In this week’s Riffs, Lydia and I tackle one of streaming’s most loaded questions: who actually owns the streaming customer: the streamer, the aggregator, the TV manufacturer, or the device ecosystem?

We started with a quick follow-up from last week – the HBO Max UK launch, and why Sora closing tells us something useful about the economics of generative video.

Then to the main event. We unpacked the billing relationship, whether PII (Personally Identifiable Information) matters more than payment rails, the hidden power of the UI layer and why, as Lydia put it, discovery is the real battleground. We also got into why Netflix’s UI is doing its marketing for it, and why platforms like Amazon and Samsung have structural advantages that individual streamers can’t easily match.

As ever, feel free to reach out to me or Lydia on LinkedIn with any thoughts.

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00:00: Introduction to The Riff Show

02:21: The Hidden Battle of Streaming Control

11:51: The Economics of AI and Streaming

15:18: Who Really Owns the Streaming Customer?

17:25: The Importance of Billing Relationships

22:09: Convergence in Streaming Services

25:37: The importance of Billing Relationships

34:47: Data and Customer Relationships

45:53: The Key Battleground: Content Discovery