With the buttloads of money Netflix must be making why do movies have to disappear so frequently?
So they can keep on making the buttloads of money.
They should be careful then. Storage is cheap. Someday someone's going to come out with a streaming service with many more titles than Netflix. I know I'd switch.
Storage isn't the issue. It's the streaming fees that Netflix has to pay to the studios for the right to stream those films or tv shows.
i think the studios are waiting for the great unbundling of cable. they might think the fees from their own "channel" by going more direct to consumers are worth more than what Netflix pays them. they didn't value them correctly when they made the original agreements it looks like.
A few of the studios already have started their own streaming services. But they don't have near the membership numbers as Netflix or Amazon.
Netflix is restricted by license fees. In fact, they've decided not to compete with the major outlets on fees, which further limits their available library.
Licensing fees are obviously higher the newer the content is. Seeing a movie when it first comes out costs you $10 a viewing at a theater. Once it moves out of the theaters, it goes through several "windows" of home viewing: first Pay-Per-View at like $3-$5 a viewing. Then it moves out of that and into Redbox/rental territory at $1-$3 for a limited time to view as often as one wants. Then HBO & premium cable outlets where the viewer is paying for a monthly bundle of titles, then non-premium cable where they're getting even less per viewer.
Netflix has a choice about where to insert itself into the chain. They've opted not to pay for movies at the PPV stage or the Redbox stage. They've also announced they're not going to compete with HBO. They want to wait until
after films have left the HBO phase and pick up titles between that window and the rest of the cable run.
Now, movies occasionally cycle in and out of those last few phases. It could be basic cable, then broadcast, then streaming, then back to basic cable, etc. Any outlet willing to pay for "exclusivity" to their window of ownership can muscle out the other guys. That happens regularly and cyclically, which is why even old movies disappear for a while.