Missing from this article are the Streaming Nasties, the movies Amazon removed from Prime due to sexual or violent content...but they still stream the likes of The Neon Demon (which I loved, but we need a discussion of curation and censorship).
Haven't tried Amazon Video Direct yet, but plan to. Our first (no budget) feature has over 16 million views on YouTube and we haven't made a dime. The claim is that we can't monetize it because it's not family/advertiser friendly. We would take it down, but, we receive so many favorable comments and emails from people who enjoyed it that we just don't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QATYwGSi…
Otherwise, very interesting -- both the article and the movie. Thank you for writing about this film!