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MUBI and the Curation
Model of Video on
Demand
Mattias Frey
MUBI and the Curation Model of Video on
Demand
Mattias Frey
MUBI and the

Curation Model of
Video on Demand
Mattias Frey
Department of Film and Media Studies
University of Kent
Canterbury, UK
ISBN 978-3-030-80075-8 ISBN 978-3-030-80076-5 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80076-5
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Acknowledgements
I express my sincere appreciation to the Leverhulme Trust, whose Philip

Leverhulme Prize (PLP-2015-008) funded much of the research behind
this project. I extend my gratitude to Lina Aboujieb and the staff at
Palgrave Macmillan for shepherding this project from commissioning to
production with supreme efficiency. Amanda Landa, Cecilia Sayad,
Roderik Smits, Peter Stanfield and Jonathan Wroot graciously provided
feedback, tips or other assistance. Many thanks are due to the three exter-
nal peer reviewers, who provided excellent advice with impeccable timing;
any leftover oversights or errors remain, as ever, mine. To my friends, my
family and my まり子: I owe so much to you and your support. Please save
space on your shelves!
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
2 Curation as Discourse, Trend and Cultural Salve 15
3 The Curation Business Model 33
4 MUBI History: Connections, Community and Curation 53
5 Recommendation Credibility in the MUBI Interface 77
6 The MUBI Audience107
7 At the End of the Long Tail125
References145
Index163
vii
List of Figures
Fig. 3.1 VOD service use, United Kingdom 45

Fig. 3.2 VOD service use, United States 46
Fig. 5.1 Diversity of MUBI’s thirty-film list by year of production on
selected day. For Table 5.1 and Fig. 5.1, data for 25 October
2018 derive from Smits and Nikdel (2019, 11); all other data
derive from mubi.com/showing via the Internet Archive
Wayback Machine 100
ix
List of Tables
Table 5.1 Diversity of MUBI’s thirty-film list by country of production

on selected day 99
Table 6.1 Demographics of MUBI subsample vs. overall weighted
representative sample of all UK adults online 112
Table 6.2 VOD use of UK MUBI users vs. UK Netflix users 113
Table 6.3 Source influence in film choice, UK MUBI users vs. UK
Netflix users 114
Table 6.4 Consumption diversity since starting to use VOD 116
Table 6.5 Trust in algorithms vs. critics 118
xi
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Abstract This introduction outlines the backlash to algorithmic cultural

recommendation that followed the initial celebrations of technological
innovation and kill-the-gatekeeper rhetoric in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In the brave new world of video on demand (VOD), a number of ser-
vices—Jaman, MUBI, BFI Player, FilmStruck and many others—arose
that consciously partook of the rhetoric of human “curation” and cultural
taste-making, rather than computer-generated suggestions. Compared to
Netflix, Amazon and other algorithmic VOD providers, this more niche
type of platform has been rarely investigated by scholars. This chapter
previews the book’s argument that this “curation model” entails a distinct
business paradigm, marketing rhetoric, taste philosophy, choice architec-
ture and audience engagement—albeit residing on a spectrum with the
algorithmic providers and meeting with decidedly circumscribed long-
term market success.
Keywords Video on demand (VOD) • Algorithmic recommendation •

Curation • Cultural taste • Black box
The early public discussion of video on demand (VOD) often resembled a

rags-to-riches story of technological and entrepreneurial triumph, a cele-
bration of access to an abundance of content choice. This narrative fea-
tured market kings Netflix and Amazon as heroes. It highlighted these
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2021
M. Frey, MUBI and the Curation Model of Video on Demand,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80076-5_1
2 M. FREY
companies’ engineering capacity to predict users’ tastes using technically

sophisticated algorithmic recommender systems (e.g. Thompson 2008).
It indulged giddy cinephile dreams about a completist archive of all films
and series available at a moment’s whim and a single click (e.g. Scott 2007).
Inevitably, the initial techno-optimistic glow faded in the course of
practical use. The consumerist realities of paywalls and disappearing con-
tent set in; in a fractured media landscape, no single VOD provider offered
access to all films, all the time. There ensued a wider backlash against the
use of data collection, algorithms and computational processes. This
ranged from concerned statements about data surveillance and filter bub-
bles (e.g. Pariser 2011; Cheney-Lippold 2017) to indictments of these
systems’ cold rationality and low credibility (e.g. Steiner 2012; Hallinan
and Striphas 2014; Alexander 2016), not to mention critiques of racist
and sexist technological outcomes (e.g. O’Neil 2016; Noble 2018). To be
sure, as many such as Michael Gubbins (2012, 86) have noted, the “early
narrative of digital change was of a democratising trend away from ‘gate-
keepers’ restricting choice”—the emphasis here clearly on human gate-
keepers. In fact, the rejection of algorithms and the post-digital re-embrace
of the human guide has emerged as a second-wave sentiment that reaches
well beyond recalcitrant nostalgics, steam-punk hipsters and media critics.
Indeed, there has been an outpouring of commentary that “An Algorithm
Isn’t Always the Answer” (Kreizman 2017), that “Our Love Affair with
Digital Is Over” (Sax 2017), or general anti-tech, simplify-your-life digi-
tal-detox guides to “Save Your Sanity. Downgrade Your Life” (Paul
2017)—all of these within a three-month period of New York Times op-
eds. (The newspaper of record began a column entitled “Beyond the
Algorithm” [e.g. Bailey 2021] to provide a human critic’s “under-the-
radar” films and series recommendations that personalised AI might miss.)
In the Guardian, to cite another locus of this persistent message, Rebecca
Nicholson (2018) wrote a love letter to video shops (whose community
spirit and serendipitous word-of-mouth recommendations Netflix had, to
her mind, killed), Rafael Behr (2017) claimed that “Algorithms Outdo
Us. But We Still Prefer Human Fallibility,” while Michael Bhaskar (2016)
pronounced that “In the Age of the Algorithm, the Human Gatekeeper
Is Back.”
These commentators acknowledge cultural surplus—the fact or at least
perception that there are too many films, series, songs and so on, and too
little time to consume them all—as the root cause of VOD recommender
1 INTRODUCTION 3
systems and algorithmic culture more widely. “The more we have,”

according to Bhaskar, “the more we rely on algorithms and automated
recommendation systems. Hence the unstoppable march of algorithmic
recommendations, machine learning, artificial intelligence and big data
into the cultural sphere.” And yet, they submit, algorithmic recommend-
ers do not constitute the solution to cultural surplus, and certainly not the
resolution. The answer, above all, is curation. “Far from disappearing,
human curation and sensibilities have a new value in the age of algorithms.
Yes, the more we have the more we need automation. But we also increas-
ingly want informed and idiosyncratic selections. Humans are back.”
Bhaskar sees evidence for these seemingly blanket pronouncements in big-
tech cultural providers’ retreat from the rhetoric of banishing editorial
content at all costs. Already in the late 1990s, Amazon discarded its edito-
rial book reviews and Netflix similarly discontinued its human-generated
films of the week once their respective algorithmic recommender engines
were beta tested. Nevertheless, both companies seemed to retreat from
this absolutist position: the former company purchased Goodreads, a
trusted site of personal book reviews, and Netflix deploys a modern rec-
ommender system that relies on humans tagging subtle levels of emotion
in films and series, and as much on the “popular” as the “personalised”
(Frey 2021). For Bhaskar (2016), the new reverence for human gatekeep-
ing recognises the cultural (and above all business) value of a deeper, more
intimate and more transparent type of cultural recommendation: curation.
It captures this irreplaceable human touch. We want to be surprised. We

want expertise, distinctive aesthetic judgments, clear expenditure of time
and effort. We relish the messy reality of another’s taste and a trusted per-
sonal connection. We don’t just want correlations—we want a why, a narra-
tive, which machines can’t provide. Even if we define curation as selecting
and arranging, this won’t be left solely to algorithms. Unlike so many sec-
tors experiencing technological disruption, from self-driving cars to auto-
mated accountancy, the cultural sphere will always value human choice, the
unique perspective.
A number of other revisionist or contrarian media critics also began to

see the future of cultural recommendation as much like its past. According
to Michael Wolff (2015, 199), “the future of the future, the higher value
of the future, is always analog—handmade, sought after, exclusive….
Digital’s early attraction, its counterpoint to television, was the promise of
4 M. FREY
infinite uniqueness,” but the end result of algorithmic personalisation has

been “an effective repetition and blandness—that Hallmark drivel of social
media, the qualified and tested lists and headlines of BuzzFeed,” and a
curious resurrection of 1930s and 1940s cinema culture.
The backlash against algorithms has been careful to pitch itself not as
rearguard nostalgia (or late-born, rose-tinted fascination) but rather as a
positive alternative to computational conformity, somehow hipster and
authentic at once. Latching on to the term “curation,” it spawned a dis-
course, a Zeitgeist-feeling, but also a whole set of future-facing business
practices. In the world of VOD, a whole range of services—Jaman, MUBI,
BFI Player, FilmStruck, Criterion Channel, Docsville, FilmDoo,
Filmatique, alleskino, Realeyz, Trigon-Film, YardVibes, Crunchyroll,
Dekkoo, Spuul and many others still existing or already evanescent—
emerged to cater to niche demographics, and in particular the arthouse
and festival audience segments, under the banner of human(ist) sensibility
rather than random bundling. As Johnson (2019, 147) has noted, even
legacy television providers such as the BBC and Channel 4’s Walter
Presents section on its online service All 4 attempted to jump onto the
curation bandwagon.1 Using marketing rhetoric that implicitly (and often
explicitly) pitted itself against the “cold algorithmic logic” of Netflix and
Amazon, these platforms promised a different sort of “personalised” expe-
rience: not a confirmation of existing tastes but instead the provision of
quality audiovisual content (most often films rather than television, with all
of the attendant cultural connotations) delivered to a community with an
appreciation of the bespoke, the rare, the handcrafted or the artistic. With
classics, rare gems or new discoveries, these services purported to surprise
users (in their language often “members,” “friends,” “our community”)
and burst their filter bubbles. As such, these portals sought to fulfil a niche
market need but also take advantage of the expected (and indeed) grow-
ing propensity for North Americans and Europeans to “stack” subscrip-
tion video on demand (SVOD) services, that is, to subscribe to multiple
platforms much in the vein that cable and satellite subscribers added and
subtracted premium channels. In early 2016 US households on average
used 1.96 SVOD services. By 2019, US households subscribed to 3.4
1
Johnson (2019, 147) quotes a BBC executive who uses much the same rhetoric as that
we shall see of MUBI, BFI Player and others: the BBC “can compete with new OTT services
because we have people with editorial judgement. My view is, people plus data beats data,
and people plus data beats people.”
1 INTRODUCTION 5
(and used 4.2) SVOD services; UK usage increased from 1.7 to 2.6 sub-
scriptions in the same period (Gladher 2017; Broughton 2017; Dixon
2019; Albergotti and Ellison 2019). Many of these boutique services,
including MUBI and Shudder, also became available via Amazon as à la
carte “channels.”
Despite the many different SVOD services offering various permutations
of content in any given territory, we can understand and divide these
platforms into two broad categories, which in turn have distinct business
models, modes of content presentation and recommendation, and audi-
ence address. According to Amanda Lotz (2017, 24–26), for example,
two general strategies inform such portals. The first is a “conglomerated
niche strategy,” such as that pursued by large warehouse-style platforms,
whose offerings intend to service the tastes of a variety of distinct audience
segments. In other words, Netflix collects many small groups of people
who may be respectively most interested in sci-fi, horror, romcoms, binge-
worthy British series, Nordic noir and so on. The company then presents
a unique home screen to each of these users that highlights the sort of
content to which they have previously shown predilections, hiding most of
the rest. The second is the “audience strategy” (“curating content to meet
the needs of a specific audience or audience tastes”), in other words,
assembling a clear, coherent and narrower brand of content, for example
primarily or exclusively offering art films or reality series or horror flicks or
Bollywood or LGBTQ-themed content. In this book I will flesh out these
categories and speak, respectively, of two general sides of the SVOD spec-
trum: “algorithm-informed services” and the more niche “curation-style
platforms.”
There is no shortage of press accounts and academic scholarship
surrounding VOD as a concept (Lotz 2017; Robinson 2017; Johnson
2019) and in particular on the larger, warehouse-style, algorithm-informed
services such as Netflix or Amazon (e.g. Thompson 2008; Hallinan and
Striphas 2014; McDonald and Smith-Rowsey 2016; Barker and Wiatrowski
2017; Jenner 2018; Frey 2021). These companies command economies
of scale in content (thousands of licensed or original productions) and
wide swathes of audiences (Netflix boasted of over 200 million members
in early 2021), which they address with algorithmic recommender sys-
tems. These computational programmes weigh users’ behavioural data
with formulas that link users to other similar users (or users to similar
content to that which they have already shown interest) to predict and
present future consumption choices. The promise of these systems is
6 M. FREY
personalised film or series tips, derived from the wisdom of crowds and
tailored to the individual user.
Here, however, I seek to account for the other, less examined end of
the SVOD spectrum: the curation-style platform, focussing above all on
MUBI as a case study. The basic task of such services is the same as their
algorithm-informed counterparts: to provide users with enough satisfac-
tory content to continue subscribing, and to present that content in a way
that is manageable and attractive, rather than overwhelming. And yet their
messaging around the purpose and technology of their content presenta-
tion and recommendation could hardly be more different. Curation-style
providers purport to promote discovery rather than confirming existing
predilections, to elevate and widen taste, to keep up with the latest trends,
to provide a forum for the open- and like-minded, to bestow distinction
(often venerating content as art, rather than mere “content”) and above
all to galvanise decision-making in a more human and humanist form.
In contrast to the lavish attention on Netflix and company, scholarly
regard of MUBI and curation-style providers has been scant and piece-
meal. The few smart takes deserve mention here. Dina Iordanova and
Stuart Cunningham (2012) delivered a key early contribution in the form
of an edited collection of interviews and essays that delved into prime
movers such as Jaman and MUBI. Back then, with VOD in its infancy and
several years before the worldwide rollout of Netflix, predictive hopes and
fears of “disruption” (of film distributors’ and cinema exhibitors’ existing
business practices) were still central to most of the scholarly discussions.
More recently, two articles have examined aspects of MUBI in greater
depth. Hessler (2018) analyses MUBI Social, a forum that formed part of
the service’s early effort to create an interactive user community, arguing
that its shuttering evinced a larger demise of democratic dialogue on the
platform. My short book will elaborate on these insights, providing a full
account of the service’s evolving credibility building, social networking
and overall user address—and how these elements remain essential to the
overall curation-style business model and marketing rhetoric. In turn,
Smits and Nikdel (2019, 22) have provided a useful overview of how
MUBI’s ethos and acquisitions and distribution strategies in the special-
ised film market recall “conventional traditions and practices of linear and
physical media delivery formats.” This conclusion, as well as their clear-
eyed revision of MUBI beyond early utopian rhetoric on VOD, serves as
an important point of departure for my own investigation. My treatise
recognises and emphasises how the real-world practices of streaming
1 INTRODUCTION 7
services, whether algorithm-led or curation-style, represent continuity as

much as change—despite the often bombastic claims of novelty emanating
from these companies’ marketing departments.
Let me make my intentions known and this short book’s overall
argument plain. Using the case study of MUBI, I will demonstrate, on the
one hand, how such services set up the “curation model” via marketing
and publicity rhetoric, content acquisition and presentation,
recommendation styles and explanations, user interfaces and choice
architectures, community building, industry engagement, and a whole
bevy of associated cultural forms and business tactics. As such, “curation”
constitutes a boutique business model and concomitant marketing rhetoric
for a set of niche VOD providers, informed conceptually by contemporary
connotations of curation in popular discourse and (pseudo-)scholarly
business and cultural theories of the “long tail,” the “paradox of choice”
and the “curated model of selection.” On the surface, at least, these
services actively remediate (and defiantly celebrate) atavistic cultural
mediators, especially museum curators, festival programmers and critics
for newspapers, television and radio. They reject the algorithm-informed
personalisation taste-model and instead take pains to present a personal,
supposedly authentic experience, with the intention of boosting
recommendation credibility and intensifying users’ identification with
the brand.
On the other hand, however, I argue that although curation-style
services stake out a distinct brand identity as an antipole to Netflix or
Amazon in publicity messages, curation-style VOD services are best
understood on a spectrum with, and as a complement to, the mass-
audience algorithmic providers: like boutiques to the megamall. They seek
to fill in market gaps of diversity and artistic distinction left wide open by
Netflix and others, and slake real (if circumscribed) consumer demand for
feature films of periods, cultures, attitudes and styles more distant from
the mainstream. In the end, however, this book will show that although
many have tried, few companies have been able to survive long term using
this model, especially in the art film marketplace. Many if not most of
these services fail to attract sufficient user bases to sustain themselves as
going concerns. Indeed, Chap. 7, the afterword to the MUBI case study,
will demonstrate how the company eventually relinquished a pure
curation-style system in 2020 to become, in effect, an arthouse version of
Netflix or Amazon, settling on the strategy of vertical integration and the
tactics of pre-buys, original productions and theatrical distribution. The
8 M. FREY
itinerary of this history casts serious doubts about the sustainability of

long-tail items and curation as more than a short-term niche business
paradigm. This conclusion poses serious, larger questions about the future
diversity of VOD providers: many would seem to be under long-term
threat of extinction, faced with the increasing market concentration of
Netflix, Amazon and Disney.
Why is it important to investigate MUBI and how does this book
overall contribute to a better understanding of VOD, (art) film and digital
culture? First, this book offers the hitherto most comprehensive examina-
tion of MUBI, which claims to be the world’s most subscribed indepen-
dent SVOD service. Unlike other platforms that have grown out of media
empires or fiefdoms (e.g. FilmStruck, BFI Player, Curzon Home Cinema),
MUBI arose as a startup in 2007 and now figures as a major player in the
specialised film market. MUBI history helps us understand a broader busi-
ness narrative about how digital-media companies survive, especially
within contemporary art film culture. MUBI—but also competitor VOD
streamers, film festivals, exhibitors and distributors—has had to vertically
expand and integrate; what was once a licensee of art films is now a funder,
producer, theatrical and DVD distributor, not to mention (canny) bene-
factor of exhibitors, film festivals and film schools. By example, this book
suggests how even smaller “VOD streamers”—sometimes treated as mere
pipelines to deliver films to viewers’ homes—are having much wider effects
on the traditional film value chain in the digital age.
Second, examining MUBI stands in for a larger anatomy of “curation-
style” VOD as a cultural and social paradigm. In targeted and persistent
marketing messages, these services promote themselves as unlike Netflix
or Amazon not only for their distinct content; they highlight the fact that
human experts—rather than algorithms—“hand pick” this content and
present these films to audiences with explanatory rationales and other con-
textual information, on a sleekly designed website. Up to now, these plat-
forms have received far less scrutiny than overall market leaders Netflix or
Amazon Prime. And yet—at least taken in aggregate—they provide con-
tent variety and added value to many (niche-public) film consumers. The
book thus functions as a contribution to, and a call for, a wider body of
research into the logics, forms and formats of discoverability, recommen-
dation and choice architecture in digital (film and media) culture.
Third and finally, on a meta-level the MUBI case study (and indeed this
book overall) offers a new, holistic methodological approach to research-
ing VOD services in particular and digital-age media companies more
1 INTRODUCTION 9
broadly. My point of departure is closely aligned with the practices and

procedures of critical media industry studies (e.g. Holt and Perren 2009;
Havens et al. 2009; Herbert et al. 2020). The main principle that under-
pins this methodology—the conviction that media industries emerge from
(1) underlying social conditions and contradictions; (2) working practices,
hierarchies and ownership patterns; (3) and the discourses communicated
by practitioners (Freeman 2016)—necessitates diverse and complemen-
tary objects and methods of inquiry. With this project and case study, I
seek not only to adopt the best practices of critical media industry studies,
but to develop the approach further, specifically by exhibiting a triangula-
tive methodology that addresses what has become a traditional point of
complaint and practical hindrance when examining VOD and digital-age
media companies more broadly: these organisations’ lack of candour,
especially regarding their user base. This effort can serve as a paradigm for
researching and understanding, for instance, VOD audiences in the light
of streamers’ “black box” of proprietary data. To this end, I triangulate
analysis of:
• theoretical, cultural and business discourse surrounding “curation”;

• web/app interface and design;
• content;
• marketing and publicity rhetoric;
• company employees’ public statements, press releases, reports and
interviews (and my own interviews with them);
• business history as reported in the trade press, cinephile magazines
and the broader news media;
• publicly accessible audience data;
• my own specially commissioned nationally representative quantitative
VOD user surveys;
• my own qualitative semi-structured interviews and demonstrations
with VOD users.
This methodology explicitly blends top-down concerns and sources

(e.g. published statements by company executives) with bottom-up
approaches (e.g. empirical audience study), thus productively blending
what Alisa Perren (2013, 166) characterises as the two main ways of
researching film distribution and film culture more broadly. Whereas the
former, predominantly political economy-informed approaches tend to
dwell on corporate power and intentions by examining internal documents
10 M. FREY
and items from newspapers and the trades, the latter, influenced by cultural
studies, uses interviews to explain larger sociocultural issues. Like an alloy,
this admixture of methods strengthens the rigour and integrity of the
individual parts, with the aim of providing a fuller account and more
confident conclusions about MUBI and curation-style providers’ integral
features and their place within the larger media landscape.
By way of preview to the book and its overall structure, Chap. 2 sets the
scene by exploring curation as a contemporary cultural discourse. It illu-
minates how the concept ties into current self-help simplicity rhetoric and
reacts to long-standing and historical perceptions of “too many films” and
cultural surplus. Chapter 3 extends this discussion by outlining how cura-
tion has been theorised as a potent business model in digital culture and
how a few such exemplary VOD services consciously avail themselves of
the curation discourse in the structure of their consumer offer and
branding.
Chapters 4, 5 and 6 undertake a sustained case study of MUBI, which
claims to be the world’s largest curation-style art film SVOD service, by
examining trade press, industry documents, interviews with executives,
interface design, marketing messages, audience data and other sources.
Specifically, Chap. 4 narrates MUBI’s historical trajectory from arthouse
aggregator with weak forms of recommendation to a full embrace of a
thirty-film curation model. It simultaneously details the company’s busi-
ness model transformation, establishment of credibility within the (art)
film industry via partnerships and deal-making, and finally vertical forays
into original co-productions, DVD distribution and theatrical exhibition
partnerships. The company has thereby assumed traditional functions of
festivals, repertory cinemas, indie studios and arthouse distributors. In
turn, Chap. 5 dissects MUBI’s web and app interface, illuminating how
the service attempts to consolidate a taste community by reactivating and
modernising traditional recommendation models and inscribing a digital-
culture, neo-liberal, neo-Habermasian form of gatekeeping. Chapter 6
concludes the case study by offering a mixed-method, multimodal analysis
of MUBI’s audience. This analysis reveals, among other insights, how the
company has cultivated a relatively young, culturally omnivorous and
tech-savvy arthouse-style audience with a thirst for thorough contextual
information and a high trust in traditional human expertise, such as
onscreen recommendations and critics’ reviews.
Finally, Chap. 7 deliberates on the sustainability of the curation model
and the extent to which algorithmic and curation-style VOD providers in
1 INTRODUCTION 11
fact represent distinct business paradigms, recommendation modes and

audience experiences. Ultimately, MUBI partially abandoned the model in
2020, and many other ventures such as FilmStruck and Jaman have shut-
tered. These failures on the one hand provide another death knell for the
“long tail” and other curation theories, and on the other underline the
urgency for alternative models of media pluralism in a world increasingly
dominated by behemoths such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney.
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Initiative Helps Niche SVoD Visibility. Ampere Analysis, 1 June. https://www.
ampereanalysis.com/blog/64a229cd-93e6-42f5-bafc-d55ca4f1f745.
Gubbins, Michael. 2012. Digital Revolution: Active Audiences and Fragmented
Consumption. In Digital Disruption: Cinema Moves On-line, ed. Dina
Iordanova and Stuart Cunningham, 67–100. St. Andrews: St. Andrews
Film Studies.
Hallinan, Blake, and Ted Striphas. 2014. Recommended for You: The Netflix
Prize and the Production of Algorithmic Culture. New Media and Society 18
(1): 117–137.
Havens, Timothy, Amanda D. Lotz, and Serra Tinic. 2009. Critical Media Industry
Studies: A Research Approach. Communication, Culture and Critique 2
(2): 234–253.
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Industry Studies. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hessler, Jennifer. 2018. Quality You Can’t Touch: Mubi Social, Platform Politics,
and the Online Distribution of Arthouse Cinema. Velvet Light Trap 82: 3–17.
Holt, Jennifer, and Alisa Perren, eds. 2009. Media Industries: History, Theory, and
Method. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
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Moves On-line. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies.
Jenner, Mareike. 2018. Netflix and the Re-invention of Television. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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24 November. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/opinion/sunday/
holidays-gifts-algorithms-online-dating.html.
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Arbor, MI: Maize.
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and Entertainment in the 21st Century. New York: Bloomsbury.
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Me, They Were a Lifeline. Guardian, 19 July. https://www.theguardian.com/
commentisfree/2018/jul/19/video-shops-netflix-blockbuster.
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Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press.
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London: Penguin.
1 INTRODUCTION 13
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18 August. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/sunday/
technology-downgrade-sanity.html.
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November. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/18/opinion/sunday/
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Old Media in the Digital Age. New York: Portfolio/Penguin.
CHAPTER 2
Curation as Discourse, Trend and Cultural

Salve
Abstract This chapter identifies curation as a contemporary cultural dis-

course. It illuminates how the concept ties into self-help simplicity rheto-
ric as well as acts on perceptions of cultural surplus. Although the scholarly
literature on cultural consumption choice by social psychology, economics
and marketing scholars is decidedly mixed, a number of cultural commen-
tators, concerned about cultural surplus, filter bubbles, data surveillance
and other matters, have captured the pop-cultural imagination by promot-
ing curation as a cultural salve to anxieties surrounding “too much” (data,
films, material objects and so on). This chapter also contextualises this
contemporary discourse historically: although this has been swelling
recently in response to real spikes in media production and data prolifera-
tion, humans have been anxious about too much information and cultural
products since at least Roman times.
Keywords Curation • Cultural surplus • Cultural choice • Filter

bubbles • Minimalism • Gatekeeping
Conceptually, curation incorporates principles of selecting and ordering,

combining or separating, aggregating and filtering, prioritising and con-
textualising, explaining and elucidating, evaluating, criticising or demysti-
fying. Its core purpose is the delivery of surplus value. Placing a spotlight
on one desired object or series of objects, curation is a subtraction that

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80076-5_2
16 M. FREY
adds: by limiting or otherwise altering the perspective of a search, applying

a category by which to browse, or designating a specific audience to tar-
get, it filters out waste or excess and thereby adds a perception of quality,
customisation and efficiency.
In this manner, moreover, curation aspires to provide coherence. For its
many enthusiastic proponents and business aficionados, it focusses atten-
tion, imposes order and makes meaning. Curation is about providing a
better kind of choice. Of course, any filtering hides, predigests, alters con-
texts and modifies perspectives; it forecloses alternatives and can obscure
the bigger picture and its principles (and biases) of selection. Nevertheless,
the aggregation that curation provides is supposedly a smart form of sim-
plification: joined-up thinking, an economy of small scale, a critical mass,
a collection more valuable than the sum of its individual parts. Curation
aims to provide safety in numbers. Even if the amassed objects or data can-
not be consumed in whole by one human being in one sitting, they are
organised into categories and hierarchies, they are searchable or otherwise
masterable.
As a term, curation has redefined (or at least rebranded) occupations,
old and new. Before 2010, the profession of “content curator” would have
elicited blank stares; now such positions regularly appear in advertise-
ments. Well-worn job descriptors—including programmers and librarians,
photo editors, film funders, network executives and distributors—are
being reinvented as “curators.” These monikers also function as euphe-
misms to dress up older tasks, such as censorship, now performed with
new technologies. As ever, new media appropriate the language of the old
and extant.
In turn, various connotations and levels of cultural status adhere to
curation vis-à-vis “programming” or “filtering” or “gatekeeping.” By sub-
tly and silently invoking desired values of taste and class, “curation” deliv-
ers significant appeal to marketers. Curation comes laden with over a
century’s worth of cultural capital from visual arts museums and highbrow
critical organs. (Woe to all who tell self-described “curators” that their
mission is merely selecting or programming.) Whereas filtering implies a
mere whittling down (of unnecessary or superfluous content), curation
also gestures to joining, adding, combining. It is no accident that the
authors who celebrate new tools to combat too much media choice call it
curation (e.g. Bhaskar 2016); the treatises about how such processes frag-
ment our society or brainwash users tend to use other epithets (e.g. Pariser
2011). Indeed, these terms activate alternate normative moral judgements
2 CURATION AS DISCOURSE, TREND AND CULTURAL SALVE 17
in jeremiads about filter bubbles, public sphericules or the gauche ubiquity

of curation. Contested concepts that commentators bend to fit their cho-
sen focus and agenda, such words elide (or, depending on one’s perspec-
tive and inclination to self-reflect, help us talk about) taboo subjects.
Today we often speak about curation or discovery rather than taste (let
alone class) hierarchies.
Despite its current cachet, however, curation persists as a form of cul-
tural recommendation whose origins precede the digital age. The very first
public museums, founded well before the Common Era, assembled vener-
ated items of religious and cultural import; for over two centuries the
Louvre Museum has curated a collection of painting, sculpture and other
art forms, a one-stop shop for the best of human cultural production. The
Book of the Month Club, which offered a curated book subscription
selection to members was founded in 1926; the Columbia House and
BMG music clubs deployed similar business models for records, cassette
tapes and CDs since the mid-1950s. The cable channel Turner Classic
Movies, to cite an example from television, has since 1994 created value
by aggregating the MGM and early Warner Bros. film libraries and broad-
casting them throughout the year.1 Indeed, since the beginnings of media
all humans have performed their own self-filtering in the form of various
conscious and unconscious heuristics and repertoires. Responding psy-
chologically to media choice, some of us remain satisfied with the first
attractive option, whereas others pore through long lists in the anxiety
that there might be a better choice forthcoming (Webster 2014, 36–38;
Hasebrink and Domeyer 2012). For a long time now, even the greediest
culture vulture lacks the time to consume every film or series available to
her or him. Filtering, if not curation, is a necessary and permanent human
task in order to navigate and provide coherence to the cultural sphere.
Although, as we shall see, commentators outline various conceptual
underpinnings of curation, nearly all agree on one fundamental principle:
curation is not a neutral presentation, but rather an intellectual and social
intervention that an algorithm or computer a priori cannot execute.
Activities performed under the banner of curation have attempted to
impart knowledge; they have also sought to inculcate social protocols and
norms, forms of communal belonging and citizenship, and ways of seeing
and understanding (Dovey 2015, 29; Morgan 2013, 23). At least since
the 1960s, with the rapid postwar rise and expansion of film festivals,
1
On the history of studio film libraries, see Hoyt (2014).
18 M. FREY
curation has accrued heroic, romantic associations in audiovisual culture.

The curator has in some (self-)presentations figured as a pendant to the
auteur, a bearer of an against-the-grain subjective vision. Through selec-
tion and arrangement, s/he authors a narrative; through presentation and
context, the curator acts as a stylist, aesthete and critic. These aspirational
tasks overlap and compete with new and legacy roles of cultural recom-
mendation. Indeed, it is no coincidence that the periods of what film his-
torians call the “age of the programmer” and the “golden age of criticism”
coincided. The auratic qualities, but also the good-taste signalling and the
promotion of a common set of classic works registered special importance
at a time when many were agitating for film’s artistic status and worth as a
subject of serious appreciation and study.2
Recently, Robinson (2017, 5–6) has proposed to see “curation” as a
metaphor in the sense of Lakoff and Johnson (1980): a word whose vari-
ous cultural appropriations structure how we understand the (media)
world and something that veils hidden meanings. Robinson coins the term
“curatorial culture” to describe “a new era of media consumption” in
which a “scarcity of viewing access and options” has been superseded by
“scarcity of viewer time and attention” (12–13). Faced with the disparate
usages of “curation”—the old-world concept of stewarding artistic work
and the new-media entrepreneurialism of filtering out noisy data—
Robinson squares the circle and follows previous commentators by pro-
posing that the root of these shifting definitions is the idea of “guardianship”;
curation exceeds mere aggregation by providing the added value of evalu-
ation (20–23).
To be sure, curation-style VOD services such as MUBI recall old-media
recommendation concepts: gatekeeping, human expertise, professional-
ism and broadcasting. As Roderik Smits and E. W. Nikdel (2019, 25) cor-
rectly note, “MUBI’s online strategy is rooted in common practices
associated with repertory film programming, reinforcing the theme of
continuity, rather than outright disruption” in digital culture. In addition,
curation-style providers infuse this top-down wisdom with modern forms
of consumer address, a mode of relating to their community of viewers
that implies egalitarian, populist cultural flows. To an extent, new curation
services resuscitate traditional one-size-fits-all theories of curation, for
2
For an account of film festival periodisation by which curation became a central concern,
see De Valck (2007, 167–170, 2012, 29–32). For an example of the curator-as-author line,
see Cousins (2013).
example canon-building à la Matthew Arnold (1993 [1869]) and

F. R. Leavis (1948), which promised to enlighten the masses with the best
of the hitherto thought, said and created. Under this understanding, taste
is not merely an instrumental synonym for consumer preference, but
rather “good taste is a valuable thing to attain and train in others,” a
shared, communal process “through which idealized versions of the per-
son are imagined, through which people are trained for social life and
through which identities are formed” (Wright 2015, 2).
Nevertheless, this reactivation comes with a modern twist: the new
curation-style recommenders approach their task largely cognisant of
widespread cynicism towards authority, performing their service with
canny and ironic acquisitions principles, critical context, marketing mes-
sages and recommendation explanations that, at least on the surface, dis-
avow “great works” rhetoric for the language of hidden gems, discoveries
and authenticity. The proliferation of choice enabled by on-demand plat-
forms—the power for the individual user to choose among wide assort-
ments of content available outside of linear cinema or television listings
and with fewer restrictions on time, place and device—has increased the
visibility and cultural-economic potential for aggregation, but has also
stoked anxious perceptions of fragmentation and excess, not to mention
the fear of missing out. Curation-style recommenders’ strategies of surplus
management seek to assuage these anxieties.
In so doing, these services consciously partake of, and feed into, a
trend, wider discourse and cultural phenomenon. Curation—together
with words such as artisan, bespoke or (hand)craft(ed)—has gained
remarkable traction in the twenty-first century’s digital age. Google
Trends indicates that the term curation has tripled in search frequency
since 2004, with an especially accelerated growth between 2009 and
2012. “Data curation” and “digital curation” are some of the most fre-
quently sought after subjects, key skills in the age of Metafilter, Slashdot
and Reddit. Google’s Ngram Viewer also reveals a sharp spike in books
about curation since 1980, after an overall downturn in the twentieth
century (Bhaskar 2016, 78–81). Indeed, it is vital to emphasise the con-
temporary polyvalence of curation: as a word and concept, it resounds
with at least two distinct (yet surely overlapping) meanings. First, it func-
tions as an operative logic with an intended perceptible distinction from
“programming,” “list-building,” “archiving” or other common terms to
describe the assemblage and offering of cultural objects to an audience.
Second, curation figures as a symbolic cultural phenomenon and
20 M. FREY
somewhat empty cipher in the early twenty-first century, one hardly iso-
lated to film and also encompassing music, food, material objects and
so forth.
In digital-humanities power searches, in research librarians’ data-
storage conferences and in web developers’ instruction manuals on digital
curation, the term has achieved an increasingly inflationary currency, with
many diverse activities being subsumed under this rubric (e.g., Sabharwal
2015; Gardiner and Gere 2010; Johnston 2017; Valenza 2014; Anderson
2015; Betts and Anderson 2016). Apple speaks of “Curated Computing”
to describe the process of selecting (or rejecting) iPhone applications for
its online store (Van Buskirk 2010). These days, the word describes how
Facebook or Google News collates news outlets’ items in users’ feeds, or
how Pandora or Spotify organises music. Online marketers use software
tools to effect “content curation,” in other words “the process of sifting
through all the various sources of content on the web to compile a list of
the most informative or interesting pieces to then share with your target
audience” (De Cunha 2017), a task charged to a newly coined profession,
“Learning Curators” (Bower n.d.). Ross Harvey (2010, 7) contends that
curation is an “inclusive” term that incorporates but transcends mere
archiving or preservation by both adding value to content as well as
addressing a range of processes over the lifecycle of digital content (rather
than at a single point in time), akin to a “digital stewardship.” Bachelor
and Master courses in curation (or overarching fields such as “Culture,
Criticism and Curation,” which Central St Martins University of the Arts
London offers) have proliferated in recent years. Travel itineraries are no
longer planned but rather “carefully curated,” and the word is applied to
furniture, cosmetics, restaurant menus, clothing lines, recipes, Instagram
shares and YouTube cat videos. In turn, the term has faced disparagement
in the news media and parody from comedians as one of today’s most
overused and misused words (Rosenbaum 2014; Bhaskar 2016, 3–4). In
a recent New York Times article (Stoppard 2020), the US-American paper
of record declared that “Everyone’s a Curator Now,” posing the conun-
drum that if “everything is ‘curated,’ what does the word even mean?”
Film culture has proved no exception to the rule; its usage carries a
similarly ambiguous halo. The Film Curation MA degree at the University
of Glasgow is one indicator: “The MSc in Film Curation offers you the
opportunity to explore film programming in a variety of theoretical,
historical and practical contexts.”3 One wonders if this is not film pro-
gramming, by another name? In fact, scanning contemporary film trade
papers, whole sets of activities now come under the lexical auspices of
curation. In a recent article about the supposed current overproduction of
films, various industry insiders deploy the word to describe at least four
different activities and agents. The CEO of a Scandinavian distributor, for
instance, refers to the “audience as the curator,” to express how consumer
choices determine which films will succeed or fail, a primitive idea expressed
in much less lofty terms for most of film history; a bureaucrat working for
Eurimages, the European cinema subsidy fund, calls himself a “curator”
(Mitchell 2017). From festival selectors to funding bodies to distribution
companies, the feared “gatekeeper” now re-emerges as the friendly,
democratic-yet-upmarket “curator.”
In film scholarship, activities that have traditionally and routinely been
referred to as “archiving,” “preservation,” “programming,” “collection,”
“cataloguing,” “documentation,” “selection” or “buying/acquiring”
now bear the catch-all phrase. The historians, programmers, archivists and
self-professed “film curators” Paolo Cherchi Usai et al. (2008, 5) differen-
tiate curating from archiving by virtue of intellectual added value: “inter-
pretation is what differentiates a collecting body from a mere repository of
audiovisual content.” After hours of dialogues, transcribed over 230
pages, they agree on a working definition of film curatorship as the “art of
interpreting the aesthetics, history, and technology of cinema through the
selective collection, preservation, and documentation of films and their
exhibition in archival presentations” (231).
Curation, as a discourse today, is fundamentally Janus-faced: old and
new, highbrow but democratic and accessible, tech-savvy yet nostalgically
authentic. It looks back to the great-works selection processes that prom-
ise enlightenment to the follower, absorbing the status of the gallery and
museum circuit. But it also appropriates the digital-culture language of
the present and supposed future, the data and content curation of today’s
computer programming. A less threatening placeholder for “taste,” a term
laden with hierarchical associations about class and cultural authority, and
anathema to pseudo-democratic new-media rhetoric, “curation” contains
multiple points of attraction that gesture to a politics of authenticity, a
potential economy of consumer desire and cultural mediation. Subject to
hyperinflation, the “curation” cultural currency nonetheless retains an
3
See http://www.gla.ac.uk/postgraduate/taught/filmcuration/.
22 M. FREY
essential value among receptive marketing demographics, especially as a

response to perceived problems of cultural surplus.
“Too Much”: Curation as Salve to Perceptions

of Cultural Surplus
Examining curation as a concept, buzzword and trend helps explain the

function and appeal of VOD recommender systems. It speaks to a wider
cultural phenomenon that contextualises and inflects these practices. As
one art historian notes, the processes of collecting and curating “cannot
be considered separately from the cultural characteristics of the society
undertaking it” (Cannon-Brookes 1984, 115). Despite the fuzziness of
the term in bestseller how-to manuals, adverts and hipster bartalk (these
are popular discussions and marketing slogans, after all, not philosophical
symposia), among these diverse accounts a few first principles obtain:
above all, that we need curation to survive the modern world’s economy
of attention. If curation is the answer, excess is the purported problem.
Curation remains a symptom of, and seeks to resolve, problems of pleni-
tude; it figures, according to its champions, as a safe and authentic alterna-
tive to algorithmic recommendation.
Statistical indicators demonstrate how choice in audiovisual produc-
tions, channels of dissemination and media platforms increased precipi-
tously in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. For example,
between 2006 and 2019 the number of films exhibited theatrically each
year rose 41 per cent in the United States and 78 per cent in the United
Kingdom; the number of films produced per annum (rather than those in
theatrical distribution) in EU countries increased substantially between
2007 (1444 features) and 2016 (2124 features), for a sum total of 18,000
films across the ten-year period (European Audiovisual Observatory 2017,
1). In the late 1990s, to cite one last example of the surge, about fifteen
to twenty film festivals ran each year in the United Kingdom; by 2017,
that number had ballooned 1900 per cent to four hundred (Follows 2013;
Koljonen 2017, 11); Moeran and Pedersen (2011, 4) estimated 3500
worldwide only a decade into the twenty-first century. Of course, these
data points do not yet broach matters such as the three-figure television
channel landscape and the hundreds of VOD services currently on offer.
The available quantities of media content and consumption portals have
long since surpassed individual humans’ abilities to adequately survey

them, let alone watch a substantial fraction of these films.
To be sure, rigorous meta-analyses delineate decidedly mixed effects of
numerous choice options on cultural consumption and decision-making.
A prominent strand of traditional theoretical choice models and empirical
research in social psychology, economics and marketing indicates that
humans crave expanded choice and enjoy choosing from many options
(e.g. Arrow 1963; Rieskamp et al. 2006). These studies suggest that more
choice leads to more choosing: in other words, higher sales and more sat-
isfied consumers (Rolls et al. 1981; Sloot et al. 2006). On the other hand,
further research (e.g. Iyengar and Lepper 2000; Chernev 2003) has sug-
gested that when we have too many choices at our disposal—whether
chocolate assortments, jam flavours, wine varieties or television chan-
nels—we are apt to choose none of the above. This is the so-called choice
overload hypothesis. When Scheibehenne et al. (2010) performed a meta-
analysis of fifty experiments on this overall subject, they found a mean
effect size of virtually zero and considerable variance between the studies.
Another meta-analysis (Chernev et al. 2015) of ninety-nine experiments
found that choice size is indeed significant, but only when taking into
account choice set complexity, decision task difficulty, preference uncer-
tainty and decision goals. My purpose here is not to take a side in what is
clearly an active debate. Rather, I seek to point out how one side—the
choice overload hypothesis—has successfully and perhaps disproportion-
ately filtered into the news media and pop culture. Indeed, Scheibehenne
et al. (2010, 417) found a publication bias towards the choice overload
hypothesis among the scientific studies, which they attribute to the “so-
called Prometheus effect, according to which tantalizing counterintuitive
findings have an initial advantage for getting published.” Precisely this
paradoxical, counterintuitive idea—no doubt easily relatable to many in an
anecdotal, confirmatory way—has found many proponents and followers
outside ivory towers.
The proliferation of media choice has manifested as a discourse of anxi-
ety. We can read about problematic excess in university bookshop titles
but also online bestsellers and breezy sign-of-the-times airport hardbacks.
These Zeitgeist diagnoses—Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice: Why
More Is Less (2004); Steven Rosenbaum’s Curation Nation: How to Win in
a World Where Consumers Are Creators (2011); Tom Vanderbilt’s Taste in
an Age of Endless Choice (2016); Michael Bhaskar’s Curation: The Power of
Selection in a World of Excess (2016)—remain perhaps more valuable as
24 M. FREY
symptoms than as rigorous scientific analyses of cultural epiphenomena.

“When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable,” Schwartz (2004,
2) writes in his popular survey. But as choice continues to expand, “the
negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no
longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.” The
disadvantage of having access to so many films, according to Vanderbilt
(2016, 51), “is expending more time in deciding what to watch.” Absent
the time to read critical reviews in cinephile magazines, he continues,
referring to VOD recommender systems, “there might be some benefit to
off-loading some of my decision making and discovery process to a
computer.”
Excess is the culprit in Marie Kondo’s self-help guides and Netflix
series; her KonMari method of discarding unused clothing and other clut-
terbugs, heavily covered in upmarket left-liberal dailies like the New York
Times and the Guardian, advocates a tidy living space with heavy doses of
faux-Zen self-Orientalism. The move towards downsizing material goods
and cultural offerings in the name of simplicity and the elimination of
agonising or time-consuming decisions resound also with trends towards
slow food, slimmed-down or chef’s-choice restaurant menus, not to men-
tion the frugal FIRE (financial independence retire early) crusaders. In
hoary hoarder reality shows, pack rats are the new fat, served up with prêt-
à-manger Schadenfreude. The minimalism movement propels forward in
a thousand new-age-guru blogs and films such as Minimalism: A
Documentary About the Important Things (2015). Curation, it seems, like
thinness or mindfulness, functions as a virtue in itself, a will to
self-fulfilment.
These meanings, perceived problems and social needs circulating in the
public sphere are important motivations for the curation-style VOD rec-
ommender systems and their marketing address: a service for the cash rich
and time poor that combines “best of” culture with a low-stress “healthy”
format. Bhaskar’s pop-scholarly ode (2016) provides a symptomatically
revealing insight into the draw of curation as a method of cultural media-
tion. Defining curation as the act of selecting and arranging (including
related operations such as refinement, reduction, display, simplification,
presentation and explanation) in order to add value, Bhaskar argues that
curation is nothing short of a sociocultural remedy, yes necessity, in an age
of unprecedented abundance, satiety and excess (8, 85). Indeed, Bhaskar
sees curation—despite its long history and his ex post facto application of
the term to many tasks undertaken by humans for thousands of years—as
a sign of the contemporary moment. Noting the 2.5 quintillion bytes of

data that the world produces each day—data that includes tweets, e-mail
spam and CCTV footage—Bhaskar wonders how a society can manage a
daily information overload in which a pocket device can store the entire
contents of the Library of Congress (1–2). A civilisation that has solved
the problem of information scarcity now faces the dilemma of information
overload: “We don’t always need more information. Instead, value lies
today in better curating information” (3).
In pop-scholarly literature, curation functions as a code for a reinvigo-
rated economy of cultural presentation and recommendation. Its champi-
ons promote curation as a quick fix to contemporary first-world,
middle-class problems of both material and data abundance, a new devel-
opment after the long era of informational asymmetry. That is, for much
of human history, sellers of services and products have leveraged superior
intelligence about the quality of their goods—a particularly vexing prob-
lem for experience goods such as films, television programmes, restaurant
visits or holiday trips, transactions whose subjective value can only truly be
confirmed by the buyer after consumption (Akerlof 1970). Today, how-
ever, a jaunt to Yelp, TripAdvisor or Rotten Tomatoes can reveal a whole
wealth of reviews and caveats about any particular restaurant, hotel, film
and so on. In theory, the proliferation and democratisation of recommen-
dation represent welcome developments. Yet because media consumers in
rich countries like the United States and United Kingdom are now inun-
dated with cultural recommendations of various shapes and provenance, a
second-order need arises: to sift through the quality and credibility of
recommendations themselves. Curation advocates argue that we need a
benign authority to tell us what to watch.
On the one hand, popular accounts of curation must be read with scep-
ticism, mindful of stakeholders’ roles, interests and imperatives. Authors
like Bhaskar, Rosenbaum, Schwartz or Vanderbilt have strong incentives
to play up the severity of an urgent problem and offer a catch-all,
buzzword-heavy solution ready for the New York Times bestseller list.
Vincent Mosco (2004, 36) has described such new-media storytellers as
bricoleurs who pull “together the bits and pieces of technology’s narra-
tives, to fashion a mobilizing story for our time.”
On the other hand, we need to consider how the discourses of surplus
and curation resurrect long-standing social anxieties and cultural prescrip-
tions. The motion picture industry has long complained about too much
product, a fact that seems to attenuate snap judgements about an
26 M. FREY
unprecedented, novel dilemma. Between 1906 and 2016, Variety contains

422 references to “too many films,” 89 mentions of “too many movies,”
171 complaints about “too many pictures” and 88 notices regarding “too
many pix,” with the earliest mention in 1913. To be sure, some of these
referred to “too many films in 3D” or “too many movies about superhe-
roes.” Nevertheless, in general, the point about an anxiety regarding over-
production obtains. Trolls through other industry trade papers, such as
Boxoffice, Independent Exhibitors Film Bulletin, Broadcasting, Hollywood
Reporter, Radio and Television Mirror, Modern Screen and Screen
International, and searches for “too many TV shows,” yielded similar
results. These earnest lamentations took place in the historical context of
a fraction of today’s film production, well before the 300-channel televi-
sion palette and overpopulated VOD landscape.
Indeed, tracking out from digital film and television to the larger issue
of cultural surplus, there is no shortage of historical complaints about too
many media options and a thirst for cultural guidance. Alvin Toffler’s
Future Shock, a six-million-copy bestseller from 1970, argued that society
was changing at a pace that exceeded human limitations to process and
understand. Bearing down on the key terms “overstimulation” and “infor-
mation overload,” the book contends that developments in technology
and the resulting increases in choice would have profound (and dire) soci-
ological and psychological consequences. Among the culprits of this cog-
nitive overstimulation are the mass media, including television, but in
particular what Toffler saw as a dangerous trend for market segmentation
and niche media products, evidenced both in the trend for smaller cinemas
in the United States and Europe (nostalgic for film palaces with capacities
of 4000, he calls then-new 150-seaters in London “midget movie houses”),
but also to what he deems smaller films. “Today in cities across the coun-
try these ‘mainstream’ movies,” which sought to attract a mass audience,
“are supplemented by foreign movies, art films, sex movies, and a whole
stream of specialized motion pictures consciously designed to appeal to
sub-markets—surfers, hot-rodders, motorcyclists, and the like” (252).
One shudders to think what Toffler would have made of today’s postage-
stamp- sized multiplex cinemas, cocooned Netflix-and-chilling, not to
mention the spectre of algorithm-assisted niche-content produc-
tion models.
In crucial ways, Toffler’s argument represents The Filter Bubble avant la
lettre: his work anticipates many contemporary cultural theorists’ con-
demnations of the internet and its effects on content diversity, cultural
gatekeeping and social atomisation in film and television culture. And yet,
we should remember, Toffler’s ideas were hardly unprecedented even in
1970: they constitute one marker in a long genealogy. In an essay on the
“Cult of Distraction” (1926) and several others (e.g. 1927), cultural critic
Siegfried Kracauer illuminated a world of mass communications—includ-
ing cinema, photography and illustrated daily newspapers—designed to
elicit an overstimulation of the senses. This sentiment was shared among
various thinkers in 1920s Weimar Germany, for example Martin
Heidegger’s (1927) critique of modern technology and the loss of con-
templative perception. And yet these sign-of-the-times treatises on specific
matrices of new entertainment offerings and sociopolitical constellations
echo a longer historical trajectory of similar observations. Already in 1903
sociologist Georg Simmel diagnosed a fragmented urban culture and
mental life riddled and oversaturated with the trappings of technological
innovation. In the nineteenth century, following Industrial Revolution
moral panics about cold capitalist overproduction, leading Victorian think-
ers in England wrote invectives that considered the sprawling intellectual
interests of new university departments and their associated scholarly jour-
nals as a danger to a cohesive public sphere (D. Williams 2006, 24). Others
(Frey 2015, 14–17, 141–143) have detailed film critics’ long-standing and
recurrent worries about a fragmented cultural landscape. Indeed, histori-
ans have demonstrated how perceptions of information overload date back
even prior to Seneca’s first-century pronouncements on the overabun-
dance of books and the need to read selectively. The fourteenth-century
philosopher Jean Buridan was already profoundly worried about informa-
tion overload in decision-making, inspiring later ruminations on the sub-
ject (Zupko 2003; Lipowski 1970). By the late antiquity and early modern
period there were already numerous well-developed strategies to navigate
the perceived surfeit of information via recommendation systems, includ-
ing digests, indexes and compendia, prototypes of today’s filtering, “data
mining,” aggregators and “content curation” (Blair 2010a, b). In sum,
today’s buzzwords of information anxiety, data glut, infoxication, cogni-
tive overload, FOMO (fear of missing out) or data smog reanimate a long
tradition of o-tempora-o-mores concern about having to manage too much
information and too many media choices—not to mention the elites’ pre-
occupations about choreographing perceptions of cultural value. Clearly,
and already for thousands of years, it has been impossible to consume even
a fraction of extant media content, whether books or audiovisual media.
28 M. FREY
The introduction of new media and technologies has consistently exacer-

bated such fears.
Notwithstanding this history and its eternal regress of surplus and cura-
tion, my trade-press research reveals that such complaints within the film
and television industry have increased significantly since the 1990s and
especially in the 2010s. Moreover, the (pre-COVID-19-era) data clearly
show exponential growth in the audiovisual marketplace, whether mea-
sured in films produced or theatrically exhibited, or in the proliferation of
film festivals, television channels or VOD portals. The crucial big picture
is how the discourses of curation and cultural surplus feed off each other
as symbiotic halves. The American Psychological Association and Pew
Research Center, among other organisations, have released research indi-
cating that social anxiety about the roles of algorithmic and automated
computational processes may be increasing in the general populace (Paul
2017; Sax 2017). In equal and opposite measure, canny business opera-
tors stand ready to stoke and fulfil perceived social needs for downgrading,
simplification and curation—especially as performed by benign human(ist)
cultural mediators. Let us now turn to this cohort and detail how curation
not only functions as a buzzword in cultural discussions, but also as a key
term in popular business theories as an instruction manual for accruing
economic value in the media industries.
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CHAPTER 3
The Curation Business Model
Abstract This chapter extends the discussion of curation as a cultural dis-

course by outlining how the term has been theorised—such as in Chris
Anderson’s “long tail”—as a potent business model in digital culture. As a
preview to the MUBI case study, the chapter briefly sketches some other
exemplary VOD services—in particular, BFI Player and FilmStruck/
Criterion—that consciously avail themselves of the curation discourse in
their consumer offer and branding. This chapter concludes by outlining
the main points of distinction between the two sides of the VOD spec-
trum: the algorithmic and curation models. These distinctions generally
revolve around methods of personalisation, scale and credibility building,
not to mention different taste philosophies and levels of transparency.
Curation-style providers generally target and reach a small, narrow market.
Keywords VOD • Streaming services • Long tail • BFI Player •

FilmStruck
Some business-world actors have proposed curation as a lucrative new

economic model, a powerful market-gap filler in an age of excess. The
next-big-thing subgenre of Gladwellian non-fiction bills curation as the
heartbeat of start-ups across the culture economy. At least as far back as
the 1990s, internet cheerleader Nicholas Negroponte (1996, 155) sug-
gested that there is great money to be made in the aggregation and

Switzerland AG 2021
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80076-5_3
34 M. FREY
curation business: “The fact that TV Guide has been known to make larger
profits than all four broadcast networks combined suggests that the value
of information about information can be greater than the value of the
information itself.” Indeed, according to Eli Pariser (2011, 67), compared
to traditional “push” delivery systems such as linear broadcast television,
the “problem” is that “pull” technology, such as the web or VOD, “is
actually a lot of work. It requires you to be constantly on your feet, curat-
ing your own media experience. That’s way more energy than TV requires
during the whopping thirty-six hours a week that Americans watch today.”
Cultural recommendation—despite prevalent death-of-the-critic worries
and new-media kill-the-gatekeeper rhetoric—is a promising growth
industry.
Numerous theoretical ideas have arisen to explain or predict how the
logic of curation can add value to consumers’ lives and thus help busi-
nesses extract new revenue sources. According to these theories, in an era
in which overwhelmed consumers are too busy to “read back issues of
Cahiers du Cinéma” (Vanderbilt 2016, 51) or otherwise research which of
the many films, series and fuzzy bunny YouTube clips they should bother
watching, a whole business market awaits to help consumers whittle down
their expanded media options.
These theories attempt to show how new media affect patterns of cul-
tural production, consumption and distribution, and in particular how
they might incentivise niche or blockbuster products, respectively. To be
sure, the debate is not uncontested, for example between the “long tail”
of niche cultural goods and the “winner-takes-all” blockbuster model of
making huge bets on a small number of potential hits (e.g. Anderson
2004; cf. Elberse 2013). And yet each takes the business of entertainment
production and distribution as its point of departure, and the internet and
new technologies as its catalysts. Faced with an explosion of production,
these grand narratives seek to explain how these items can be bundled and
harnessed to reach audiences and achieve profits. If there are a potentially
infinite number of cultural productions on offer, how many and which
should be supplied with what level of capital support to bring them to the
attention of audiences? Business paradigms about taming and profiting
from an unprecedented wealth of product and information, each recom-
mends amassing critical volumes in aggregate or otherwise filtering pre-
cisely in a zero-sum neo-liberal economy.
Perhaps the most prominent and widely discussed of these theories was
Wired editor Chris Anderson’s “long tail.” In a 2004 article, a 2006 book
3 THE CURATION BUSINESS MODEL 35
and a 2009 updated revision, Anderson envisions a bright future for inter-
net retailers and all those who sell niche products in bulk. Anderson’s
“long tail” model is essentially a curation economics: aggregated selection
together with good search functions and recommender systems will unlock
new value by matching niche products and niche tastes.
According to Anderson, digital distribution innovations hail the end of
the blockbuster age; companies that achieve economies of scale by allow-
ing consumers to find and purchase deep-catalogue cultural items will
flourish. Their cumulative aggregation will henceforth outpace high-risk
wagers on top-ten pop hits and tent-pole movies. Like many other gurus,
Anderson’s ideas—so influential that his book itself became a blockbuster
bestseller—coalesced around assumptions of cultural surplus and fragmen-
tation. Once consumers have a whiff of bespoke narrowcasting, Anderson
posits, they will reject four-quadrant, one-size-fits-all mass address. A for-
merly docile public, happy to share watercooler chitchat about Leave It to
Beaver (1957–1963) or wonder who shot J.R., has fractured into an
immediate-gratification-only “mass of niches” (2009, 5). To be sure,
Anderson admits, divergent tastes have always bubbled beneath the veneer
of mass-media pop culture. It is only in the digital age, however—via
algorithm-equipped recommendation systems, the ability to amass huge
central storage facilities (to replace neighbourhood bricks-and-mortar
retail outlets) and concomitant lowered price points—that satisfying con-
sumers’ more finicky predilections has become economically viable.
Anderson singles out a number of sign-of-the-times “long-tail compa-
nies.” Whereas a local Blockbuster could only stock 3000 titles, the
internet-based DVD-by-post Netflix could hoard 90,000 films and poten-
tially many more as a streaming site (23). Whereas yesterday’s cinemas and
video stores needed to focus on lowest common denominators because
their screening times, seats or shelf space were finite, digital distribution
has allowed big-boy outfits such as Amazon and Apple’s iTunes to stock
and profit from obscure backlists.
Anderson heralds a cultural landscape where hidden gems are ripe for
discovery, cultural hierarchies overturn, tyrannies of locality vanish and
consumers become empowered to break through corporate gatekeepers.
It is a model that—in the vein of Yochai Benkler (2006), Henry Jenkins
(2006) and other digital-democracy champions—assumes an active con-
sumer, networked sharing, satisfied niche communities, tailored content,
limitless selection and a cornucopia of media diversity (Anderson 2009, 7;
cf. Turow 1997, 3). According to Anderson (2009, 52–57), three forces
36 M. FREY
of the new media revolution will engorge the far end of the demand
curve—the long tail—and balance off the blockbuster’s hitherto heavy
head. First, democratised production (e.g. digital video cameras, desktop
editing programs) lengthens the tail. Second, democratised tools of distri-
bution (aggregators like Amazon, eBay, iTunes, Netflix and YouTube)
results in greater access to niche content, which fattens the tail. Third,
recommendation filters connect supply and demand and shepherd busi-
ness from hits to niches.
The long-tail theory meshed well with other breathless assessments
(e.g., Greenleigh 2014) of the internet’s ability to bypass gatekeepers and
inspired many fans in the tech community, such as Google’s CEO Eric
Schmidt. It also gained considerable traction in the commentariat and the
academy. After all, the long tail represented the fulfilment of a coveted
dream: that cult fandom was swelling into a critical mass (Jenkins 2006,
263). An army of academics—from film, media, economics and business
departments alike—mobilised empirical data to support Anderson’s pro-
nouncements. They offered evidence about how the demand for difficult-
to-pronounce and niche erotica products increased when offered online or
how the concentration of top-100 DVD rentals reduced from 85 per cent
in bricks-and-mortar stores to 35 per cent on internet platforms (Goldfarb
et al. 2015; Zentner et al. 2013; Smith and Telang 2016, esp. 70–73).
Television scholars pointed to the quickly increasing and potentially
boundless proliferation of digital cable channels as proof of the long tail
(Curtin and Shattuc 2009, 119–120). Still others poured attention on the
inventory and balance sheets of Amazon as demonstrations of long-tail
demand and business success in an age of excess. The number of new book
titles had rocketed from 122,000 (in 2000) to 560,000 (in 2008) to 3.1
million (in 2010) and the number of new albums had quadrupled in this
period; yet between a third and a half of Amazon’s sales came from titles
for which even the largest physical bookstores and record shops would not
have had room. These facts lead Michael D. Smith and Rahul Telang
(2016, 67) to conclude that there is “strong evidence that online consum-
ers had a great appetite for obscure titles.” Indeed, one could argue that
the very existence and success of companies like Amazon and eBay and
niche breakouts like Fifty Shades of Grey demonstrated the viability of a
long-tail business model. Advocates like Smith and Telang (70) predicted
that profitability would follow those aggregators and curators who pursue
the long tail: “If consumers derive an enormous amount of value from
being able to find obscure products that match their tastes, as we have
found that they do, that opens up many business opportunities for firms
that can create these matches.” Because of this new market for a wide array
of niches, the logic goes, more media producers and retail companies will
be able to sustain themselves financially with the production and distribu-
tion of niche products, leading in a virtuous circle to increased develop-
ment of such products, whether chanting monk records or art films.
It is important to emphasise that although Anderson’s theory focussed
on niche cultural items (rather than blockbusters), he explicitly linked
these items to large-scale selection and AI-assisted matchmaking. For this
reason, Amazon’s retail arm and Netflix’s DVD-by-post operation (which
maintained a selection ten times the size of its streaming service) func-
tioned as key examples. In contrast, however, other theories downplayed
Anderson’s points about mass aggregation and algorithmic recommend-
ers, explicitly tying curation economics with the cultural trends towards
minimalism outlined in Chap. 2. Indeed, one of Bhaskar’s (2016) most
resonant points revolves around curation’s business prospects and how
canny businesspeople have sought to derive profit by offering less. He
asserts that—after the Industrial Model of Selection, a Fordist business
model based on mass production of a limited selection of goods marketed
to mass consumers—a Curated Model of Selection, “one of the major
business transitions of our time,” now dominates: “more producers and
products, but more expertly matched to consumers” (99–100). According
to Bhaskar (99), selection “isn’t just a necessary part of doing business;
selection is a primary asset. Selection isn’t an afterthought; it’s the priority.
Selection is no longer a by-product of being a retailer; it is the point of
being a retailer.”
Chapter 7 will evaluate the claims of Anderson and others and show
that, by and large, many curation-style VOD services have failed as busi-
nesses. Nevertheless, such theories of recommendation and exchange help
us understand the intentions of VOD business models and marketing
rhetoric, as well as their potential user appeal.
Indeed, a whole breed of VOD services have sought to turn their com-
parative disadvantage in terms of content acquisition volume into a com-
petitive advantage by using a curation business model that emphasises the
quality, rather than quantity, of its offerings. In 2020, the European
Audiovisual Observatory (Grece and Pumares 2020, 16–17) found 185
SVOD and 138 TVOD platforms operating in the EU-27, determining
that while “multi-country TVOD services seemed to focus on offering a
large choice to their customers, proposing recent and catalogues [sic]
38 M. FREY
films, several national TVOD and SVOD services had more a logic of
curation.” The report revealed that TVOD catalogues had seven times the
median number and five times the mean number of film titles that the
SVOD catalogues offered.
To be sure, the precise nature and branding of each portal’s content
varies: some services concentrate on a single genre or format, others on a
geographical region or cultural heritage, while still others focus on demo-
graphic or niche-taste groups. The profiles range from niche horror, real-
ity TV, anime and documentary platforms, to specialists for African cinema,
Latin American series and Bollywood, to those services aimed at the
LGBTQ community and even British royal family enthusiasts (e.g., Saner
2017). Yet all promise to fill in the gaps of generalist, warehouse-style
platforms such as Netflix and Amazon: to offer more distinct, diverse,
focussed or perhaps higher-prestige content, but above all to provide a
community of (taste) identity and often the positive presentation of scar-
city. For instance, Jaman (founded in 2007) brought Bollywood, European
arthouse and American independent films to interested users in a host of
worldwide territories; seven leading film festivals launched DocAlliance
(from 2008), a platform for documentaries. Fandor (from 2010) used a
revenue-sharing model to distribute silent and classic films, arthouse and
independent fare, as well as documentaries and shorts. Filmatique emerged
in 2016 to offer one new (usually recent, usually non-English-language)
film per week, while Nicolas Winding Refn’s byNWR.com promised a
revolving program of exploitation films from the ragamuffin director’s
personal collection, cleaned up and made streaming-ready by the Harvard
Film Archive. MUBI was founded in 2007 under the name The Auteurs,
concentrating squarely on contemporary and classic arthouse feature films.1
Not only has curation as a concept informed these companies’ business
models and inflected their strategic decisions as well as day-to-day activi-
ties; it forms the core of marketing strategies, investment pitches, interface
design and recommendation explanations. FilmStruck’s “tightly curated
rotation of about 500 films at a time” and MUBI’s “heavily curated”
thirty-film selection have figured prominently in these companies’ press
releases, adverts, interviews and promotional materials as a key reason to
subscribe. One MUBI advert, a white text in all caps, succinctly summed
up its appeal to those suffering from choice overload: “IF YOU’VE EVER
1
For chronicles and timelines of the fitful history of early digital distribution enterprises,
see Cunningham and Silver (2012, 2013).
SPENT MORE TIME LOOKING FOR A GREAT FILM THAN

WATCHING A GREAT FILM, TRY MUBI.” In smaller text below:
“MUBI. Hand-Picked Cinema.” In turn, Fandor has promised “carefully
selected films from around the world.” According to its co-founder,
Jonathan Marlow (qtd. in Appelo 2011), the service “relies on human
expertise to curate, like a film fest programmer or the proprietor of a great
video store like Chicago’s Facets or Seattle’s Scarecrow Video…. It isn’t
just a simple algorithm,” but rather “an actual individual who can distil the
reasons why you might be interested in the movie.” This statement epito-
mises the appeal of these services to the human touch, pitching their puta-
tively superior forms of explanations as added value over algorithmic
services, which in Marlow’s telling are simplistic in comparison to the
complexity of a human expert’s curation. Initiating a cooperation with
Facebook that allowed users to view platform films and then share “a rave
(or pan) with friends”—a telling simultaneous embrace and rhetorical
rejection of big tech—the service furthermore encouraged community
building and a bottom-up form of word of mouth more transparent than
algorithmic collaborative filtering.
Two brief examples of the curation business model in practice,
FilmStruck and BFI Player, help us contextualise the in-depth case study
of MUBI that begins in the next chapter. In 2016, with Netflix and
Amazon in the throes of global expansion and yet retreating from the
diversity of world cinema and from most of film history in their dwindling
catalogues, FilmStruck, a joint venture between Criterion Collection and
Turner Classic Movies (and Curzon for the United Kingdom platform),
emerged to disseminate international, arthouse, independent and classic
films. Directly addressing cinephiles, the now-defunct portal offered a
curated programme revolving around movements (Italian Neo-Realism),
themed collections (“Female Friendships”) and retrospectives (Agnès
Varda), but above all bonus features such as interviews with directors or
actors, or video commentaries prepared by film scholars and critics—thus
replacing the old function of DVD/Blu-ray extras. According to Charlie
Tabesh (qtd. in Brandman 2016a), FilmStruck SVP of Programming and
Production, the independent service emerged as an antidote to the non-
transparent recommendations of Netflix and Hulu, which “didn’t have
any special features, any explanations of why that scene was there, any kind
of sense that there was a lot of curation, any significant curation behind
the scenes.” Deploying a unique “editorial voice” sustained a key point of
contrast.
Another random document with
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Here is some of the ancient city, vii. 255.
Here lies Father Clarges, etc., xii. 150.
Here lies a she-Sun, and a he-Moon there, etc., viii. 53; xii. 28.
Here will I set up my everlasting bed, etc., viii. 210.
Here’s a health to ane I lo’e dear, etc., v. 140.
here’s the rub, xii. 234.
hermit poor, xii. 126.
heroic sentiment of, etc., iii. 61.
Hesperus, among the lesser lights, shines like, etc., viii. 164.
hewers of wood, etc., x. 124.
hew you as a carcase, etc., xii. 181.
Hey for Doctor’s Commons, viii. 159.
hiatus in manuscriptis, vii. 8, 198; xii. 305.
Hic jacet, x. 221.
hid from ages, i. 49.
High as our heart, v. 271 n.
High-born Hoel’s harp, etc., xii. 260.
high endeavour and the glad success, the, vi. 28; vii. 125; ix. 318,
373.
high leaves, the, etc., iii. 232; iv. 268.
high grass, the, that by the light of the departing sun, etc., v. 363.
high holiday, of once a year, on some, iii. 172; vii. 75.
High Legitimates the Holy Band, the, xi. 423.
High over hill and over dale he flies, v. 43.
High-way, since you my chief Parnassus be, etc., v. 326.
higher and the lower orders, the, xi. 370.
highest and mightiest, vi. 439.
hill of ages, ix. 69.
himself and the universe, x. 166.
Hinc illæ lachrymæ, xii. 187.
hinder parts are ruinous, its, iv. 201.
his bear dances, vi. 412; viii. 507; ix. 351.
His garment neither was of silk nor say, etc., xi. 437.
His generous ardour no cold medium knows, etc., iv. 263; vi. 253.
his little bark, v. 74.
His locked, lettered, braw brass collar, etc., v. 132.
His lot, though small, He sees that little lot, the lot of all, v. 119.
His plays were works, while others’ works were plays, v. 262.
His principiis nascuntur tyranni, etc., vii. 347.
his ruin meets, v. 301.
his spirits gave him raptures with his cook-maid, xii. 155 n.
his soul was like a star, and dwelt apart, v. 180.
his yoke is not easy, etc., iii. 85.
hitch into a rhyme, viii. 50.
hitch it, iii. 64.
Hitherto shalt thou come and no further, vi. 268; viii. 425; x. 344.
Hoc erat in votis, xii. 126.
Hoisting the bloody flag, x. 374, 376.
hold our hands and check our pride, x. 378.
holds his crown in contempt of the choice of the people, i. 394.
See also contempt.
Holds us a while misdoubting his intent, etc., xi. 123.
holiest of holies, x. 336.
hollow and rueful rumble, with, xi. 374.
holy water sprinkle, dipped in dew, a, iv. 246.
Homer, have not the poems of, i. 23; ix. 28.
Homer, the children of, ix. 429.
honest as this world goes, To be, etc., iii. 259; xii. 218.
honest man’s the noblest work of God, an, iii. 345; viii. 458 n.
honest, sonsie, bawsont face, viii. 450; ix. 184.
Honi soit qui mal y pense, vi. 65; ix. 202, 338.
honour consists in the word honour and nothing else, xi. 125.
honour dishonourable, etc., xii. 247.
Honour of Ireland, and as they were curiosities of the human kind,
for the, i. 54.
honourable vigilance, v. 264.
Hood an ass with reverend purple, etc., viii. 44.
Hoop, do me no harm, iii. 212.
Hope and fantastic expectations spend much of our lives, etc., i. 2.
Hope, thou nurse of young Desire, vi. 293.
Hope told a flattering tale, viii. 298.
Hope travels through, nor quits us till we die, vii. 302.
Hope! with eyes so fair, But thou, oh, etc., vi. 255.
Horace still charms with graceful negligence, etc., v. 75.
Horas non numero nisi serenas, x. 387; xii. 51, 52, 53.
horizon, at the, vi. 150.
horned feet, And with their, etc., xii. 258.
horse-whipping woman, that, viii. 468.
hortus siccus of dissent, the, iii. 264; x. 370.
host of human life, xi. 497.
hour when I escap’d the wrangling crew, The, etc., iii. 225.
house of brother Van I spy, The, etc., xii. 449.
house on the wild sea, with wild usages, v. 153.
housing with wild men, etc., x. 279.
How am I glutted with conceit of this? v. 203.
How apparel makes a man respected, etc., v. 290.
How blest art thou, canst love the country, Wroth, v. 307.
How do you, noble cousin? etc., v. 258.
How happy could I be with either, etc., xi. 426.
How is it, General? i. 209.
how it grew, and it grew, etc., vii. 93; xi. 517.
How little knew’st thou of Calista, iii. 180.
How lov’d, how honour’d once, avails them not, v. 176.
How near am I to happiness, etc., ii. 330; v. 216.
How oft, O Dart! what time the faithful pair, iv. 305 n.
How profound the gulf, etc., xi. 424.
How shall our great discoverers obtain, etc., i. 115.
How shall we part and wander down, etc., xii. 428.
how tall his person is, etc., vii. 211.
howled through the vacant guardrooms, etc., ix. 229.
Hudibras, who used to ponder, and, etc., viii. 66.
huge, dumb heap, vi. 28; ix. 56.
human face divine, x. 77.
human form is the most perfect, the, etc., x. 346.
human reason is like a drunken man, etc., vi. 147.
human understanding resembles a drunken clown, etc., xi. 216.
humanity, a discipline of, i. 123; vii. 78, 184; xii. 122.
Hundred Tales of Love, him of the, xi. 424.
hung armour of the invincible knights of old, is, i. 273; viii. 442.
hung like a cloud upon the mountain; now, etc., vii. 13.
Hunt half a day for a forgotten dream, iv. 323; ix. 64.
hunt the wind, I worship a statue, etc., vi. 97, 236; xii. 435.
hunter of shadows, himself a shade, a, vi. 168.
huntsmen are up in America, the, v. 340 n.
hurt by the archers, iii. 456; iv. 104.
Hussey, hussey, you will be as much ill-used and as much
neglected, etc., v. 108; viii. 194.
Hyde Park, all is a desert, Beyond, vi. 187; vii. 67; viii. 36.
Hymns its good God, and carols sweet of love, xi. 427, 501.
Hypocritical pretensions to virtue, i. 392.
I.
I also was an Arcadian. See Arcadian and painter.
I am afraid, my friend, this letter will never, etc., i. 94.
I am not as this poor Hottentot, iv. 44 n.
I am, on the contrary, persuaded, etc., vi. 126.
I apprehend you, viii. 10.
I cannot, seeing she’s woven of such bad stuff, etc., v. 238.
I cannot marry Crout, xii. 122.
I care not, Fortune, what you me deny, etc., vii. 371.
I’d sooner be a dog, xii. 202.
I hate ye, iv. 272.
I have secur’d my brother, viii. 86.
I hope none living, sir, And, viii. 201.
I knew you could not bear it, viii. 228.
I know he is not dead; I know proud death, etc., v. 208.
I know that all beneath the moon decays, etc., v. 299.
I’ll have a frisk with you, viii. 103.
I’ll walk, to get me an appetite, etc., v. 268 n.
I’m feeble; some widow’s curse, etc., viii. 274.
I never saw you look so like your mother, In all my life, viii. 456.
I never valued fortune but as it was subservient to my pleasure, viii.
72.
I observe, as a fundamental ground common to all the arts, etc., vi.
32.
I pr’ythee, look thou giv’st my little boy some syrup for his cold,
etc., v. 245.
I prythee, spare me, gentle boy; press me no more for that slight
toy, etc., viii. 55.
I rode one evening with Count Maddalo, etc., x. 261.
I see before me the gladiator lie, xi. 425.
I see him sweeter than the nosegay in his hand, etc., i. 65; v. 107.
I set out upon this adventurous journey, etc., xi., 249.
I stood in Venice, on the bridge of sighs, xi. 423.
I, that might have married the famous Mr Bickerstoff, etc., i. 7; viii.
96.
I think not so; her infelicity seem’d to have years too many, etc., v.
246; x. 260.
I think poets are Tories by nature, xii. 241.
I thought of Chatterton, the marvellous boy, etc., v. 122.
I too, whose voice no claims but truth’s e’er moved, etc., i. 379 n.
I’ve heard of hearts unkind, etc., iii. 172; xi. 515.
I was invited yesternight to a solemn supper, etc., viii. 41.
I was not train’d in academic bowers, etc., v. 283.
I will touch it, iii. 127.
I wish I was where Anna lies, iv. 305.
I wish my old hobbling mother, etc., viii. 80.
I wish you would follow Dr Cantwell’s precepts, vii. 189 n.
I would borrow a simile from Burke, etc., iii. 419.
I would not wish to have your eyes, vi. 19.
I would take the Ghost’s word, xii. 88 n.
Ici rugit Cain les cheveux hérissés, etc., xi. 234.
Idea can be like nothing but an idea, an, etc., xi. 109.
Idea, It is true we can form a tolerably distinct, etc., xi. 57.
Idea which in itself is particular becomes general, an, etc., xi. 23.
Ideas, If in having our, in the memory ready at hand, etc., xi. 45 n.
Ideas, operations, and faculties of the mind may be traced, all the,
etc., xi. 167.
Ideas seemed to lie like substances in the brain, iii. 397.
ideas seem to elude the senses, moral, etc., xi. 88.
ideas and operations of the mind proceed? Whence do all the, xi.
171.
idiot and embryo, iii. 270.
Idleness, with light-winged toys of feathered, xii. 58.
If a man lies on his back, etc., x. 341.
If a thousand pardons about your necks were tied, etc., v. 276.
If any author deserved the name of an original, etc., i. 171.
If aught of oaten stop or pastoral song May hope, chaste Eve, to
soothe thy modest ear, etc., v. 116.
If ever chance two wandering lovers brings, etc., v. 76.
If Florence be i’ th’ Court he would not kill me, etc., v. 241.
If his hand were full of truths, etc., ii. 393.
If o’er the cruel tyrant love, vi. 293; viii. 248, 320; xi. 304.
if the poor were to cut the throats of the rich, etc., iii. 132.
If these things are done in the green tree, etc., vii. 140.
If they cannot succeed in what is trifling, etc., vii. 168.
If this man Had but a mind allied unto his words, etc., v. 264.
If to her share, viii. 525.
If to their share some splendid virtues fall, etc., vii. 83.
If we fly into the uttermost parts of the earth, etc., v. 16.
If ye kill’d a thousand in an hour’s space, etc., v. 276.
If you cannot find in your heart to tell him you love him, I’ll sigh it
out of you, etc., v. 290.
If you were to write a fable for little fishes, vii. 163.
If you yield, I die To all affection, etc., v. 255.
ignorance was bliss, vii. 222.
Il avoit une grande puissance de raison, etc., i. 88 n.
Il y a aujourd’hui, jour des Paques Fleuris ... Madame Warens, vi.
24.
Il y a des impressions, etc., iii. 152; xii. 261.
Il y a donc des esprits de deux sortes, etc., xi. 287.
Ils ne pouvoient croire qu’un corps de cette beauté, etc., vi. 200 n.
ils se rejouissoient tristement, xii. 16.
Iliad of woes, iii. 10; iv. 41.
Ille igitur qui protrusit cylindrum, etc., xi. 73.
illustrious obscure, x. 143.
illustrious personages were introduced, These three, etc., vi. 209.
Illustrious predecessors, i. 380.
image and superscription, ix. 330.
image of his mind, the, iv. 372.
imagination étoit la première de ses facultés, etc., i. 88 n.
impeachment, We own the soft, x. 142.
impediments, the first of these, etc., x. 258.
impenetrable whiskers have confronted flames, Those, i. 422; xi.
273 n.
imperium in imperio, vi. 265.
implicité, it is without the copula, etc., x. 121, 129.
imposition of names, some of larger, some of stricter signification,
by this, etc., xi. 129.
Imposture, organised into a comprehensive and self-consistent
whole, etc., iii. 147.
imprisoned wranglers free, set the, iii. 390.
in all things a regular and moderate indulgence, etc., xi. 518.
in corpore vili, iv. 3.
in dallying with interdicted subjects; v. 207.
In doleful dumps, etc., xii. 12 n.
in each hard instance tried, oh soul supreme, x. 375.
In green vine leaves he was right fitly clad, v. 35; x. 74.
In happy hour doth he receive, etc., iii. 49.
in his habit as he lived, xii. 27.
in medio tutissimus ibis, viii. 473.
In my former days of bliss, etc., xi. 284.
In one of Mr Locke’s most noted remarks, etc., xi. 286.
In peace, there’s nothing so becomes a man, xii. 71.
In poetry the same effect is produced by a few abrupt and rapid
gleams of description, etc., v. 33.
in Pyrrho’s maze, iii. 226.
In search of wit these lose their common sense, etc., v. 74.
In spite of these swine-eating Christians, etc., v. 210 n.
in their eyes, in their hands, etc., i. 45; xi. 373.
in their untroubled element shall shine when we are laid in dust,
etc., v. 52.
In vain I haunt the cold and silver springs, etc., v. 302.
Incredulous odi, vii. 102.
independently of his conduct or merits, etc., xi. 417.
Indignatio facit versus, iii. 257, 317; v. 112.
Individual nature produces little beauty, xi. 212.
incapable of its own distress, viii. 450.
inconstant stage, the, viii. 383.
indolence is the source of all mischief, iv. 70.
Indus to the Pole, from, xii. 185, 278.
inexpressive she; The fair, the chaste, the, xii. 205.
inexpressive three, viii. 454.
infidels and fugitives, as, etc., xi. 443.
infants’ skulls, Hell was paved with, vii. 243.
infinite agitation of men’s wit, iv. 314; vi. 312; xi. 323; xii. 441.
infirmity, of our, viii. 402.
informed with music, sentiment, and thought, never to die, v. 274.
inhuman rout, the, v. 89.
inimitable on earth, etc., viii. 55.
innocence and simplicity of poor Charity Boys, ix. 18.
inscribed the cross of Christ, etc., iii. 152.
Insipid levelling morality to which the modern stage is tied down,
etc., xi. 298.
insolent piece of paper, an, xii. 168.
Insensés qui vous plaignez, etc., iv. 100.
instance might be painful; The, but the principle would please, viii.
21.
instinct with fire, viii. 423.
insulted the slavery of Europe, etc., iii. 13.
interlocutions between Lucius and Caius, viii. 417.
interminable babble, vii. 198.
Into a lower world, to theirs obscure And wild—To breathe in other
air, etc., v. 262.
intoxicating, whatever is most, in the odour of a Southern spring,
etc., i. 248.
Intus et in cute, vii. 24, 226; viii., 116; x. 34.
invariable principles, xi. 486.
invention of the enemy, A weak, etc., viii. 355.
inventory of all he said, viii. 103.
invincible knights of old, the, etc., i. 273; viii. 442.
invita Minervâ, vii. 8, 56, 119; viii. 379.
Irish People and the Irish Parliament, xi. 472.
Irishman in a row, like an, etc., xi. 494.
Iron has not entered his soul, The, xii. 277.
Iron mask, the Man in the, iv. 93.
iron rod, the torturing hour, the, xii. 215.
irritabile genus vatum, iii. 221.
island in the watery waste, lone, iv. 190.
Islands of the Blest, ix. 253.
It is a very good office, etc., viii. 2.
it is better to marry than burn, iii. 272.
It is by this and this alone, etc., vi. 135.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, etc., i. 376
n.
It is he who gives the second blow, etc., vi. 396.
It is my father, v. 237.
It is not easy to define in what this great style consists, etc., vi. 123.
It is not with me you are in love ... Sophia Western, etc., i. 44.
It is observable, I know not for what cause, etc., i. 318.
It is the keystone, vi. 36; xi. 581.
It is the same harmless thing that a poor shepherd, etc., v. 343.
it only is when he is out he is acting, vi. 296.
It’s well they’ve got me a husband, viii. 82.
It was even twilight, etc., i. 218.
It was my wish like him to live, etc., v. 362.
It was reserved for Shakespeare to unite purity of heart, i. 253.
it was very good of God, etc., xi. 352.
It will never do, iii. 361; vii. 367.
Italiam, Italiam! ii. 329.
Ithuriel’s spear, ix. 369.
J.
jackdaw just caught in a snare, And looks like a, etc., viii. 238.
Jacobin, Once a, etc., i. 430; iii. 110, 159.
Jacobin who writes in the Chronicle, the true, iii. 175.
Jacques, The melancholy, etc., xii. 285.
Jactet se in aulis, etc., iv. 71 n.
Je suis peintre, non pas teinturier, ix. 435.
jealous God, at sight of human ties, The, etc., xi. 147.
Jew that Shakespeare drew, the, i. 158.
jewels in his crisped hair, Like, xii. 450.
Job’s comforters, vii. 179.
John de Bologna, after he had finished, Thus, etc., vi. 140.
Johnny Keats, vii. 208.
jolly god in triumph comes, etc., the, v. 81.
jovial thigh, the, etc., xii. 196.
joys are lodged beyond the reach of fate, Those, vi. 23.
Joy, joy for ever, my task is done! etc., iv. 357.
judgment, after it has been long passive, the, etc., vi. 128.
judgment is really nothing but a sensation, xi. 86.
Juger est sentir, xi. 87.
Juno’s swans, link’d and inseparable, Like, xi. 472 n.
Jupiter tonans, xi. 308.
Justice is preferable to mercy, xi. 86, 88.
justify before his sovereign, he would not, etc., vi. 100.
justly called the Silent, viii. 13.
justly decried author, a, xi. 167.
K.
Kais is fled, and our tents are forlorn, for, etc., vi. 196.
Kean’s Othello is, we suppose, the finest piece of acting, viii. 414.
keeping his state, viii. 402.
kept in ponderous vases, are, x. 161.
kept like an apple, etc., xii. 171.
kept the even tenor of their way, have, vi. 44; viii. 123; x. 41.
kept under, or himself held up to derision, i. 147, 149.
key-stone that makes up the arch, ’Tis the last, etc., vi. 36; xi. 581.
kill at a blow, the two to, xii. 194.
killing langour, relieve the, etc., iii. 132; v. 357.
Kind and affable to me, etc., xii. 267.
King could live near such a man, no, i. 305.
King is but a king, a, etc., xi. 324.
king of good fellows and wale of old men, the, viii. 103.
kings, As kind as, etc., xii. 140.
Kings are naturally lovers of low company, vi. 159; xi. 442.
kings, if there were no more, etc., i. 387.
King’s Old Courtier, The, etc., iv. 232.
kings, the best of, i. 305; iii. 41.
Kingly Kensington, xii. 275.
Kiuprili, Had’st thou believ’d, etc., xi. 412.
kirk is gude, and the gallows is gude, The, etc., viii. 269.
knaves do work with, called a fool, which, xi. 415.
knavish but keen, iii. 60.
knight had ridden down from Wensley moor, etc., v. 157.
knight himself did after ride, The, etc., viii. 66.
know another well, were to know one’s self, vi. 316.
know my cue without a prompter, vii. 226.
know that I shall become that being, But I, vii. 395.
Know that which made him gracious in your eyes, etc., v. 290.
Know the return of Spring, xi. 317.
know to know no more, v. 67.
Know, virtue were not virtue if the joys, etc., ix. 431.
Know ye that lust of kingdoms hath no law, etc., v. 195.
knoweth whence it cometh, no man, etc., xii. 312.
knowledge, that had I all, etc., vi. 225.
knowledge, Though he should have all, etc., vii. 199; x. 208.
Koran and sugar! the, ix. 56 n.
L.
La ci darem, viii. 364.
La nuit envellopait les champs et les ramparts, etc., xi. 236.
la téte me tourne, etc., xi. 125.
laborious foolery, with, iv. 239; ix. 121, 332; xi. 289.
labour of love, ix. 223.
ladder of life, the, xi. 388.
lady of fashion would admire a star, etc., xi. 499.
lady of a manor, A certain, etc., i. 422; xi. 273 n.
laggard age, xii. 208.
Laid waste the borders and o’erthrew the bowers, iv. 282, 334; vi.
50; viii. 36.
Lancelot of the Lake, a bright romance, ’Twas etc., viii. 441.
landlady, the, and Tam grew gracious, etc., v. 129.
languages a man can speak, for the more, etc., vi. 70.
lapped in luxury, ix. 284.
large heart enclosed, in, xii. 303.
last objection, In regard to the, etc., vi. 141.
last of those bright clouds, the, ix. 477.
last of those fair clouds, the, that on the bosom of bright honour,
etc., v. 345. 369.
lasting woe, vii. 429.
latter end of this system of law, the, xi. 89.
laudator temporis acti, iv. 241.
laugh now who never laugh’d before; Let those, etc., viii. 469; xi.
316.
Laugh to-day and cry to-morrow, viii. 536.
laughed with Rabelais, etc., iv. 217.
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames, xi. 505.
Law by which mankind suffers, etc., iii. 203.
law of laws, the, etc., iv. 203.
Laws are not, like women, the worse for being old, viii. 22; xii. 161
n.
laws of nature which are the laws of God, etc., iv. 295.
lawful monarch’s bleeding head, his, etc., viii. 309.
lay heavy burthens on the poor and needy, They, iv. 150.
lay the flattering unction, etc., xii. 230.
lay waste a country gentleman, viii. 36.
See Laid.
lay’d a body in the sun, Say I had, etc., vi. 315.
La père des humains voit sa nombreuse race, etc., xi. 233.
Le son des cloches, xii. 58 n.
lean pensioners, vii. 401.
Leaping like wanton kids in pleasant spring, vi. 172.
leaps at once to its effect, xii. 185.
learn her manner, To, etc., ix. 326.
learned the trick of imposing, iii. 16.
leave, oh, leave me to my repose! i. 84; vi. 71, 182, 249; viii. 313; xii.
121.
leave others poor indeed, xii. 219.
leave our country and ourselves, etc., xi. 353.
leave stings, vii. 287; ix. 72.
leave the will puzzled, etc., xi. 446.
Leave then the luggage of your fate behind, etc., v. 357.
leaving the things that are behind, etc., x. 195.
leaving the world no copy, viii. 272.
leaves in October, like, viii. 142.
leaves our passions, afloat, etc., iii. 92.
leer malign, with jealous, xii. 43, 287, 387.
left its little life in air, it, xii. 322.
left the sitting part, he, of the man behind him, viii. 17.
leg? Can it set a, etc., i. 6.
lend it both an understanding, etc., xii. 55.
Lend us a knee, etc., v. 257.
Les Francs à chaque instant voient de nouveaux guerriers, xi. 232.
lest it should be hurried over the precipice, etc., vi. 156.
lest the courtiers offended should be, iii. 45; viii. 457.
Let Europe and her pallid sons go weep, etc., v. 115.
Let go thy hold, etc., iii, 192.
Let honour and preferment go, etc., xii. 323.
Let loose the greyhound, and lock up Hoyden, vi. 414; viii. 82.
Let me not like a worm go by the way, v. 30; xi. 506.
let me light my pipe at her eyes, xii. 455.
Let modest Foster if he will, excel, etc., vi. 367.
Let no rude hand deface it, etc., vi. 89; viii. 91.
Let not rage thy bosom firing, viii. 248, 320.
Let the event, that never-erring arbitrator, tell us, v. 258.
let there be light, viii. 298.
Let those laugh now who never laugh’d before, etc., viii. 469; xi.
316.
letting contemplation have its fill, iv. 215.
leurre de dupe, iv. 5; vii. 225.
Leviathan among all the creatures, the, etc., vii. 276; viii. 32.
Leviathan, the, tumbling about his unwieldy bulk, vii. 13.
liar of the first magnitude, v. 279.
liberalism—lovely liberalism, ix. 233.
liberty was merely a custom of England, xii. 215.
Liceat, quæso, populo, etc., iii. 299.
license of the time, viii. 186.
lie is most unfruitful, The, etc., viii. 456.
lies about us in our infancy, that, i. 250; x. 358.
life, a thing of, ix. 177, 225; xi. 504.
life an exact piece would make, Who to the, etc., ix, 326.
life and death in disproportion met, Like, vi. 96; xii. 127.
life, From the last dregs of, etc., xii. 159.
life is best, This, etc., xii. 321.
Life is a pure flame, etc., xii. 150.
Life knows no return of spring, vi. 292.
life of life was flown, when all the, vi. 24; xii. 159.
Life! thou strange thing, etc., xii. 152.
ligament, fine as it was, that, etc., vii. 227; xi. 306.
light as a bird, as, etc., iii. 313.
light, But once put out their, etc., xi. 197.
light, her glorious, ix. 316.
like a surgeon’s skeleton in a glass case, viii. 350.
Like a tall bully, ix. 482.
Like a worm goes by the way, xi. 514.
Like angel’s visits, few, and far between, iv. 346 and n.; v. 150 and
n.; vii. 38.
Like as the sun-burnt Indians do array, etc., xi. 334.
like Cato, gave his little senate laws, iv. 202.
like importunate Guinea fowls, one note day and night, iii. 60; xi.
338.
like it because it is not vulgar, I, vi. 160.
Like kings who lose the conquest gain’d before, etc., viii. 425.
like master like man, xii. 132.
like morning brought by night, v. 150.
Like old importment’s bastard, v. 258.
Like proud seas under him, iv. 260; vii. 274.
Like Samson his green wythes, xii. 128.
Like some celestial sweetness, the treasure of soft love, v. 253.
Like strength reposing on his own right arm, v. 189.
Like the high leaves upon the holly tree, iii. 232; iv. 268.
Like the swift Alpine torrent, etc., x. 73.
Like to the falling of a star, etc., v. 296.
liked a comedy, better than a tragedy, He, etc., viii. 25.
lily on its stalk green, the, v. 296.
limited fertility and a limited earth, iv. 294.
limner’s art may trace the absent feature, Yes, the, viii. 305.
Linden, when the sun was low, On, etc., iv. 347.
line too labours and the thoughts move slow, The, etc., viii. 313,
331.
line upon line, and precept upon precept, x. 314.
lines are equally good, All his, etc., viii. 287.
Linked each to each by natural piety, xi. 520.
link of peaceful commerce ’twixt dividable shores, i. 144.
liquid texture, mortal wound, And in its, etc., iii. 350.
lisped in numbers, iv. 215; v. 79; xii. 29.
little leaven leaveneth the whole lump, iv. 267.
little man and he had a little soul, There was a, iv. 358 n.
little man, but of high fancy, A, etc., vii. 203.
little sneering sophistries of a collegian, the, xi. 123.
little spot of green, i. 18; v. 100.
little things are great to little man, These, etc., vi. 226.
Little think’st thou, poor flower, etc., viii. 51.
Little think’st thou, poor heart, viii. 52.
Little Will, the scourge of France, etc., v. 106.
live and move and have their being, they, vi. 190.
live, if this may life be called, Yea, thus they, etc., viii. 307.
live in his description, iv. 337; vi. 53.
live to please, he must, etc., viii. 433.
live to think, etc., xii. 147.
lively, audible, etc., xii. 130.
lively sense of future favours, a, viii. 17.
lives and fortunes men, vii. 364; xi. 437.
living with them, There is no, etc., vii. 300.
Lo, here be pardons half a dozen, etc., v. 277.
lobster, like the lady in the, viii. 430.
Lochiel, a far cry to, viii. 425.

Mubi and The Curation Model of Video On Demand 1St Edition Mattias Frey Full Chapter

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Mubi and The Curation Model of Video On Demand 1St Edition Mattias Frey Full Chapter

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MUBI and the Curation Model of Video

on Demand 1st Edition Mattias Frey

MUBI and the

ISBN 978-3-030-80075-8 ISBN 978-3-030-80076-5 (eBook)

Cover illustration: Pattern © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com

I express my sincere appreciation to the Leverhulme Trust, whose Philip

2 Curation as Discourse, Trend and Cultural Salve 15

3 The Curation Business Model 33

4 MUBI History: Connections, Community and Curation 53

5 Recommendation Credibility in the MUBI Interface 77

6 The MUBI Audience107

7 At the End of the Long Tail125

Fig. 3.1 VOD service use, United Kingdom 45

Table 5.1 Diversity of MUBI’s thirty-film list by country of production

Abstract This introduction outlines the backlash to algorithmic cultural

Keywords Video on demand (VOD) • Algorithmic recommendation •

The early public discussion of video on demand (VOD) often resembled a

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

companies’ engineering capacity to predict users’ tastes using technically

systems and algorithmic culture more widely. “The more we have,”

It captures this irreplaceable human touch. We want to be surprised. We

A number of other revisionist or contrarian media critics also began to

infinite uniqueness,” but the end result of algorithmic personalisation has

services, whether algorithm-led or curation-style, represent continuity as

itinerary of this history casts serious doubts about the sustainability of

broadly. My point of departure is closely aligned with the practices and

• theoretical, cultural and business discourse surrounding “curation”;

This methodology explicitly blends top-down concerns and sources

fact represent distinct business paradigms, recommendation modes and

Curation as Discourse, Trend and Cultural

Abstract This chapter identifies curation as a contemporary cultural dis-

Keywords Curation • Cultural surplus • Cultural choice • Filter

Conceptually, curation incorporates principles of selecting and ordering,

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

adds: by limiting or otherwise altering the perspective of a search, applying

in jeremiads about filter bubbles, public sphericules or the gauche ubiquity

curation has accrued heroic, romantic associations in audiovisual culture.

example canon-building à la Matthew Arnold (1993 [1869]) and

essential value among receptive marketing demographics, especially as a

“Too Much”: Curation as Salve to Perceptions

Examining curation as a concept, buzzword and trend helps explain the

long since surpassed individual humans’ abilities to adequately survey

symptoms than as rigorous scientific analyses of cultural epiphenomena.

a sign of the contemporary moment. Noting the 2.5 quintillion bytes of

unprecedented, novel dilemma. Between 1906 and 2016, Variety contains

The introduction of new media and technologies has consistently exacer-

Hasebrink, Uwe, and Hanna Domeyer. 2012. Media Repertoires as Patterns of

The Curation Business Model

Abstract This chapter extends the discussion of curation as a cultural dis-

Keywords VOD • Streaming services • Long tail • BFI Player •

Some business-world actors have proposed curation as a lucrative new

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

SPENT MORE TIME LOOKING FOR A GREAT FILM THAN

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2 Curation as Discourse, Trend and Cultural Salve 15

3 The Curation Business Model 33

4 MUBI History: Connections, Community and Curation 53

5 Recommendation Credibility in the MUBI Interface 77

6 The MUBI Audience107

7 At the End of the Long Tail125

Fig. 3.1 VOD service use, United Kingdom 45