The Alpha Streaming Service Announces its Closure by the End of March

• Alpha announces the end of the road on March 31, with a tone of regret on their official website.
• Subscribers will get their prepaid amounts back as refunds, and some content will stay on the platform as VOD.
• The platform will continue to live on the Twitch platform, delivering similarly exciting content there.

At times when streaming services are on the rise, growing their userbases exponentially year by year, and enjoying wider acceptance and popularity against traditional media distribution platforms, some are destined to languish and die. This is the process of the “survival of the fittest” in nature, and it’s exactly the same in the world of any competitive market. As announced on the official website, the service will go dark on March 31, 2019, and a large portion of its original content collection will be streamed through the Twitch, and the “Geek & Sundry” channel in particular.

Originally launched back in 2016, Alpha was a joint venture between Nerdist Industries (digital entertainment company) and Geek & Sundry (commercial YouTube channel and media production company). The platform was reportedly growing steadily, increasing its user base to a “six-figure” number (undisclosed), and counting 8 million unique hit each month. However, it looks like the “$4.99 per month” subscription model hasn’t worked out after all, as the platform failed to gain real traction that would support its operation and dynamic expansion.

source: join.projectalpha.com

In the announcement, Alpha claims that its users watched 640 million minutes of content, what is the equivalent of more than 1200 years. Now, all of the subscribers who had renewed their plans for beyond the seizure date will receive a refund, while some content will remain accessible on the platform as “Video on Demand” (VOD). Certainly, not many of Alpha’s fans expected this development when only last summer, the platform acquired the rights to the Kickstarter-funded sci-fi series “Sona” from its creator and starring actress Ashley Clements.

As more powerful and influential players are entering the market of streaming content platforms, getting a chance to win a piece of the pie will get increasingly harder. Only a few days back, we touched the subject of Disney trying to push out all other partners it has in its Hulu ownership, buying their stake and wishing them good luck on the way out. Large corporations are seeing streaming platforms as the present and future, firmly believing that the industry will grow exponentially, and thus spend absurd amounts of money to ensure their stable positioning in the field. Those who are too small or too financially weak to cope with this fierce competition are destined to follow Alpha’s fate.

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