Book Review: Streaming Wars - How Getting Everything We Wanted Changed Entertainment Forever by Charlotte Henry

This should be a fascinating look at how streaming services evolved and the outsized impact they've had on our culture. Instead it is mostly a series of re-written press-releases and recycled analysis from other people.

Sadly, the book never dives in to the pre-history of streaming. There's a brief mention of RealPlayer - but nothing about the early experiments of livestreaming gigs and TV over the Internet. Similarly, it ignores how Big Brother created a generation of people who wanted to stream on their phones. Early pioneers like JenniCam are written out of history. The book is relentlessly focussed on American streamers, with only a brief foray into the UK, Africa, and other markets. There's nothing about Project Kangaroo and how it squandered an early opportunity for streaming dominance.

Steaming only started with Netflix, according to this book. Despite iPlayer launching at roughly the same time, it doesn't make an appearance until halfway though the book. It's also missing some of the interesting aspects of how Netflix built its algorithm, and the privacy impacts of it.

The analysis itself mostly quotes from reports from Enders and other firms like that. It doesn't seem like there was any original research done, and there aren't any new interviews done for the book. Instead it is just a surface-level analysis mixed in with clichéd prose about boiling frogs. It's also fairly uncritical - several sections are just press-releases from big streaming services with little discussion about whether they're accurate. It almost turns into a corporate biography / hagiography rather than a serious look at streaming.

There's very little about the production side. For example, how Netflix squashes cinematograph and how its lack of permanent props storage restricts accurate set-dressing to tent-pole shows.

Although this is a preview copy, the prose feels half-baked.

Overall, the iPlayer is a very high-quality product, providing access to both linear TV and a whole range of content in its extensive catalogue.

That's the sort of thing I'd expect from a student essay rather than a serious book.

Unlike Warez - The Infrastructure and Aesthetics of Piracy by Martin Paul Eve, there's almost nothing about piracy and how that drives the behaviour of consumers, producers, and distributors. There's a bit of discussion of Napster, but hardly anything about the more modern cultural impact.

It is maddeningly contradictory. In a couple of pages it goes from:

Consequently, we are closer than we have ever been to having something like global TV. Close, but not actually there.

To:

because of the amount of work available to view, there is no mono-culture anymore.

Which is it?

The book concludes by saying:

With that in mind, the ultimate winner of the streaming wars is the consumer. It is us.

Is it though? There's almost nothing about shows cancelled before they got going. Nothing about whether American cultural hegemony suffocates local media development. It briefly touches on the constant price rises, but never investigates whether it changes behaviours or if they drive customers away. There's not a single interview with viewers - and no attempt to understand whether they feel positive about the way streaming has changed the world.

There's a fascinating story to be told, but this isn't it.

Thanks to Netgalley for the review copy, the book is available to pre-order now.