
Bollywood and U.S. Media Giants Try to Induce Indians to Pay for Video - muddyrivers
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/technology/bollywood-and-us-media-giants-try-to-induce-indians-to-pay-for-video.html
======
brownbat
"Cable and satellite TV subscriptions cost just $2 or $3 a month, which makes
paying even 50 cents for a movie seem expensive."

India's per capita income in 2014 was $1,570. In the US it was $55,200.[0]

That's a factor of over 35.

Even if we assumed people spend the same proportions of their wealth on
everything (a pretty stupid assumption), then we should expect the average
Indian to tolerate maybe a two or four cent fee for a redbox rental.

Even that's inflated though. People spend on needs first, entertainment
second. When you're at a certain level of poverty, a higher percentage of your
income is devoted to basic essentials, like food and shelter.

According to the BLS, the average American devotes 6% of their annual
expenditures to entertainment, mostly to audio-visual equipment. 34% on
shelter and 13% on food.[1]

In India, your outside of city center rent is 6700 Rs / month, or around $100
USD / mo. And your cheap restaurant meal is 125 Rs, or $2. $120 USD per month
for two meals a day, though you can probably eat more cheaply than even at
cheap restaurants, so let's generously slash food to $50 per month. So while
the average American can get food and shelter and have half of their money
left over, in India we're at $1800 / year in expenses from just food and
shelter, already something like 115% of annual income.[2]

Sure, you can bring that down by putting more than one person in an apartment,
or separating out outliers living in much worse poverty in India, but you're
still not going to have a lot left over for movies.

If you want to make money selling intellectual property to the masses, you
have to start by addressing inequality and poverty.

[0]
[http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD/countries](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GNP.PCAP.CD/countries)

[1] [http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/average-american-
spend...](http://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/average-american-spends-on-
entertainment/)

[2] [http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/country_result.jsp?coun...](http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
living/country_result.jsp?country=India)

------
bruceb
Not mentioned is Indians also face the choice of torrenting a movie or paying
to see a possibly censored version of the same film. Paying to see an
uncensored version of say Game of Thrones is not possible.

Some newspapers talk about upcoming shows that might not even be available on
Indian TV as they assume some middle class will torrent:
[https://twitter.com/b50/status/681673141593227264](https://twitter.com/b50/status/681673141593227264)

~~~
signa11
> Indians also face the choice of torrenting a movie or paying to see a
> possibly censored version of the same film. Paying to see an uncensored
> version of say Game of Thrones is not possible.

this. i would rather torrent an uncensored version of a program than pay for
censored version of the same thing

------
msravi
"Cable and satellite TV subscriptions cost just $2 or $3 a month, which makes
paying even 50 cents for a movie seem expensive."

While that might be true in Tier-2 cities, the cost of a cable/satellite
connection in Bangalore is of the order of Rs.450+, which is about $7/month.

I'd gladly give that up for a service like Netflix which charges $8-$10/month.

