Musings on Markets: How Streaming Disrupts Entertainment Business Economics

Streaming has fundamentally disrupted the movie and broadcasting industries by shifting content distribution, altering financial economics, and forcing companies to choose between competing business models—from the Netflix shotgun approach to HBO's curation strategy—with profound implications for profitability, talent compensation, and competitive dynamics similar to the music industry's earlier disruption. The article analyzes how streaming has compressed operating margins across entertainment companies from 15%+ pre-COVID to below 5% in 2022-2023, while redistributing market value away from legacy studios toward Netflix and Live Nation, presenting three possible futures ranging from revenue collapse to market expansion.