Even if you don't think Disney is a serious threat, they are losing at their own game to Amazon, which is producing objectively better quality content given their dominance at the Emmys over Netflix (which was nearly shut out).
They have resorted to overpaying billions for old reruns like Seinfeld. At some point people will wake up and wonder why they're paying $15/month to watch reruns and return to actually buying content again for things like that.
Outside of that lucky pick up, Amazon really hasn't done all that well. Many of their big hype shows have been abysmal. That Jack Ryan one is just terrible -- I had big expectations for it, but it's so poorly acted, and so bizarrely edited, that I still marvel that it was released as is. If I actually had to pay for Amazon's offering, instead of it being some bizarre throw-in with Prime, I wouldn't.
At the same time, Netflix has had a lot of fantastic, and fantastically successful, shows. Shows with enormous appeal.
So I wouldn't start shorting Netflix because Fleabag won some awards. Indeed, the trope that Netflix is so over has gone on here for time eternal.
And it hardly has anything to do with Amazon, they just helped fund some of it with BBC3.
Disney appears to be another big threat for IP reasons, but we have yet to see how their rollout goes.
Netflix probably has to sell ads and/or do something else to remain independent, if the other big tech companies are going to continue to desire to be media companies. If Netflix’s stock drops a lot, they’ll be a big acquisition target.
EVERY award is just a nepotism/popularity contest. Nothing is done via merit anymore. I don't know about the Emmy judges but the Oscar judges have gone on record to say they don't even bother watching the vast majority of submissions and just go by "buzz".
Look at the Hugo sci fi book award's being gamed for political correctness.
Obama won a Nobel peace price for...what exactly?
The internet has levelled the playing field but somehow a show produced by a multi billion dollar corporation always wins awards over a net original on Vimeo
Netflix has $12B in debt. Subscriber growth has slowed a lot (2.7M per quarter). They're competing with big players with deep pockets, and sometimes large content libraries.
Services are getting so fragmented that I could see that being a net loss for the industry. Maybe people would have paid $20 per month for Netflix with 95% content coverage, but I cancelled my subscription because $12 per month wasn't worth it for the three shows I watched.
When netflix had marketshare and somewhat a monopoly, they should've pushed for laws to prevent monopolies/exclusive content (or create deals/made agreements for such). Instead, they leaned in to making content the main attraction of their service.
I want streaming service to be content agnostic, and that studios making the content are mandated to allow all streaming services to serve their content. Streaming services should compete on speed, convenience and other non-content related features. Imagine if DVD/tape players were content exclusive - you'd have to buy a differently branded DVD player different shows from different studios!
Perhaps if Internet service were regulated like a utility then paying for fragmented streaming wouldn't be so bad. As it is just a few hundred megabits per second rivals the cost of television cable in my parent's time.
You mean like having to go Blu-Ray for shows/movies from some studios, and HD-DVD for shows from others? https://www.engadget.com/2008/02/20/two-years-of-battle-betw...
that is not what the comment is about - you added the above poverty bit yourself.
The idea that labour is a commodity is something _companies_ created when industrialization occured, and even though it sucked for artisans who previously commanded high wages, commodity workers were the reason products became cheaper (as well as machines & industrialization).
Just because you're a commodity worker, doesn't mean you have to be poor. If your skill is in demand, you can still command high prices for it (which is what programmers of today are). I don't doubt that one day, the needs of skills of programming are going to fall off a cliff (i.e., due to AI). But programming as a skill today is still a commodity, and that is a good outcome.
He thinks that 10% is a fair profit. Who should decide?
(b) If you earn 2500$ a month, do you actually have 250$/month after all expenses are paid? I don’t. I’m happy if I have any money left at the end of the month.
An average employee has no savings whatsoever, and can’t even fully pay all their expenses. 95% of the western world would be happy if they would have 10% of their income left after expenses at the end of the month. 100% of the rest of the world would be happy with even any money left at the end of the month.
Companies are making far more profit than any single employee ever could dream of, often with massive profit ratios (Target and Walmart are at 25% to 30%, as is Google — that’d mean 830$ left after expenses for a person earning 2500$!), and many of the companies with the highest profit ratios are pure middlemen, providing no real benefit at all.
But, you are still avoiding the central question. If you want to have the government force Disney to use middlemen because you think it’s unfair for them to be both the producer and the distributor, why single out movie producers and not software makers, authors, producers or even physical good makers? Should Apple also not be able to have Apple stores and be forced to only sale products through “middlemen who bring no real benefit at all”?
> Who should decide a fair licensing cost?
the cost is the same - the studio decides it, and any streaming services gets to use the IP if they pay the studio.
> Commodity products don’t make money when they can’t differentiate
that's absolutely not true. They can just charge X% above operating costs (where X is usually 10%). It is true that they cannot make exorbitant amounts of high margin profit. But that's a good outcome.
And when you have s commodity product - you must compete on price. That brings profits to mostly zero.
yes - i hate that there are platform exclusives (and not just on PC, but on phones).
Things being a commodity is how competition occurs, and how the average consumer reaps the benefits of improvement. Imagine if computer CPUs were not commoditized, and you had to buy into a particular instruction-set. It would cost so much more to do any computing than today, that i think we won't see the explosion of internet till another decade.
Companies that want monopolies know this, and want to delay it as much as possible to maximize a product's profitability without adding extra work. Gov't should try to combat that, while keeping the playing field fair for all.
Now you want the government to force software developers to pour resources into supporting all platforms? Should Sony be forced to develop for the Xbox and the Switch?
Things being a commodity is how competition occurs, and how the average consumer reaps the benefits of improvement.
That’s completely backwards. When everyone is forced to compete on price, no one is going to spend money on improving their product.
Imagine if computer CPUs were not commoditized, and you had to buy into a particular instruction-set.
CPUs aren’t commoditized. Intel has had a monopoly on the x86 instruction set for decades and licenses it to one minor competitor. You do have to buy into a particular instruction set to have any hope of having a viable product - x86 for desktop and ARM for mobile.
Gov't should try to combat that, while keeping the playing field fair for all.
And now you are suggesting that the government gives power to middle men - you are already see that in alcohol distribution in some states. How is it giving producers more freedom by introducing a middle man that will raise prices? Are you also against people selling software on their own website? Authors selling books on their own site? Musicians selling music on their own website?
In the beginning I liked netflix because it felt as if everything was there, like on spotify. I always saw netflix just as a distributor of content produced by others.
Then they started to make all their own shows, and I found less and less of the stuff that I wanted to watch. It's as if my ISP would stop to serve me google and facebook, and instead made their own homemade replacements and served me those instead.
Then this past week, watched "The I-Land" which was heavily advertised on Netflix. Watched 1 episode, and then started episode 2, and then quit. It was basically a pile of garbage.
Apparently, I am not along in my assessment.
https://www.tvinsider.com/815148/the-i-land-netflix-reviews/
https://qz.com/quartzy/1712203/the-i-land-on-netflix-is-the-...
Basically, I use Netflix mainly for entertainment for my children. Since they are huge Disney fans, I can't wait for Disney to release their streaming service, so I can cancel my Netflix subscription.
When you ruin your product in effort to game your users, you've already lost.
The fact that they have enough conviction in their data to stick with autoplay despite the bad press should be a very good sign about a company's culture (and therefore their future).
I don't necessarily agree that they're "circling the drain" as GP put it, but hitting a goal can definitely be a sign that a company is in trouble. Autoplay videos might net them some short-term viewership at the expense of long-term goodwill and engagement.
I don't have an opinion regarding Netflix. Ironically, I cancelled it a while ago after realizing I watched more on Amazon.
I don't see how putting a toggle in their app to turn off all these things is such a major change. This is like snapchat "i don't care about android" levels of tech stupidity/laziness
What Netflix does is stressful and makes me avoid engaging with their catalog. It's insane they won't let us control that one aspect.
My second frustration was when they crippled their catalog API, forcing abetterqueue offline. I'd plan my entire season around that, and now I feel like I only have what their algorithm recommends to my TV's app, which is usually garbage because my SO and I share an account.
Prime is far from perfect, but it does less wrong, and what that tells me is that maybe Netflix isn't for me.
Yep, they do this in all sorts of ways. It feels exactly like you're getting gamed.
- Rotated order of shows / movies in all categories
- Rotated images for the same shows and movies
- It doesn't show you that you've previously watched something while browsing
- UI will show "in watch list" label over expiration times so you can't tell when it'll disappear
- DVD listings (and even the details page) stopped showing that you already had this movie shipped to you in the past
They do everything possible to make it as hard as possible to get a scope of their catalog size and to avoid re-watches. If you've been subbed for 10 years it's sometimes hard to remember you watched something 8 years ago.
edit: The really annoying thing about "I-Land" is that it has an interesting premise at the core. They could have done so much better with that, it physically hurts.
Disney* is ad free.
> return to actually buying content again
It's a nice thought, but lets be honesty piracy is coming back for round 2 off the back of the splintered streaming ecosystem.
Movie / TV streaming & PC gaming. It's really a bummer, because I don't mind subscriptions, but I will not subscribe to everyone's.
The two wildcards are Apple and Amazon. I don't see either company competing directly, but they could lower the cost of customer acquisition (especially internationally) for HBO Max, Comcast, etc. and take a cut of the subscription. If that doesn't work, I think these other services will have a hard time competing internationally outside of Disney.
I don't think many people will cancel Netflix, but right now, it seems the content needs and costs scale in proportion to subscribers, which isn't ideal for them. I could see Netflix struggling over the next couple of years, but Comcast and AT&T struggling, even more, to get their services off the ground. At that point, perhaps AT&T and Comcast go back to selling content to Netflix, or perhaps Amazon buys up the content rights cheaply after everyone else is decimated.
Amazon stopped a few months ago. You just cannot watch Seinfeld online.