambled on in a vague way about how this business plan will be vaguely bad for us...somehow.
Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well he is also calling it a phishing site, which is just to troll and throw this articles comments offtopic. Even the summary notes that theres tons of people waiting for invitation, so its kind of stupid to think you're just gonna get account like that from their main site.
But interesting note from About Voddler site is "Finally an alternative to illegal downloading is available on the Swedish market.", which makes me think if Voddler is available elsewhere too (atleast nordic and european countries like Spotify has). It might even be that this is specifically developed for Swedish market (at least first), since so large percent of people, specially young, pirate movies and music.
That being said, if this anything close to "Spotify for Movies" I'm really interested. It's been an year that I've used only Spotify for my music listening and it's even more convenience than downloading mp3's and everyone I know is the same thing. Been a premium member for months too.
Re:No news here, RIAA peddles M$ (Score:3, Insightful)
How exactly pirating movies will boost business?
I know there's lots of people on slashdot who like to justify their pirating with all these "open", "bad bad record labels" etc bullshit, but truth is that people just want stuff for free and conveniently. As surprising it is after all the years of fighting from industry, it was really surprising that Spotify actually offers legit service that is a lot better than downloading warez. And with both free and paid, all-you-can-eat models. Spotify really changed things around here in Europe - it brought lots of people that download mp3's or send them between friends to a legit service.
And I love it.
Re:No news here, RIAA peddles M$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Free isn't the big issue. Convenient is.
Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the rest of the world.
It's often that us non US-people only get a sparse page with a few fields to enter your data in, only to find out that the service you thought you were registering for doesn't work yet in your country.
Call it phishing if you like, but it's par for the course. It's just that you US-ians don't notice it as often.
Re:No news here, RIAA peddles M$ (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah I agree on that tho. I buy pretty much all games from Steam too because its just so much more convenient than walking to store, and comes with extra features like friends lists, community stuff and the ability to always download the game again when you need to.
Free model is a plus in this.
Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the AC answering with "you're an idiot' and "jackass" is informative... that is more of a flamebait I think...
It's not an insult to say a dead man is dead.
Re:barrage of ads; been to the theater lately? (Score:3, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, the only thing you're paying to use Voddler is the bandwith and the time to watch the adverts.
Why is it bad to have your movies paid by watching ads? Yes, on paid cable and theatres ads are fucking annoying as I've already paid for admission. Here, the ads ARE my payment of admission.
Re:Um.. Can someone tag this "phishing"? (Score:2, Insightful)
And it is also not an insult to say that a jewish persn is "Jew"... it all depends in how you say it.
Re:barrage of ads; been to the theater lately? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do I sound picky? Perhaps. I have a nice TV at home, and renting movies is very cheap. It is up to the theater to give me a reason to not just stay home.
Yeah right... (Score:3, Insightful)
...that argument works, because your customers can't tell data formats (like MKV or AVI) from executable files.
Unfortunately, I say FUCK streaming! I'm not falling for that "you actually don't own shit" strategy!
Either I own the unencrypted file on my hard drive, of you can just right GTFO.