@BurnetRhoades That's very interesting. I had been wondering just how receptive consumers would be to buying/renting/viewing movies from places other than iTunes and Netflix. My initial impression, based on nothing other than a guess, was that most consumers wouldn't really want to mess around with Distrify, VHX, or any of the other non-iTunes online sites. I'm curious if there's any detailed info on the kinds of revenue numbers some of the more successful (and less successful) films are doing on these alternate sites, including Vimeo On Demand.

I guess my thought was regardless of how much exposure/marketing/advertising a film or video has, I was really wondering if consumers are turned off by using sites like VHX to buy/rent content. iTunes is trusted and feels legit, with an expectation of a smooth high quality viewing experience, where maybe VHX, Distrify, and the other sites are unknown and might be perceived as a bit "off" by consumers. Again, I would add that I really don't know what consumers think, so that's why I'm asking for people's opinion on how consumers are reacting to VHX, Distrify, etc.

Either way - hopefully VHX, and the filmmakers/content providers working with them, have success.

That's a good point about people outside of Apple devices. Perhaps I'm having trouble explaining my question on this. It's basically the question of whether consumers are likely to be comfortable buying/renting movies from relatively unknown companies like VHX.

You can´t search by cathegory / a-z / newly added / old. You spend more time browsing than watching if you don´t know what you are going to watch.

Generally, it is their goal. Major software/music stores are all limited, differently, but limited. As biggest interest for them is to sell promoted music, not push you to research.

@matt_gh2

That's very interesting. I had been wondering just how receptive consumers would be to buying/renting/viewing movies from places other than iTunes and Netflix. My initial impression, based on nothing other than a guess, was that most consumers wouldn't really want to mess around with Distrify, VHX, or any of the other non-iTunes online sites. I'm curious if there's any detailed info on the kinds of revenue numbers some of the more successful (and less successful) films are doing on these alternate sites, including Vimeo On Demand.

They will be publishing their case study so that folks can see the breakdown of how their film did over about a two year period, but the figures were quite surprising, especially to them.

They had fantastic exposure from premiering at Sundance. They already had a big mailing list, a successful kickstarter that raised part of their budget and about $150K in pre-orders. They had game and the top tier of mainstream press talking about their movie after festival premiere.

They got approached by a lot of majors who were going to take it theatrical while the producers wanted to retain digital rights. The majors said they were going to lose money with theatrical so they needed the digital rights so they told them all no and then based on their mailing lists and requests for screenings they took the film on the road to something like 15 markets, selling out little art theaters mostly through pre-sales and that ended up expanding to something like 140 which radically increased their mailing list and exposure.

So then they did a worldwide simultaneous digital release on three platforms: iTunes, Steam and their own website through VHX. They had already made sure that when people searched for their film the number one result was their own website. The VHX stream transaction took place there, so it wasn't like they were sending folks to another place run by a company they didn't know. It all took place on their site with VHX handling the transaction and this version was DRM free, per overwhelming feedback prior to digital release.

One of the curious things was just a few months after this release they got on Amazon and Netflix and the risk there was that this would mean no more reason to buy, but they saw a huge spike in purchases with the Netflix premiere.

How things shaked out with iTunes was mysterious because they were front page and charted in the top 20, as a documentary, sitting between Mark Wahlberg and Katherine Heigl pictures. They got ubiquitousness with iTunes but their personal site and Steam together vastly out sold this and then ultimately their personal site also outsold iTunes, regardless of charting and placement that most indies could not reasonably hope to ever achieve.

The whole time they never spent a dime on marketing, it was all just the two filmmakers who built their audience before making the film and then kept them in the loop and grew it slowly through the process. Their case study at SXSW stressed "the long tail" of what the film does over time versus Hollywood's model of making most of their money at initial release. It was obviously a lot of work but the way things work is it's the people who bring the audience to the work that stand to be rewarded the best, not the maker, so for the indie they need to seriously decide how much they're willing to devote to the process.

@BurnetRhoades Great breakdown - thanks. Very very interesting. Did they mention what type of distribution the majors offered (15 markets vs 2500 theatres etc.)?

Cool. Yeah - been wondering just how decimated have the BD/DVD sales been in last 2 years, and to what extent has online/on-demand actually filled the gap.

Congratulations to VHX on its public opening and its beta success. Best of luck.

@maxr Thanks for original post.

@RRRR That's a good point re various types of retail stores that people rent from.

@BurnetRhoades IMO it is most interesting to see how a transparent and "fair" wide distribution platform can root and grow while maintaining the bar on content's quality at the same time it builds and entrusts (taste also gets educated, though might sound dangerously accommodating, here no whatsoever paternalism) a community of makers, viewers and supporters.

To achieve that on a big scale... Somehow would mean that profitable would no longer be just the capital revenues but also the way content gets produced, distributed and shared. Audience's growing would also carry on content's quality growing (variety too)... It almost sounds like a kultur utopian concept =)

Sorry for the mixed up thinking out-loud :P

Since no one is using them I thought I'd tell my experience so far. I'm a babe in the woods as far as online sales, never did it before. I signed up and had some questions so I emailed support. Got fast, accurate and personal answers. Later, I got an email from one of the higher ups. I expect it was both a fishing expedition to make sure I wasn't making Porno and info gathering for future help. Every day I get an email tip based on what's working for others on their system and they're damn good tips. I'm about to upload a couple free shorts to help establish a following. In case you didn't catch my drift, I like these guys and if I don't sell, it's because of my content, not their service.