Silly question but don't know the answer to it.

I have only ever bought downloads or videos.

Can you download as a member of mostwam.tv or just stream?.

Thanks

Widgy

The website is streaming only. There's loads on it though, going back ages.

If you want to download their stuff then you'd have to buy the relevant scene on here.

Cheers for the reply.

I thought that would be the case but it's good to know for sure.

It is streaming only but I have seen people downloading streaming only videos but don't think that is legal at all

I would never do anything illegal as its not right on the producers & most of Leon's stuff cost into the thousands every shoot.

I was simply asking if you could download as part of your membership & you can't so I will continue to just buy the individual downloads as they come on the umd like I have for the last 20 years.

I am a regular customer of Leon's work at Mostwam & will go on enjoying it hopefully for another 20 paying the going rate.

Widgy

I must admit I'm curious as to why you thought this. You can't download Netflix for instance.

The entire point of streaming is viewing access to a vast amount of media. It's a rental. But instead of the ol days of renting A movie at Blockbuster, you're pay the fee of about 5 movies to rent ALL of Blockbuster for a month.

Also, bringing up specific tools used to pirate online media BY NAME doesn't really seem to be in the producers best opinion either. Also a lot of sites have since created defenses against such tools.

People still don't seem to get the concept of streaming.

The idea is that there is NO need to download.
All the content you could ever want, able to be watched any time, any where, for a monthly fee.

Mostwam.tv uses the same CDNs as most of the big streaming services, meaning that it is unlikely that you would have issues watching our content on the site.

Over the years I have tried to bring down the cost of our content as much as possible, as a very passionate producer, I want my media to be watched by as many people as possible.

There is a finite balancing act with streaming prices, we are aware there are those who join for a month and then leave, having used various means to download what they want.
I know not everyone who only joins for a month steals the content, but many do.
The trouble is this forces us to put up our monthly prices.
If everyone could be trusted to use our site they way it is intended, we could lower our prices considerably.
But, we found that we had to increase our price of monthly access due to the one month bandits.

It's a shame, but it is what it is, no matter what security is in place, people will find a way round it. I get that people can't afford to pay even low prices monthly, so I'm not angry or upset about it, I just have to adjust prices to defend the business.

Luckily we have a lot of people who do get it and who continue to support us month by month, year by year.
Thanks to all of you.

I see no need to try and download off the streaming site. All things considered, it's pretty cheap. For £25 a month I have access to hundreds of brilliant WAM videos, including (in my view) the best pie and gunge tank content in the UK. If I were to buy all of the videos I liked, I'd probably be spending upwards of £500 with them each year, so streaming is much cheaper...and I don't have to worry about hard drive failure.

There are a few videos of theirs that I have paid out for, mostly ones that weren't on the streaming sites at the time, and I don't regret it, but as long as you have an internet connection you don't have to worry too much about downloading.

I applaud the innovative intention, but personally I don't think streaming is a viable model for WAM. I have no doubt your intentions were good with this (though how does your lowering prices idea work exactly? If you had X number of active subscribers you would just lower everyone's rates?), but it's still asking a person to pay more for their Mostwam streaming than they would pay for Netflix. I realize it's not a fair comparison in terms of the resources of the respective companies, but it's hard (for me at least, and I doubt I'm alone) to justify that consistent spending when my other major exposure to streaming services:

1 - Costs less
2 - Can somewhat easily be my only paid source for content - there are more streaming services, but for many, Netflix along with free services is more than enough to cover TV watching, which, outside of a pandemic, say takes up ~15 hours of an average person's week.

Both points are important, but 2 probably moreso. I'm a huge fan of Leonco, bought hundreds of downloads across all the sites over the years. But I certainly would never take the stance that their streaming services could be my sole paid source of WAM content, the market is simply too big and diverse. So I'm faced with a streaming service that costs more, is only one of several sources for which I pay for content, and which I use far less in terms of hours per week. I don't know what the average habits of folks here are, but I certainly don't spend anywhere near as much time watching WAM content as I do streaming television, my best guess maybe three to one TV to WAM. As a consumer who feels the need to justify my spending as fiscally appropriate and within my limitations, that just doesn't square.

Again, I know the comparison isn't entirely fair, I'm not suggesting Mostwam should be the same price as Netflix, I know that WAM as a specialty product necessarily costs more. I just don't believe it's viable to use the streaming service model, which is successful in cases like Netlifx where prices are low and there are few major competitors, and apply it to WAM, where there are many major competitors, prices are (relatively) high, and the market has heretofore operated on the members site/download store system. Hell the streaming service costs as much or more than any of the still existing members sites, which allow downloading and (in most cases) are still regularly updated.

The only way IMO that streaming could work in this context is to have a number of sites all join together and form one large streaming service that could conceivably be the sole source of paid WAM for a majority of folks here (which given the diversity of tastes may be unfeasible), and then charge an amount that roughly equates to what the average consumer here spends monthly/annually. If that happens, sign me up.

I think Mostwam's streaming service (which i've had since the creation of it) is a good tool for me to separate what i love and what i don't... test the waters to see if a scene is good enough before i buy it. I will always download scenes... as i can have a place with all the scenes i love and none of the scenes i don't.

Customwam tv is very different, only do a month here and a month there, as there is a large gap between UMD customs and streaming... so i buy it just to check out the ones i've missed and didn't think they were my cup of tea. Most of the custom scenes i buy before, hundreds i've deleted after i've watched them (or even a few minute in and thought no this isn't for me and in the bin it goes)

I don't mind doing that, as if you find that special scene (lets take the Vat team episodes recently with Sky, Amber, Mimi and Zara) you spend just $10 on them, when actually they are that special that i'd be happy spending £50 if i knew they were that good and hit ever single mark. that covers me buying loads of scenes i just end up deleting within minutes or days.

Pricing has always been cheap really, yes its gone up in prize alittle, but its still cheap... but i understand if people have loads of producers that they buy from month to month.

Actually, our annual (Currently unavailable due to COVID-19) and Six month memberships are cheaper than Netflix Premium price, you don't even get HD content with Netflix basic.
It is actually possible to achieve Netflix prices with loyal members.
The more members you have, the less you have to charge.
Our initial price was £15 per month with the hope that once people get a taste for streaming, they would remain loyal and I could provide £12 or even £10 per month memberships, unfortunately, way too many people did the "join for a month, come back 12 or 15 months later" thing and the price had to go up.

As for your other points about diversity, yes, but then Netflix has the same, ever growing, diverse competition. We do have a massive amount of diversity within our own content.

Having other contributing producers was considered, but, the cost of doing so and how to pay them fairly was/is an issue, so we decided to increase our own diversity instead.

Either way, saying, my intentions were good, but streaming is nonviable for WAM is completely wrong, it has already proved to be more than viable for WAM content.
You talk like it's some failed project?
It really isn't, look at how much our business has grown since we launched mostwam.tv, not viable?

Mostwam does a great job and is evolving constantly, lots of new ideas and concepts compared to 10 or 15 years ago, e.g. the mud cleaning sessions, wrestling etc etc. so hats off

Also, that attention to detail, those ever stylish ladies and the camera work that has become so good

Streaming is certainly the way to go. I tried it for a month in the very beginning but in my case it was just too overwhelming

Also, I'm into specific scenes, e.g. not into the games, so I'm happy with buying a couple of scenes once in a while and enjoy them a lot :splat:

I'm glad to hear it's working for you, and I was not claiming you have factually failed, I have no earthly idea how much better/worse your business is doing now than it was with download stores. I was sharing an opinion on why I will not subscribe to a streaming WAM site as I would for TV/movies (though fair point on the cost, if one can afford paying that much up front, it is cheaper per month). From the tone of your first post, saying "people still don't seem to get the concept of streaming" and complaining about one-month bandits, along with the fact that you have had to raise prices when you hoped to keep them low, it didn't sound positive to me. I wish you nothing but success and will continue to support you as I can within my budget.

I think you are understating the diversity point though. Yes there are more niche TV/movie streaming services coming up (Disney+, DC Universe, Shudder), but the big 3 are still Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime, with Netflix still the most common. That may change, but as of now the market for TV/movie streaming is not really that diverse IMO - an average consumer could probably subscribe to any of the big 3 and find enough content to meet their needs.

The WAM market on the other hand is much more diverse, from type of substances to clothing/lack thereof to scenarios to model quality and so on. Your sites cover more than most, but for a site that's 99% clothed/non-sexual, I don't think "massive amount of diversity" is an appropriate description. I'm not trying to knock you on that front, you appear to have a successful business model going. Rather, I'm saying that the market for WAM tastes may be too diverse for any one site to cover (in contrast to TV/movies, where Netflix et al can win by quantity - even if average person X only watches 20% of the content, it's enough to cover their TV needs)

If it's working for you, I'm glad, but I can categorically say it won't work for me in the current state. If I'm in the minority, then bugger me I suppose. I'm used to it, I was a YCDTOTI fanboy.

Without getting too much "into the weeds" here, Netflix has a huge catalog because they were the first. Back when they were still sending you discs in the mail (remember that?!?), ALL the major media companies were mostly fine with licensing their entire catalogs to them for a reasonable fee.

Eventually, major corporations got wise to the fact that, say, Netflix was now making billions off content from NBC (Friends, The Office) or Disney (Avengers, Pixar, Star Wars). But by that point, Netflix was already the MAJOR streaming player at a time when everyone was switching to streaming... and they now had the funds to make their own content, which also attracted new members. But I think we're in a transition period.... and the comment that "I get all the TV I need from a Netflix subscription" is probably gonna be completely false in a few years.

Already, we're seeing a big shift. Right now, you can ONLY watch Disney content on Disney+. You can only watch HBO content on HBO Max. The "Peacock" is coming, which will be only place to watch NBC content. In five years, I have to assume every single studio and company will have their own separate streaming service, and if you want to watch X movie or Y television show, you'll have to sign up for that particular service. Meaning, Netflix will have plenty of Netflix-produced content and movies... but nothing else.

So I don't think it makes sense to push WAM into a Netflix model, with a bunch of separate rival producers under one umbrella, and the customer getting content from many different places for one fee. (I mean, it WOULD be great for a customer, but a nightmare for producers on the financial end.) If anything, streaming services like Netflix are moving closer to the current WAM scenario, where you have to sign up for a bunch of separate memberships to access separate content.

Just to bring the convo back to WAM: Leon's site was the first streaming WAM out there (along with WAMTEC), and I think it's still the model for the rest of us. Lots of content, lots of choice. I think for a producer with a big back catalog, streaming and download stores together provide the best of both worlds. I know my bottom line has grown since I incorporated streaming... and funny enough, I STILL sell plenty of older catalog downloads, because some folks still like owning the physical files.

FYI, thanks to MM, I do offer a coupon for all my UMD Streaming members, where they can buy any of my streaming downloads for 80% off, as long as they have an active sub. It's a way of basically allowing folks to own the downloads of the scenes they stream without forcing them to pay for the same content twice. I'm honestly surprised more folks don't take advantage of it.

I'd be really interested to see how many downloads an average streaming member would be buying if streaming weren't an option.

I pay £40 every 3 months for Mostwam's site. I guess that would get me anything between 5-8 downloads if I was to want to keep them permanently, so less than one download a week.

I feel like there's more regular content uploaded to stream than that. I definitely watch a wide variety of their content, and if I was paying about $10 a time for it I probably couldn't afford that much. That's not to say it's overpriced - when you consider the production values it's actually pretty damn cheap - just that streaming has allowed me to consume more media than I'd otherwise afford.

I take that into consideration when looking at how much content is uploaded too - for instance, I'm a huge fan of Mostwam's pie content and I might think there's not too much of it in recent uploads, but I'd never complain, since I have literally dozens of clips to stream at the click of a button. If I was paying for individual downloads, budget would come in to it and I might only have a handful of pie clips to watch. I'm actually getting more content via streaming!

I would never ask any producer to share their sales figures, but I'd guess there's a small core of regular customers who buy a LOT of clips, but a majority that buy a few here and there. I'd guess that streaming allows that majority to get a lot more bang for their buck. Who knows, it might also help out the producer if a customer would normally only buy one or two clips but instead chooses to subscribe for a few months.

And I wonder how long that model will work. There is only so much people can afford. Someone who wants to watch Star Wars, Marvel Universe, The Office and wrestling is going to have to have four subscriptions. The paying market might not be big enough - which will either lead to consolidation, or an "online cable", where a company might offer all channels (at least a certain amount of access to them) for a single smaller sum.

Each generation has it's own approach to things, and streaming is a huge and very successful concept nowadays. I grew up in the 80s, with lots of post-apocalyptic fiction, Day of the Triffids and the like. So somewhere in my mind is still the idea that when civilisation has collapsed, the Internet is gone, and I'm one of the last survivors in a bunker somewhere, with a static bike dynamo to charge my laptop, I'll still want access to my WAM collection, so I prefer to buy downloads. Yes I know, esp at my age, if the apocalypse does happen now I'm zombie-fodder, but the old ideas die hard.

But to those who've grown up never knowing the world before always-on broadband internet, an all-you-can-eat smorgasboard that you pay a subsription for just makes sense.

Some really interesting stuff here, Rich. I have kept thinking that streaming is the future of WAM for 3 or 4 years now, & for whatever reason my sales breakdown is about 75% downloads and 25% on streaming..which is a real surprise to me when you compare it to mainstream media.

As you say I really thought MM's ability for producers to offer discounts to subscribers might change things (like you and others I offer subscribers a big discount off any scenes they want to download, so there is no downside to subscribing), but the split has stayed avowedly similar throughout and, exactly as you say, almost no-one takes advantage of the code. Streamers gonna stream and downloaders gonna download, and never the twain etc.

I am hugely grateful to my repeat subscribers though....having that base of income each month means it is so much easier to weather a storm when that expensive download you just knew would be a huge hit, sells 4 copies!

I do think at some point the tide must turn. The value that the Mostwam team, Rich, myself, Candy Custard, Messymayhem and many others offer in the subscription packages (in terms of quantity of content vs price) is insane. But even as I type this, I do realise the problem.

Exactly as some have said above, although each subscription package is incredible value, if you loved the work of all 5 of us, you'd have to get 5 streaming packages to cover everything.

So, bizarrely, just by typing this message out, I am beginning to realise why downloads are still king.

A few points & replies:

--Other people before me have already realized that we've spent the last 10 years bemoaning cable, "cutting the cord," and moving to streaming services.... only to realize that streaming is now broken into a TON of separate providers, each offering their own content... and it's only getting worse. I think it was 2019 when I first heard the joke: "If only we could get ALL this content for one price.... And maybe that content could come directly into your house through a CABLE or something...."

--Streaming does benefit producers with lots of content and back catalog, so yes... In a way, it does tend to "reward" you for cultivating a strong fanbase over the years.
But I've found you can't sit on your hands. My new scenes aren't as profitable as my older ones (for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they're competing with ALL my other clips dating back years) but every time I put out new content, I see a bump. In new download sales, AND old download sales, and streaming. Basically, new content keeps your awareness up, and that rising tide lifts everything.

--I recently crunched the numbers for a UMD user who was very curious. (We tend to talk a lot of inside baseball in PMs and email.) I found it interesting that streaming is only a minor part of my Vidown income.... but at the UMD, it's almost 50/50. Why? Because MM offered streaming a year earlier, so I had my UMD Streaming going long before Vidown. It's the Netflix Effect.... Get your customers early, and a lot of them will stay loyal forever.

We are 50/50

When we launched mostwam.tv, it was an instant income boost, which unlike other website launches we've done in the past, didn't then drop down in the months following, it just carried on growing.
Then with our various UMD stores and customs, downloads have picked up and sales of those have grown to meet the income from our streaming sites.

There is obviously a market for both.

I think much of it has to do with age and what people watch their content on.

For older, many of which are PC people, downloads are the only way they accept, they can download it forever and just keep adding hard drive space for their collections.

For younger people, many of which have the very latest tech, streaming seems to work well for smartphone and tablet users, with limited storage and the ability to watch wherever.

It'll be interesting to see where the market is in ten years, as the current younger generation get older and the older generation, well, you know.

I'm well aware of the WAM market and all of it's niches within niches.

I think the brunt of it falls into the reply I just posted, you're old, like me these days.

It's about how you watch stuff and how you value getting something you can keep for your money.
Buying 2 downloads from us is equal in price to a month's access, yes you get to keep those 2 downloads, but that is all you get, apart from the fact we give another for free
You get to watch 3 videos, that's it, that's all.
Even if you only buy a few videos from us and shop around from other producers, you'll find all our streaming packages off way more value. It's about what you get to watch for your money, rather than what you get to own.
It's still only a few downloads for the same price that you could get access to watch 1000s of videos.

As for the tone of my message, you have some guy further up the thread, encouraging downloading from my streaming sites, that is NOT cool, so my tone was me trying to say NO, don't be a fucking jerk and explaining why it isn't cool, but, without me saying what i just did.

Sorry Leon.

I asked a simple question & was expecting just a simple answer. No you can't download.

I didn't expect it to snowball on you like this thread had. I am a law abiding citizen & I would never break the law.

I asked a simple question & expected a yes/no answer from the forum.

You know I have always loved your work & will continue to buy at the proper prices.

I asked a simple question. Sorry if it has caused you grief. Wasn't my intention at all

Widgy

I subscribe to Mostwam and I have for ages, and I think Leon and Lisa are geniuses. There is just so much amazing stuff on there, something to suit whatever mood you are in. .

No downloading basically -- You can subscribe for the immediate content, or for the sake of supporting the producer. The latter ensures such quality content continues for years to come, and that's often worth the price of admission. Just my 2

I'm with you st7. I get customs done, buy downloads & subscribe to the streaming channels. Now spending more on (most)WAM than I am on alcohol. Wonder what a therapist would make of that...

I get why Leon got a little testy on this thread. Stealing is stealing. I'm sure none of the contributors here would actually rip from the streaming sites, but talking about it would no doubt get his blood boiling.

Stay well all! Hopefully the lockdown will soon end & we can all get on with our lives...