1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910495187803321

Autore

Frey Mattias

Titolo

MUBI and the curation model of video on demand / / Mattias Frey

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Cham, Switzerland : , : Palgrave Macmillan, , [2021]

©2021

ISBN

3-030-80076-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (xi, 168 pages) : illustrations (some color)

Disciplina

338.47621388332

Soggetti

Video-on-demand - Economic aspects

Video-on-demand

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index,

Nota di contenuto

1 Introduction -- 2 Curation as Discourse, Trend and Cultural Salve -- 3 The Curation Business Model -- 4 MUBI History: Connections, Community and Curation -- 5 Recommendation Credibility in the MUBI Interface -- 6 The MUBI Audience -- 7 At the End of the Long Tail.

Sommario/riassunto

Subscription video on demand (SVOD) represents the fastest-growing means to consume films and series. Although market leaders Netflix and Amazon Prime have received much scholarly attention for the way that they use algorithms and big data to connect users to content, there is another significant, relatively unexamined model: curation-style services such as BFI Player, IFC Unlimited, the Criterion Channel or MUBI - the latter, which forms the focus of this book, claims to be the world's most subscribed independent video on demand service. These platforms take advantage of common anxieties about algorithms, cultural surplus and filter bubbles to promote discovery, human-generated recommendations and quality over quantity of content. Deploying an original, holistic methodology that includes analysis of technological affordances, marketing rhetoric, business models, interviews with company executives and a qualiquantitative audience study, this book critically analyses MUBI as a way to understand this particular mode of content aggregation, cultural recommendation, choice architecture and community building. Curation services address a real, but decidedly circumscribed gap in the market. Ultimately, MUBI



offers film, media and business scholars an instructive example of the fate of art cinema and media diversity in a digital culture increasingly dominated by a few giant tech companies. Mattias Frey is Professor of Film, Media and Culture at the University of Kent, UK. He is the author or editor of eight books, including The Permanent Crisis of Film Criticism (2015); Film Criticism in the Digital Age (co-edited with Cecilia Sayad, 2015); and Netflix Recommends: Algorithms, Film Choice, and the History of Taste (2021).