Ah Lovefilm. I want to love you. I love movies and I love the concept of renting everything I watch, and you have the finest customer service of any tech company I’ve dealt with. So how did I find myself at this point, about to deactivate my account?
I’ve been a Lovefilm customer for about four years now, and as a DVD by post service, it’s superb. Blu-rays, console games, whatever, just slap it on your list and you’ll get it delivered to your door. Sometimes a DVD is a bit scratched up, but that’s about it. Complain, and you’re immediately given a free rental. On paper, it’s brilliant.
But in that time, I’ve grown up. I’m no longer a student, I no longer have the time to sit down and watch a well-meaning art house film pulled out of a hat and send it back the next day to make the most of my subscription fee. I go to the cinema to see new releases, and if I want to watch something, I’d rather choose something to watch there and then – usually through my PS3 plugged in under the telly.
That I’m getting older is neither here not there for Lovefilm, as depressing as it is. The problem is, Lovefilm is moving too slowly on the digital front. Far too slowly.
You see, I could make the most of my money and watch Lovefilm via PS3. But I don’t want to: the app is slow and fusty, and the image quality is absolutely appalling. Worse, you can’t rent new releases to stream for a price as you can with Lovefilm on your desktop browser: you can only watch films which are free with your package. And I can’t find a single one I want to watch: I’ve gone through all the old Nick Broomfield documentaries and everything else that isn’t Hornblower, and already there’s nothing worth bothering with.
I waited two years for this?
Just this week, Lovefilm launched an Android app. Don’t get too excited though – it doesn’t let you watch films on the move. It just lets you rejig your DVD wishlist. That’s right, it’s the same basic app Lovefilm launched on iPhone almost two years ago.
There’s a tablet iPad app now, thankfully, but it still feels like too little, too late. There’s still no Lovefilm access for the Wii, even though we broke the news 18 months ago that the company was exploring the possibility, and the Xbox version is only just arriving with the latest dashboard update.
It’s not for a lack of trying either. I’ve visited Lovefilm’s headquarters in west London, spoken with their top executives and developers. They love their jobs and they work hard.
A spokesperson this week told me that “It’s Lovefilm’s aim to be on as many devices as possible”, but in a world where giant corporations like Apple and Google, with the manpower to back them, are becoming the defacto portals to my media, it’s still not enough. Lovefilm needed to be on all those platforms last year.
An elephant has quietly slipped into the room now too: Netflix is coming to the UK next year. The US company operates a very similar business model, but even with Amazon backing it, Lovefilm could face an uphill struggle. Netflix is bloomin’ massive. As of April this year, it had 23.6 million subscribers. To put that in perspective, that’s about a third of the entire UK population. 23.3 percent of all internet traffic on an average day in and out of North America is Netflix.
That scale could be Lovefilm’s undoing. The R&D budgets, the close proximity to those all important studios give it a huge advantage. Netflix provides streaming services for consoles (in full HD on PS3 and Xbox 360), tablets and smartphones already (Not just apps to adjust your wish list), and it’s only licensing deals that could stop it from instantly rolling them out in the UK. To make matters worse for Lovefilm, Netflix is snapping up exclusive streaming deals, with studio MGM giving it first dibs on new releases.
It’s far from over for Lovefilm though. Netflix has had a horrific few months, backtracking on business plans and losing customers while upping prices. And receiving DVDs by post is still a strong business: Lovefilm has built up a well recognised brand over the years. And there’s an ace in the hole: the Kindle Fire.
Amazon now owns Lovefilm in its entirety, and its new sort-of-Android tablet is shaping up to be the sub-iPad tablet to beat, because it’s about service and not hardware. Consuming content, rather than fiddling with the latest apps. It doesn’t yet have a UK release date, but if Lovefilm access were to be pre-loaded on the Kindle Fire, it could get the brand in early on a market that’s yet to explode.
In the meantime though Lovefilm, I recommend you focus more attention on the digital platforms you’ve yet to fully exploit. More stuff to watch, adding a la carte rentals and sorting out the picture quality. I’m out for now.
