The ages are totally gone when we listen to Deep Purple, B’z etc. with CDs and tried to read/interpret lyrics, but dance is the king in the music business now. They will be ABBA singing Dancing Queen in 2020’s. (Maybe, my metaphor is still not up to date..)
I’ve heard the service would start from April 6th, but actually my app on iPhone was available from the 5th. I wondered why, but anyway I appreciated that I could see some content for free on Sunday while I’m sheltered-in-place. I registered myself in the service for free for 90 days. I know a lot of Japanese media companies are interested in and kept an eye on the service. Here I report briefly what I felt by using it.
総じて、個人的には時間に追われている中で「これ、絶対見たい！」っていうコンテンツはなかったですが、仕事柄調査しなきゃいけないこともあり、後で仕掛けが色々ありそうな（その手のものが好き）「Survive」とワンちゃんに癒やされそうな「All the Feels by The Dodo」を見てみました。
Overall, in my busy life, I couldn’t find content that I definitely wanted to watch at first sight. But my job is making investment in media companies anyway, I picked “Survive” in which I thought I could find some ‘traps’ afterward, and “All the Feels by The Dodo” in which I assumed I could get some soothing effects.
Thank you letting me know and automatically download the app to my iPhone. (Email received on April 5th)
The initial page of the app
The user at least have to specify your age
“Today for you” has 25 content at the preset. And according to a web article, that’s all they have now.
“Turnstyle Video” has been buzzed in the industry after CES and I checked the functionality. 1. The horizontal view has naturally more range to see – wasn’t it obvious? 2. But maybe I can more easily hold smartphone vertically? I was thinking those two aspects while I turned smartphone up and side but eventually I found myself the horizontal view is more comfortable since I get used to it.
初回、ワンちゃんが出てきた All the Feelsについては、一話完結であり、中毒性を感じなかった。YouTubeで何か見たら、次に関連する別の動画にすぐ写ってしまうことに慣れているんだから、一話完結モノはそんなもんでしょう。
I saw a cute puppy in All the Feels and I liked the dog, but since it completed its story in it, I didn’t feel it was addictive or binge-watchable. We are getting used to see that kind of content in YouTube and move on to next relative ones.
On the other hand, the first episode of Survive was ended before it got intriguing, but it might be in next several coming episodes. They left some “touch” of being able to be addictive. I guess that is the reason they made the free term relatively lengthy 90 days. Having said that, the sign that if they can recoup $2B they will raise ($1.75B has been done already) or not will be observed after the first 90+ days to see how the churn will come out since usually this kind of OTT service has very high churn rate.
ComcastとそのSTB「Xfinity」を使っていて一つ便利なこととして、音声認識→各試合の途中経過が見れて→各選手のスタッツが見れる ということがあります。 Good thing about using Xfinity by Comcast is that with voice recognition we can move to status/result of sports game and stats of players.
ComcastはVideo（日本語で言うところのテレビ）加入者を直近で減らしていますが、「ケーブルに残り続けてくれるお客さんは主にスポーツに期待している」ということを重視してスポーツ関連のテクノロジーを導入して、何とか踏みとどまろう（加入者源を最小限に食い止めよう）としている点は、日本企業が「我社に必要なイノベーションって何だっけ？」みたいなfundamentalな問いを繰り返しているところに大いに参考になるのではと思います。 Comcast is losing video customers, but it values the fact that customers remaining in cable are watching sports. Thus it deploys sports technologies in STB so that they can minimize churn. This can be a valuable example for Japanese companies yet repeating fundamental questions to themselves “What are necessary innovation to us??”
それにしても、バスケ経験者、NBAファンとして、カレッジバスケ時代の八村選手も生で見ましたが、プレシーズンの内容も踏まえ、「ちょっと本シーズンでの活躍は流石に難しいかな…」と個人的に予想していましたが、大間違いでした（汗） 一試合20点超えはもう目の前ですし、夢のような本当に凄い活躍ぶりです。（一試合で20点取れる選手というのは、一チームに一握りしかいないのです） 心より八村選手を応援します。 All in all, Rui Hachimura is paving his way in NBA season despite my previous anticipation based on the pre-season matches as a former basketball player and an NBA fan. He will score more than 20 points in a game very soon which is an awesome and dream-come-true level of performance for Japanese people. I sincerely pray for his success in NBA.
