Hi
popheads! This is a guide meant for those wishing to improve their comprehension of the
Billboard 200. Any corrections from those who are also familiar with the charts is welcome.
As with the
Billboard Hot 100, the
Billboard 200 (BB200) has been going through some changes and has been experiencing some new trends as of late. With this comes people left behind, and with people left behind comes confusion. So, with this guide, I would like to explain the history and some of the inner workings of the
Billboard 200.
If you’re not interested in learning about the BB200 in depth including a few chart situations that resulted in new chart policies, then simply go straight to the “Recapitulation” section.
What is the Billboard 200? (And more!)
A history
The
Billboard 200 is a record chart published weekly by American trade magazine
Billboard; it ranks the most popular albums and EP’s of the week in the United States. It started 24 March 1956.
The BB200 did not always exist in its current form; before the BB200 became the BB200,
Billboard had already been publishing album charts in different forms and names.
Before there was even a weekly chart, there was a precursor to the BB200’s precursors called
Best-Selling Popular Record Albums, which had made its debut on 24 March 1945 (
http://bit.ly/2n4l79X, p65). (In this time period, the definition of “album” was relatively loose; albums at this time were mostly just collections of singles instead of singles among album tracks. In fact, the first #1 and #2 were both compilation albums of singles.) This chart was calculated by weekly survey samples of 200 record shops across the country that had sent in their ranked lists of their best-selling albums of the week. However, the
Best-Selling Popular Record Albums chart was irregularly published; sometimes, nearly two months would pass before the next chart appeared.
This was the norm until 24 March 1956, exactly 11 years after the debut of
Best-Selling Popular Record Albums; the 10-position
Best-Selling Pop Albums chart had debuted, using the same general methodology. Despite what the name may imply in today’s language, the chart ranked albums of all genres. The chart was released on a regular weekly schedule. The number of positions on the chart varied from 10 to 30. The name changed to
Best-Selling Pop LP’s in 1957.
On 25 May 1959, the chart then split into two: the 30-position
Best-Selling Stereophonic LP’s and 50-position
Best-Selling Monophonic LP’s charts (
http://bit.ly/2IlH3Fb, page 45). The charts, as indicated by their names, ranked the best-selling stereo LP’s and the best-selling mono LP’s. The stereo chart and the mono charts used the same methodology as the precursor. After various name changes, in early 1961, the two charts became the 50-position
Top LP’s—Stereo and the 150-position
Top LP’s—Monaural charts.
On 17 August 1963, the
Top LP’s—Stereo and
Top LP’s—Monaural charts were merged into a single, all-encompassing 150-position chart titled
Top LP’s. By 13 May 1967, the chart expanded to the 200-position format we know today.
In 1972, the chart’s name became
Top LP’s & Tape; in 1984, it became
Top 200 Albums; in 1985,
Top Pop Albums (again, just like the precursor
Best-Selling Pop Albums chart, this chart took into consideration albums of all genres; the “pop” in this case mostly just means “popular”); in 1991,
Billboard 200 Top Albums; finally, in 1992,
Billboard 200.
I keep hearing about “catalogue albums”. What is “catalogue”?
“Catalogue” refers to a definition of albums established by
Billboard for the
Billboard 200.
The definition of “catalogue” and the numerous recurrence policies that
Billboard has established has repeatedly changed throughout history. Starting 1960,
Billboard had published
Essential Inventory charts (this was when the chart was split between mono and stereo LP’s), which was essentially catalogue before catalogue. The criteria changed over time, but the first known criteria for an album to chart on the
Essential Inventory charts were:
- Albums charted on Essential Inventory—Mono if they had charted for 40 weeks on the main mono chart.
- Albums charted on Essential Inventory—Stereo if they had charted for 20 weeks on the main stereo chart.
Beginning in 1982,
Billboard began publishing new album chart titled
Midline LP’s, which ranked the best-selling mid-priced and older albums. (“Mid-price”/ “midline” at the time meant about US$5.98, which is US$16.01 in 2019. In other words, more albums with more budget-friendly price tags.)
On 25 May 1991,
Billboard began the
Top Pop Catalog Albums chart, which is when
Billboard instated their current definition of a “catalogue” album. Because of the switch to SoundScan as the chart’s data provider (more on that later),
Billboard introduced a new system where albums that are at least 18 months old would automatically be removed from the BB200 should they chart below #100. Once removed, they would be placed on the
Top Pop Catalog Albums chart.
On 5 December 2009, the exclusion of catalogue titles was lifted completely. As a result,
Billboard created the
Top Current Albums chart, which is a 100-position sales chart that still uses the previous catalogue title exclusion rule; the
Top Pop Catalog Albums chart eventually became
Catalog Albums, which is a 50-position sales chart ranking all albums at least 18 months of age that are charting below #100 on the
Billboard 200.
From 22 November 2003 to 28 November 2009,
Billboard published
Comprehensive Albums, which is essentially what we call the BB200 today. It forewent all catalogue exclusions. Like what was said in the previous paragraph, on 5 December 2009, the
Comprehensive Albums chart was shut down and the BB200, through lifting all exclusions of catalogue titles, essentially became what
Comprehensive Albums had been.
Okay, so how did Nielsen SoundScan come into play for the Billboard 200?
Nielsen SoundScan became the official data provider for the
Billboard 200 on the chart dated 25 May 1991. Before this date, the
Billboard 200 was calculated with the same general methodology;
Billboard would survey record shops across the country for their ranked lists of their best-selling albums of the week, and then aggregate it. Of course, this method was very prone to manipulation by retailers and labels. It was common for retailers to simply remove albums from their best-sellers list if they were declining and thus deemed “on their way out”, even if albums would possibly later prove themselves to be stable sellers.
The way SoundScan works is that by scanning barcodes, retailers can produce a computerised list of best-sellers by actual numbers of copies instead of ranked lists. In other words, for the first time, the BB200 was ranked by the actual piece-count of copies sold instead of ranked lists that provided no numbers of copies.
Because SoundScan was such a young technology in 1991, extrapolations of copies sold based upon population of geographical regions were necessary. At the time of addition to the BB200, SoundScan had already been tracking 2000 retail locations, 4000 mass-merchandise locations, and 300 independent seller locations. This panel tracked 40% of all US sales at the time (
http://bit.ly/2OhR0Hp, p119). (You can see why extrapolations were necessary at the time.)
As Nielsen SoundScan didn’t allow for retailers to remove albums from their lists because of being “on their way out”, it instead showed that quite a few older albums were consistent sellers for longer periods of time.
Billboard believed that the BB200 should demonstrate more current titles than older titles, especially titles from developing acts. This is how the catalogue albums policy came into place; just to reiterate, albums at least 18 months of age would be removed from the BB200 once they charted below #100.
As of 2019, SoundScan and its data is still in use by
Billboard for the vast majority of their charts. Over the years, SoundScan has adapted its technology to consumer trends, eventually tracking digital activity. The BB200 reflects this in its current methodology.
Cool. How did the chart update its methodology throughout the digital age?
In 1999, according to data from the Recording Industry Association of America, album sales by volume peaked at 1.1 billion albums. Since that year, the yearly total volume of albums sold has been on a near-consistent decrease. Since 2011, album sales by volume has decreased every year, from 240.8 million albums to 118.4 million albums in 2018.
As a result of ever-decreasing album sales and changes in consumer behaviour,
Billboard decided to create a new formula for the BB200. On 13 December 2014,
Billboard introduced the album-equivalent unit formulas. At the start, the formula was 1500 streams = 1 streaming-equivalent album unit and 10 digital track sales = 1 track-equivalent album unit. These conversion rates were decided from relative value of each format; a digital song cost $1.29, so $1.29 times 10 is equal to $12.90, which is about the price of an average album.
This was the methodology until the charts dated 14 July 2019.
Billboard then introduced two tiers for counting streaming: a paid streams tier and ad-supported streams tier. In other words, premium tier and free tier. In an effort to give formats with more value more say on the BB200, streaming from paid services was weighed higher than streaming from ad-supported services; paid streams were set at 1250 streams = 1 album, while free streams were set at 3750 streams = 1 album (
http://bit.ly/31Pf9Jp). This didn’t have too much a big impact on the BB200 in the long run; music industry insider publication
HITS Daily Double found out from streaming data that most albums would experience a 5-10% boost in first week units (
http://bit.ly/356E9h8); asides from that, there wasn’t much change.
Billboard also announced in October 2018 that eventually, "later in 2019", they would split the paid tier further into two new tiers; limited paid tier and unlimited paid tier. As of October 2019 (when I'm writing and posting this), this hasn't happened.
Before and throughout the internal deliberations of this decision, YouTube had been attempting to get their official clip views included into the BB200 (
https://nbcnews.to/2MiVaMq). But pushback from rights holders and Apple Music (
http://bit.ly/2OxD5gD) resulted in YouTube music streams not being counted.
What happened with Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way”? Was there a pricing policy involved?
At the time, no. Before the chart dated 10 December 2011, there was a lack of pricing policy for bodies of work that charted on the BB200. This is probably because very low discounts for bodies of work typically result in losses for the label and/or the distributor involved.
This is what happened when Lady Gaga released her album
Born This Way. The album, released in the US 23 May 2011, debuted at #1 on the BB200 with 1.108 million sales. Out of those 1.108 million sales, 662 000 were digital copies. But this came with a bit of a footnote; e-commerce company Amazon sold the album for 99¢—yes, you read that right—for the first day of release and on Thursday, 26 May, the fourth day of release. It was said that out of the 662 000 digital copies sold that week, about 442 000 of them were 99¢ copies from Amazon’s MP3 download service (
http://bit.ly/2neUxLo).
Billboard says that Amazon lost $3.3 million through this deal ($8.40 wholesale price minus 99¢ times 442 000) (
http://bit.ly/31SGHgK, p10). Pocket change for Amazon, but what vendor would want to do this on the regular?
On top of all of this, her label Interscope and Universal Music Group Distribution (UMGD) shipped 2.1 million CD copies of
Born This Way to retailers across the United States. In the first week, 449 000 CD copies of the album were sold, resulting in a 21.4% sell-through of the CD shipment. In the 2000’s, major labels would ship three units for every one unit they expected to sell in the first week. In the early 2010’s, this ratio dropped to around two units for every one unit they expected to ship. UMGD however shipped
Born This Way at a ratio of 4.7 units for every 1 unit sold; twice more than the typical ratio at the time and about 1.5× more than the typical ratio in the 2000’s. In other words, Interscope created an inventory liability for themselves and for retail, both independent and mass retailers alike. It was then reported that merchants had to and began to ship back some copies in order to improve their cash standing and to rid themselves of inventory liability.
And who was likely to blame for this situation? Amazon and its 99¢ deal. Of course, 99¢ for an album is essentially free; hell, who’d pay the typical $10-$12 for an album when you can get it at a retailer for 99¢? And why would
Born This Way have shipped so many CD copies in the first week if such a bargain bin discount was happening in the first place?
Alas, months after this,
Billboard enacted a new pricing policy for the BB200 that went into effect starting the BB200 dated 10 December 2011. Sales for albums priced below $3.49 within the first month of release would not qualify for charting on the BB200 (
http://bit.ly/33abDcS). And since then, such an ordeal hasn’t happened.
What’s this deal about Britney Spears’s Blackout vs. the Eagles’ Long Road Out of Eden? Something about exclusive titles?
On 30 October 2007, both Britney Spears’s album
Blackout and the Eagles’
Long Road Out of Eden were released in the United States.
At the time, there was a long-standing policy from
Billboard involving exclusive titles: No album sold exclusively at one store (in other words, proprietary titles) would be allowed to chart on the
Billboard 200 at all. The Eagles released their seventh studio album
Long Road Out of Eden exclusively to Walmart and its sister store Sam’s Club.
Initially, all signs pointed to
Blackout debuting at #1 on the BB200 with respectable sales; the album sold 124 000 copies in the first day alone (
https://on.mtv.com/2VmzLGu), and the album was initially projected to sell 330 000 copies in the full week.
But then, something strange happened: the same day that
Billboard announced that
Blackout would debut at #1 on the BB200 with 290 000 sales, Walmart itself put out a press release announcing that
Long Road Out of Eden had sold over 700 000 copies (
http://bit.ly/30P0dJK). After internal deliberations,
Billboard announced a last-minute rule change that same day on their website allowing proprietary titles to chart on the BB200. This resulted in the Eagles debuting at #1 with verified sales of 711 000 while Britney Spears debuted at #2 with 290 000 sales (
http://bit.ly/2p0ovmJ, p69). Then-chart director at
Billboard Geoff Mayfield said of the situation:
If the writing was already on the wall that proprietary titles would find their way on the Billboard 200 in the foreseeable future, then we had to make the move now for the sake of a more accurate chart.
We’ve read and heard passionate complaints from Spears fans and members of her camp that it wasn’t fair to change rules in the middle of the game. I understand that complaint, but the simple truth here is that we’re not talking baseball or football or tennis so that analogy only goes so far. Had we waited until January to make the change, as one label president opined we should, this issue’s chart would forever stand under a cloud with Spears’ Blackout owning No.1 with a respectable 290 000 sold in a week when everyone knew the Eagles moved 711 000 copies.
[….] Even if we held to the status quo and parked Spears’ Blackout at No. 1, the consumer press would still find a way to belittle her feat, noting this album started at less than half of the first-week sales of her last studio album in 2003 [609 000 copies].
What about Tidal?
I don’t know. What
about Tidal?
Tidal, the Norwegian Jay Z-owned streaming service, has been scrutinised multiple times since 2016 due to multiple accusations of manipulated streaming numbers. The first round of accusations came in with the release of Beyoncé’s
Lemonade, which was a proprietary title for streaming on Tidal up until April of this year. Tidal infamously claimed that tracks from
Lemonade were streamed 306 million times in the first 15 days of release, while tracks from Kanye West’s
The Life of Pablo were streamed 250 million times in 10 days.
The concerns regarding digital manipulation blew over after that, until May 2018 when Norwegian newspaper
Dagens Næringsliv analysed a hard drive containing billions of rows of Tidal streaming data. They then went out to track down multiple users whose accounts demonstrated bizarre streaming patterns; a Washington, DC user was shown that her account activity showed that she streamed
Lemonade tracks 180 times within 24 hours, with her saying that it must have been wrong. A Norwegian music critic was shown that his account activity showed that he streamed
The Life of Pablo tracks 96 times in one day, with 54 plays in the middle of the night; he also said that it must be impossible (
http://bit.ly/2LXf2G9).
So, what was
Billboard’s response to all of this? Nothing really. Tidal hasn’t ever been excluded from the panel of streaming services reporting their streams. Tidal continues to count towards the BB200, but there hasn’t been any recent case of scrutinised streaming numbers from Tidal; not in the US, not internationally.
Tickets, T-shirts, and socks, oh my! —What about bundles?
Oh right. Bundles.
Album bundling—that is, pairing an album copy with another purchase—is a promo tactic that has been around for a very long time, long before this decade. But since 2017, this specific tactic has become very prolific.
The New York Times reported that out of the 39 albums that went #1 in 2018, 18 of them had a bundle attached to it (
https://nyti.ms/31S6Zjn). One prolific example from not too long ago is Bon Jovi’s 2016 album
This House Is Not for Sale returned to #1 with 120 000 units for the week of 10 March 2018 thanks to a ticket bundle that week where buying a ticket came with a paired CD copy of the album (
https://nyti.ms/2oT1UJ5). The week after the bundle was over, the album fell to #169, becoming the biggest fall from #1 of all time. There are many more examples, typically from legacy and rock acts; it can be speculated that this is their attempt at competing with a market where less people are buying music (as these acts typically do better on sales than streaming).
Typically, these bundled #1 albums almost always have dramatic falls from #1 in the following week. In fact, the 9 of the 10 albums with the biggest drops from #1 on the BB200
of all time were all albums that had bundles during the week they went #1, and they are all from the past 5 years.
This is not the first time such a snafu happened; in 2004, Prince released his album
Musicology. The album sold 632 000 copies in five weeks due to a bundle where every ticket was paired with a CD copy of the album. 158 000 of the copies sold were from this bundle. Eventually,
Billboard responded by creating a rule declaring that the consumer must take an extra step to actually redeem the album, instead of actually having the album pushed onto them (
https://on.mtv.com/35eQlwb). Such a rule does not exist for merch bundles.
As it currently stands,
Billboard is still internally deliberating with the music industry on how to revise their bundling rules as a result of this new wave of bundling. But for now, we may have to continue dealing with some more
This House Is Not for Sale situations.
The year-end charts
Just like the
Billboard Hot 100, the
Billboard 200 follows what is called the “chart year” instead of the typical calendar year. This is defined as the first week of December into the last week of November of the following year.
Before the introduction of SoundScan, the Year-End
Billboard 200 (YEBB200) was determined by counting all inverse points a title received throughout the chart year. After the introduction of SoundScan, the YEBB200 is now determined by simply aggregating all of the units an album pushes throughout the chart year.
Albums released shortly before the end chart year typically have stunted rankings on the YEBB200 as they don’t have much time to accumulate units for the chart year. This can result in splits in between chart years; for example, Shawn Mendes released his second studio album
Illuminate on 23 September 2016, which went on to debut at #1 on the
Billboard 200 chart dated 13 October 2016. The album then went on to chart at #128 on the 2016 YEBB200 with just seven weeks in the 2016 chart year. On the 2017 YEBB200 however, after having a full chart year of performance, the album rose to #22.
The tracking week
The
Billboard 200 has a very simple and straightforward tracking week. Both sales activity and streaming activity are tracked at the same time on the same days.
- Friday, 1 January: The tracking week begins.
- Thursday, 7 January: The tracking week ends.
- Tuesday, 12 January: The Billboard 200 in its entirety is published on Billboard’s website as is dated for Saturday of that week, the 16th.
This tracking week is based around the Global Release Day initiative pushed by major music industry trade organisations such as the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The music industry has mostly decided on Friday being the day to release new music, as opposed to the previous Tuesday.
Streaming services that are counted
Streaming service | Paid or free? |
Amazon Music (Unlimited/Prime) | Paid |
Apple Music | Paid |
Google Play | Paid |
Medianet | Paid |
Napster | Paid |
Slacker | Paid |
SoundCloud | Paid/Free |
Spotify | Paid/Free |
Tidal | Paid |
No video streams count towards the
Billboard 200.(src
http://bit.ly/2Oulh5F)
Recapitulation
Since there’s a lot of info in this guide, I’ve decided to give you guys a quick recap!
Album-equivalent units
Album-equivalent units includes streaming-equivalent albums (SEA) and track-equivalent albums (TEA). They are first calculated and then added directly to the pure sales to create a complete album unit total.
Streaming is weighed between whether or not it’s coming from a free service or paid service. Paid streams are weighed at 1250 streams to 1 SEA, while free streams are weighed at 3750 streams to 1 SEA. Video streams do not count. Here are all of the services that count:
Streaming service | Paid or free? |
Amazon Music (Unlimited/Prime) | Paid |
Apple Music | Paid |
Google Play | Paid |
Medianet | Paid |
Napster | Paid |
Slacker | Paid |
SoundCloud | Paid/Free |
Spotify | Paid/Free |
Tidal | Paid |
(src
http://bit.ly/2Oulh5F)
One TEA unit is 10 tracks to 1 TEA.
Tracking week
Sales activity and streaming activity are both tracked at the same time on the same days.
- Friday, 1 January: The tracking week begins.
- Thursday, 7 January: The tracking week ends.
- Tuesday, 12 January: The Billboard 200 in its entirety is published on Billboard’s website as is dated for Saturday of that week, the 16th.
The tracking week is based on the Global Release Day initiative.
Year-end chart
The YEBB200 is determined by aggregating all of the units an album pushes throughout the chart year. Albums released just before the end chart year usually have stunted rankings on the YEBB200 as they don’t have much time to accumulate units for the chart year. This can result in splits in between chart years.
Assorted rules
- Albums priced under $3.49 during the first four weeks of release will not be eligible to chart on the Billboard 200 during those weeks.
- In order for a ticket bundle to count, the consumer must redeem the album. A similar rule does not exist for merchandise bundles.
- Proprietary titles are allowed to chart.
- When a track is available on multiple albums, whichever album is selling more pure sales that week receives that track’s TEA and SEA performance for that week.
Quick Q&A
These are simply other chart tidbits…
Can albums sell very low and still chart at #1? Yes. This year, A Boogie wit da Hoodie released his album
Hoodie SZN which hit #1 in its third week with 55 000 units in the first week. However, that figure was mostly due to the SEA performance; the album had actually sold just 823 copies. The following week, it held at #1 with 56 000 units while selling just 749 copies. It is the first and only album to rank at #1 while selling under 1000 copies (
http://bit.ly/2IufZ6t).
What if a track is on two or more albums? Where does its SEA and TEA performance go to? The SEA and TEA performance of that track goes to whichever album is selling more in pure sales. A recent example of this is Post Malone and Swae Lee’s collaboration “Sunflower”. The song featured on the
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse OST. But when Post Malone’s
Hollywood’s Bleeding debuted at #1, the
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse OST tumbled from #26 the previous week to #162.
Can albums chart with just streaming? Yes. Chance the Rapper’s mixtape
Coloring Book was initially released as a streaming-only release. The album went on to debut at #8 on the BB200 with 57.3 million streams, equating to 38 000 units all in SEA.
End
It seems like this is the end of the guide. Thank you for your attention. I hope you enjoyed and appreciated all of the information that I provided in this guide.
submitted by i was starting a tidal vs spotify thing a couple weeks back, i been busy lately however last night amazon music unlimited came to my attention too, for some reason i wasn’t able to get that 30 day trial on it, so now if i keep it i’ll be paying 44.96/month just on music (including a family plan on tidal plus youtube premium) so...i’ll still do a breakdown of tidal and spotify, when i have time, but i’ll also include amazon music unlimited, ...not sure if youtube premium should be added? but right now i don’t think so... .. .amazon m/u caught my attention because they’re the only service other than youtube that had garth brooks, haha...so sometimes content like that may be worth the price, sometimes it isn’t, but we’ll see...have a great day
submitted by Disney just held their annual D23 event, jam-packed with new programming and information about their upcoming
Disney+ streaming service and Apple has released more trailers for the shows set to debut on their upcoming
Apple TV+ streaming service.
And… one of these things is not like the other. So, what does it all mean for Disney, for Apple, and for us? Let's figure it out.
Disney+
Where to start with
Disney+? Specific to my interests, in addition to the already announced Falcon and The Winter Solider — and, please, Marvel, the man's name is Captain America now, get it right — WandaVision, Loki, and Hawkeye shows, Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige added three more to the list: Ms. Marvel, She-Hulk, and Moon Knight.
All with the same star-power you see in the MCU movies, and with stories that intertwine with those movies — probably the most successful and certainly the most audacious in history.
For Star Wars, in addition to the Mandalorian and the Cassian Andor show, which we knew about, and the return of Clone Wars, which alongside Rebels, is so good it kinda just clowns all the movies since Empire, we'll be getting a new Ewan McGregor Obi Wan show.
And, since, with the Fox purchase, Disney now effectively owns 80% of our childhoods, there was even more for fans of the other brands, from High School Musical to Lizzy McGuire, to Muppets.
We won't get all of it all at once, of course. In fact, we'll get barely any of it at launch beyond the Mandalorian. And it won't be dumped for binging. It'll be weekly releases like Game of Thrones was on HBO. But it'll start flowing hot and heavy going into 2021 at launch.
It will have catalog content though, including the Simpsons from the Fox purchase.
Disney+ is set to debut in the U.S., Canada, and The Netherlands on November 12, 2019, and in Australia and New Zealand a week later, on November 19, 2019, and to continue rolling out to the rest of the EU in early 2020, and Eastern Europe and South America in 2021.
It'll be available on pretty much every streaming screen and box, including Apple's and the TV app — but strangely not Amazon. At least not so far.
And it'll cost $7 a month or $70 a year in the U.S., though D23 fan club members in the U.S. can get an even bigger discount for a limited time if they sign up for 3-years. There'll also be a Disney+, ESPN, and Hulu-with-ads bundle for $13 a month.
Apple TV+
Apple, by comparison, has said relatively little about
Apple TV+.
I was at the big event they held in March, when the lights went out and came back on, and every time another huge star was on the stage, from Spielberg to Aniston to Corel to Mamoa, to Oprah.
There are no huge franchise plays, like Disney is pulling with Marvel and Star Wars. No, I'm a Mac: The Series, or the Adventures of Liam, Robot Deconstructor.
But there's a galactic ton of the aforementioned star power, and programming like The Morning Show, For All Mankind, Amazing Stories, See, Dickinson, Peanuts in Space, and more.
Many of which just got their trailers pushed out.
Since Apple doesn't own a studio or production house, at least not yet, and hasn't licensed any older shows that we know of, TV+ won't have any catalog content available at launch.
No official launch date has been given yet, other than this fall, but it will hit all 100+ countries that already have Apple's recently updated TV app.
And, it'll be available on Apple devices, Samsung, LG, Sony, and Visio smart TVs, and streaming boxes including Roku and Amazon.
No word yet on pricing either, which is where this all gets very interesting.
Apple's currents subscription services, News+ and Music both cost $10 a month for standard, single subscriptions.
Rumor has it, Apple's upcoming Arcade video game service will be $5, but there's been no official word on that either.
The fractured fiefdoms
Netflix pricing has gone up and become kind of convoluted over the last few years. It starts at $9 a month for 1 screen in standard resolution, or 480p, then goes to $13 a month for 2 screens in HD 1080p, or $16 for 4 screens in 4K.
Unlike Disney and Apple, which have massive revenue generators outside of content streaming, Netflix has to make all its money off of this one, single business. They're Palm or BlackBerry compared to Samsung or Microsoft in the phone space. Their strengths include their investment in original programming, like Stranger Things, and their back catalog, primarily of licensed content.
But, that part is changing. Office is leaving. So is Friends. The Marvel stuff like Daredevil and Jessica Hones has also already been canceled. That's because every other studio is launching a streaming service or several of their own, and bringing everything home.
This, as a consumer, is the fundamental problem with video streaming today. Apple Music, Spotify, all of that is great. $10 or so for effectively all the music. But imagine if it was like video today. $10 for Sony Music. $10 for Warner Music. Oh, U2 and the Beatles are big, they charge $10 just for themselves. $20 for Taylor Swift and Metallica.
Video doesn't want to end up like music but they're quickly creating a fractured set of fiefdoms that we, their customers, may not want to end up in either.
People have already talked about subscribing to Netflix for one month, binging everything from that year, then unsubscribing and doing the same with Disney+, HBO Max, TV+, all the streams. At least until the services try to restrict that too.
It's unclear exactly how much compelling content Disney+ will have for me at launch. I hope the Mandalorian will start to redeem Star Wars again, but all the Marvel stuff will take a couple years to roll out. Maybe the catalog content will defray that a bit, but the problem catalog content solves is primarily boredom. I just finished watching the hot new show, now keep me entertained.
Netflix has tons of that, even with the losses, and I often don't find anything to solve my boredom fix. At least not compared to all the stuff I can find on YouTube. And, yeah, I pay for Premium.
But, Apple isn't even going to have a catalog to fall back on, again as far as we know. Just a few hot new shows now with more on their way. And, if they get a Game of Thrones or Stranger Things, hell, if they get a couple or even a few, that'll be great. But how much will it really be worth in terms of monthly dollars?
Amazon, I think smartly, bundles its original programming and licensed content with its annual Prime subscription. It's just one of the many benefits of the program.
I'm not suggesting Apple give TV+ away for free. That's almost anathema to the company. And I'm sure there are some fans who'll pay $10 just to see Aniston or Oprah. But maybe not in service-sustaining numbers.
That's why I continue to think a low price like $5 or even $6 makes sense. But offering it as part of an Apple+ bundle makes even more sense. Hell, they can charge $10 by itself if they absolutely feel they have to, but make it just a couple or five bucks extra to every existing Apple Music customer. Apple News customer. iCloud customer. And then offer a grand unified bundle for like $20 that just has it all.
A billion devices in our pockets isn't cool. A billion people suddenly added to all the services, that's cool.
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