I'm skeptical.
This posits that Amazon is spending about 1/4-1/2 of what Netflix spends (Netflix on track for $2.1 billion this year), to stream about 1/20th as much (Netflix 33% of internet traffic, Amazon 1.8%), from a greatly inferior content catalog.
I think Bezos & Co. can cut better deals than that.
Hastings says the estimate is based on head-to-head competition. If I'm selling streaming rights for property A, I'm going to go with the people who pay me the most. If Bezos says, "But gosh, we aren't showing it to as many people," my answer will be "Tough!"
- Titles we provide free to our customers
- Titles we provide for a charge which we split the fee with content producer at some ratio
- Placement of those for pay titles on the site so they are bought more
I'd sum the value of the contract and show how even though Amazon will not give as much cash in the deal, the content producer will net a bigger positive number.
Obviously this is speculation, but I could see that playing out easily.
One possibility would be per-stream (per-view) licensing.
Another could be per registered user or percentage of revenue.
Amazon's best bet may be to include prime streaming as an incremental addition to their paid rental streaming licenses.
Lots of options, and Amazon has enough reach and enough channels to customers that I expect a smart business to be able to structure a better deal than paying 40-80 times as much for delivered customer value as a single-channel competitor.
Numbers like that give me pause. I can kind of see where the anti-Network Neutrality folks are coming from.
Trying to charge both sides is just monopolist idiocy.