Study: 77 million highly original thinkers would pay for an indie movie streaming network

In what could, with a little work, easily become the most aggressively Letterboxd streaming service in human history, a new study floats the idea that some 77 million Americans might be willing to shell out cash for a streaming network exclusively devoted to independent films and documentaries. This, per IndieWire, reporting on an 118-page study led by former Sundance Institute CEO Keri Putnam, examining the “U.S. Independent Film Audience And Landscape.” Combining survey data, field reports, interviews with experts, and more, the study suggests that indie films have been taking it in the teeth in recent years, as more traditional streaming services have moved on from low-budget fare to more blockbuster offerings, and as the marketplace has continued to fragment.

Specifically, the study lists as one of its key findings the assertion that 36.7 million Americans say they watch independent films, 52 million call themselves “definite fans” of independent film, and 77 million said they’d pay for an indie-focused streamer. Even taking into account certain caveats that leap immediately to mind—i.e., how many of these people were on or near a first date while asserting their deep desire to watch independent film, instead of blasting their brains with the same YouTube clip for the dozenth time—that still suggests that there’s a large untapped market for indies that isn’t being served by the current process of a) hearing about an indie movie, b) checking what streaming service it’s landed on, if any, c) trying to remember if you have that one, and, ultimately, d), loading up that YouTube clip you’ve now watched for the 13th time instead of going through the hassle.

Of course, we also can’t help but note that the report also lists the current estimated subscriber counts for a number of streamers that already focus at least partially on non-studio fare, including the fact that, even between the three of them, The Criterion Channel, MUBI, and IFC have less than one million estimated U.S. subscribers, let alone 77. The study estimates that there are about 3 million people in the U.S. currently paying specifically for streaming access to indie films, although it also partially blames the fracturing of that smaller market on the low numbers. (That is, if there was one place you could go to get all the indies, instead of having to poke around between multiple, often quite expensive options, more people would bite.) It also notes that free independent streamers like FilmRise have roughly 15 million subscribers (not counting all the independent material posted to YouTube, Roku, Tubi, and their ilk), and represent a possible alternative to a paid service.

It is, if nothing else, an interesting study to browse through, even if some of its conclusions and recommendations feel a tad pie-in-the-sky. (A lot of its suggestions require a focus on centralization and coordination that runs pretty contrary to the nature of indie filmmaking, at least from a surface-level read.) Still, as outside observers who’ve seen services like Criterion and MUBI do and support genuinely interesting material in recent years, we can’t help but get a little hopeful while reading it; given how thoroughly most of the non-independent streaming landscape seems to be tripping over itself to be Cable 2.0, the idea of something more art-forward can’t help but appeal.