This is just going to push more people to piracy.
It’s funny how these things go.
Long ago, you would need to buy or rent your movies, because other options weren’t really very convenient or effective. Then the internet became fast enough for you to use DC++ and later torrents to get all the movies you would ever want to see. Next, streaming services became popular due to convenience, ease of use and affordable prices.
What’s going on today? Streaming services are increasing prices and reducing convenience. Seems like the balance of power is tipping again.
And meanwhile extremely convenient piracy options have cropped up, like, just as convenient as real services, if not more because all the content is in one place.
Hell many people even use paid piracy services.
Not me though, I’ll suck my dad before I pay for piracy.
I hate Netflix as much as you guys do and I think their content is dogshit, but you’re naive if you think they’re going under any time soon. Their revenue increased from the password sharing ban crap, and it’s likely only like 1% of people used the 720p plan anyway. Netflix is ass but financially they’re chillin.
And what is the price? I think it’s like $16 CAD a month or so? So the price of a movie ticket and not even enough for a small popcorn. I find it a bit overreacting that people act like that’s way too expensive for what you get out of it. Used to be that I’d spend way more than that for a TV show season on DVD that I’d finish in a week.
I’m not saying this is a good move. But the folks vowing to only ever pirate because a month of content costs about as much as my local hourly min wage seems a bit much.
They have a ton of reality tv dogshit content that a ton of female subscribers love lol. Personally i hate it but i bet all of our gfs/wives love that shit. Unfortunately you should expect all of the streaming platforms to lean into that bullshit, especially with the writers strike. It will be interesting to see how many people cancel their plans once all of the good shows dry up due to the strike. We are going to be in a content desert for like 2 years at least.
Edit: lol why the actual fuck was I down voted? For criticizing Netflix? Huh??
People probably didn’t like your reality TV comment but it’s true my wife watches that shit lol
I’d say a great time to catch up on older shows, but I know that’s both not popular and for some reason streaming services are removing older shows.
Everyone here seems to think this’ll be another nail in their coffin. But I’m not sure. As far as I know, they’re the only steaming platform that’s actually profitable. Plus any current users of that plan are getting grandfathered in, so they’re just removing the option for new people which I think is pretty normal for services to do.
Only they know how many people are on the 720p plan. And I’d bet they’ve run the numbers to know that they’ll make more revenue from new users who sign up for the higher tier than the revenue lost from users no longer being able to select this plan.
Profitability is a funny thing, especially with internet services and such. Some companies launch and raise money hand over fist without even having a revenue plan in place - I had a family member who proudly boasted about how he was going to short google at their ipo because they were obviously going to crash hard and were all hype. Other companies have a model for revenue but choose to concentrate on growth instead. Amazon skirted profitability for years as it sank its money into infrastructure and kept its prices low.
Companies can have staggering valuations because of the prospect of growth, and profits (depending on where they are coming from and what you’re doing with them) may not contribute to that perception because that’s money nominally not going into headcount, r&d, etc. This is especially true of streaming services that are rising on the backs of other profit centers, such as Disney. Hollywood accounting is an entirely separate beast anyway.
Ultimately, the importance of profitability is decided by the stakeholders - the large investors, board, and c-suite. If people are happy with the growth model and performance, they’re not going to care as much about the balance sheet. Stock prices stay up. If money starts to get tight, stock prices will fall and the company will go into cost cutting.
All of which is to say that if Netflix starts to lose customers, it should probably get pinched. They’re going after new markets and developing new IP, but the space has become really crowded over the last several years. They’re not going full Musk, but they are making decisions that will affect growth and retention in a per-customer revenue grab. To me, that means they’re having accounting issues and they’re hoping their continuing IP investments and international growth (where they might still be losing money) will be paid for by the customers they do manage to hold onto.
As a customer who subscribes to at least ten streaming services, I’m probably going to just start rotating monthly. That will save money, give me enough time (and focus) to catch up on the series I actually want to finish, and at least theoretically let me show a reaction to the price hikes.
I mean, the essential problem is the streaming video services don’t have close enough to “everything” that the streaming audio services have. So you essentially fragment your market. You basically become a specific niche (in a way) because you can’t appeal to “everyone” because you can’t afford to make a popular version of “any show”. This tied with people already wanted to shrink their cable bill so most people DO NOT WANT 10 streaming services. Even if they have the money to burn, they will feel (like you do) that they can’t possibly make use of 10 streaming services worth of content. So you start to be choosy about what shows you want to watch, and probably start to lose FOMO because it’s so fragmented there’s just not that many “everyone is watching the show and I want to talk about it with them” that used to make appointment TV. I.e. there’s less peer pressure to talk about any given Netflix (or Hulu, or P+ or D+ etc) show, so you might well think “hey, that’s something I might like, but it’s like not important enough for me to pay to see it or plan to see it.” And today, if you aren’t scheduling it - I’d say there’s a good chance it’ll be like that 500th book you got at the local book sale for $0.50 that “you definitely plan to read” that’s been sitting at #500 for the past 10 years.
What’s even worse is unlike in the 80s when cable took off is that there’s so much content and competition that people probably aren’t even watching as much “TV” as they used to. I already mentioned books, but there’s comics, graphic novels, forums like this, YouTube, Anime (a big portion of a whole other cultures collective TV series added in now mainstream), video games, 3 hour long podcasts, and just fricken getting off a device and going outside. Some of this always existed, but a lot is new, and competing. I’d argue that as a share of what you could do in your spare time, as a whole TV is down.
I don’t know if it would ever work, but I do wonder if we don’t start to see something like “personal syndication” return. I know the app stores used to sell an episode of a specific show for $4 or something, but that’s way too much. But I wonder if we start to see much lower per ep pricing where you literally pay for the show you want more directly. But again, we rapidly hit the microtransaction problem again. Maybe you just can’t pay for an episode at at time, you have to pay per season to make it work. Maybe $4 a season / no ads would work? IDK. I guess as soon as you want more than 4 shows on a given streamer it makes sense to buy it bulk.
I don’t think micropayments have entirely worked yet. There’s still intellectual resistance to paying for an article that you expect to be free, and I don’t know if you could change that by making them available for $.05. It hasn’t been normalized yet.
I also have not yet caught up on 80% of the shows I was enjoying last year, including multiple Treks, shows where people cook stuff or make clothes, or stupid sitcoms that I got eight episodes in before being distracted by jingling keys. Don’t even get me started on my Steam library - I bought a Deck just to try to work through my backlog of more unplayed than played games.
I liked it when Netflix had movies I wanted to watch and shows I had missed. I watched Lost, Heroes (S1), B5, and Battlestar for the first time on the service. There was a service, and it had a lot of content. Then the studios, which had ignored streaming, saw there was a market and jumped in while raising prices or withdrawing licensing.
People went to Netflix from Pirate Bay because, as Steve Jobs pointed out when he got music studios to remove DRM, people will pay for it if it’s easy and reliable. It has ceased being easy and reliable because of fragmentation and predatory pricing.
I hope Netflix’s strategy dies and they have to think of something better. I hope the same for twitter and reddit. But other than the occasional glance in the rear view mirror for an opportune “I told you so,” I really am not planning on paying attention beyond logging off.
My number one criticism of Netflix was that it was too accessible so this is a welcome change, I really think the higher bar will increase the quality of views.
Do you not think it’s a bit too cheap as well? I feel guilty thieving such a quality service from them.
Real question - not sure if you guys are serious? It’s my least used service these days due to the quality and longevity of its content (outside of the kids shows)
I think getynge was being sarcastic and I was following suit. I do actually have a subscription because my family uses it a lot but I agree that the service is getting worse and worse. What other services do you prefer?
