1) obfuscate its surprisingly shallow library
2) encourage user interaction (more telemetry data)
3) promote Netflix original content
As a user, I don't want any of this. A small cottage industry of alternative Netflix UIs has popped up, because sometimes you just want some good old fashioned filters and sorts.
A few examples:
A thousand times, this. Netflix should take all the money they are spending on ML to solve a discovery problem that they don't even have, and instead buy up rights to flicks from the period 1950-2010. A lot of these movies can't be streamed or downloaded anywhere - the only legal way to get them is to pay a grossly inflated price for the DVD on Amazon. This is actually a massive archival problem, and I would love to see someone tackle it. Unfortunately, it almost certainly won't be one of the current major streaming platforms.
Key distinction
(1) Competitors (eg. Disney+)
(2) Studios leasing the rights to competitors (eg. Amazon)
(3) Studios that want to expand into the new streaming market (all the rest).
The remaining few indie or abandoned flicks are not really worth it.
The problem is worse if A) you're not in the US and B) you are interested in stuff that wasn't a box office top 100 hit.
It's an empirical question as to whether, as you say "the remaining few indie or abandoned flicks are not really worth it." Netflix has certainly decided that this is the case, but it's not obvious to me that they're right.
[0] https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/10/missing-movies-not-avail...
Really? I often find myself learning about Netflix stuff I want to watch only from friends telling it to me, and then having to seek it out in the search function.
They are a public company now. I find it hard to believe they could not afford US licensing deal.
And since they actively enforce their geofencing, the shallow library argument becomes even more apparent.
I really dislike streaming wars. We are basically reinventing cable. Any moment I expect unskippable ads in the middle of the show for all paid plans and people defending them as.. it is only 30 seconds..
Netflix revealed a way to monetize the long tail of media content, owned by big studios. To those big studios, Netflix is just a middleman; they'll raise rates until Netflix has no profit left, or give discounts where there's a marketing tie-in (this is why the earlier movie shows up in Netflix when the sequel is on in the cinema - it won't hang around for too long though).
This structure is why Netflix is turning into yet another cable channel. There's no network effect beyond an install base and a bunch of customers paying monthly - not nothing, but also not actually much of a moat if users are using things like Amazon Firestick or something else that apps can easily be added to.
If anything, copyright is the problem. Copyright ought to enable rent extraction to cover the cost of production and a healthy profit premium to encourage quality and have hits that cover losses. But beyond a certain point (and it's measured in years for cinema, not decades) the output probably ought to be considered cultural capital and have capped and non-discriminatory broadcast and streaming costs.
All that said, as a customer I don't care. I have been spoiled by near instant access to anything I want free of ads. If Netflix does not want my money, someone else will.
And if no one else will, then that is how we get piracy.
To sum up, I really do not disagree with you. I just think customers are less tolerant today.
It’s a shame there aren’t more dictatorial Jobs-esque CEOs striking out all the bullshit vanity-metric-chasing the upper/middle managers will do if you let them. The world would be a better place.
Who are these people who watch so much stuff they run out of things to watch.
I used to go to Netflix for a few core shows (and still do) but they've slowly moved off. 30 Rock, Buffy, Sunny in Philly - all are gone, which means the number of shows I actually care to watch on Netflix was cut in about half.
They may have a million other titles, but it's extremely rare that I'm in a "browse and pick something" mood these days.
It's also why I hate the fragmentation. All 3 of those shows are from different networks - one day they will all be on their own respective subscription based websites. And I'm gonna just go back to pirating.
> It's also why I hate the fragmentation. All 3 of those shows are from different networks - one day they will all be on their own respective subscription based websites.
All 3 of those shows are on Hulu, so you only need to sign up for one additional subscription. So far. I expect that the fragmentation will only get worse from here.
I subscribe to Hulu (Always Sunny, Brooklyn 99, Bob's Burgers, Rick and Morty), Netflix (Black Mirror, Arrested Development, Bojack Horseman, Great British Baking Show), and Disney+ (The Mandalorian). I'm paying $31 a month for these subscriptions. I keep wondering if I'd be better off buying DVDs/Blu-rays and ripping them all to a plex server instead, but that seems like a lot of work, even if it would pay off in the long run.
Money isn't an issue, it's mostly just annoying to have N services to juggle. Pirating's really easy - I use exactly one pirating website, and it's free. Way simpler.
> why should my subscription fee pay for the license fees of stuff that doesn't interest me?
So obviously different people will have different interests... yet you don't think your monthly payment should subsidize any of those other things? How do you imagine that working exactly?
It would be hard to watch everything on Netflix, but it would be a short list to scroll through, especially when you apply some filters (e.g. romantic comedies with a rotten tomatoes rating > 70%).
For me, Netflix is just another channel with maybe some interesting shows this season.
There's a difference between a deep library and a comprehensive library. Netflix's library is quite extensive, so shallow isn't the right word for it. But it isn't a corpus that includes everything you could possibly want to watch--nowhere really is right now, and historically, corpuses like that have been rare and short-lived.
I've overextended the analogy.
The content available on Netflix is great, but the discoverability UX is atrocious.
Only if you are in the US
You have no idea how much I prefer this over the dominant competing model which is "promote content that costs extra because it is not actually included in the subscription I already pay".
Netflix at least is trying to make me satisfied with the content available, instead of making me yearn for more in order to upsell.
They just try to avoid you canceling your subscription when their licensing agreements are not getting renewed and everything else except their original content is gone.
Is this true? Lately I stumbled upon some movies made in India. And suddenly there was a whole new catalog available.
I think it just sucks to discover new content because you always get stuck in the 'more like this' search loop.
I just want something simple and minimal. No bullshit fullscreen autoplaying trailer at the top. Just 3 sections: Shows I've been watching (with an easy button to remove any i'm done with), shows I have marked as interested in, and then at the bottom, there can be recommended shows and new content.
That's it. It shouldn't be that hard. Some day I might code it myself.
https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/netflix-more-2019-originals...
Watched 2 seasons of 2 different series in less than 48 hours.