Nebula CEO Says Indie Streamer Isn’t Trying to Become a YouTube Competitor — It’s Aiming for a Netflix Competitor With A24 Vibes
variety.comJennifer Maas TV Business Writer Nebula, which launched in 2019, describes itself as a creator-focused, creator-built, creator-first premium streaming service — akin to a Netflix or Hulu, but with the ethos of Patreon.
The four-year-old indie streaming service, which is backed by creator-owned management company Standard and a minority stake held by Curiosity Stream, costs $5 a month or $50 a year and currently totals 650,000 subscribers and passed 100,000 daily active users in October.
The platform is home to the popular “Amazing Race”-style online competition series, “Jet Lag: The Game,” which has half a million subscribers on YouTube, as well as the theater-in-the-round Shakespearian trans-coming-out story of “The Prince,” and “Night of the Coconut,” the debut film from Patrick Willems.
Unlike other streamers, Nebula sees YouTube as a partner, not a competitor, with episodes of Nebula series usually seeing a week-long exclusive window on Nebula before creators post them to YouTube and use them to in turn promote Nebula, according to Standard CEO Dave Wiskus. “It’s easy to think that what we’re building is a YouTube competitor,” Wiskus told Variety on this week’s “Strictly Business” podcast. “And if you imagine it as a YouTube competitor, it’s easy to think that anything we do from any creator we work with the goal should be for it to be exclusively on Nebula.
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