In response to some reasonable questions from the research process with Destiny Media, I've produced some comparisons worth looking at for consumers looking to shop this company versus a leading transcoder. The information from this research displays a significant up front savings for any consumer looking to save, as well as reach as wide a consumer base as possible.
For example, if a user is loading a video to a transcoding company (Zencoder in this case) and plans on having a 30 minute video for his recipients seen over the course of a month, and that video is viewed 5 times, the total cost would be 7.50 USD. Yes, you read that right. It would cost you $7.50 to have a 30 minute video seen 5 times with current transcoding price structure. That's how expensive transcoding is. The flat starter rate they charge is $ .05 USD per minute, for each video viewed. This of course is only a transcoding cost, and does not identify how large a video file might be, and where it would be stored.. Hosting fees are considerable..
Compare that to Destiny Media's Clipstream Product that would allow you to have the same video seen by a recipient 20 times for the same price. This pricing structure implies the usage of Destiny's smallest available package, priced at 4.99 USD per month. Overages are included in this package, as well as competing transcoders.With Destiny's product: In the event of an overage of the purchased 600 minutes in transfer, each additional view would cost $3.30 based on the entry level package. This pricing incentivizes consumers to purchase appropriately higher plans of coverage to avoid the increased pricing induced by overages. Keep in mind that this calculation is done at the lowest pricing package available from Destiny. (Whereas the pricing from the transcoding competitor is a flat rate, but still more expensive.)
The larger packages (as is the case in all industries) cut into the margin in order to secure a bigger purchase. The comparison cost for transfer at the lowest margin threshold is less than $.01 for Destiny Media, ($.0086 to be exact) and $.0125 for leading comparables. That is compelling value. But the real kicker here is that these calculations are done prior to inclusion of hosting costs.
Hosting is dominated by two super majors, Google and Amazon. Amazons S3 Hosting platforms rate their pricing based on how many times you post a video, as well as how many times a video is viewed from inside its content network. The cost savings here is difficult to quantify because some regional benefits apply. Suffice it to say, every cost in this category is a gain when compared to destiny media because it removes the need for hosting at all. If you are an advertiser or business looking to share media en masse, these costs can be very much substantial. The publicly posted Amazon price range states:
|
Data Transfer OUT From Amazon S3 To Internet |
|
|
First 1 GB / month |
$0.000 / GB |
|
Up to 10 TB / month |
$0.120 / GB |
|
Next 40 TB / month |
$0.090 / GB |
|
Next 100 TB / month |
$0.070 / GB |
How many GB a video contains depends upon its content and compression. An odd surprise in the pricing considerations here are that Zencoder (my example for encoding) asks for double pricing when encoding an HD video, as opposed to a Standard Definition video. I wish I had the time or patience to run a view specific examples in order to create additional scenarios for investors to view, but this is a pretty compelling product, and certainly deserves the title 'Disruptive'. As media files become more dense, the storage space required for hosting those files also increases. If you have a massive audience base, then the need for larger storage is also clearly evident. In all, Destiny's invention clearly has an opportunity to impact the market. It is up to them to make sure that the end product from uploading to viewing is as competitive as their pricing.
