Hoopla and Kanopy provide movies, music, comics, and television to their users. They are both online streaming services that distributecontent to their users with just a library card number and their device. They have similarities and differences.
Creation and Target Markets
Both Kanopy and Hoopla were created abroad. Kanopy was the brainchild of Olivia Humphrey of Western Australia. According to an interview with Tom White on documentary.org, she began her company as a DVD distributor in 2008. Hoopla was created by John Eldred and Jeff Jankowski. They were library vendors of physical media like DVDs and BluRay discs. The parent company is called Midwest Tape, which was founded in 1989.
Kanopy focused on the academic market initially but then shifted to include public libraries as well. It got its start in Los Angeles and New York. Now, it boasts186 public library connections. Hoopla, on the other hand, started out to capture the local public library sector.
Digital Media Provided
Kanopy primarily provides film for library use. In Humphrey's interview with White, she states that "higher education students were watching more film than any other resource outside the academic world, but on campus, it was all books and journals." Her company aimed to fill that hole with films that the professors would request for their classes and students would watch.
Hoopla provides over 500,000 digital and streaming materialsacross six different formats.This table illustrates the number of each type of content that is available on the streaming service.
These titles come from popular outlets like Disney, Stars, Warner Brothers, and others. Because Hoopla has contracts with the providers of the streaming content, they can pass savings along to the libraries thatno longer have to purchase each title.
Use for Library Customers
In an interview with Stephanie Klose, the company's Vice-PresidentJeff Jankowski stated that their business model is better than the traditional "one user, one copy model" because rather than begin with a huge initial investment, "libraries only pay for what their patrons are actually using."
Hoopla and Kanopy are free for the user. They both let library patrons listen to music or watch movies as long as they sign in with their library cards. The library pays for the title only if patrons check the item out. If a patron does not check out or download a title, the library does not pay for it.
The orientations of these streaming services are slightly different. Kanopy is wonderful for movies while Hoopla takes a more generalist approach. "One of the things that's interesting for me about libraries as we learn more and more about them is the role that they play in their communities. For example, in Brooklyn, they have a shelf that's all Brooklyn filmmakers, and there are a lot of them," Humphrey tells White.
Their download and browsing process consists of a screen displaying the different titles. The user picks a title to download or watch and then sits back to enjoy the entertainment. Both services provide similar platforms to access their content.
Another thing to consider while examining these service providers isthe new role that digital streaming services have in the post-pandemic world. Leila Kahlil fielded questions relating to patron use of Hoopla during the pandemic. Her involvement with the Miami-Dade Public Library System made her the point person for this issue. She said that the library system not only saw an increase of Hoopla users, but all of their digital resources became more popular.
"We are here for patrons and their needs," she said in a phone interview when asked if the library system was planning to cut back on digital offerings once the community moved away from restrictions. Kahlil went on to say that they have added resources and although she was not in a position to comment on individual titles, she did not believe that anything would be discontinued.
Conclusions
To break things down, there is really nothing that is free. Even though library customers are getting content through a library card, the local library or institution still has to pay. Each title costs the place issuing the material anywhere between 99¢ and $2.99 each time that it is checked out. Also, the sites make it easy to watch content, but the quality of the items may not be as good and technical issues like wait time may affect library customers.Plus, as Chris Cagle discussed in his article for Film Quarterly, physical material will outlast any three-year license. This new way of providing content has shown us during the pandemic how limitless the digital world can be. It still has some work to do to meet its goals and its partners' expectations.
