Duke University Libraries Announces Change to Kanopy Streaming Service After “Unsustainable Increase in Cost of Providing Unlimited Access”
From Duke University Libraries:
Effective September 20, 2019, the Duke University Libraries have transitioned to a title-by-title access model for Kanopy, a popular library of streaming video titles. This change comes as a result of the unsustainable increase in cost of providing unlimited access through an automatic licensing model.
Kanopy’s pricing for libraries under our previous model was based on views per title. Once a title was viewed three times for longer than 30 seconds, we were charged a licensing fee of $135 for one year of access.
Under the new model, users will still be able to watch and stream all of our currently licensed films in Kanopy (of which there are more than 800). New titles may still be requested by members of the Duke community, but they will not be accessible automatically.
We understand and respect how popular streaming media has become. It is an invaluable instructional resource and a gateway for lifelong learning. We regret having to make this change. But we could neither justify nor sustain Kanopy’s skyrocketing price tag.
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See Also: Changes to Kanopy Streaming Service (December 13, 2018)
Filed under: Libraries, News, Patrons and Users

About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.