Netflix plans to start charging for password sharing, and customers aren't happy
npr.org
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With more and more content silo's (Apple, HBO, Prime, etc.) and Netflix creating friction like this I wonder how long before we are back to people pirating stuff like it's 2005.
But now, every second show is one yet another platform. I don’t even start with movies… So I’m back to using torrent because it simply became easier: there is one place to find everything.
With all the people saying they pirate for convenience, not for cost, maybe enough of them would pay to be “legal” to make it worthwhile for rights owners to collect that money.
You could be Netflix minus the distribution issues.
It's going to be a cold day in hell when any of Apple, Netflix, HBO, Disney, Amazon, etc. license their own produced content for anything else then their own streaming service.
It would allow you to paste a magnet / torrent link and it would start streaming the file to you. Ironically I found it cause it was posted on hacker news. As you can guess it was shut down immediately
It works amazingly. They download everything for you, you can stream directly and even on your tv via their app or chrome cast or you download on your computer or phone. Seriously, the experience is as good as Netflix. It’s 10USD a month and you have access to everything you can think of.
It is especially good combined with Chill Institute. I can get nearly anything on my television from idea to streaming in < 15 seconds. I can’t program, but I’d like to figure out how to turn this into a Siri shortcut…
I do some googling and it's available on Prime, for $20 a season. Fine. Whatever. Go to checkout but can't pay because I need a US bank account?
Next weekend I spent a bit of time setting up the arrs and life has been great. Open Overseerr on my phone, request a TV show or movie, arrs do their magic, and within ~10-60 minutes I can watch it on any of my devices through Plex. The ecosystem of Overseerr, Sonarr/Radarr, Prowlarr, Bazarr, Plex.. and whatever *downloadclient+vpn) is just super well integrated. This all being a bunch of simple docker-compose files makes it accessible for anyone who has a little bit of technical skills and a free afternoon.
I still have spotify but honestly also thinking of cancelling it, I'm stuck in my bubble anyway. Paying 10 euros a month for the same few albums just isn't worth it.
All media companies need to do is setup a subscription based private tracker and host their content there. It's cheaper for them, more convenient for users, but no, can't let users consume content on their own terms now, can we? Psychological control is the only means to growth.
It really didn't. Lots of people do not pirate. It became popular because it was cheap, and sold content for less than it cost Netflix to acquire or make it, and subsidised that with debt to built marketshare.
Now those days are coming to an end, Netflix is running out of road to borrow money, and it needs to bring in a sustainable amount of revenue or it will go away.
It looks like I'm headed back that way for music too. I'm a huge fan of rap and Death Row recently removed some of their most popular releases for the sake of NFTs?[0] This isn't how you get customers to go buy your music, it's a great way to piss them off and get your music for free. It's becoming a seemingly regular thing, with artists like Neil Young and Joni Mitchell removing their libraries where possible.
You can even look at Steam with their relatively wild success in Russia; GabeN himself has said "It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates"[1] that you realize it's not a pricing issue, it's an availability issue. It's a similar deal with Netflix, if we're browsing through movies we probably want to watch one right now, not wait a few hours to download one or go to a store to rent a disc.
[0]: https://thesource.com/2022/03/14/snoop-dogg-removes-most-of-...
[1]: https://www.pcgamer.com/gabe-newell-on-piracy-and-steams-suc...
I can only speak for myself but I'm trading streaming services entirely for other activities and cancelling every streaming service purchased over the pandemic save the one or two my wife deems critical. Personally I'm just as happy to listen to a podcast or read a book, or even turn to creative pursuits like learning a new language. I wish more technical books were available on Amazon's Kindle Unlimited.
Netflix became popular because it was easier than driving to the video store. Then they added streaming and it was popular because Netflix was already popular.
I was already contemplating canceling my subscription due to the constant price hikes and poor catalogue. If they add these extra fees I'm definitely canceling.
If you have kids. Which is, y'know, not uncommon. The four screen plan has always, since it's inception, stated that is for four people who live in your household in the terms.
As I read it, this is the parent poster's point. An individual person is unlikely to use Netflix on two devices simultaneously, so a notional "four screen plan" that also charges per profile (as per the linked article) undermines itself.
It says the additional household subs get an extra profile for them, and that there will be facilities to transfer profiles. There's nothing indicating that the account won't still be able to have five profiles for people who live in the household, as is currently the case.
I realize that traditional cable is account per house but that's what streaming services were supposed to break us away from.
Then the streaming is being done by someone who lives in your household and is permitted under the terms and conditions. And will probably cause no issues, as Netflix will likely register that device regularly appears at your IP address with all your other devices.
Most people don't. But they bundled it with 4K so that's why people have the multiple screen option. Not because they want multiple screens but because they want to be able to view 4K content.
I wonder how many people will churn if they have to pay extra for other households in netflix.
For yourself, you wouldn't.
For your household, OTOH, well, a 4 person household isn't that uncommon, most people have their own screens these days (even kids), so...
Imagine if you were building a service and had trouble getting customers to pay their fair share. Netflix are making it easy for people to use it the right way. Its a gentle nudge in the right direction. They arent just blocking or banning the users. Its not everyone who has to pay more, just people who are already in the wrong. And for a discount of $3, thats less than a cup of coffee!
Is it that people are worried that they will unfairly be charged more or something?
Anyway, I think this is an interesting space. I wonder how many users are account sharing this way and how many are account sharing on other services.
Aside from some of their K-Pop dramas, and BoJack horseman, everything they put out is absolutely bottom tier. I'll be watching it, thinking "Did you give a college sophomore $30 and tell em to write a script."
In From the Cold comes to mind, it comes off as a strange parody of itself.
Like a lot of the Disney plus content, it's okay as background noise. But if you go out of your way to become more hostile to end users, they might just put on YouTube.
Plus, what if you have a family with multiple residences so now you need to have an password for the timeshare, a password for the weekend apartment, a password for the vacation home.
Won't someone think of those who own multiple properties! I can imagine well to do people might be the stingiest about this, you tend to not get rich by wasting money
No you don't.
1. Initally sign up subscribers that can be easily be shared in the near term.
2. Someday, new account growth tops out, as expected.
3. Cancel the shares, and many of those deactivated secondary accounts bloom into fresh subscriptions.
4. Shareholder growth is reinvigorated beyond subscriber base buildout phase.
So apparently, the first adult profile (plus any kids-only profiles, which is still free) is included on the base price, while you can add more profiles (by twos) are charged. So it's more of a family plan in other straming sites.
It doesn't say that the existing household won't retain the five profiles it used to.
Netflix already allows you to watch on multiple devices simultaneously, and already allows you to watch from places other than your home. (Say, the gym, or airport, I dunno). It doesn't say they are going to stop doing that. So I don't know how they'd knwo which "household" a watcher is in, and the info doesn't say anything about new ways to monitor number of households, it doesn't mention households at all, only profiles. I can't read it in any way but they are reducing the number of profiles you get without paying extra.
But we'll find out!
Meanwhile, people can still share with folks in other households as long as they all share the same profile? Weird.
i guess it's hard to enforce otherwise. They already limit to only X simultaneous streams at once, depending on your account tier. But this does seem a way that will surely enrage customers... they probably know what they're doing and know it won't hurt their bottom line regardless?
They will likely use one of those.
Plus you'll have two problems with Profiles. One, each user could have their own profile and therefore machine learning isn't going to detect abnormal viewing patterns. Two, some people choose to share a single Profile and so it'd be unpredictable whether you could deduce unusual viewing habits from that.
It's likely they will go based off of unique device type and location/IP. If you have a Smart TV streaming from an IP that's 3 states over, it's more likely to be sharing than if it's a phone.
They'll just do it from account not profile.
And Netflix has external 3rd parties contributing to their recommendation teams and their geofiltering and proxy detection teams...
However, I do have multiple internet connections, and frequently switch connections (all with different IPs).
Therefore, I have a feeling it'll eventually determine I'm logging in from multiple households and then ban me, even though it's all just me from different networks.
At which point I'm simply going to unsubscribe.