Playster
Playster is a global subscription-based entertainment service, providing on-demand movies, television shows, music, video games, ebooks and audiobooks.
History
Playster was founded in Montreal with private equity in 2014.
During its Beta phase, the company announced content partnerships with several major publishers and distributors, including HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Harlequin, Paramount Pictures, Cinedigm and Gameloft. In March 2015, Playster became a member of the Los Angeles-based Digital Entertainment Group, and shortly afterwards The New York Times labelled it "a new contender" in the subscription market, alongside Scribd and Oyster.
In June 2015, Playster announced it had partnered with digital audio distributor Findaway in order to add audiobooks to its collection. The company later claimed that it had been driven to make the addition having seen competing services such as Scribd and Audible introduce restrictions to their audiobook catalogs.
At its launch in December 2015, Playster was giving subscribers access to more than 250,000 books, 50,000 audiobooks and 15 million songs.
According to Forbes, the company also opened a new office in New York at the end of 2015.
Concept
The subscription model used by Playster differs from other on-demand services in that multiple types of media are brought together under a single subscription. Business and publishing magazines have suggested that Playster's all-inclusive offering is an attempt to "revive" the digital subscription model which is considered to be struggling, particularly in the field of ebooks.
Playster's recommendations technology uses a combination of metadata and user behavior insights in order to recommend similar titles to users across different media types. For example, upon watching a movie the user could be recommended a related book or video game.
Playster can be used in any web browser on a desktop or laptop computer, as well as Android and iOS devices.