Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video platform for public and academic libraries that offers films, TV shows and documentaries. The service is free for users, but content owners and content creators are paid on a pay-per-view model by the institution. The company was founded in Scarborough, Western Australia on December 25, 2008, moving its headquarters to San Francisco, California a few years later. On June 9, 2021, it was announced that OverDrive had reached a deal to acquire Kanopy. Kanopy's subdivision, Kanopy Kids, includes children's programming; all Kanopy member accounts have access to Kanopy Kids.

History

Kanopy was founded in December 25, 2008 at

Scarborough, Western Australia Scarborough is a coastal suburb of Perth, Western Australia, located approximately 14 km northwest of the city centre in the City of Stirling local government area. Located along the coast of the Indian Ocean, it was named after the Engli ...

, by Olivia Humphrey, an Australian entrepreneur, as an educational tool for colleges and universities. Until 2010, the company functioned only as a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

distributor, moving into streaming in that year. After attaining considerable success in Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore, it expanded into the UK and US, and soon afterwards moved its headquarters to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, with Humphrey remaining as CEO. In October 2019, Kevin Sayar succeeded Humphrey as CEO. On June 9, 2021, OverDrive announced that it had reached a deal to acquire Kanopy.

Services

Kanopy provides each participating public library, college and university with a dedicated and customizable website through which members can stream films. The service includes features such as captions, transcripts, clip creation, and playlist creation that allow users to share videos.

Business model

Public library patrons, college and university students and faculty are able to watch Kanopy free-of-charge with their institution's library card. Institutions pay for the films their students and faculty watch on a per-view basis. This model used by libraries is referred to as "patron-driven acquisition" where each view (watching a video for 30 seconds or more) will prompt the sale of a license fee for that title. Costs vary per institutional contract, but have been estimated in 2019 for single titles to be $150 for one year, $350 for a three-year license. Librarians have access to an administrative dashboard which allows them to view user analytics and adjust budgets. On July 1, 2019, three of the largest public libraries in the United States—the New York Public Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, and the

Queens Public Library The Queens Public Library (QPL), also known as the Queens Borough Public Library and Queens Library (QL), is the public library for the borough of Queens, and one of three public library systems serving New York City. It is one of the largest li ...

—discontinued Kanopy, citing unpredictable and unsustainable costs.

Device support

Kanopy can be viewed on a computer, mobile device, or television via a web browser supporting

HTML5 video The HTML5 specification introduced the video element for the purpose of playing videos, partially replacing the object element. HTML5 video is intended by its creators to become the new standard way to show video on the web, instead of the previo ...

or the Kanopy app for

Amazon Fire Tablet The Amazon Fire, formerly called the Kindle Fire, is a line of tablet computers developed by Amazon. Built with Quanta Computer, the Kindle Fire was first released in November 2011, featuring a color 7-inch multi-touch display with IPS tech ...

and Fire Stick, Android,

Apple iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also includes ...

, and

Roku Roku ( ) is a brand of hardware digital media players manufactured by American company Roku, Inc. They offer access to streaming media content from online services. The first Roku model, developed in collaboration with Netflix, was introduced ...

References

External links