A twitter user, deep dove on the history of file sharing and found an interview with Ben Affleck from 2003. In this interview, Ben Affleck predicted the rise of Spotify and Netflix along with their subscription based models accurately.
Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt, is an American actor and filmmaker. He has won two academy awards, three Golden Globe Awards, two Bafta Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Well now, you can add to that list of achievements that, he is also a true psychic.
In 2003, when Ben predicted the subscription models for the music and movie industry, his career had taken a downward turn. During this time, he appeared in ‘Daredevil’ and ‘Gigli’. This was followed by a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in Hollywoodland in 2006. From there on, Ben only saw an upward graph with ‘Gone Baby Gone’, followed by ‘The Town’ and ‘Argo’. Quite an amazing journey he has had, isn’t it?
How and where did this prediction unearth from? Well, John Backus who is the founder of Cognito and Bloom which are – an identity verification service and a service that allows you to create cryptographically secured identities respectively; seemed to have been researching file sharing processes. While deep diving into file sharing, he stumbled upon Ben Affleck’s interview from 2003.
… wow. Ben Affleck perfectly predicting Spotify and Netflix in a random 2003 interview
Almost exactly right about the unit economics of annual music subscriptions and the timing of online movie streaming. Solid point too on how shareware (Napster) is a necessary predecessor pic.twitter.com/mpEgRPK4zL
— John Backus (@backus) July 8, 2018
During his conversation on file sharing Ben starkly noted that the industry then, was too slow w.r.t embracing and adopting latest paradigms like the shareware – Napster which was introduced to the public as a new concept of file sharing. He went on to assess the economic model of the music industry 5 years later along with his thoughts on movie streaming as well.
Ben said – “I think an annual subscription-based system is one that works, it will be movies on-demand but it will be a tiered structure.”
He also explained that as the music and movie industry progress, sharing of files between two individuals was something that both these industries would eventually have to adapt to, to thereby counter reasonably priced services.
He also predicted that – “The technology’s not quite there yet, but it will be within five years,”. Well 5 years later, his prediction is spot on. He got exactly right the economics of annual music subscriptions like that on Spotify, and for movies and content subscriptions like that on Netflix, in addition to online movie streaming. His thoughts on Napster were also true as it is now a case study for all those deep diving on the history of file sharing.
So, what followed Ben’s prediction in 2003 was the announcement of Netflix in 2007 and the launch of Spotify in 2008. It’s time to ask Ben what he thinks is going to happen to all the streaming services in the next 5 years. After this revelation we feel that, maybe Ben is connected to the French physician and scientist Nostradamus, who allegedly predicted future events.
Don’t forget to tell us below about what you think of Ben’s ability to predict the future?
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