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Amazon’s Disc+ program bundles streaming e-media with purchase of plastic discs
November 3, 2010 | 2:39 pm
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By Chris Meadows
![image36[1]](http://www.teleread.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/image361.png "image36[1]")
Tim Carmody at Wired’s Gadget Lab blog points out that Amazon has moved forward in combining physical and electronic media for purchase. With its new “Disc+” program, Amazon will make available a free streaming video version with the purchase of any DVD or Blu-ray from Amazon.com. The video will be playable on the PC, or on TVs and set-top boxes that support the Amazon video-on-demand format.
Of course, there’s nothing new in bundling a digital version of a movie with the disc version—a number of DVDs, such as titles from Pixar, have included that. But with those, you still had to have the disc in your possession before you could use the digital version. With Disc+, you will have the ability to watch the movie you just ordered right away as well as wait for it to come.
Amazon has been doing something similar with CDs plus digital music downloads for quite some time, of course. As Carmody suggests, now Amazon just needs to offer a “Book+” program, bundling a free Kindle e-book with a printed book sale.
Unfortunately, I don’t think such a move is likely on the horizon. Whereas movie studios by and large seem to view streaming versions as not being worth the full purchase price of a movie (and hence let them go for rent cheaply on iTunes, or as part of a monthly-fee service at Netflix), most of the mass-market print publishing industry is very firm on seeing an e-book sale as a separate edition of the book, exactly equivalent to a print book sale. (Indeed, they even see different e-book formats as being separate editions, which is why Fictionwise couldn’t allow someone to download a DRM’d book in multiple formats after buying it once.)
Given the fit the publishing industry pitched over Amazon’s $9.99 pricing, I don’t think it’s likely that they’ll be bundling e-book copies with printed books any time soon. Which is a pity; Amazon’s Disc+ streaming doesn’t really cost the studios anything since digital copies are free, but it makes buying movies from Amazon all the more attractive if that you know you’ll be able to experience it immediately as well as in greater detail once you have the disc.
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Yep! I agree, although I wasn’t able to go into quite so much detail in my short kicker.
I’ve been saying that books should offer a physical book + e-book “deluxe edition” for years, ever since I got my first DVD that offered it. (I think it was one of the Harry Potter movies.)
But the movie industry has it much easier, because they’ve had much more experience offering a secondary format, specifically a digital as well as an analog product. The book industry now is roughly where the movie industry was with VHS — uncertain what the models are, or whether the secondary format will cannibalize the primary one.
Eventually, of course, the movie industry figured out that you could extend profits and radically restructure your business model using VHS and DVD. Books might or might not be able to make the same transformation: after all, the “primary format” for movies was an event, not an object.
Music performers have essentially said, the object is a loss leader, we’ll make the money back on the events. Taking the opposite trajectory of movies. So it’s still wide-open.
Wider still, and maybe more optimistic, if you look at models outside of mainstream media, like software. Or, crap, the textbook market, which had no problem transitioning from book + CD-ROM to book + web site.
Pity about georestrictions, then.
I have to say I don’t see the point of Disc+. You can stream the movie while you wait for your disc to arrive. So, when the disc arrives, you’ve already seen the movie and the disc is sort of “so what”.
This might work for children’s movies where kids seem to want to watch the same thing ad nauseum; but, I don’t see it as a big selling point for the rest of us.
If I want to watch a movie over and over, all I need is an $8.99 Netflix account and I can stream as many movies as I want as many times as I want. I can watch one movie five times in a row this week and twenty different ones next week–all for one $8.99 subscription. I don’t need to own a disc…even for kid’s movies.
I guess I feel the same way about e-books being bundled with paperbooks. What is the point? If you’ve read the book once in e-book form, its there to read again if you want. I know there are people who think this would be wonderful, but I don’t need mutliple copies of a book. I can only read one at a time and, whether I own it an “e” or “p” edition, that one is enough.
Tim wrote: “But the movie industry has it much easier, because they’ve had much more experience offering a secondary format, specifically a digital as well as an analog product. The book industry now is roughly where the movie industry was with VHS — uncertain what the models are, or whether the secondary format will cannibalize the primary one.”
The book industry has had years to watch and see what the Music Industry was experiencing. They have also known about eBooks for years. They chose to ignore it and not to act. So the Movie industry didn’t have it easier – in fact I suggest the Book industry has had it easier for those very reasons.
I tend to agree with Lenne.
“I guess I feel the same way about e-books being bundled with paperbooks. What is the point?”
For me personally this is true, but I sure seem to talk to a lot of people who want both.
I’ve been pushing Amazon for the same idea of a while now — and my publisher is completely on-board with the idea. Really, who is going to buy both a print and a full-price Kindle version? There is no lost sale there. And the idea isn’t even new. Computer technical books have included a searchable PDF of the book in CD attached to the back cover for a decade or more — and that cost money to produce and package the CD. Kindle d/l’s are near free. Giving away the Kindle version makes buying the print version new instead of secondhand have more value, hence more revenue to the author. All I can guess is that the major publishers are still living in the vinyl record age and believe that they will be able to charge full price a second time when the CD revolution hits,and again when iTunes becomes the next great thing. But that is no reason to shut out the publishers who are fine with this thought now!
Amazon’s response to me? We’ll think about it. Yeah, right.
–D.B. Story