Ben Affleck’s 2003 Vision: How He Saw Streaming Coming
Long before streaming giants took over, Ben Affleck predicted the rise of subscription-based digital platforms and the dramatic shift in how we consume music and film. His foresight in 2003 now seems almost prophetic.
Say what you will about Timothée Chalamet, but the relentless campaign for his latest film, Marty Supreme, is perhaps just what the industry requires. The perennial anxiety over the future of the big screen seems to be materialising with each passing year. If it means Chalamet must perch atop the Las Vegas Sphere, energetically promoting his project, so be it. The signs have been there for some time, and every creative field—whether music or film—has found itself at the mercy of streaming services. The pace has only quickened over the last decade, but the roots of this transformation stretch back much further.
It was as early as 2003 that Ben Affleck offered a remarkably prescient take on the matter. This was a time before Spotify had even launched, and Netflix was still a few years away from its streaming debut. Sensing the cultural shift, Affleck remarked in a resurfaced interview,
“I believe that the industry has been too slow to embrace and adopt these paradigms. If you look historically at consumer-based technologies, you have basically shareware that introduces the consumer to it at no cost,”
he began.
“At which point, the consumer is on the hook. They figured it out, they worked out the kinks, they figured out how to interact with it and how to exploit.”
He went on,
“And then you charge a fee, and the consumer is willing to pay that fee. I think an annual subscription-based system is one that works.”
Affleck’s Early Analysis of Digital Shifts
Affleck’s comments didn’t stop at film. He turned to music as a case in point, at a time when Apple’s iTunes reigned supreme. Back then, listeners still had to purchase entire albums before downloading. The notion of a digital library, accessible and fair, was only just beginning to take hold. Affleck continued,
“We have the music business, which is a $3.4billion dollar-a-year business, which is largely about 1.7million people in the country spending $200 a year. Those same people would spend those $200 each year to have access to basically the entire library of existing music, and of course, you re-up your subscription because you continue to pay for new music.”
He elaborated further,
“Royalties would be paid more directly to the artists. You have less overhead, you have less shipping, less packaging, and you pay no mammoth amount of executives at music companies that are glomming off a lot of that money.”
His observations, sharp for their time, were meant to encourage a more sustainable approach as films and music moved into the digital age.
The Reality of the Streaming Era
Yet, the reality that’s unfolded has been rather different. Technology firms and profit-driven executives have turned these digital platforms into something else entirely. The product has become so inexpensive for the end user that musicians and cinemas are often left with little to show for it. The numbers are telling: Netflix, for instance, now boasts a market value in the hundreds of billions and a subscriber base exceeding 230 million worldwide. Meanwhile, UK cinemas in 2024 managed to draw in a record 126.5 million admissions—still only about half the reach of the streaming behemoth.
Affleck’s foresight, once a call for genuine progress, now reads as a warning. The industry did indeed ‘figure it out’, but perhaps not in the way he had hoped.