Difference between revisions of "Amazon Prime Video"

Revision as of 22:13, 11 February 2022

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.

The creation of Amazon Studios subsequently led to the distribution service named Amazon Instant Video in 2012.^[8]

In 2016, Amazon Prime Video was made available outside the United States in more than 200 countries globally.^[9] 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.

Features

The service offers licensed content, produced originals, and user-uploaded content.^[10] With a paid subscription, they have unlimited access to Amazon Prime Video's entire library alongside Amazon Prime's free shipping cost benefits.^[11]

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.

Amazon Prime

Amazon Prime is the paid subscription in which Amazon customers can have access for Amazon Prime Video, with an annual subscription fee of $120^[12] 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.^[13] Students who sign up with through their school email can receive a discounted Prime membership of $6.49 per month or $59 per year.^[14]

The membership launched in February of 2005.^[15] With this membership, users benefitted with the shorter two-day delivery feature.

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, an 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.^[16] 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.^[17]

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.^[18] 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.

Ethical Concerns

Unregulated Content

Amazon Prime Video is a newer streaming service commonly compared to the likes of established services like Netflix and Hulu. Since its initial release, Amazon Prime Video has amassed large volumes of content.^[19] 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.^[20] Amazon Prime Video has as a result allowed an abundance of conspiracy theory videos, amateur productions, and short instructional clips.^[21]

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.^[22] Users have also discussed the inability to distinguish between produced and vetted content versus user-generated content.^[23]

In December 2019, Ampere Analysis, a UK-based data and analysis firm,^[24] researched that user-created content was almost double the amount of professional or licensed content on the service.^[25]

Transparency

Copyright Issues

Amazon Prime Video

They also run into copyright issues for international Prime users. In 2016, despite having more than 18,000 titles^[26], 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.^[27]

Algorithm and Filtering

Ethics

References

1. ↑ 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. ↑ 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. ↑ https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-customers-can-now-instantly-watch-ad-free-movies-and-tv
7. ↑ https://press.aboutamazon.com/news-releases/news-release-details/amazon-customers-can-now-instantly-watch-ad-free-movies-and-tv
8. ↑ 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
9. ↑ https://variety.com/2016/digital/global/amazon-prime-video-now-available-in-more-than-200-countries-1201941818/
10. ↑ 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
11. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
12. ↑ https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
13. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G34EUPKVMYFW8N2U
14. ↑ https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=G34EUPKVMYFW8N2U
15. ↑ https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/3/18511544/amazon-prime-oral-history-jeff-bezos-one-day-shipping
16. ↑ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/amazon-prime-video-algorithms-1203233844/
17. ↑ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/amazon-prime-video-algorithms-1203233844/
18. ↑ https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/amazon-prime-video-algorithms-1203233844/
19. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
20. ↑ 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
21. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
22. ↑ https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
23. ↑ https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/24/21080240/amazon-prime-video-conspiracy-theory-offensive-content
24. ↑ https://www.ampereanalysis.com/about
25. ↑ https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazons-video-library-has-grown-big-on-amateur-content-11579792605
26. ↑ https://variety.com/2016/digital/global/amazon-prime-video-now-available-in-more-than-200-countries-1201941818/
27. ↑ https://variety.com/2016/digital/global/amazon-prime-video-now-available-in-more-than-200-countries-1201941818/