Play.com to become LOVEFiLM & Netflix killer

We’ve had an tip off that the Play.com domain isn’t for sale, although the brand is definitely to be dumped in favour of Rakuten.co.uk. This makes perfect sense as all sites across the world will carry the Rakuten brand.

The domain will go to Wuaki.tv, a Barcelona streaming media company which Rakuten already own.

Wuaki.tv aim to become the European alternative for watching movies directly on your computer, TV, tablet or console. The service is already up and live in Spanish, and all content is stored in the cloud so that, when you buy or rent a movie from Wuaki.tv, it’s instantly available on all your registered devices.

Rakuten are already infiltrating Europe and the US with marketplace businesses and are rapidly closing down existing retail operations on the site they acquire in preparation. Now it appears that with Wuaki.tv and the Play.com brand, Rakuten also aim to compete with Amazon’s LOVEFiLM and Netflix. That puts them head to head with Amazon on two fronts in Europe!

Look out for Play.com becoming a place where you can rent and stream video content instead of buying media. Although of course you’ll still be able to buy DVDs from Rakuten.co.uk but through 3rd party merchants instead of from Rakuten themselves.

I have to say though… Play.com – what a perfect URL for a streaming media site!