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As well as its public battle with rival Netflix, Amazon’s LoveFilm streaming and delivery service seems to be suffering from internal problems, fueled by news of a second high-level exec leaving the network within a week.
Mike Blakemore, the company’s Chief Technology Officer, joins LoveFilm’s CEO Simon Calver in leaving LoveFilm, to take up a role at the Guardian. Calver left last week after seven years with the company to join Mothercare of all places, making it appear there’s some sort of race going on to see who can get the hell out of LoveFilm the quickest.
The possible reason? Amazon is believed to be upping its own media streaming services, which opens up the possibility that poor LoveFilm could see itself obliterated in favour of a new fully Amazon branded film and TV service. [Guardian via TNW]
This is good news for consumers. Amazon will have more clout in getting content. Obviously the execs are worried that they will be “rationalised” out of a job.
It seems like it would be a logical move from Amazon too, since that is what they do in the US.
Hopefully we will get a Prime/Stream membership like they have in the other side of the pond too.
Yeah, I have to say I’d be all over that Prime membership if it offered next-day delivery and movie streaming.
If it offered genuine next-day maybe but last time I had Prime and stuff was delivered later than their ‘super saver’ I was told that ‘next-day’ was only an ambition for the service not a guarantee as they just send things first class royal mail…..
It doesn’t work as expected all the time, but adding the stream to the offer it would be a pretty sweet deal.
Streaming would make it more appealing though. Especially if they just consume Lovefilm’s service totally and just offer Amazon dvd & streaming service.
US style Prime for the same price would be awesome, and yet I’m somewhat dubious as to whether we’d get it for the same price.
This makes sense if they are going to bring the Kindle Fire over here.
Kindle Fire should be here soon, maybe that is even why they are holding out on us. But there are the apps for game consoles and smart tvs which makes it quite interesting.
Or a less pathetic headline:
“Loveflim to soon become Amazon Streaming as execs leave?”
Are you really that desperate for web traffic you have to sex up stories with dumb headlines worthy of the Sunday Sport?
Was wondering how long it would take you to jump on this one.
Chances are that if Amazon do want to do away with LoveFilm they’re not going simply rebrand…. so chances are that there will be jobs losses. So yes. Doom for LoveFilm.
Get over it.
I quite liked that headline myself.
Yours or Troll-boys?
Eh? Why would they want to “do away” with LoveFilm? They can rebrand it tomorrow, keep their subscribers, and move on from there. There is no evidence they want to destroy a company they just bought then start a new one from scratch.
I didn’t say they wouldn’t keep the existing subscribers.
There is nothing new in a big company buying out a little company who is competition to them, then getting rid of the little company in one way shape or another to replace it with their own.
Whichever way it happens the management of the little company rarely survive and unless the small company has some particular distribution chain the bigger one can use that goes too.
If Amazon went over to streaming only what would they want with LoveFilms distribution chain?
Yeah, they’d keep the subscribers, move them over and that, but the people who work for LoveFilm are unlikely to still be there for much longer.
This is actually getting me really excited. I’m a US expat so was really sad when I realised that my amazon UK account has like have the services of the US.
So I’m hoping for Amazon VOD with real content (Love Film has like 5 US tv shows) and maybe Cloud Player too?