Amazon Prime Video

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Amazon Prime Video, also frequently referred to as Prime Video, is a subscription-based streaming and rental service for video, primarily television shows and movies. Amazon Prime Video's programming consists of live-streaming of television shows and sporting events, original series known as Prime Originals, and shows and channels licensed by Amazon. It has become one of the leading competitors in video streaming services, its library outsizing industry giants like Netflix.[1] Amazon Prime Video is available on both online and mobile platforms.

Amazon Prime Video logo[2]

History

The overall Amazon website launched in 1995 as an online book retailer, followed by the establishment of the Amazon Marketplace in 2000.[3]

The predecessor service to Amazon Prime Video originated in 2006 as a video download service called Amazon Unbox.[4] Similar to other video services such as Blockbuster and Netflix, Amazon Unbox allowed its users to download television shows and movies from major studios, including Paramount, Warner Bros, and Fox.[5] Amazon Unbox was only available for use on PC with their application or a TiVo box.[6]

It was subsequently rebranded into Amazon Video On Demand and announced on September 3, 2008.[7] Amazon users could now stream within the browser, download, purchase, or rent titles.

Partnering with Warner Bros. Studio through a first-look deal, Amazon launched Amazon Studios in 2010. Users on the Amazon.com website could submit films and video content in monthly contests built around community feedback, with one screenplay and one film selected annually in December for a $100,000 and $1 million prize, respectively. Winners picked by the studio were slated to be produced in-house with a theatrical release.[8] Participants were intended to upload revised or advanced versions of their work, of which they could then be run through a sort of public test-screening process, alongside assessment via an industry panel for their commercial viability.[9]

The creation of Amazon Studios subsequently led to the distribution service named Amazon Instant Video in 2012.[10] Amazon Instant Video was created as a way to boost the existing Prime Subscription service.

Amazon Unbox was discontinued in 2015 in favor of Amazon Prime Video.

In 2016, Amazon Prime Video was made available outside the United States in more than 200 countries globally.[11] International users can access it on the PrimeVideo.com website, while those in the United States can find it on the Amazon website or the specific Prime Video website.

The company announced the launch of the Prime Video Cinema Hub in 2020 in response to the shut-down of movie theatres due to COVID-19. The hub features Hollywood movies released starting in March of 2020, with a cost of $19.99 to rent a movie.[12]

Features

The service offers licensed content, produced originals, and user-uploaded content.[13] With a paid subscription, they have unlimited access to Amazon Prime Video's entire library alongside Amazon Prime's free shipping cost benefits.[14]

For new users, Amazon Prime Video is available on a 90-day free trial run if they do so with Amazon Prime. As of 2021, the platform had roughly 24,000 movies and over 2100 shows. They also host over 150 possible channels with their Prime Video Channels for users add on. Any additional channels can be added for a monthly fee to the subscription.[15]

Users have access to seven navigation tabs on the Prime Video homepage. They include Home, Free to me, Store, Channels, Categories, My Stuff, and Deals. From top to bottom, the homepage is sectioned off into Prime movies, including suggestions, Originals, and recently added sections; Top in the US; and Prime television shows with lists of various categories and genres recommendations.

In terms of video and audio quality and format, Amazon Prime Video supports high dynamic range (HDR), 4K Ultra HD, and Dolby Atmos.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime is the paid subscription membership in which Amazon customers can have access for Amazon Prime Video, with an annual subscription fee of $120[16] for its shipping and extraneous benefits. Other subscription options are $12.99 per month, or solely a Prime Video membership that is $8.99 per month.[17] Students who sign up with through their school email can receive a discounted Prime membership of $6.49 per month or $59 per year.[18]

The membership launched in February of 2005.[19] With this membership, users benefitted with the shorter two-day delivery feature.

Other entertainment features under an Amazon Prime membership include but are not limited to[20]:

  • Music streaming on any PC or smart device, free of charge
  • Unlimited cloud storage for photos
  • 5GB for documents and videos
  • Amazon Prime Reading, the e-book and magazine library
  • Free PC games
  • A selection of free Audible channels

Prime Originals

Prime Originals are Amazon's own content that is only available through purchase and streaming on the Prime Video platform. They are produced and distributed by Amazon Studios, the Amazon subsidiary aimed for the creation of television shows, specials, miniseries, documentaries, and films.

Algorithm and Filtering

As a streaming platform, Amazon Prime Video contains a recommendation algorithm to provide users personalized content. Starting out, the algorithm for product discovery was heavily based on human curation and bestsellers lists as the service primarily sold books initially.[21] The algorithm therefore was designed before the existence of Amazon Prime Video, instead developed at the early stages of the Amazon website in 1995. Amazon then developed collaborative filtering in order to account for special interest groups, collecting information about a user's preferences to build an automatic prediction system.[22]

In 2012, developers at Amazon Prime Video looked into new approaches to filtering the content options on the site in order to advance and broaden its capabilities. These included various forms of machine learning, including neural networks, however they failed to perform to the standards set by its previous approaches, collaborative filtering as well as human curation and bestsellers list-based sorting.[23] This was a result of developers training the algorithm to recommend highly rated and publicly well-regarded classics as opposed to sorting based on the user's personal clicking and viewing history. The Amazon engineers proceeded to tweak the algorithm so that it sorted based on Amazon's entire library to recommend new releases.

Unregulated Content

Since its initial release, Amazon Prime Video has amassed large volumes of content.[24] A large majority of the content the service has taken in and hosted is user-uploaded content rather than licensed content, a result of Amazon's initial strategy for content development with Amazon Instant Video in 2012 to crowdsource development on a large scale.[25] Amazon Prime Video has as a result allowed an abundance of conspiracy theory videos, amateur productions, and short instructional clips.[26]

In December 2019, Ampere Analysis, a UK-based data and analysis firm,[27] researched that user-created content was almost double the amount of professional or licensed content on the service.[28]

Amazon does have policies regarding offensive and illegal, utilizing both AI and human reviewers to regulate the content uploaded and viewed on the service. The company has taken down this type of content in the past, including the works of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones as well as multiple anti-vaccination documentaries in 2019.[29] However, it is unclear how effective the content moderation is given the vastness of the library and search functionalities within the algorithm.

Transparency

The lack of transparency with regards to user-uploaded content raises concerns on regulation given the nature of many of the titles in the library being conspiracy theorist and extremist works. For one, Amazon users who produce user-uploaded content receive a small revenue for each video that is posted.[30] There have also been discussions among users about the inability to distinguish between produced and vetted content versus user-generated content.[31] One that has been raised is the labeling of content. Amazon Prime Video programming can mix in Prime content, labeled with a blue Prime tag on the cover, with pay-to-rent and pay-to-buy content that is labeled with a gold dollar sign instead. However, this can vary across devices.[32]

Copyright Issues

Amazon Prime Video allows its users to purchase any television show or film that they pay for from the service. However, in April 2016, Amanda Caudel, a Californian resident, filed a putative class action lawsuit against Amazon Prime Video's services for false advertising in regards to user purchases of video content. The following Monday, Amazon filed a motion with the argument that the user agreements that any Amazon Prime Video user agrees to when applying for the membership included information pertaining to content from third-party rights holders, specifically that there is the possibility that one of those Amazon Prime Video purchases can be pulled or made unavailable by said holders.[33] Amazon further argued that the Prime Video Terms of Use is an agreement that users see and agree to every time they purchase something from Amazon Prime Video, where users purchase a limited license to watch the television show or movie or may lose purchased content if third-party provider changes their licensing.

On June 26, 2020, Amazon was sued for violating the Copyright Act of 1976. Amazon had distributed four movies on Amazon Prime Video without obtaining proper authorization or licensing to host.[34] The plaintiff, Ralf Hartmann, was sold four titles from Capella Films, Inc., a Californian film production company, in 2008. Hartmann alleges that Amazon made two of the titles available in the United States for streaming and pay-to-rent without requesting authorization from Hartmann starting in July of 2017 and through 2018, as well as all four titles being made available to global audiences in July of 2018. Amazon in response moved to dismiss Hartmann's claims on the basis of a lack of proof of ownership over the movies' copyright registrations.[35]

Amazon have also run into copyright issues for international Prime users. In 2016, despite having more than 18,000 titles, most of them were unavailable in other countries, rendering much of the content inaccessible. The same year, the European Commission had proposed a new bill that would require streaming services like Amazon Prime Video to contribute to the financing of European production.[36]

References

  1. ↑ Schwartzel, E., Shifflett, S., & Berzon, A. (2020, January 24). Amazon Prime Video Gives Amateur How-To's, Conspiracy Theories a Stage. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
  2. ↑ https://logos-world.net/amazon-prime-video-logo/
  3. ↑ Rey, J. D. (2019, May 3). The making of Amazon prime, the internet's most successful and devastating membership program. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18511544/amazon-prime-oral-history-jeff-bezos-one-day-shipping
  4. ↑ “What Was Amazon Unbox and Why Was It Discontinued?” What Was Amazon Unbox and Why Was It Discontinued?, Failory, 18 Mar. 2021, from https://www.failory.com/amazon/unbox.
  5. ↑ “What Was Amazon Unbox and Why Was It Discontinued?” What Was Amazon Unbox and Why Was It Discontinued?, Failory, 18 Mar. 2021, from https://www.failory.com/amazon/unbox.
  6. ↑ Amazon customers can now instantly watch ad-free movies and TV shows on Macs, pcs and compatible Sony Bravia televisions starting today on Amazon Video On Demand. Amazon.com, Inc. - Press Room. (2008, September 3). Retrieved from https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-customers-can-now-instantly-watch-ad-free-movies-and-tv
  7. ↑ Amazon customers can now instantly watch ad-free movies and TV shows on Macs, pcs and compatible Sony Bravia televisions starting today on Amazon Video On Demand. Amazon.com, Inc. - Press Room. (2008, September 3). Retrieved from https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-customers-can-now-instantly-watch-ad-free-movies-and-tv
  8. ↑ Fernandez, J. A. (2010, November 16). Amazon.com brings moviemaking to the masses with Amazon Studios launch. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/amazoncom-brings-moviemaking-masses-amazon-45925/
  9. ↑ Fernandez, J. A. (2010, November 16). Amazon.com brings moviemaking to the masses with Amazon Studios launch. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/amazoncom-brings-moviemaking-masses-amazon-45925/
  10. ↑ Perez, S. (2012, May 2). Amazon Studios now funding original Content series for Amazon Instant Video Service. TechCrunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/02/amazon-studios-now-funding-original-content-series-for-amazon-instant-video-service/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHzdPUCXun8SBTBMb5b6q4GqH8jwIg841hbuCruzr-pwIDpKfsAdw4OzdpRjw24zIaP-bzh9fpBb33Au4K_SNi1g0KCtc1k8yqp9p9LFtadulsKucLWuGYWmecE5ndVpMkc00b7EqTlhJK44rZNjkK9ikJr_Oweoq2aKwHZ4gAQd
  11. ↑ Barraclough, L. (2016, December 14). Amazon Prime Video Goes Global: Available in more than 200 territories. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2016/digital/global/amazon-prime-video-now-available-in-more-than-200-countries-1201941818/
  12. ↑ Musil, S. (2020, March 22). Amazon's Prime Video Cinema Hub to corral new theater releases. CNET. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-launches-prime-video-cinema-hub-to-corral-new-theater-releases/
  13. ↑ Molla, Rani. “The Dark Underbelly of Amazon Prime Video.” Vox, Vox, 24 Jan. 2020, from https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
  14. ↑ Schwartzel, E., Shifflett, S., & Berzon, A. (2020, January 24). Amazon Prime Video Gives Amateur How-To's, Conspiracy Theories a Stage. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
  15. ↑ Mara Leighton, B. B. (2021, August 13). Amazon Prime Video lets you add channels for an extra monthly fee - here's how to get Paramount Plus, Starz, and more. Business Insider. Retrieved from https://www.businessinsider.com/guides/streaming/amazon-prime-video-channels
  16. ↑ Molla, Rani. “The Dark Underbelly of Amazon Prime Video.” Vox, Vox, 24 Jan. 2020, from https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
  17. ↑ Amazon. (n.d.). The Amazon Prime Membership Fee. Amazon. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G34EUPKVMYFW8N2U
  18. ↑ Amazon. (n.d.). The Amazon Prime Membership Fee. Amazon. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G34EUPKVMYFW8N2U
  19. ↑ Rey, J. D. (2019, May 3). The making of Amazon prime, the internet's most successful and devastating membership program. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18511544/amazon-prime-oral-history-jeff-bezos-one-day-shipping
  20. ↑ Broida, R. (2018, June 1). What is Amazon prime? CNET. Retrieved from https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/what-is-amazon-prime/
  21. ↑ Roettgers, J. (2019, June 5). How Amazon recommends movies on prime video. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/amazon-prime-video-algorithms-1203233844/
  22. ↑ Roettgers, J. (2019, June 5). How Amazon recommends movies on prime video. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/amazon-prime-video-algorithms-1203233844/
  23. ↑ Roettgers, J. (2019, June 5). How Amazon recommends movies on prime video. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/amazon-prime-video-algorithms-1203233844/
  24. ↑ Schwartzel, E., Shifflett, S., & Berzon, A. (2020, January 24). Amazon Prime Video Gives Amateur How-To's, Conspiracy Theories a Stage. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
  25. ↑ Perez, S. (2012, May 2). Amazon Studios now funding original Content series for Amazon Instant Video Service. TechCrunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2012/05/02/amazon-studios-now-funding-original-content-series-for-amazon-instant-video-service/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9lbi53aWtpcGVkaWEub3JnLw&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHzdPUCXun8SBTBMb5b6q4GqH8jwIg841hbuCruzr-pwIDpKfsAdw4OzdpRjw24zIaP-bzh9fpBb33Au4K_SNi1g0KCtc1k8yqp9p9LFtadulsKucLWuGYWmecE5ndVpMkc00b7EqTlhJK44rZNjkK9ikJr_Oweoq2aKwHZ4gAQd
  26. ↑ Schwartzel, E., Shifflett, S., & Berzon, A. (2020, January 24). Amazon Prime Video Gives Amateur How-To's, Conspiracy Theories a Stage. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
  27. ↑ Ampere Analysis. (n.d.). About. Ampere Analysis. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.ampereanalysis.com/about
  28. ↑ Schwartzel, E., Shifflett, S., & Berzon, A. (2020, January 24). Amazon Prime Video Gives Amateur How-To's, Conspiracy Theories a Stage. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
  29. ↑ Molla, Rani. “The Dark Underbelly of Amazon Prime Video.” Vox, Vox, 24 Jan. 2020, from https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
  30. ↑ Molla, Rani. “The Dark Underbelly of Amazon Prime Video.” Vox, Vox, 24 Jan. 2020, from https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
  31. ↑ Molla, Rani. “The Dark Underbelly of Amazon Prime Video.” Vox, Vox, 24 Jan. 2020, from https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
  32. ↑ Rayome, A. D. N. (n.d.). Amazon Prime Video Review: A great streaming service, especially when you're already paying for it. CNET. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.cnet.com/reviews/amazon-prime-video-review/
  33. ↑ Cullins, A. (2020, October 29). Amazon argues users don't actually own purchased Prime video content. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/amazon-argues-users-dont-actually-own-purchased-prime-video-content-4083703/
  34. ↑ Errick, K. (2020, June 29). Amazon sued for copyright infringement over films on Prime Video - Tech. Law Street Media. Retrieved from https://lawstreetmedia.com/news/tech/amazon-sued-for-copyright-infringement-over-films-on-prime-video/
  35. ↑ Media, N. (n.d.). Amazon to face 'Austin Powers' illegal streaming claims. World IP Review. Retrieved February 12, 2022, from https://www.worldipreview.com/news/amazon-to-face-austin-powers-illegal-streaming-claims-21647
  36. ↑ Barraclough, L. (2016, December 14). Amazon Prime Video Goes Global: Available in more than 200 territories. Variety. Retrieved from https://variety.com/2016/digital/global/amazon-prime-video-now-available-in-more-than-200-countries-1201941818/
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