Why do you feel entitled to get the product of other peoples work for free?
Its not customer's fault that the only option for that is now piracy. You want my business earn it, I've yet to see people jumping hurdles and run 10km to get McD burger. Then moment McD does it they are out of business.
Now people complain about the complexities of unbundling.
It's fairly clear to me that these complaints, while real, aren't the core issue which is: people would rather get content for free than pay for it. So a lot of the time they will.
The rhetoric about bundling vs unbundling is just the justification.
That's not a fair framing. It's not that people want everything for free, it's that they aren't willing to pay an arm and a leg to get everything. I'm happy to pay for 2-3 networks (and do) for 30-50 or so a month but in return I want EVERYTHING meaning live sports and all the shows with no region blocking. I am not willing to pay 150 per month for that and I am not willing to pay 50 for a small subset of content which comes and goes. Sorry, the product was overpriced as a bundle and is still overpriced as an a la carte offering. I don't currently torrent but I understand why other people do as the current setup is highly irritating. You can say I'm being unreasonable and maybe I am, but it is how I feel.
We don't accept that answer for other products.
> Now people complain about the complexities of unbundling.
Why do you treat people like they are one amorphous blob? People want different things. There will always be people unhappy with the way things are. Are you trying to discount their complaints?
I don't care about bundles/deal/special arrangement all I care about is convenience. Netflix used to be more convenient to watch quality series and I was using it exclusively.
I paid fair price for convenience. Starting show where you left of skipping intros etc, all of those things made me pick netfilx over torrents.
But now the scales are tipping other way as EVERYONE wants a piece of pie, making exclusive deals with a single platform (plus amount of crappy show on netfilx making it time consuming to find new stuff to watch there, and their terrible recommendation algorithm, if you can call it an algorithm).
I still use netflix, but I can see myself dropping it in the future and stick to one place that have all.
“On-demand access to any movie or TV show I can think of that has ever been digitized, from one service.”
That’s it. If you can provide that, take my money. In the, say 20 years since broadband existed, literally no legit company has offered this yet, for any price.
That's because they insist on (and we permit) keeping control of both licensing and distribution. If content companies couldn't distribute themselves, or make exclusive deals for distribution, and just had to say "here's the price sheet, anyone who wants our stuff and can pay our rates can distribute it" there'd probably be such a pay-one-bill-and-watch-anything service—but it'd own no content itself. There'd also probably be a few cheaper ones licensing a wide variety of cheaper content—a single, cheapish streaming service with damn near every B-movie and failed or obscure TV show ever made, as an example. The services would have to compete on price and UX, not primarily by which content they can prevent other services from accessing—so, better for the viewer than the current situation.
Given that entertainment media aren't like other goods (you can't just go find someone else to make you a satisfactory replacement for Casablanca, say) and we grant legal monopolies on copyright, it seems anti-consumer and anti-competitive to allow same entities to also own & control distribution.
People hate the cable companies because you're paying high prices for a bunch of bullshit.
People hate the plethora of streaming services because now they have to pay 50 different places. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, HBO, etc.
What people want to do is choose what "channels" or shows they want and pay one entity.
Basically Amazon Prime's model of adding on CBS All Access or HBO Go (Now? Max?) to the base. But Amazon's UI is probably the worst.
People also love cable companies because of all the content, always have and always will. That is why they pay them billions a year. I am not sure what your point is?
So I don't see your point. Yes, cable has a lot of stuff. But not everyone wants all of it.
That's the issue. No one wants to feel as if they're paying for stuff they aren't using.
Keep in mind that these are the same cable companies that charge for basic broadcast channels, too. There's charging for stuff that people might not watch, and then there's charging for stuff that is freely available in the air for anybody to tune into.
People don't want to pay full price for 100% of a service's catalog when they only consume 10%.
People don't want to pay the complexity of switching between more than 2-3 services when they only consume 10% of each catalog.
Both of those are true.
People want ONE portal where they pay a 'fair'[1] price.
I want one service (low complexity) that has all the content I want and charges me fairly (low(er) price due to lack of absurd bundles).
[1] - fair is nebulous. People don't always like a la cart pricing, but they also don't want bundles of things they don't want.
The group of people who used to complain about bundling, is largely not the same as the people who are now complaining about unbundling.
What happening is basically reverse price anchoring. Most young people have never paid for cable, and their idea how much this service is worth is based on the price of Netflix.
I'm one of them. I'm already not sure if I get enough out of my Netflix subscription, paying for 2+ subscriptions would be unthinkable for me right now. I couldn't care less that people used to pay $160+ so even with 5-6 subscriptions I would still be better off than cable. It just doesn't match my idea of how much this content is worth.
I think it will take the industry a long time to significantly raise how much people think these services are worth. I can't see it getting it back to a similar price point as it was in the past.
I mean... before the internet, there was the TV-Guide. If you google a show there's plenty of services that will show you where it streams. Content has gotten easier to access (with a few exceptions) compared to cable, especially with the transition from linear to VOD. People just got used to Netflix, where 30% of the content that exists out there looked like "everything" because it was the only streaming game in town. The new services are putting out a ton more content and making them more accessible.
The pirates were definitely right about one thing - $30 for 1 season of a show on DVD or through iTunes is highway robbery. I don't consider the outcome to be in any way worse though. Finding where to get the content isn't the problem.
Not true, there are many ways to search multiple companies offerings. Apple has one, Roku have one on their devices. Others do too I am sure.
Can I dine and dash from Ruth Chris Steakhouse becuse they charge more than McDonald's? Can I at least grab the broccoli for free since McDonald's doesn't offer that?
I have Hulu+live, Prime, Netflix mainly. I've tried CBS all access and DCU. The later two are the same company.
CBS is a pain in a few ways and not worth it in others. Most of it is on Hulu live TV. The fact that DCU is missing so much content it isn't worth it either.
Disney+ is in for a shock too. Unless they have all of their back catalog and their new content is really compelling, I probably won't choose it over Netflix.
In the end, I'm left feeling like CBS is trying to sell be several of what should be a single service. And the rest are getting to be too split.
Netflix was the first good option... Hulu was the media industry's response. That was plenty. HBO and others wanted in, and now it's just too segmented.
As for comments in not wanting bundles. If the pricing were competitive and you could as a la carte in the interface of your choice, sure. Even then, offer bundle options.
As it is, having content strewn across a dozen apps, and finding a media device that supports then is downright painful in practice.
My advice to Disney is to also offer their content as a Hulu and Prime addon like HBO and Starz.
Hulu and Prime aren't going anywhere, but the rest, I'd rather just pirate at this point.
CBSViacom owns Philo and Pluto. Strategically, as CBS and Viacom merge, I see CBS All Access, Philo, Pluto, Paramount, Nickelodeon merging into a family of more related apps, similar to Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+. But itll be a bit for that ship to right its course, Viacom Consumer Products and CBS Interactive wont merge efforts overnight.
Is denying a faceless corporation profit from finding some bits elsewhere theft? It seems the public consensus is no. This is the digital content market seeking equilibrium. Competing against free is hard, but possible! Don’t whine as a CEO that your job is hard, it’s supposed to be hard.
I’d liken it more to the looting and vandalism in response to police brutality. More opportunism than civil disobedience.
Ask Immanuel Kant how he feels about that.