I’ve become super bearish on Netflix. At some point the masses will realize how bad the selection is for the money you pay.
That's where I'll have to stop you, as its still a very cheap service comparatively.
I worked at Blockbuster toward the end of their run, it was about $4-7 dollars for a single rental.
Current streaming rentals on Amazon range from $4-8 as well.
Netflix, streaming only, is currently $13 per month.
The only alternative I think is very good is HBO, which is $15 per month. They usually have before-cable-run-but-after-initial-rental-period movies. And they have a handful of stellar TV shows. We still struggle to find something to watch on that service.
Netflix disks are a better comp. They cost the same as streaming does and while the selection is far better, the limited capacity is far worse for most people.
The real competition will probably end up being piracy, eventually. Netflix streaming is getting worse content. And if this decline continues, piracy will become much more favorable.
So at some point I decided that a subscription service with almost everything I was interested in would socialize things appropriately and reduce the transaction costs so that piracy and this anarchic tendency wouldn't be worthwhile. After a few years of using the service, I feel that it is only a moderate convenience. In the end my watching habits haven't changed. I am saving some time downloading random things from random horrible websites. But the selection is horrific. There is no way to actively decide to watch something. There are just a handful of options. There are no classics. It's worse than the selection on an international flight. And it's getting expensive.
Blockbuster at that price isn't a great example. Redbox Blu-rays are $2.12. I live in an area with a relatively low population density and there are three Redbox machines within short driving distance. Each with a solid selection of new releases (Aquaman, Glass, The Mule, Into the Spider-verse, Green Book et al.). Redbox has ~34,000 locations.
If you seriously can't find anything to watch on Netflix, I suspect you either are uninterested in trying new/unknown things or are so hard to please that no service could satisfy you. I can't imagine either is a demographic all that large or rewarding to pursue.
I don't mean that in a bad way. Rather, I don't think it's in our best interest for any single company to own the entire catalog that would appease these demographics.
People have been foreseeing a mass exodus from Netflix for years now though, often when Netflix loses their hobby horse show. Yet Netflix only grows in net subscribers. Since everything always comes to an end, surely you need to put a timescale on your claim if you want to receive credit when Netflix finally collapses. Even Chicken Little is eventually right.
And, if you look at piracy for the lay person, it's not all that attractive. You have to somehow be able to sift through the bullshit streaming and torrent websites will throw at you. Somehow click the right links along the way that don't dead-end in a fake paywall or ad. And after torrenting something, you might get a scary letter from your ISP which happened to my sister in Austin with Comcast.
Do I wish there was a video equivalent of premium music services for video? (i.e. had most content) Sure. There isn't. So I'll pick some streaming services and I'll buy a la carte in various formats and just accept there's no single bundle that gives me everything for a monthly subscription.
Well, best best interest would probably involve mandatory, open-to-all-interested-parties licensing terms/fees in order to enjoy copyright protection, and outlawing vertical integration of end viewer distribution with production. Also I'd like a pony.
Put on your non-tech-savvy hat and google "watch <movie> online" or "torrent <movie>" and try to navigate a streaming website. You need to be somewhat tech savvy just to navigate the minefield. For example: https://pelispedia.tv -- it's confusing, frustrating, and full of popups/ads.
The layperson depends on someone more tech savvy to give them instruction. But even then, I once showed my sister how to download torrents and she got a scary letter from Comcast in Austin. My guess is that Comcast simply participates in the seeding process of the top 10k torrents and waits for its customers to connect. She hasn't tried since.
Not to mention all the side-loaded Firesticks with Popcorn time.
They've added record 6.9 million subscribers. That's new subscribers - defectors.
I'm not sure what would cause the "masses" to re-evaluate the quality of selection, especially taking into account the fact that Netlifx is now adding tons of content they'll own forever, so 10 years from now "The Crown" and "The Stranger Things" etc. will still be there plus all the shows and movies they've added in those 10 years.
Competitively Netflix is safe because to watch those 250 top movies online in one place you can go to... nobody.
eg 3 year lease that's a decent deal but if you don't cancel and take a 4th the lessor makes a large profit. IT equipment leasing is frequently like this.
I mention by name it in case anyone wants to dig deeper with this idea w.r.t their own business...
I've already seen many people who I would never believe could pirate anything reliably turn to sharing Plex libraries.
If you want highly rated content of all genres and formats (TV and movies), you get more than you could ever hope to have time to watch.
If you want to watch one specific thing, then yeah chances are good it's not there.