Netflix loses 1M users in Spain over password policing
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Customers: “Farewell pirating. We pay a fair flat and it is automatically shared between Netflix and artists. Great!“
Netflix: “We increase the flat permanently. And we have now competitors and doesn’t over anymore all relevant content (e.g. Star Trek Picard, Expanse, Disney). How about ruining it and blocking family members with heuristics, geoblocking, per-device-checks and so on?“.
Customers „I’m done.”
THE END
We accepted and used the fair system. And you tease us with DRM? And HDCP? Increasing rates? And now you block our family members?
I wouldn’t be surprised if artists (filmmakers, musicians…) create a common fair streaming platform. Let us name it “United Artists“ ;)
That's what I've witnessed with my Portuguese and Spanish friends anyway. Extended groups who depend on one or more sources of "private Netflix (ie: Plex)".
What's everything is set up, imagine a Netflix where you can also request something not available and get that added in the time it takes to download in the exact resolution, language, subs, etc., that you want with no more than a search and a click.
5 years ago I bought some 14TB drives for 229 euro. They are now still more expensive than that. This is really a bummer. Too many people move to cloud so the market for consumer HDDs is shit.
Most of my network that is from LATAM seems to be on it. EU seems to be lagging, but iberians are jumping on it slowly. I have no idea what USA peeps are doing.
Buying it involved whatsapping with someone far away and sending pic of the wire sent page. It was cheap and fast, tho highly unorthodox
Service works well. Main issue is that most of the content is in spanish. Only about 2k movies are native english, but i suspect a big chunk of movies may have 2nd audio channel for eng. Most series seem to have that 2nd channel. Content is brand new and works. Also seems like there are a million live channels.
I dont trust web based streams anymore. Too many poppups and games being played with ads. It was only a matter of time until i got kissed by with drive-by malware.
What a vampiric, corporate lickspittle point of view.
The narrative is important. It's important to reframe this as Netflix going against the less powerful side.
Also, I celebrate this has already cost them 1 million users in Spain alone. I hope this backfires on Netflix globally.
This isn't just "things only deserve to exist if it makes someone money" this is "our system systemically discourages wasteful use of resources".
Actors and such need to be paid. Their labor is a scare resource so if they are doing something that's not worth more than their time, they should generally be doing something else. If we all behaved otherwise society would slowly die as wealth got consumed to zero instead of increased with time.
But if I stop buying your stuff maybe you will lower your prices and maybe stop investing in expensive stupid fantasy shows that everyone hates.
I mean, I don't owe it to you to buy your crap either. It's a two way street.
Yup, this is my point.
It’s also quite frankly impossible to grow forever. Market saturation is a thing, as is the number of atoms you can convert to paper clips.
Nearly everything that's wrong with the current economy and welfare of your average man in the US can be traced in some way to the stock market. Now we have the additional burden of lumping nearly everyone's retirement accounts into that same system. What could possibly go wrong, again?
I read an article probably 20 years ago, about the things that take down profitable companies, and one phrase that stuck with me was "the relentless pursuit of more".
Just the basic fact that an economy that is good for workers, where they are more in demand and make more money, is bad for their retirement because the stock market goes down, is really all you need to know to understand why the stock market is a plague.
> no money for separate accounts for family members
I would assume it's not their intention to try to "go after" this segment and make them pay more (since it's a small portion of their users, and the revenue opportunity is small), but they've undoubtedly thought about this possibility and the unfairness it creates.
Edit: double checked and Netflix today is clear that plans are for a single "household". No idea if that language has changed over time but I vaguely recall them always referring to multiple "devices", not people.
> those who dwell under the same roof and compose a family; also: a social unit composed of those living together in the same dwelling [1]
It seems more focused on the family unit rather than where they're located. If a household goes on vacation, are they not still a household when they are at their hotel? Why is it different if they're at a condo, which they own?
Disclosure: not that it matters, but I do not have a second home.
To me this reads as a category error. Households are made up of people, and houses are made of wood. But if you want to pay more to Netflix when you visit a friend's cabin, or your own, I won't get in your way!
To be clear, the portability afforded with streaming services is nice. And I'm all for taking advantage of it. But household has always been the combination of a physical house and a social group in it. To claim otherwise is silly.
Can you find other uses of the term that does this? Even "family" is typically constrained to immediate family. Such that nobody expects family benefits at a job to extend to their cousins. Heck, we don't even expect it to extend to siblings or parents.
But to answer your question, economists refer to "household income" and they don't care if you have a vacation home.
If you look at the origin of this thread, it relates to a single family with multiple homes. If you can't see that a family does not cease to be a family when they purchase a second home, then nothing I can say will convince you. Cheers!
Household income is an interesting one. You have a primary residence that dictates a ton of information for financial reporting. And as far as households go, you only count in one of the houses, as far as a household. The others are non household units.
My entire point is that a household is not a family. Those are different things.
You are the one doing the petulant redefining.
> But household has always been the combination of a physical house and a social group in it. To claim otherwise is silly.
Not true.
Household has a well established meaning that you are trying to redefine. The referent of "household" is a social group and does not include the house itself. The house is merely part of how that social group can be defined.
If your house is destroyed in a fire, you don't stop being a household while it is rebuilt. If you own a vacation home, the household doesn't change based on who might be visiting the vacation home at any given time.
> Even "family" is typically constrained to immediate family. Such that nobody expects family benefits at a job to extend to their cousins. Heck, we don't even expect it to extend to siblings or parents.
You seem to have trouble with meanings. Just because some employment benefits described with the term "family" are contractually limited, doesn't change the meaning of the word "family". In fact, even the term "immediate family" explicitly includes siblings, spouse's siblings, parents, spouse's parents, grandparents, etcetera.
Now, I will fully cede that Netflix has redefined their terms and are also at fault in this whole fiasco. They are the ones that tried to build on the back of goodwill by allowing a much more open sharing policy than anything else was ever capable of doing.
Then maybe you should have spent some time looking before so strongly asserting something that is flat out wrong. Go look at some definitions. There are plenty of legal definitions, in addition to dictionary ones, that clearly contradict your take.
The key element is shared residency and living expenses. The number of homes owned is not relevant.
For fun, try https://www.prb.org/resources/what-is-a-household/ which says "A household is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as all the people who occupy a single housing unit, regardless of their relationship to one another."
Did they get it wrong? https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/cps/technical-docume... seems to agree with them.
Or, maybe, you are just trying to gaslight folks and not actually arguing in good faith...
Even if your 10 person household has 11 homes, 1 primary home where everyone sleeps 183 days a year and 10 vacation homes where each sleeps the other 182 days a year, that would still be counted as a 10 person household by the census.
And both those linked definition make clear the basic point that you are still apparently failing to grasp. The referrent of "household" is the people who share their primary residence, not the residence itself.
Consider standard household services. They are tied to the household, which has a fixed address. Is why power company won't give you power for your RV at any other location.
Again, I'm sympathetic. And power companies distinguish this with service address. But this is exactly the point. Every other "sharable thing" will be a distinguished thing that is shared. They will often have vague ass terms that tie it to the people of a household. But they will also have carve outs on how that applies to them.
Not in the poor houses, and the rich ones would pay anyway because they're rich and price inelastic.
So I doubt there'd be a revolt.
Second, it would be difficult to avoid overinclusive/underinclusive issues. For example, someone who lives in a studio apartment in a zip code with many large expensive homes would feel they are being clumped with people who are not like them. Is it hypothetically possible to avoid these outcomes? Sure, but it would take a ton of work, and would likely outweigh the benefit of differential pricing.
Revolt? Price discrimination is illegal.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/income-based-electric-r...
I'm guessing they aren't actually going to put this into action in the USA, but we'll see how it goes
I'd personally be fine with paying for 5 different streaming video services, but my wife is too frugal and makes me cancel one when I start another.. presumably a lot of people are in the same boat, and would look at this as a good opportunity to try out Disney+, HBO Max, etc
And at that point, I'll cancel. I've already kind of accustomed my parents to it by reminding them that it takes them half an hour to find anything that they even want to watch on Netflix.
Their implementation allows people to use their tablet / phone / setup box/ streaming device in multiple locations. Since the technology isn’t available to cater for people living and paying for multiple house holds the options are everyone pays extra or the very very few people that can afford it or an anomaly pay extra
To be frank for the case of someone living 6 months here 6 months there They can sign-up and cancel cause it’s a month by month subscription
No, it’s clearly supposed to be that one account covers multiple people. GP is fine to complain whether they have enough money for two houses at once.
What about kids who have divorced parents and stay at a different house on the weekend? Do they need to get two separate accounts because “their parents can afford two houses?”
Like cable, internet connection, or Costco membership - it's per household not per family.
2017 (https://archive.is/KFZtP) "No matter which plan you choose, you can install the Netflix app on as many devices as you want, and enjoy as many TV shows and movies as you want, anytime, anywhere." In 2017, not only were they not talking about households, they were explicitly bragging about how you can watch on any device in multiple locations, which conflicts with the concept of a household they are pushing now.
2021 (https://archive.is/OzbRU) "The plan you choose will determine the number of devices that you can watch Netflix on at the same time. With all of our plans, you can download the Netflix app on all your favorite devices and watch unlimited movies and TV shows."
But now in 2023 (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926) "As a Netflix member, you are charged monthly on the date you signed up. A Netflix account is for people who live together in a single household. Learn more about sharing Netflix."
Why bothering with mobile apps then? They should make a desktop decoder box like the old times…
Or maybe ping lan for other netflix app. Or remember the MAC address of router or something.
Things that an app or website shouldn't even be able to do without clear permissions.
Thankfully getting MAC of router or other similar network stuff would be hard from browser.
The catalog will be different in each country, but that's expected. It's also quite annoying when you get addicted to a show and fly to the other country where it isn't available...
According to many websites I come from another country in eastern europe. Which is not true.
If you are maintaining a website and rely on IP geo location, which should really be called "IP crappy geo guess", you are doing it wrong, especially if you set the default language based on this.
There are definitely edge cases (specifically for mobile data), but on average, IP geolocation is much more accurate than "the ISP‘s headquarters".
I live nowhere near my ISPs corporate or even regional office(s), yet my IP location is accurate within a few hundred meters.
I think they tried that with Nebula already, to some? success.
Everybody knew this was not "legal-base family", it was advantageous for everyone to pay lip service to "family" while meaning "anyone you trust".
That falls under
> And we have now competitors and doesn’t over anymore all relevant content
The core problem is basically owners of IP all wanting to build walled gardens to distribute them (and get all of the cut), instead of just going "pay us X per view, regardless of who you are" which would allow every platform to potentially have everything at cost of having to actually compete on service, not exclusives.
Yes, the first part is obvious facetiousness.
They all had big ass signs in the front window saying $25/month per line (with a bunch of fine print that can't be read from outside the store).
Of course, none of them will honor that pricing. Also, none of them actually publish their prices. The best I got was some hand written scrawl from the the customer service person, who had memorized their pricing table.
Of course, after handing the piece of paper to me, he said something like, "so that'll be $85 per line, but in practice your bill will probably be $110. I've seen some people end up with $115/month".
Anyway, that's a long way of saying they can offer to pay me to subscribe to their crappy whatever service, and I'll still refuse.
You see "9,99€ / month" for a mobile plan? That's the full price they will take from you each month, no more. Only exception being the home fiber lines, which start at 24,99€/month but progressively increase every couple months to reach upwards of 30€/month.
I haven't seen that but I have had marketing phones where they insistently tried to upsell me on random shit ("security protection") or to increase bandwidth (I had 300Mbit/s, they wanted to sell me 600Mbit/s)
I (Sweden) haven't seen this before, where has this been used?
And 10Gbit FTTH from the same provider is just 12 euros. :)
Yeah and this is actually how the music industry is doing this and it works great. Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer etc all work fine alongside one another.
"We'll cut the people creating that art's earnings down to millicent's per stream and even screw them over on that, and we'll share all the profits equitably between the rent seeking middle men" doesn't really count as "works great" for everybody...
But anyway, it's better than getting nothing like it used to be :) Spotify and the like have really managed to stop piracy.
With a label "screwing them", they get more famous, practice the craft more often in front of more people, and get more money out of it.
Because let s be honest, what s the thing you can cut the fastest in your budget ? Movies, music and paintings. It s a difficult profession with a difficult billing. Labels help more than they screw, up to the artists to shop around for one that has good marketing for a cheaper fee.
Exclusivity does not serve the customer.
Don't forget cancelling shows constantly. I'm not getting invested in anything Netflix unless I know it has an ending already.
I wonder if it has a vicious circle, spiral component to it, like how Google keeps killing their products because people don't adapt them, because Google keeps killing their products.
Some percentage of users don't trust Netflix anymore and don't start watching a series until they know it has an ending. A new show launches, it doesn't perform too well, so Netflix cancels it after the second season. Now, the people who enjoyed the show will be more sceptical of new shows, and now a larger percentage of users will "boycott" new shows.
This isn’t new, rarely is a cable tv show signed initially for more than 1-2 seasons and then if it does well it’s renewed. Netflix is literally following industry standard here so if you’re going to call them out call everybody out.
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1299847/spending-on-orig...
Only nice thing is, that the channel subscriptions are easily cancelable. Spending 3-9 bucks on a channel for a month is essentially the price for one movie, so it is ok for me to a certain extent.
Customers: "Oh, great ! Looks too good to be true but so cool !"
A few years later
Netflix: "Well, reality caught with us, we must tighten the bolts or sink in"
Customers: "But... but... you are now forcing me to pirate again !"
/s
I often read a sentiment close to this around the topic of copyright. But what is "fair" seems to be more often than not "we want to pay as little as possible" with no relation to any tangible values, cost or anything.
I remember during my time at university, a popular point was a culture flat rate of 10€/month to cover everything: Games, videos, books, music, you name it.
Of course the media companies would claim fairness for themselves as well. Everybody is for fairness, they just mean vastly different things.
IP Protection is for the ownership of the art. Whether an intermediary between the audience and the author exists or not.
Somehow, by extension, we ended up with exclusivity contracts and protection of the distribution. Lobbies made the law against consumers who don't play by the distributor rules, and worse, even against authors of tools made for use against distributors abuses (DRM)
OK, who's to say what is fair, but it's certainly not individual consumers who have the upper hand: actually they do, unsubscribe and going pirating full on, everybody loses.
no thanks, they can keep their shit
> Subscription cancellations in the first quarter tripled compared to the previous period, according to Kantar’s research. Of all remaining Netflix subscribers in Spain, one-tenth said they planned to unsubscribe in the second quarter.
So they lost 300,000 paying users whom they think will come back, but 10% of existing users plan on leaving despite Netflix investing in Spanish content.
I think the issue is that people who are paying for an account they are sharing are likely to keep the account active so their family members can continue watching, even if they are also using a competitor. When the family are cut off, they cancel.
That's the case for me indeed. I myself basically stopped watching Netflix, somehow the content doesn't do anything for me anymore.
But I shared my account with family and they watch it. If this gets to us, and I'm the only one who can watch it, I'm for sure cancelling. The family members with whom I'm sharing the account are very unlikely to get their own account either.
(Sharing accounts is a great form of stealth giving to family members who would otherwise not be able to afford such "luxuries". It's much easier to say "hey, I got one free account on my Spotify plan, would you like to use it? Otherwise, it will go to waste" as opposed to awkwardly offering money directly)
They don't even seem to be bothering to create great content like Stranger Things anymore. We are at the enshittification of Netflix stage.
None of us are interested in the kind of content they are pushing anymore.
The drop in the stock price was expected news for everyone familiar with the service, at least in my circle.
In short, without quality, there is no choice.
Now they do 7 episodes and call it a season and frequently their shows only have one or two seasons.
BBC's QI is one example. I understand new series not being available on Netflix (in the UK) as the BBC now have their own subscription platform. But it's not just that, because Netflix don't have the earliest ones either, just a seemingly random set in the middle, perhaps even non-contiguous.
Buy what you can when you can afford it. It seems like good business strategy?
These days that’s even more of a plus. When someone recommends something to watch the first thing I check is how many seasons it’s up to, then the number of episodes, then the runtime. Shows with too many seasons of too many too long episodes are immediately ignored.
Expensive is a word accounting, finance and investors really don’t like.
I stopped even considering Netflix shows with only one or two seasons because they almost always get killed mid-story. Which means I pretty much never watch Netflix now. Out of state relatives using the account is the main thing keeping me subscribed, so when that sharing gets cut off it'll be the end of my subscription.
Let's say you aren't alone in your subscription situation, to put it mildly.
That's why your average nigh-unreadable dogpoo novel off the bargain bin has writing on par with an excellent TV show or movie
What I like best about HBO is that they have an A-Z listing of every show they have (something people have been asking Netflix for since day one of their streaming service) and how peaceful it is to use their platform.
You can browse without anything auto-playing, you can pause a show for more than 3 seconds and ads don't start rapidly flashing on the screen, and shows don't jump to more ads immediately as credits start rolling so you can actually let an ending sink in without having to scramble for your remote.
HBO max is just much nicer to use than netflix.
I also really like their "last chance" section because things are leaving all the time and that gives you some warning.
> You can browse without anything auto-playing
What? Has this changed recently? I mainly use their AppleTV app, and sometimes their web app. With the AppleTV app, there are a bunch of thumbnails that look like DVD covers. When you swipe over to one of them, at first nothing happens, but just as you're about to move to the next one, the one you're on expands shoving everything to right off the screen. Moving one-to-the-right, then causes everything to collapse down again for a second, until the newly selected thing suddenly expands for no reason. It's incredibly spastic and makes it very hard to get to a specific item.
I could have sworn it auto-played a preview, too, but I might be misremembering that.
If that's changed recently (I haven't browsed the app since "The Last of Us" ended), then great! But using it for the past year or two has been a non-starter. I just look up their shows in the search section of the AppleTV and add them to my Up Next queue so I can avoid interacting with their app at all costs.
Hulu and Netflix seem to not be so painful to use. AppleTV+ used to be perfect but a recent update made it equally unusable. I set the Home Row on my AppleTV to be my "Up Next" queue, and now only interact with the TV app from the home screen. It has less functionality that way, but it also has none of the suckage.
Even when you're using the same device they A/B test on us. Netflix recently introduced a weird sound effect as their main ad loads (it plays after their usual intro sound effect) but other's I've spoken to hadn't heard it.
I searched for Dracula, got documentaries about nazis.
The value proposition isn't there for me, I'm just being nice to my mom.
Definitely the case for me. I am able to help out 10-20 family members across 4 countries, and all I have to do is pay a measly $17.99/mo. If that goes away, I will be cancelling my subscription.
I think Netflix (and others) are looking at that 10-20 x $18/month and salivating, not realizing that the money just isn't there. They need to take a page from the Microsoft book and let people "steal" some of the content so they can have a least some paying customers. It beats having no paying customers.
Today, who would waste time pirating music instead of paying for a streaming service?
[0] https://piratebayproxy.info/setup.html
[1] https://apibay.org It has no public-facing site, probably to keep it off the radar.
[2] https://piratebayproxy.info/ is what I use.
You're sharing an account with 20 people across 4 countries? It's honestly kind of amazing that they let this level of sharing go on for so long.
It's hard for me to believe that out of 20 different people, every single one of them would decide to boycott Netflix forever because of this. If even 1 of those people decides to re-subscribe, Netflix has lost nothing. If 2 or more subscribe, they win.
Extrapolate this across their userbase and it's not hard to see why they're doing it. Obviously some people will cancel, but I guarantee Netflix has run pilot trials and analyzed the net effect to their bottom line.
While extrapolating over a large dataset, it's important to get the initial numbers as correct as possible. Since the person you're replying to is paying for the most expensive plan (probably to get the 4x devices-at-a-time perk for so many people), the plan those people would re-subscribe at is important (and less likely to be the same plan if only for one person).
They'd need at least 3 people to re-subscribe on either of the two cheapest plans to net a profit, or they'd need at least 2 people to re-subscribe on the "Standard" $16/mo plan to net a profit. Anything less is a net negative. It's a favorably-biased population for Netflix, but that'd still require a 15%-30% conversion rate for users.
I'm sure they'll come ahead in the end, but I imagine a high % of the expected profit comes from cutting costs from serving 20x "free" users per plan rather than converting them into paying users themselves.
They are obligated by law to create this content
See: https://www.innovationmcc.com/post/spain-will-now-protect-it...
> "Towards the end of 2018, European Parliament approved a law that requires all platforms that provide audiovisual content throughout the continent to have at least 30% European productions within their programming."
Edit: formatting
In other words: no different than almost all efforts of the EU to "regulate the market" instead of creating incentives.
My family is in the process of finding the best suitable and possible emigration target. Unfortunately this is common. The hardest problem are family ties and care of our parents :/
If your downvoting because of derailing the thread, I deserve it, go on. I'm just frustrated how the EU is, at least from the perspective of my bubble, losing almost every game it wants to play.
For me the European content has been the fun part and much more exciting than boring low effort shows like Chicago $THING.
The two last shows I actually enjoyed on Netflix were both french (a very secret service, and call my agent)
The mistake Netflix makes is to assume that the families and friends, who have been using a shared login, will signup for a subscription on their own. They won't, the value proposition isn't there anymore and these are people who didn't want to pay for the subscription to begin with.
I have serious doubts about Netflix calculations on this decision, but I also don't see what else they could do. They can't buy the content people want and they struggle to produce high quality movies and shows. Their productions are beautiful, but the scripts are severely lacking. Sometimes they get lucky and do a good season of a show, only to screw up subsequent seasons.
Or cancel really good shows like The OA or Mindhunter...
But in reality they end up losing the 1 account instead because none of the 3 people are willing to pay full price individually. They were all willing to pay 1/3 of the price when sharing.
They've initialized this crackdown in a few different waves. I can't imagine they would continue to do it if it were detrimental to their bottom line.
Companies regularly do things that are detrimental to their bottom line because they either misunderstood how their customers use their product, or because they are trying to please shareholders, or a combination of both.
The question begging to be asked here is whether those are new subscribers or people that were using someone's else password, natural growth, or just a good show landed in meantime and a bunch of people subscribed
It's an increasingly crowded market, everyone's distracted, everyone's sick of subscriptions, and nobody has enough money. If I was going to alienate a major chunk of my userbase, this would not have been the time I would've picked.
It does seem like this was a plan that was in the works for a couple years, and momentum is keeping it moving. I doubt they would have picked this timing if they knew what was coming!
They had noted they saw or expected the users who were on someone else's account and who used it actively to come back with their own accounts or convince the account holder to pay for them
I did more of a write up based on what they are shared in their earnings here: https://upollo.ai/blog/learning-from-netflixs-earnings
> The move was linked to a fall in users of more than a million, two thirds of whom were using someone else’s password, according to Kantar’s research, which is based on surveys of household streaming habits.
This makes it seem like they lost 333k customers. I don't know how many customers they have in Spain, but that sounds like a lot. But what does it mean to be "using someone else's password"? Does that include me, using my wife's password? I feel like more clarity is needed.
By putting someone "in your family" you at least feel like you're giving them access to a lot of stuff, so you probably don't do it with friends as much. Plus there is some unique tracking by account even if it's just an email address. I never tried it but I would assume I can't be in multiple "families" at the same time on Prime or iStuff.
Whereas if you're just Netflix, and the only reason I use you is to stream Netflix, what is the barrier to handing out my password?
As for the setup, it'd probably start like this: "Mom, what's your Apple ID password?" "I don't know."
There are Apple limits to how often you can change families, and potentially family members could buy apps with your account or use its storage, so you're incentivized to only share with people you trust and not random strangers.
Netflix needs something similar at no additional charge.
Yet.
> according to Kantar’s research, which is based on surveys of household streaming habits
How many people got HBO because their friends (paying or not) were talking about Game of Thrones?
Hopefully for Netflix somebody there has run the numbers WRT one incremental unit of video-delivery-cost is worth more or less than one incremental unit of chatter.
Wikipedia: "It had fair viewership in its first three seasons, but the fourth and fifth seasons saw a moderate rise in viewership when it was made available on Netflix just before the fourth season premiere."
"Breaking Bad's viewership grew greatly as viewers binged the series on Netflix, helping to assure that a fifth season could be made. The fifth-season premiere had more than double the viewership compared to the fourth season premiere, attributed to the Netflix availability"
I'm totally done letting media companies dictate my time and letting them make me feel like I'm missing out somehow if I don't jump when they tell me to. I'll watch things on my schedule, when it's convenient for me, and I'll do it at my own pace. If a platform doesn't want to let me do that, I've got plenty of other things competing for my attention that will.
That feels somewhat naive. People don't only belong to one friendship group.
> if a streaming platform withholds episodes so that they can better manage social media and stretch out advertising I'll just wait until the whole thing is out before I even start watching.
Sounds like it works out for everyone, then: those that want to watch and discuss week-to-week can, those that don't can wait until the end of the season and watch all at once.
We did exactly that during pandemic lockdowns. We used a browser extension that let us sync our netflix viewing while we had a live chat running during the show. It meant we could all talk about the last episode during the week and people had something to look forward to. It's perfectly do-able unless you're actually trying to keep your friend groups segregated for some reason, like you've got friends that won't do anything with some of your other friends.
> Sounds like it works out for everyone, then:
It might, except that streaming companies are too stupid to take a long view on ratings. Amazon for example canceled The Tick because they didn't get enough views in the weeks immediately following release. By the time I (and many many others) got around to watching and enjoying it, they'd already made up their mind that it was a failure.
When platforms withhold episodes I'm moving on to something else and it could be a long time before I make it back around to them. If they chase me away from a show and I have to find one that respects my time and that one has got 5-6 seasons, or if instead I pick up a video game that I'll put 150+ hours into it could easily be months before I get back to whatever they are heavily promoting and tracking this instant, assuming something new doesn't catch my interest and take priority.
Release whole seasons at once, and people who want to time gate can start right away and take longer to finish, while people who binge can finish in a weekend and everyone else can go at their own pace, but in any case it's more eyeballs within the same timeframe.
I do this, and then frequently forget about the show at all. Then never watch it.
Cancelled netflix not too long ago. They should never have reminded me to check the view stats of my family.
Forcing everyone to collectively sit with a single episode per week is fun. Watching all at once makes them all sort of meld together. Having to sit with an episode for a week changes the experience of watching the show. If you can convince your friend group to watch together, that's great, but things like discussion forums and twitter (where a lot of people like to talk about shows online) will always be dominated by binge watchers.
The only thing netflix (and possibly others, i wouldn't know) have done to improve that situation is adding descriptive audio service, which brings the usefulness of good subtitles to the audio track, so that blind people can experience more of the show that they can't see.
I'm a bad anecdote for a couple of reasons, though: I haven't had a television connected to coax in any way since 2003, and i haven't liked any new television show created after about 2013 or so - furthermore, i haven't really "loved" any series that began after 2004 or 2005. A supermajority of my media (disc and disk) predates the iphone. A plurality predates America Online.
Since i'm already on an aside, i'll point out a couple of things: First, thanks to the likes of MTV's indefatigable pushing in the late 80s and through the 90s, everyone raised in that era (and after) thinks that in order to be engaging, you must change cameras every 3 seconds. Bonus points if there's no story reason to do so. Secondly, or if you prefer, as an ancillary to the first point, the constant viewpoint shifts can aggravate certain conditions; for example, new shows tend to tire me out, and a "binge" for whatever reason tends to leave me with a headache that lasts a couple of days. Third, a plurality (and majority, up to ~75%) of all television shows produced in the US are either directly or indirectly Law Enforcement related, and i'm sure a rigorous study would bear out that has a detrimental effect on both public policy and the zeitgeist feelings of law enforcement and related groups.
> Of the 69 scripted television dramas that aired on the big four US broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, Fox, and ABC) in the last year-and-a-half, 35 were about law enforcement, according to a Quartz analysis. CBS was responsible for 16 of those on its own. About 70% of the network’s dramatic programming from 2019-2020 were about cops. [0]
And that's "Dramas", i guess if you consider "all programming, including for example comedies" the ratio goes down to a peak of 28.7%. however:
> Even many of the non-cop dramas on these channels are so cop-adjacent that one could reasonably argue they are also about law enforcement. CBS’s Madam Secretary follows the fictional US secretary of state, a former CIA analyst. Evil follows a forensic psychologist investigating supernatural incidents. Blood & Treasure follows a former FBI agent teaming up with an art thief to track down a terrorist.
And now, you said: >> You also stereotyped a whole generation
I didn't, if i stereotyped anyone it was cinematographers that grew up with that as "normal", or, if they didn't grow up with that, at least consider it normal.
[0] https://qz.com/1872176/half-of-us-network-tv-dramas-are-abou...
By comparison, the first Netflix show I remember really watching was House of Cards. Tried to have conversations with friends about it but inevitably you'd start with "oh, what episode are you on? Is that the one with the...? So you haven't seen...?".
Discussing an entire season when it's complete is definitely less fulfilling than discussing each episode. Depending on the show, of course.
A typical show went like this:
last time on dragonBallZ… 12 minutes of content… next time on dragonBallZ
I like a lot how modern series are written and done. I find it to be massive improvement over what movies and series used to be when I was young. I like the one long story aspect of it all. I just do not want to watch it in one episode a week schedule.
Not salty, it just doesn't make sense anymore if you already have four or more platforms.
There's another question: how's the competition doing? Amazon and Sky Showtime are much better in new subscriptions. HBO is 50% in new subscriptions. The measure is killing mindshare.
https://es.statista.com/estadisticas/1043679/numero-de-abona...
Two notes: not sure if official numbers, but it's about paying accounts, not "users" like the original article. And you'll see also fiber companies like Movistar and the Vodafone thieves, that have their own platforms.
It seems the site is paywalled when not coming from search so in millions of paying accounts:
Netflix 9.6 Amazon 6.6 Movistar 3.7 HBO 3.6 Disney 3.2 Vodafone 1.5
Their streaming model of watching on-demand (i.e., not a weekly release, here's the whole show to watch at your own pace) and their investment in shows that were not the usual low-brow trope-laden predictable shit meant I was actually excited when a new show was announced. My favourite TV-watching moments have been getting lost in shows like Narcos, The Ozarks, or even the seemingly polarising Orange Is The New Black.
Now I log in and see nothing but nostalgia tv, trash telly like Love Is Blind, or inexplicably 1/3 of my screen is listing mobile games that Netflix think I would be interested in.
.. and I'm genuinely concerned shows like The Diplomat are just going to leave us all hanging.
Meanwhile the other streaming services are at least as bad, but typically worse.
This thought process is how we got to the point where movies stopped having plots.
Tried with Mythic Quest for two seasons and just couldn't stick with it.
Ted Lasso OTOH I'll watch as soon as a new episode pops up.
I just skip the middle few episodes and feel like I did not miss a beat.
1.10 is perfect for most audiobooks.
Either on my real TV, or via input switching on one of my monitors when working on tedious tasks.
I started listening to podcasts at increasingly faster speeds, going from 1.1 to 1.2 and slowly increasing it. It only took a few days to a week of listening to slightly-too-fast-for-comfort content before it started sounding normal and I could bump it up again. Now the slowest I listen to is at 1.5 (going up to 1.6 or even 1.8 for my "filler" podcasts). Videos I can crank even higher, since the addition of visual content and/or subtitles can help process the audio information.
I now watch half my videos at 2x speed, and 1.25 or even 1.5 are how 1.1 used to seem for me.
I'd love to see TV+ try something more experimental.
I really hope they don't fall into the Netflix habit of cancelling shows before they have time to find their groove (Mr. Corman was really creative and just getting good and got axed), and some of their dramas are starting to veer into the forgettable "Netflix Hallmark made for TV" territory.
I feel like I must mention though: as soon as For All Mankind decided to have a teenager seduce a grown married woman I lost interest. Then to top it off, they continued that plotline into the next season. What a shame.
Which is a win for literally everybody. The consumer wins because they get a very high amount of enjoyment for their invested time. The service wins because the less time each loyal subscriber spends actually using the service the less their bandwidth costs are.
This is why I don't pay for Netflix anymore. They cancel every show I enjoy. No other service treats their fans worse than Netflix.
It's not just Netflix.
Disney+ has a bunch of National Geographic infotainment ... minus the info type shows.
HBO is going to end up with Discovery Channel ... stuff.
I want some way of telling them "I don't want to wade through crap..."
Yarr matey, one way do be not parting ways with coin for said services, instead making a more... equitable re-appropriation
Can you offer a full throated defense of why you feel it's okay to pirate media in 2023, with so many options for consuming media legally, on whatever device, at any time? That was the dream of pirates in 2003, but we've achieved that dream legally today and it's still not good enough for the pirates it seems.
Streaming was going to "save us" from the big cable companies. No ads, just pay that small subscription fee and watch what you want when you want it.
Now there are a dozen subscription fees, I'm getting ads anyway, and I'm not getting content I want to pay money for. Some are even streaming live TV now, with no way to watch what you just watched again.
This is the part I don't get. Why do you feel you have this right?
FYIW, HBO Max allows you to download episodes for offline viewing, so it's not exactly true they are dictating the scenarios. I watch HBO all the time on plane rides.
>I actually “pirate” some of stuff I pay for.
So, if someone pays for HBO Max and watches the latest episode of Barry at home via the app, but, as I do, feel that HBO's UI/UX is dogshit, and they then download a copy of it and slap it on their phone or laptop in a way that's more comfortable to them for their flight tomorrow, what's the difference? OP continues to pay HBO, but that next view is just on a local device.
Edit: HBO Max downloads "expire" after 30 days, and you have 48 hours to finish it once you've started[1]. You're also limited to 30 downloads at once. This is hardly 'convenient' for some people.
It’s also fantastic because I know -exactly- what my children are watching and if there’s some episode of Paw Patrol that’s particularly annoying it get deleted.
This is the opposite of my experience. It took next-to-no effort, maybe an hour or two one time, to set up my Synology NAS box with Plex, Sonarr and Radarr. The result isn't something temporary, it's a fully-working system that obtains all of the shows and movies I want to watch and drops them onto Plex almost immediately.
All I have to do is fire up Plex and the latest episodes of everything are right there, often within an hour of them airing on the east coast. I'm on the west coast, so this sometimes means I get to check them out before they air here.
The result is a carefully curated library that's far more tailored to my tastes than any algorithm has offered me on any service.
It is just that I'm never going to consume it.
I occasionally pirate episodes of TV shows that would require another subscription (already paying for Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, HBO and Prime). Honestly, I'd much rather cancel all that and just pay à la carte for content as long as it's something reasonable (like $0.50 - $1 / episode or ~ $10 / season and $2 - $15 / movie - that adds up to about the same cost based on my family's viewing patterns, plus I get flexibility).
It was nice when Netflix was the only game in town and it was worthwhile to pay it for the library, now it's too much to pay all these services for just a pile of 99% excrement.
Similarly, if the streaming service continues to play ads despite paying for the service, we will just pirate the content.
Why though? Why don't you just watch some other content? There's so much out there, and you have so many choices, available without any ads, and also if you choose you can consume free content as well.
Given that you have these alternatives, why do you feel you have the right to nonetheless violate IP laws because you don't like that a subset of content carries ads or restrictions?
Because that content isn't this content, and I want to see this content.
>Given that you have these alternatives, why do you feel you have the right to nonetheless violate IP laws because you don't like that a subset of content carries ads or restrictions?
First, see above - that content isn't this content, so if there's not a suitable alternative, well, c'est la vie. I've demonstrated that I'm willing to pay for these things, albeit to a point. If the service goes beyond that point, and I still want the content, then I'll obtain it via other means. Besides, much of the specific content I'm referring to in this scenario rakes in massive profits every quarter and is doing quite well for itself regardless of whether or not I "violate IP laws" to obtain it. That's setting aside the fact that it's been shown that piracy doesn't harm sales[1]. Further, in spite of our pirating, we'll still often inject money back towards the IP via other means.
[1]https://gizmodo.com/the-eu-suppressed-a-300-page-study-that-...
I see. So is this your thought process?
1) I want it
2) I can't have it my way
3) So I take it, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks
Is that fair, or no? I notice you offered some rationalizations for your behavior, but those doesn't really change the above calculus right? They are provided to justify it.
They listened to consumers for a while. I stopped pirating for a good chunk of years because everything was glorious in the world of streaming. But after we finally got what we'd been asking for, they stopped giving that to us.
So, yeah, I'm going to go elsewhere to get it, your judgement be damned. I won't be losing sleep over it any time soon.
I did a lot of pirating when I was a kid; I still do a little now (but a lot less), mostly out of frustration with the cost and availability of the content on streaming platforms. I wouldn't steal stuff from a store (because I know that causes actual material loss among other things), but making an additional copy of a TV show episode (which I wouldn't have bought anyway) - it's a philosophical question whether that causes a loss for someone.
Sure.
> If it were easier like this to grab food from stores and restaurants, grab homes of other people, they would do that too.
You are implying that everyone pirating content would do these things if the chance of getting caught was low. I would posit that some people who pirate would, but it's a stretch to say that the entire group would.
Taking your simplest answer: just because one can does not mean one would.
-- NOT OP --
In the general case, no, but consider the cases of:
1. "Altered media" e.g. (1) Star Wars, (2) THX 1138.
2. "Remixed media" e.g. (1) Terminator 2 not having its theatrical CDS mix, (2) Earthquake not having its SENSURROUND mix
3. "Omitted media" e.g. (1) Halloween not having its original mono soundtrack, (2) The Exorcist not having its original mono soundtrack
4. "Missing media" e.g. (1) The Star Wars Holiday Special, (2) HBO's "Real Sex" documentary show
5. "Censored media" e.g. (1) Fantasia, (2) Song of the South
There are entire online communities dedicated to finding, restoring, and preserving items like the ones mentioned above.
So, is piracy OK in these cases? I emphatically believe it is.
If the form of art has value, then the original form of that art has at least as much value since it reflects the original intention of the artist which inherently has value by being part of the historical record.
If the original form of art has value, then there's value in preserving it for future generations to appreciate.
If there's value in preserving the original form of art, then there's value in distributing it widely since history has shown time and time again that copyright holders alone are not enough...
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1937_Fox_vault_fire
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_MGM_vault_fire
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Universal_Studios_fire
4. https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/bbc-archives--wiped-missing-and-lost/z4nkvk7
5. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-steely-dan-songs-on-aja-that-cant-be-remixed/It’s the fewest clicks to see new content.
Comically I subscribe to many online services (Hulu, Netflix, apple+) and will end up discovering and watching new shows through plex and my rss feeds than the actual apps.
So pirating still gives me the best user interface. Especially with combining content from multiple services.
Also, it’s not just pirating. I ripped my couple hundred dvd collection years ago when kids kept breaking DVDs.
Comically, the cheapest way to watch most movies is to buy the dvd at Walmart for $4 and rip it to watch through Plex. The file never goes away and it skips the frustration of figuring out if Wolf of WalStreet is on Netflix, or Hulu, or HBO, some stupid one off streaming service that I’ll never use (peacock, paramount, whatever whatever).
So I think it’s the same reason in 2023 as it was in 2003.
I certainly wouldn’t steal food from a store as that deprives the store of food. That seems cut and dry.
If I could photograph food and turn it into food to feed myself, I would certainly do that, even if it was illegal. It doesn’t deprive the owner of anything.
There’s lots of injustice in the world. And I think IP leans more towards unjust than just. Do I think creators should be compensated? Yes. Do I think creators’ descendents should be compensated for 90 years? Probably not.
I think copyright is designed and biased toward massive corporations to the detriment of society. So I don’t feel bad when I subscribe to HBONow and also “illegally” download torrents so it’s easier for loved ones to watch.
I also feel like there’s a giant PR effort from wealthy entities against a few individuals and the fact that you’d equate downloading a movie with stealing food is so weird to me that it shows how distorted the discussion is.
So we need some distinction between essential rights that seem real to me (bill of rights stuff) and “rights” that only exist because of successful lobbying on behalf of a very tiny industry (content industry is only like $100-200B globally where agriculture is $1.2T in the US alone).
I think following the law is ethical, and copyright is not only the law, it follows directly from the Constitution.
> If I could photograph food and turn it into food to feed myself, I would certainly do that, even if it was illegal.
Context and perspective. We're talking about a media landscape that is flush with content, to the point where people complain that it's all just rehashed. There's plenty of media to go around.
> It doesn’t deprive the owner of anything.
It deprives someone of their rights, which is something I think pirates don't really care about at all, as it's never considered in the calculus. It's always "what's more convenient for me and my desires to consume particular media, rights be damned". I wish pirates would just be frank and admit this like the other poster who was replying to me.
> I think copyright is designed and biased toward massive corporations to the detriment of society.
Me too. But I also enjoy the rule of law and the hard work of people who make content that I consume.
> There’s lots of injustice in the world. And I think IP leans more towards unjust than just. Do I think creators should be compensated? Yes. Do I think creators’ descendents should be compensated for 90 years? Probably not.
I would feel more sympathetic to this argument if pirates had ever given an inch, or seriously attempted to organize to fix the law in the US over the past 20 years. Instead, they just kept pirating as hard as they could, even when the industry moved toward streaming services, and rationalized their behavior away.
> I also feel like there’s a giant PR effort from wealthy entities against a few individuals and the fact that you’d equate downloading a movie with stealing food is so weird to me that it shows how distorted the discussion is.
So you're saying my strong feelings about copyright infringement are due to a PR campaign, and not a carefully considered position I've come to on my own, through my own experiences as a content creator, artist, and owner of copyrighted works?
I understand that some people are so blasé about violating copyrights, they don't even think they could possibly be doing anything wrong. On the other end of the spectrum are people who have to spend money and resources to defend their rights from violations of law by others. I fully understand that digital media and physical goods are not the same. But I categorically reject that zero people are harmed when copyrights are violated.
> “rights” that only exist because of successful lobbying on behalf of a very tiny industry
As I said, copyright is a fundamental provision of the US Constitution. We can talk about the parameters of "securing for limited Times" but "exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." is not up for debate. The word "exclusive" is important here.
And as for the size of the industry interested in copyright... upending copyright would also upend trademarks and patents. There's a much larger industry (well... all of them) interested in those forms of IP.
Copyright was 14 years at the time of the Constitution. If it was still that, I’d have no problem waiting it out and only watching material 14 years old.
Following laws isn’t always ethical. The constitution also allowed slavery. Do you think owning slaves was ethical? There’s lots of instances where laws are out of sync with ethics and morality, and, hopefully change over time.
In the past 20 years gay marriage became legal and I would argue it’s always ethical. Same for recreational drug use. And therapeutic mdma and ketamine. The list goes on and on.
Especially when the copyright laws aren’t the result of some specific debate and determination but by very targeted lobbying by Disney and others to extend copyright from 14 years to its current length of life+70 years or 95 years for corporate works.
Upending copyright would have nothing to do with trademarks (perpetual as long as in use) or patents (usually 20 years) and can be reformed completely independently. Although those other IP topics could also be improved.
I’m not making a judgement on your beliefs or how you formed them. I don’t know you. But there are PR campaigns to promote copyright targeted toward school kids (remember “don’t copy that floppy” [0] and “you wouldn’t steal a car” [1]) and I think they are in alignment with “copying a friend’s video is like stealing bread” so you just seem to be using simile analogies. It’s quite possible that you reached the analogy independently. It’s also possible that you aren’t aware of how you reached this analogy and are influenced by advertising and PR, just like everyone else.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Copy_That_Floppy [1] https://youtu.be/ALZZx1xmAzg
"pirating still gives me the best user interface"
To support this argument, you cited the various inconveniences you face when dealing with copyrighted works. Only after more prompting have you landed on a high-minded, ethical argument. Why didn't you argue this in the first place if you feel so strongly about these points? Why was your first foot forward an argument based on convenience?
Personally I pirated a ton back in the day due to convenience. Why did I stop? Because now I have money and it's all on my TV one click away. It's so convenient today compared to 2003, so that's why I don't understand why people who can afford it still pirate. I can understand why people without money would, but still... it's like $10 a month for all the music in the world, anytime, anywhere; whereas back then all you got was a CD for $10 that you could play in your crappy boom box or walkman. As a young pirate, Spotify was my dream growing up, and now that it's a reality, the pirates still aren't satisfied.
> Do you think owning slaves was ethical?
I think you know the answer to this question.
> slavery... gay marriage.... medical drugs.... etc...
Everything you listed was changed due to robust and organized social movements to effect that change. Because the societal ills were so egregious, society mobilized to neutralize those.
If you want copyright to stand next to slavery, gay rights, and the drug wars as a worthy social cause, it's fine to make that argument. But you've got to back it up with a robust social movement centered around effecting change, not selfishly consuming.
When I look at the last 20 years of piracy, I don't see the same kind of movements. I see a lot of petulance disguised as civil disobedience (looking at the Pirate Bay), and a joke of a social movement (the Pirate Party), but other than that really nothing. Could it be because most of society doesn't really care about this issue the way they care about human rights? Maybe society recognizes piracy as the selfish act it is. I know that's not popular to say here on HN, but as a former pirate myself, I really can't justify my behavior any other way. I'm certainly not going to compare my actions to those of civil rights leaders and the movements they formed.
And if I did feel so strongly about the ethical nature of my actions, I wouldn't start by grounding my argument as "pirating still gives me the best user interface". Because if I did that, others would think that's what I really care about, and any ethical considerations would be secondary.
As I said to the other poster, I'm not judging you for this. It's okay to be unethical and selfish. I'm very unethical and selfish as a person (most people are), so it's okay if you are too. You can also be ethical and giving in other areas of our lives. Just be honest about your motivations like they were, and it's all good.
> Upending copyright would have nothing to do with trademarks (perpetual as long as in use) or patents (usually 20 years) and can be reformed completely independently. Although those other IP topics could also be improved.
My reply to you in this regard was in response to your assertion that copyright is not an "essential right", but instead a "right" only due to successful lobbying. My point was that this right is grounded in the Constitution itself, and no corporations today lobbied for that.
It's true that rights holders have broader protections today, and as a rights holder, I appreciate that. But as a citizen, I also recognize that the term should be much shorter, and we can indeed reform the whole system. But I wouldn't go back to the drawing board, because that requires a rewrite of the Constitution. As long as it's in the Constitution, rights holders will have representation to make sure our interests are protected.
> I think they are in alignment with “copying a friend’s video is like stealing bread” so you just seem to be using simile analogies.
I think what's actually happened here is that you've internalized these more than I have, and are jumping to conclusions. Because I didn't argue what you quote there, so let's go back and look at what I actually said instead of paraphrasing.
"Stealing food from the store is way more convenient than going through the line. Best UI there is for grocery shopping."
I was not saying that that copying data deprives someone of property, but that convenience is not an excuse for violating the law. I made no argument regarding deprivation of property. Stealing food and violating copyright are both illegal. I'm not saying they are both stealing, as was the argument when I was growing up. It doesn't matter that one is physical and one is digital. You are free to make the argument that the acts are different and therefore one should not be illegal, or the punishment should be different, but that's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that both are de jure illegal, and the convenience argument doesn't make one better than the other.
People had illegal gay sex for centuries before society mobilized. So it was the groundswell of “unethical” activity that eventually led to social movement. Same for drugs and whatnot.
I think the societal change for legalizing what I think is ethical (and what billions of people think is ethical enough to do despite laws) will come about after many years of people just not caring and doing what’s convenient.
The convenient argument is just the most straightforward and I think why people continue to pirate. So that answers your question. All the other parts are going into additional detail that you requested.
It’s like if you asked someone why they illegally smoked pot 40 years ago they’d likely say “because I like to get high.” That doesn’t mean that there aren’t deep reasons why, just that that is the most important one.
Obviously legalizing pot cost corporations lots of lost revenue. And modernizing copyright will cost corporations lots of lost revenue as well.
If it's just a backup I can't see any ethical reason why you shouldn't be able to do this.
We went through all this in the courts when we got the rights to timeshift recorded TV programmes.
Comparing it to stealing food is ridiculous. No body has been deprived of anything, it's just copyright violation.
The second part of your sentence doesn't follow from the first. If someone is violating a copyright, that someone else has been deprived of their rights to control their IP, and they're owed compensation. That's the system we set up, so that's the system we should follow.
If a rights holder wants to grant you the privilege of copying the data, that's great. Many of them actually do that. But that doesn't mean we're allowed to just violate the rights of those who choose otherwise. The response should be to consume media that is offered in favorable terms, not to pirate media just because you feel it's convenient.
Again, no one has been deprived of their rights and the copyright holder’s rights are not unlimited.
Granted there aren't many / any.
I do donate to my local PBS station ... the content they provide is pretty dang good.
Pretty much all the other video I watch is independent content on YouTube. Just people talking about and showing stuff they are interested in. I'm sort of amused that these people come up with more compelling stuff to watch than the big studios with their huge budgets, writers, celebrities, etc.
Welcome to the infinity pool. Spotify playlists, Youtube search results, your Twitter and Facebook feed....they're all bottomless for a reason.
Netflix isn't going to be any different.
Netflix may have a quality problem, but another one (and a much easier one to fix) is their stupid recommendation algorithm. It shows me nothing but trash and genres (like Love is Blind) I absolutely dont want to see, while I have to use a 3rd party service to dig for gems.
I cant help but wonder if thats skewing their own metrics. People are going to watch trash if thats all they present.
Holland seemed to focus more on developing fewer shows of higher quality content while Bajaria was more focused on "get all the content, throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" (who saw "Squid Games" coming?). It also aligns, however, with a timeframe of the launch of the studios having their own top tier services such as Disney+, Peacock and even the new HBOMax (MAX now) all of whom are more tightly holding the streaming rights to the studios to which they're associated.
This for me aligned with when Netflix started going downhill. I have to say some of their newer content seems better but I'm not sure where its going to go. Right now HBOMax and Apple seem to be the most consistent for fewer, higher quality shows which also more closely aligns with my viewing habits. Netflix we keep mostly for my daughter these days and the few random hits that come through on Netflix.
[0] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflixs-...
Youtube / Creative studios could pitch 1-3 min video ideas which Netflix could greenlight and provide just bare minimum capital to produce. If the final film is good, Netflix could buy the film and release on their platform.
Current Trends which are in favour of above idea:
1] Story generation will get cheaper thanks to ChatGPT.
2] Film generation will get cheaper thanks to Stable Diffusion.
3] Short video formats are already very good, engaging.
4] RunwayML and so on.
Personally, there are so many short stories (e.g. by Greg Egan, Borges, others[0]) which I would like it to reach mass audience. Rights are tricky issue though.
The reason they failed is mostly because they went too big too fast. They spent almost a billion dollars in content at launch and expected to get a ton of people subscribed quickly at $8 a pop. Had a bit of a chicken and egg situation there. They needed enough quality content to justify that amount per month. But it was all new, untested content. When they didn't get the subscribers they had pretty much zero runway to ride it out and iterate.
I assume they’re going to be (one of) the first with an AI-assisted or even completely generated show that is completely tuned to your taste.
I expect the same to happen with games, with the wildcard of multiplayer. Music probably earlier than movies / series and games even.
A one-off thing from 5 years ago that hasn't been replicated since and nobody really cares about now?
I’m not saying HBO or Apple TV+ (what a name..) couldn’t do it, just that they seem much less poised to.
Funny how saying Bandersnatch was innovative gets HN absolutely livid.
... huh? I didn't say Bandersnatch wasn't innovative and my feathers are far from ruffled. I just don't see how citing one thing from five years ago that no other streamer, nor Netflix themselves, have replicated since (correct me if I'm wrong) is a strong is example of Netflix being "innovative".
I'd argue that other streaming providers would've explored this sort of thing already if they felt there was enough interest. Anecdotally, I'm in multiple communities that involve the discussion of film and television and people just aren't asking for that sort of thing.
My original comment was at -3 when I said that.
Choose your own adventure TV may be for some, but I hate it. I want to be told a story, not just pick how I want things to go.
Besides, that or AI genned to taste would remove the social aspect. I love discussing shows, movies, etc with friends. That gets hard to impossible in this model...
I think the root problem is that no studio anywhere is large enough to put out enough high-quality content to keep the people engaged continuously. Not even Disney.
All the studios were looking over at Netflix making all the money and wanted to disintermediate the middleman, but the combination of all of them doing that turn one fairly decent (not perfect, but decent) streaming service into an array of streaming services each individually not worth the subscription. That worked for a bit but it's wearing out.
The solution of just pumping out more is the obvious one to try, but it hasn't been going well.
I'm... actually not convinced that's impossible? The bottleneck on these seems to be quality writing. Generally the actors act, the editors edit, the directors direct, the effects crew broadly succeeds at the effects, etc. But Hollywood in 2023 seems to have negative respect for writing. Take any Writing 101 course, and if you want to write for Hollywood, completely throw it out the window because they do not care in the slightest about any of that. I recognize of course that any 101 course is only the intro and the basics, but current Hollywood writing is not taking the rules, deeply understanding them, and then transcending them by virtue of the deep mastery of their craft... they're just plain writing for crap. They've got a ton of other priorities and "good writing" is so far down the list that it might as well not be on there.
You can't get the best of the best to write for 100% of every season, but a lot of streaming stuff is several cuts below what middle-of-the-line episodic television shows were managing in the 90s in really, really basic stuff. Surely there's enough competent writers to at least get a solid C on the writing front to let all the other factors carry over to "at least worthwhile", if Hollywood would just raise the priority on that quite a bit more.
Tons of high quality content is probably not on the table for anyone, but surely with all these resources we could scrape together some medium quality content more consistently?
I started watching "The Night Agent" but the dialogue became too painful for me to carry on after about four or five episodes. That coupled with a script where two secret service agents bitch at each other like children eventually nailed the coffin.
I'll probably watch it on holiday to hedge against the possibility of losing two hours of my life on a school night :)
On a similar note: for so much of Night Agent, it felt like they started with competent technical advisors that paid enough attention to detail to make terminals show TUIs/GUIs that actually relate to the current goal, but the writers came along and rewrote every technical explanation with "brb guys, gotta hack the mainframe" garbage.
The wine moms around me love the show though, so maybe it's just catering to the target demographic.
So, they were let go, and a new generation of young, unseasoned writers has been doing the writing.
But unlike previous generations though (heh), many of them are not even slightly interested in learning from the previous (seasoned) writers, whom they view as inferior for some reason.
Thus, the extremely low quality (idiot level) of writing in recent years.
No idea how accurate that is, but it seems like a reasonable take at first glance.
Mind you, I don't really watch US origin tv/movies any more myself due to their crappiness. :)
However, I think this comment could use some more justification:
> But unlike previous generations though (heh), many of them are not even slightly interested in learning from the previous (seasoned) writers, whom they view as inferior for some reason.
Claiming that a particular generation is really different from another in this sort of way is something I'd need to see a lot of evidence to be convinced of. Kids trying to do their own thing and middle aged folks lamenting "kids these days" is a tale as old as time.
> Kids trying to do their own thing and middle aged folks lamenting "kids these days" is a tale as old as time.
Yeah, agreed. From my point of view, it's not totally the new writers fault.
It's the fault of the management chain that got rid of the old writers and also didn't tell the new ones "Look, just humour the old fogies for a while, you might learn something...".
The gist of the (relevant) bit of plot is that the younger writer wants to take an old classic series (ala Full House) but do a gritty reboot of it, but the studio brings in the original writers on to help, and there is unsurprisingly a culture clash.
I remember thinking (of the younger generation) how sad it was that they were so eager to dismiss all the experience of the elders, and how glad I was that this was just a TV show and probably not at all what was happening in the real world. I was safe in that ignorance right up until I read your comment.
Oops, sorry. ;)
I mean that's what every generation of skilled workers has always said about the generation following them, so I'd take it with a grain of salt.
This. There simply isn't that much really great content.
Sure, 90+% of submitted episode pitches were probably terrible, but that was fine because show runners could choose the best episodes from the slush heap. Now each series only orders roughly as many episode scripts as a season has episodes. If a writer has a 75-80% hit rate, the show can't discard the bad episodes.
Can you name a few shows that were written that way? I'd never heard of this but I don't watch much TV from before the 2000's.
I don't know what other shows might have done this.
All the old books about television script writing I've read are about submitting in this way, but by the time I was actually considering it episodic television was rapidly dying out.
And thus we're back at "cable rates" but pick your poison.
The response should be "cancel services when you don't need them" but it's tougher if you have a family with young kids who you let watch.
I really liked paying CBS/Paramount for a single month so my kids could binge Korra (sequel to Avatar: the Last Airbender) back when Netflix released A:tLA first. We literally watched nothing else on the service.
So instead of paying $10 a month to Disney for Mandalorian, Wandavision, Loki, an additional $10 for Peacock for Mrs. Davis, Bel Air, and Poker Face, plus however much else for HBOMax, Netflix, Hulu, etc., he could just pay one network $10 a month, binge the couple of good shows that they had, and then instead of waiting months for the next thing to come out, unsubscribe and switch to another network. Lather, rinse, repeat.
He isn't as current, and sometimes it's hard to chat about whatever the current new thing is, but society has effectively already given up on the concept of the whole nation tuning in to any one thing and it being the topic of watercooler conversations for a myriad of reasons.
Note: He has children, and I have no idea how he handles this other than to note that he also has a digital antenna, so some shows are "always available" (or at least as much as is allowed for)
I practically never see an ad for a particular new show -- tho in addition to memory faults there is also of course selection bias here.
If they have enough “must-watch” shows that are staggered then you lose out unless you’re paying constantly.
It’s what they want: gets them som earned media/socialmedia hype, and prevents the binge+drop discount watching approach.
Certainly with Wheel of Time I felt that there was a few weak\boring episodes in a row and I hit the point where I dropped it, for me wasn't worth waiting a full week to see if quality of subsequent episodes improved.
If there had of been a buffer of episodes available I could probably power through the bad episodes until the show picked up again but with weekly release cadence it just caused me to give up on it.
Those penalties could be "we just won't let you sign up" or "oh you don't get the promotional rate then, your rate for Netflix will be $44.95/mo for the next 11 months".
I wanted a smattering from like 10 different services. No I'm not paying 120$ a month. So I pirated every last bit.
Turns out friends also wanted to watch them so I made my JF instance available via cloudflare. And now I get requests of shows, the arrs parses the request, downloads, and just shows up.
The services had their chance. They failed us. We came with alternatives. Until their offerings are better, we see no reason to change.
I don't think it's that. Historically, you'd have a strong cast and crew on board for the first ~2-3 seasons.
Any show attracts its critical mass of viewers early on, so the first way to keep production of later seasons profitable is by eliminating expensive gimmicks (helicopters, SFX, on-location, etc.).
Firing the writers and replacing them with Writing 101 interns is usually the next step. It's not that nobody cares, but the replacement labor is new to the game; they're not writing award-winning scripts at that stage in their lives. It's a step above mining fanfiction.net for scripts.
One phenomenon of shitty writing and dialogue is that increasingly I hate the main character. Smug, cringe, sassy, sarcastic, lecturing. I'm not rooting for them, I hope the bad guys win.
I cancelled my subscription out of frustration at the crappy content I saw all the time in the US app (and the terrible discovery too) -- but now I keep seeing ads for fairly compelling Asian shows and I might resubscribe "in" another country.
If you are throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks, the stuff you get to throw might not be so good when you're competing with Apple, HBO, and all the rest. In a smaller market maybe the best people are still willing to be thrown at the Netflix Wall, so to speak.
The executives that ruined regular TV/cable with cheap and trashy TV are bringing that model to streaming.
When they started streaming, the platform was paying pennies to license shows that were already in syndication. Programs that had already made their money in first runs on network TV and cable.
As streaming became the de facto distribution method for new content, of course the cost of licensing that content ewas going to go up. Streaming licensing fees are no longer just gravy to the studios, they are their primary source of income.
The idea that Netflix could somehow afford to bankroll the entire entertainment industry on $15/mo subscriptions is ridiculous. There were three possible outcomes:
1. Netflix becomes the new cable and charges $100+/mo
2. The output of the entertainment industry shrinks until it is sustainable on $15/mo subscriptions
3. Competitors start popping up and fighting for market share
Here's an idea - quality over quantity. Make fewer, but better shows and movies.
The poor average quality of their content is why I cancelled Netflix and switched to a mix of HBO, Hulu, and Paramount.
What an insight.
But how do you determine what's "high quality" and what isn't? You don't think Netflix is trying to measure that?
There's zero chance Netflix isn't aware they are peddling more junk than gold these days. It's a gamble to have more content than anyone else - and it seems to be slowly killing them.
Everyone has a story about spending 45 minutes surfing Netflix trying to find something interesting to watch while dinner gets cold. Everyone has stories about how awful the latest Netflix Original is, etc.
The amount of poorly dubbed foreign films is appalling, for instance. That's not a gripe against foreign films, it's a gripe about the utter lack of quality Netflix green-lit straight onto the front page of results. These things could be done well - but often are not.
Netflix is shortsighted and myopically focused on tentpole shows that directly lead to “new subscribers” that join just to watch that show. All while ignoring having a strong catalog, since it is hard to measure how a cumulative collection of shows drives subscriptions.
It's perfectly possible to ignore that and still aim for some focused quality, but that's the path to becoming a niche operation. Might as well switch to pay per view.
The main challenge streaming networks are facing is that there is no attention on-ramp now that nobody is zapping through linear tv anymore who might get hooked on an earlier iteration of the franchise. When I know that I am multiple installments behind in $franchise, my willingness to pay for the latest one is zero. And if earlier ones are the same price as the latest, they will feel overpriced. That's why the focused "I subscribe x because of some specific production y" that would be implied by quality over quantity doesn't have much future, they need habitual subscription where discovery just happens.
Reductionist victim blaming and, frankly, nonsense. Pessimism is not healthy.
I supported their business (by paying) because I liked their operating model, and their campaign (for lack of a better word) to keep adverts out of the platform and to support "better" content.
I am dissappointed that model has, apparently, failed and they are pivoting away into yet another low brow, low IQ, garbage distributor - even if it is an inevitability.
Victim-blaming? What exactly are you the victim of here? Netflix not having shows you like.
>Pessimism is not healthy.
Your entire post was to complain that Netflix is failing.
>I am dissappointed that model has, apparently, failed and they are pivoting away into yet another low brow, low IQ, garbage distributor
Can't get much more elitist than this, can it?
There is tons of good content on Netflix. And Orange is the New Black wasn't very good, imho.
So then isn't it just good? Cable didn't have on demand and you couldn't share even in the same house. Beyond basic cable channels you needed a cable box for each tv for around $5 a month in the late 80s (around $11 today).
A Brazilian man speaking mexican spanish as Pablo Escobar, with mexican actors using mexican slang in a show about the colombian drug trade, completely omitting Pablo regularly raped and afterwards executed 13-15 year old girls and other insane stuff.. this was not a popular show in Colombia
Netflix has always been unwatchable crap or woke garbage. Time to unsubscribe and pirate
And like every company, v1 was run by the founders that understood their customer base.
Of course, we're at v2, with legions of sales, accounts and advertising execs, and layers of management whose performance and pay is based solely on company performance.
The other thing that Netflix dropped the ball on was the Spotify-esque "1 site to rule them all". There's now Disney+, Paramount+, Hulu, HBO, in the UK, BBC, ITV, E4, Sky, and so on. Movie + TV companies have always fought each other in a way that record companies never did, but both their products are just bits down a wire in 2023.
Competition is coming at them from all sides.
I know that they get precise viewing figures for their series, but cancelling some of them is just baffling. No more chance of "Growing The Beard" for shows given the crowded marketplace.
I cancelled a year or so ago after they cancelled some of the programmes I used to watch. The only thing left on Netflix for me is Stranger Things and that's not enough to keep me.
Netflix didn't drop the ball; it was clearly never going to happen. When Netflix launched their streaming service, I thought it was a dumb idea because I figured it was 10 years tops before all the major studios could run their own streaming services, at which point Netflix would have no content to stream (unlike mailing DVDs, you need permission from studios to stream their content).
Most of the movie studios jealously guard the rights to their movies; Netflix got a lot of its early streaming content by sublicensing from Starz, which pissed of the studios (most notably Disney, but there was murmuring from Sony as well). At this point, Netflix invested both in TV back-content as well as creating original content.
We are now entering an era in which Studios can potentially have complete control over legal distribution of their content, and they look likely to do so. I'll pause for a moment while you try to buy a copy of the (now 3.5 year old) Mandalorian season 1 on DVD or Bluray...
I'm not sure why music ended in the "(almost) 1 site to rule them all" while video did not, but a couple possibly contributing factors:
1. MP3s had a one-two punch of coming practically out of nowhere, and portable players that significantly improved on the walkman/discman experience. Napster wasn't even around that long (2 years, 80M users at peak) but planted pirated MP3s as a big deal. Then the iPod came around and being on iTunes was important to stay relevant. If you're on iTunes, why not be on all streaming and purchasing services at the same time?
2. There is a long history in the US of compulsory licensing of music for various purposes. It doesn't cover on-demand streaming, but does cover satellite, terrestrial radio and "internet radio" services.
3. Retail media sales have long been the public metric of success for music; for film studios it's been retail ticket sales. The music charts even have formulae for translating streams into equivalent purchases of physical media.
I don't think your comment is exclusively about the password sharing policy, but I'll pretend it is at a high level:
Do they (as a business) deserve to do what is in their best interest (maximize profit)?
Why are users "owed" the ability to pay for 1 household and share it with 5 households?
I think they lost a lot of customer goodwill with those frequent cancellations. Even if they didn't want to finish the series, investing in a short special episode to wrap some things up might have kept more of that alive and made me more willing to invest my time in a newer series.
I'm not an expert but it really seems like Netflix is doing self inflicted damage with some recent decisions. Maybe an exec failed upwards and ended up in charge of some policies they shouldn't have been trusted with...
They could get away with this if their offering was substantially better than the competitors but thse days it's not. Pumping out complete crap like 'The Floor is Lava' and the 9 millionth cake contest isn't what built their massive customer base. These days when a new hyped show comes up its often not even worth watching until you know for sure it's not already been axed, having left the show on a cliffhanger.
* via SBC with SP maintained by higher viewer figures.
It's also self-sabotaging behavior from the point of view of a back catalog. If people know in advance that a show had an unsatisfying ending, they're not going to recommend that people go back and watch it. But then Netflix and everyone else seems to treat shows as disposable these days, as if nothing mattered six months after it came out. Yet people still talk about The Wire (first broadcast 2002)
It's actually really frustrating to see an author continue starting one new series after another rather than finishing any of their existing works. It's probably not as fun or exciting, but it feels like an integral part of bulding trust. If I'm going to get emotionally invested in a series I want it to have a real ending.
In Japan it's very common for a series to get a single anime season, but if you're really invested in the story you can continue reading the light novels. But if a story is a Netflix Original, there's no source material you can turn to when the series gets cancelled.
If a show really needs a cliffhanger the show should budget for an extra episode to air if the next season is cancelled. If they don't want to do that, just end the season finale without a cliffhanger.
If Netflix had this guarantee, I would watch a lot more series. (I'm still a bit upset that HBO cancelled "Beforeigners" that had a major cliffhanger)
Providing such a guarantee would be akin to guaranteeing that a multitude of small businesses will not fail... which just isn't really possible.
Per Josh Whedon commentary [1]:
"This was one of the years where I was pretty convinced we would actually be picked up for another year, so we left a lot of things hanging. But at the same time I always felt if this was the last episode we ever filmed, it would be a good last one because it really did just get us into the minds of our characters, whom I love very much, and let them just sort of exist."
https://help.netflix.com/en/node/23742
I only noticed when I got to the third act of annihilation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBsJgceM0KI&ab_channel=Prime...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300772/microsoft-google-...
Source: I've done a lot of HDR processing development for a leading media company.
If I knew where to get the one I have installed, I'd send it to you people.
5€ month for what Netflix has to offer is one thing, 18€/month, for many, becomes an instant no-deal.
There might be some friend groups who split the cost of an account between them, but I suspect far more common is that parents have an account that kids (who might be independent adults) use, couples who don’t live together sharing passwords, or more well off siblings letting less well off siblings use their account.
All of them? Certainly not. Many? Yes.
>> There might be some friend groups who split the cost of an account between them, but I suspect far more common is that parents have an account that kids (who might be independent adults) use, couples who don’t live together sharing passwords
Yes, but although we don't have details on demographics, in Europe it is widely "accepted" (for lack a better word) that many friends, relative and even acquaintances share an account and its costs. I don't have number so consider it totally anecdotical, but it is honestly common sense, especially in southern and eastern Europe. (I am from Italy, FWIW)
edit: this is also true for Spotify Family accounts. Agains TOS? Sure. Do they do it anyway? Yes.
It is very common sense here to say "Ok, I'll cover Netflix, you'll cover Disney+/Spotify/other"
The moment when one of this services doesn't allow sharing anymore, this system will fall, and users will be incredibly more selective to what they will subscribe to.
I suspect this might be cultural, and not just at a country level. I wouldn't dream of charging a family member £5 a month for something, I'd either let them use it or not. But that may not be true everywhere. Between friends it makes a lot more sense, but as I said I've typically seen Netflix/etc shared in families not friends, probably because the lack of money changing hands makes it easier.
> We see a cancel reaction in each market when we announce the news,” Netflix said in its first quarter earnings release on April 18, expecting the dip to be momentary before users that didn’t pay start signing up for their own accounts. “In Canada, which we believe is a reliable predictor for the US, our paid membership base is now larger than prior to the launch of paid sharing and revenue growth has accelerated and is now growing faster than in the US,” Netflix said.
Although you may be right, I would never expect Netflix to admit my thesis, even if well known around here.
Instead, we pool accounts. If I wanted to, I can get Disney+ and regular TV, while I provide Netflix and Amazon Prime in return. If all else fails, there's a Jellyfin server that gets regular use.
Everyone pays full price, but everyone only pays for one service, maybe two. The fragmentation of services is the real killer here. This wasn't a problem back when Netflix first came here and basically offered everything there was to offer until then Disney clawed back a whole bunch of its properties. €18 for Netflix would be fine if you weren't also expected to pay €17 for Amazon Prime and €19 for Disney+ and €14 for Paramount Plus and €15 for HBO Max (only available on some ISPs).
I'd pay full price for a streaming service that had everything and I think many people I know would too. I'd even be able to look past the stupid 720p limit (I run Linux so I cannot be trusted with the noisy 1080p encodes). Instead, my workflow now comes down to "check Netflix, if not found, download torrent".
These companies could've had the Spotify of video streaming services, which basically ended traditional music piracy, but instead wound up burning their version of Spotify down for a short term profit.
Depending on the service/people sharing with, I personally witnessed both sharing costs of the single service and distributing full ownership among different services...
There are people who want to control all of them while absorbing costs, there are others who just want access.
Reminds me of old days when all we had was dialup and we would pool our warez downloads with the community. I send you Seasons 6 & 7 of Buffy and I get the latest Season of Stargate in return. All burned on CDs or DVDs shipped via post.
So while people here think they're doing this to their own detriment, their legion of scientists have already told them the end result which is obviously not detrimental or they wouldn't be doing it now.
You can't make reasonable conclusions during transients. Wait until things have settled before judging if the move was smart or not.
When they tried this in other countries, they saw a dip and then growth. According to their statements, a dip is part of their model.
And, as a scientist, you cannot build a model with a never-happened-before phenomena. Only "risk specialists", "risk engineers", etc. which are different names for BSers will even try to "predict" this.
How can one build a "model" with no x (password policing enforcement) and only y (stay or drop) is beyond me. If anyone does, I will show you an idiot/BSer.
I am sure this is a business decision. Or MLEs/Deep Learning Engineers are going beyond the capabilities of their fields.
Sure, you can predict if a user is going to drop if a show he was binging is going away or his watching pattern, time spent watching, etc. But to build models with password policing enforcement? Hah!
Trying to predict whether this decision is harmful in the long run is not in the realm of science, but of art, business, or bullshitting.
I don't know if NFLX did a smaller scale pilot study and tried to build a model, but that would be inadequate.
Note: Never worked for Netflix.
Maybe other people are in the same situation as me. There's a tenuous balance in the streaming service subscriptions thanks to the fact that people can share their accounts. If they close the door to account sharing, maybe the subscriptions will start falling like domino pieces.
I'm surprised you achieved that at all. Google accounts are locked down hardcore... As it should be
My gf wanted me to share my ChatGPT plus account but I signed up via Gmail and it was impossible.
All of these sites can easily lock it down but choose not to. We're probably living in the Golden era. Although I still think Netflix's multi location accounts are far more expensive than their utility. And I fully see Netflix as an essential service but spending $35CAD/m is a serious consideration when I already buy 4 streaming devices that will very likely result in $18/m max if I pull the trigger.
If you actually lived in a Golden Era entertainment would be free, quality, and meant to enrich the people instead of advertise and moralize to them.
I really don’t understand how a DVD collection is an “essential service” either. Or why you would effectively choose not to look at your watching statistics and then simply buy the media you watch the most.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/134503468553
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/285243804109
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/145050977289
Why not just buy what you like?
I feel the current crop of writers employed by Disney, Netflix, Amazon etc. cannot tell the difference between these two.
Shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc. which would question or discuss complex ideas without turning them into soap operas or basic dramas.
The only shows that I can think of like that now are Black Mirror or perhaps your odd HBO offering, but those are not shining examples, and often, even if they do discuss or engage with deeper concepts or ideas, it’s not handled in a way that allows for nuance. (Black Mirror is happy to be quite crass at moments, same with HBO and other “top-tier” shows.)
There's something in this. Tickbox diversity is a lazy solution that doesn't really satisfy people who want broader representation while at the same time causes the rightwing culture warriors to go increasingly berzerk. Writers need to get better at doing incidentally diverse shows, because "hello I'm a token look at me" is bad characterization. Or address it by commissioning a broader range of shows from different settings; not everything needs to be a flagship.
While at the same time there are still lots of odd misses (Ghost in the Shell 2017 managed to annoy almost everybody in this regard).
Your memory of these shows differs dramatically from my own. None of the ideas discussed in any of them were complex or nuanced, much less culturally transgressive (no, not even Star Trek) and they were often ham-fisted and moralizing. I mean Star Trek and Twilight Zone so much so they became tropes and subjects of parody.
I guess if you think it recommending you “MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus Cat”… because you liked Jaws is helpful? I think personally it is not.
At least ask why I'm not pirating it 24/7 when I already have an Android box connected to my TV w/ Kodi installed with 3rd party pirate extensions which gives me up-to-date lists of every show/movie available on Netflix/Hulu/Disney/etc (including their trending and genre based lists) with each show being a single click backed via 10 different HTTP pirate streaming servers they index...with the alternative of another app which let's me search any torrent movie ever and stream them on demand via my Fibre internet connection.
I use Netflix etc because
a) the recommendation algorithms are better than any 3rd party service like Reelgood hopes to be even with OSS plugins that track my torrents
b) I live with 3 "normal" people in my house who don't care to navigate the imperfect UI of my Kodi streaming/torrent apps no matter how many times I tell them it's better and has everything they need and more for "free"
Just fool the normal people into a better UX.
How does morality not enrich people? Isn't moral behaviour a good thing?
Ethics, on the other hand, is a set of self-imposed rules or rules of a group that you wilfully accept and join.
I'd say the issues surrounding ethics and morality is that of consent and willful acceptance. I do not consider 'morality' itself to be ethical.
Who would foot the bill to produce this content? You suggest that content would be "free"... but free to who? The consumer, right? It certainly isn't possible to produce high quality films for free. People pour their blood, sweat and tears into these productions. Why should the fruits of their labors be given away for free? Would you wake up early every day and proceed to work eight hours for free?
It's the same in this case.
It's funny that they didn't explicitly kick me out. They simply asked me to contact their customer support and certify that I did indeed live in the same household.
Back in the days, Netflix was a one-to-see-all service and that was also one of the reasons why it took people from torrenting to paying for movies.
Nowadays, if you want to watch a particular movie, you have maybe a 10% chance that it is available on the streaming service that you are currently paying for. And it makes more sense to just buy it directly, than pay monthly.
The most generous film studio is .. Mosfilm. I suppose it's fitting that the Communist movies are available for free.
(Criterion looks promising but is a long way from all movies and US/CA only)
The entertainment market is stagnating (if not quantity, at least quality-wise) because the copyright laws stiffle innovation instead of fostering it. Early-comers (Hollywood & co) are comfortably sitting on their stash of content, content with rehashing the same franchises. New-comers are forced to low-risk - low-quality content, sprinkled with anything they can get their hands on from other sources.
It seems like it's copyright laws working as intended. (I may not love that I have to pay to access a 25 year old movie legally, but it hardly feels objectively unfair or ridiculous that I have to do that.)
The purpose of copyright is to incentivize creativity, but society does not need to pay for 180 years of monopoly protection to incentivize creativity.
What investment is “society” making in tv shows and movies?
Suppose copyright law was 15 years instead of 100 years or whatever. Society still gets the tax receipts and benefits from creation of the media, but the shareholders who own the media do not get to collect a price premium from the extra 85 years. That money can now be spent by consumers elsewhere as opposed to supporting media owners who already had sufficient incentive to create the media.
The question at the end of the day is, does a 100 year copyright term incentivize the creation of media with so much utility compared to copyright term of 15 years such that it makes sense for society to transfer extra resources to the media owners for an additional 85 years? Amongst other externalities to consider.
The only thing keeping cable alive today is live sports, but that eventually will be folded into existing streaming services or they will have their own services. Which brings me to my next point. There will very likely be 200 subscription services (if there aren't already), but the more there are, the more niche and specialized they will be. But importantly, you will be able to choose what you want (a la carte). This is a far cry from cable because cable has never been a la carte. They've always required you to purchase at least a basic package with 30-50 + channels, and each channel getting a couple bucks each month. The consumer's total cost is at least $50 / mo, probably more
Compare that to one of the typical big streamers which are $10 - $15 per month. Netflix, Max, Hulu, Disney - each of these alone has more content than you could ever watch. As long as they are all around to stay in competition, then prices will remain low. The absolute worst thing that could happen for consumers is for streamers to combine and form a conglomerate. Now that would be like cable - they'd have a monopoly and they'd end up charging you more overall than you were paying before, and then singling out "premium" content for even more money.
If you feel like you have to subscribe to all of them, that is simply a marker of their success in marketing to you. There is enough content (good content that you WILL enjoy) on any one of them. Or hell - even on Youtube which you can watch for free, there will be enough content to keep you from getting bored.
Sadly people focus as definitely shifted toward serial shows rather than films so movie streaming is not really an interesting market to address. I’m really confused by that because the feeling I get from 90% of the show I try to watch and always fail to finish is that there is a good movie hiding in the indulgent editing. Even prestige TV shows are full of padding.
From another old movie kind of guy: it's full of beautiful 1080p Bluray x265 torrents out there. Teams like VXT or RARBG release more old movies than one can watch.
Other surprising sources: Tubi which often has better quality video processing for the stuff where the VHS/DVD master is all that exists (protip: yt-dlp works), and Internet Archive where people upload all kinds of stuff, including Blu-Ray rips.
A ton of stuff is also on YouTube but it's often a low-quality master and/or edited for content so it's usually a last resort.
That said, I also buy their Blu-Rays during the sales, so I might just be a fanboy.
Some of the films they review are either only available on YouTube[2] or on second hand VHS tapes.
1. https://videoarchivespodcast.com/
2. Until the someone helpfully gets them taken down. Cheers for that.
Want to hear an album? it's on Spotify / Apple Music / Deezer / Qobuz...
You pick the one that offers the best user experience (or unique features like HD songs).
Exclusives are basically non-existent.
Stranger Things is on Netflix only for X days (a month?) and then it's everywhere.
The hype train will still give Netflix its edge, because a lot of people want to watch in the first few days after release.
The economics just don't work the same.
How's that dr watson?
In an extreme example you are paying a long term subscription, let's say $200, for the exclusive privilege to access say 2 shows. That's $100 for one aficionado, per production.
What you are advocating for is Why does it not work the same for music?
First, it used to. Apple, in the good old Steve Jobs days, did it good to break the practice. With iTunes. Which managed to catch up with every other platform and integrate well to provide a UX leaving the competition far behind. Pressure power, and master maneuvers accomplished the exploit. Apple TV didn't show the same prouesse, maybe Jobs started to fade away, Apple didn't make a great screen display like they did with the iPod to gain that consumer pressure against the trad distributors, and it was simply a much harder battle due to the second reason below.
A great tune is played many many many times. An average one at least far less. So the prorata formula used to compensate the owners, works OK. The pareto distribution applies where great hits get accordingly rewarded.
With movies/series, unless it is one of those rare non thriller/mystery gem, it is watched once and for all. A one to one view to reward system puts greater productions at a deficit.
Does it make it right? Legally it seems that they win, those exclusivity contracts are legal. Building a platform and funnel your productions through it only as well. Although legislators needs to step up their game, end the lobbying thr led to this abuse of Intellectual Property rights, to finally enforce what it is and just it: ownership of the art, not of its distribution.I'd rather pay for the single item I'm consuming than for thousands I'm not paying.
The big innovation streaming services really brought was lowering the price for the crap content people watch and subsidising with people who buy the service and don't use it a lot. That's how they become better than piracy, not by centralisation (piracy is also incredibly decentralised) but by offering content at a reasonable price.
Let's say netflix costs 10$ a month and I watch 20 movies a month. 50c is a reasonable amount so I'm happy with my netflix subscription. Of course if I could pay 0.50$ to watch a movie I like I would just outright buy it - and not pirate it.
The problem with the industry is that content is overpriced. When piracy was a thing that just meant people were valuing the content at less than it was being sold. Sure, a percentage would convert anyway no matter the price, the rest would pirate it.
I sincerely hope we get rid of centralised services and we just end up with micro transactions to buy movies for cheap.
I think once AI will be used more in content production we will get there.
Urgh.
If there’s a critical mass of consumers unhappy with the current streaming landscape, providers will be forced to improve or risk being replaced by superior competitors. That’s what happened to Blockbuster as well, and what I suspect is going to happen to many major providers in the coming years.
If Steam is the only platform to get PC games, then I can just install Steam and get access to any game I want to play. I know how the service works, I don't need to install multiple things, my credit card is only tied to one service, etc. But if it's not, and I need to juggle between multiple places, then I need multiple clients, know how multiple different things operate, give my information to multiple companies, etc. I'd much rather only have Steam if Steam keeps their prices and service quality good. Would they if they were the only game in town? No idea, but the incentive wouldn't really be there.
There is nothing "free market" about the crazy copyright regulations we have today.
a free market in content would be requiring the copyright holder to following something like FRAND for patents, and disallow them from making "exclusive" deals with one provider, this would then mean the market would be on price, speed, other competitive factors not on content library
BTW back to the current situation with streaming services, we nearly would have had the same with movie theaters. But United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. shut that down, thankfully. Wouldn't expect such a ruling these days, though :(
What are you talking about?
So I now either go into my basement and look for the BluRay/DVD like twenty years ago or ... :)
Netflix streaming never had a good library of the most popular movies - especially after the initial STARZ partnership.
I don't know why anybody could possibly be surprised by this.
Businesses do not optimize for customer satisfaction, they optimize for profit. Customer satisfaction is merely a pathway to profitability.
When $STUDIO decides to pull their content from Netflix so they can put it on their own streaming service, nobody should be surprised. They're trying to optimize their profits. They don't care customers will be annoyed paying for two streaming services, they're betting they'll make more from customers paying them directly than from Netflix's licensing fees.
I think you mean "the only game in town" because the selection was worse back then!
Plus HBO and Hulu were around. I still remember Hulu commercials with Alec Baldwin. He hadn't shot anyone yet, that we know of.
I also remember getting GOT dvds mailed from netflix because i didn't want to pay for HBO service.
Nowadays, there are more shows, including more prestige shows, more movies, more comedies, more kids shows, as well as a lot of stuff that never would have been made twenty years ago. And it's all cheaper now than having cable ever was, even when you add them all up. And that's making a big assumption that you actually want/need to see "all". Which you don't. Any one of them would be totally sufficient to fill your time with quality programming. Netflix today is filled with way more content of all types than Netflix ten years ago.
Ah yes, free market competition funded by insane amounts of quantitative easing pumping equity into NFLX which took that money and lowballed customers to pick them up early. And of course, this is all somehow "worse" than the universe before Netflix existed, when you'd have to physically go rent movies and return them.
If people turn out to not watch that much content to warrant 3-4 subscriptions per (strict) household, I wonder if this could lead to a Highlander-like streaming showdown: There can be only one. The thing there is that Netflix should try to avoid the showdown, not push towards it, because they are the least equipped to win:
- Disney+, HBO Max (Warner) -> Own/produce AAA content.
- Prime Video -> Deep pockets, bundled as value added service, own distribution infra.
- Apple -> Very deep pockets, customer loyalty.
- Netflix -> ???
[1] https://tbivision.com/2022/12/09/exclusive-streamers-push-ba...
American shows do of course get wild budgets and can do some crazy stuff, but there’s good international tv
Doing TV is a marathon, perhaps Dark showrunners are more of sprinter people and should do movies instead.
Dark, I'd agree, faded in terms of the plotting as it got kind of all twisted up in itself toward the end, but I still liked it quite a bit. And you could say similar things about some of your other picks, like Mr. Robot (or Game of Thrones for that matter). Sustained excellence season after season is really hard to achieve.
Rings of power looks and is written like a cheap SyFy series. No-name actors, shoddy costumes, horrendous writing. I have no idea where their money went, but money!=quality.
The boys was good and went to shit.
Invincible was alright, supposedly season 2 is coming 'some day'.
By the time they bought The Expanse it had fallen off a cliff.
Netflix and amazon are not worth the subscription to me and haven't been for a long while.
Point taken, though. Still, if they only have a 1/10 chance at being good I am not taking the chance. It's like the netflix stamp is a kiss of death to me now. On the rare occasions they get it right they muck it all up after season 1.
If I hear good word of mouth about a show I may check it out, but I don't waste my time giving Hollywood the benefit of the doubt anymore. They have to prove they are worth my time and at the moment no streaming services are worth the amounts they charge.
If I could afford it in terms of money and time I would probably subscribe to all of them, I mean why not? To go see one movie costs about as much as a month of subscription to one streaming service. So subscribing to Netflix, Prime, Apple and HBO costs like going to see 4 movies per month, except you get more than 4 movies (I think a season of a good TV show easily worth multiple movies).
Aside from that it didnt start with 5 in mind, it just kept going till the creators decided to nix it.
That's not the same as having a 5 season vision and completing the story you wanted to tell.
And for sure to each their own, if you enjoy the services by all means continue being a patron.
I'm over all of them personally, even disney+ is going to start charging to watch new movies on it.
If there was one place to watch everything I'd be interested.
But I'm tired of lack of content worth watching, constant fluctuations in what's available, and horrible UX designs for no discernable reason.
All that coupled with the constant preaching has me watching more older movies, and occasionally something new worth watching like Super Mario.
So the money I used to spend on subs I now use on watching the occasional movie in the theater, and more storage for my ever growing media collection I know will always be there.
> Aside from that it didnt start with 5 in mind, it just kept going till the creators decided to nix it.
Many good shows are that way, it's good when they know when to stop. It's never good if it drags on or if it's cut early
Sure, own media collection is always better if you have the physical space for it...
Sure, all of Apple, Amazon, Netflix have dipped their toes into AAA movie production, but their collective throughput isn't anywhere close to becoming "players" in the field.
If you're not watching 4 hours of TV per day it's not that expensive to rent content, but I'm saying this from the point of a westerner. For other parts of the world a $5 USD for a movie for 48 hours doesn't make any sense over straight up piracy.
This really depends on how good of a pirate you are. If you put in some effort, you'll be watching 4k blu-ray movies in a higher bitrate than streaming services offer.
Never again will I rent / buy anything from YouTube, ever.
Either Netflix has it, or down to pirate bay it is.
Given our combined minor usage, the day they lock one of us out it's all over, I'm cancelling them all!
I don't invest in streaming produced series any more as they have a tendency to want to eat their cake and have it too. They won't tie up a series but don't commit to producing a second one to tie it up, then arbitrary cancel them. It's like reading The Hobbit and the last two chapters are missing, never to be written, and there are plenty of actually finished books out there!
Also my ex shared my Disney with friends, so 2 other families are now also using it.
Ah well, as long as no issues, the more the merrier.
I've had Netflix since it was DVDs by mail. I still pay for Netflix, but rarely use it. First time my sisters can't use it I'll delete my account. I honestly just don't use it enough to justify the price.
That's a strange thing to say, when Netflix blessed the behavior: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?lang=e...
It was part of the business model. I've certainly kept my subscription longer because family was using it, so they've gotten more money from me by allowing password sharing.
The math makes sense to me. If the average "sharer" shares with three people, they could lose 66% of the active users in the "sharing" population, before losing a single paying customer. Who knows what the average actually is [2].
[1] https://mobilesyrup.com/2023/04/18/netflix-password-sharing-...
[2] sharing with everyone at work? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35719281
$NFLX brought in customers with the Sharing is Caring campaign. If at that time they patted themselves on the back for customer growth, they should hold themselves responsible for the about face and customer exodus when they have changed their stance to Sharing is a crime.
They probably are worried about the cannibalization of the subscription base and hence caught in the Innovator's Dilemma.
Put into context of the same source's (Kantar) report from end of last year on Spain's VoD consumption, it would be much more interesting to know
1.) how many paying subs each of the providers lost explicitly, and
2.) whether the ~1,3M spanish households which access 6 or more (!!) VoD-services have reduced their "portfolio"
Kantar[1]:
- By September 2022, the number of households that used at least one video streaming service in Spain reached 66%, 12.4million households.
- VoD-enabled households accessed on average 3.3 different video streaming services, with 11% of households accessing 6 or more different VoD services.
- 2.7% of Spanish households took out a new Subscription Video on Demand (SVoD) service in the last three months.
- 23% of those planning on cancelling at least one SVoD service in the next quarter are doing so to save money, the #1 reason.
[1] https://www.kantar.com/inspiration/technology/newly-launched...
Anyway, the catalogue is so fragmented that cyclic migration makes sense.
So in the end the issue is the competitiveness of the content at the given price for this market.
There's another danger here for them, and that is cultural. Currently e.g. my girlfriend users my password. It means we both watch the same things, and talk about things that are on Netflix, and that serves as a reason for me to keep watching Netflix too. A whole lot of my Netflix watching is down to her. If she were to, say, spend her time on Disney Plus instead and talk to me about series there, I might end up spending more of my time on Disney Plus, and value my Netflix subscription accordingly lower. Do that to enough users and you'll start losing them.
As long as people keep watching Netflix they have a chance to convert them to paying users, but even if that fails, at the very least they have a chance to prevent those people from converting their paying customers to users of other services.
If I was Netflix I'd think long and hard about less invasive means of doing this, such as e.g. putting restrictions on additional household that might nudge them towards paying (e.g. limiting number of profiles so people need to share profiles; putting ads for Netflix in front of shows on "secondary" locations etc.) without outright pushing people off the service.
I'm not rejecting this (and I'm also not a fan of Netflix's practice here), but when REALLY thinking about it, how would that work practically without devaluing your product/service?
If people are repeatedly sneaking into your cinema and you don't crack down on them, but let them watch every time because one day they may buy a ticket, what's a path to conversion here...?
The only values provided are the content itself and the quality of service. NOT restricting access to the content but making it less convenient for everyone will just devalue your service...
In terms of conversion avenue, consider e.g. kids moving out of the house. My son has his own Netflix profile. For now there's no incentive for him to get his own, and having him get his own would be impractical because he most often wants to watch it on my TV. But once he has a family of his own running into a profile limit would be an incentive to get his own subscription eventually.
A lot of people are in situations where they initially legitimately are in the same household, then move out for all kinds of reasons (flat shares, kids moving out, breakups), might not want the hassle of switching profiles right away, but eventually want more flexibility (more profiles), or privacy.
(Incidentally, a feature they really need is a "convert this profile to a separate subscription"; that goes for a lot of services that are not at all geared for a situation of kids growing up and wanting to untangle their online lives from that of their parents)
A lot of this problem would also just go away if they priced based on a combination of simultaneous streams and number of profiles and stopped worrying about where they are. E.g. there's never any reason for more than 5 simultaneous streams from my Netflix subscription. But if I had to pay per simultaneous stream I'd probably only want to pay for 3.
They shouldn't have tried to tackle password sharing. Instead they should have enforced concurrent streams and let people pay for more concurrent streams.
Psychologically it's very different and people paying for the premium plan of 4 streams would probably not be affected.
The shared resource thing, is just Netflix turning a blind eye, because their business model worked for a time and allowed this to happen. Now that DVDs are all but dead, this was the next logical business revenue model that needed a revamp.
How can anyone blame Netflix for FIXING a loss leader in their business line(s)? We all run and work for start-ups .. its the natural progression of finances at scale.
Anyway, the punchline was that Microsoft wasn't interested because it wouldn't catch all illegal licenses.
Four adults that live in four different houses sharing one Netflix account might not ever bump up against the four concurrent stream limit. Their concurrent usage might be quite similar to a family of four under one roof.
But critically, the four adults are all technically capable of paying for their own subscriptions, while the children of the family of four are not.
Netflix is expecting to lose some (or most) of the people who are sharing passwords, but if some nonzero portion of them end up coughing up money for their own subscription, the effort is worthwhile.
Realistically, the case to allow password sharing is four family members, living under the same roof, but not sharing the same internet connection.
If the family is watching Netflix on their own phones over cellular (respectively: on train, out walking, at work, at school), you can't impose password-sharing restrictions on the account without fucking more than one of them over.
Yes. They've been doing more or less what the parent comment suggested for a very long time.
My hypothesis is that Netflix knows that account sharing is a net positive, as it cannot be curbed without losing a significant amount of subscribers, and many people aren't willing to pay $10 per account.
If, for example, when you click "play", some other user on your account gets kicked off with an error about hitting the stream limit, then you will forever be worried about hitting that limit and inconveniencing family - so you may upgrade sooner. Being kicked out mid show and unable to continue until you click to upgrade is going to lead to lots of people upgrading in frustration.
If subscriptions don't go up afterwards and streaming infrastructure costs are a sufficiently small portion of their total expenses, then I could see it being a net negative. In any case, their biggest problem is that their content has become so mediocre, but this action won't have any effect on that.
Unfortunately, the lasting affect will be a net positive, because sometimes you have to just be the adult and say loosing money isn't an option. I would like to call this shedding the college weight, and firing 80% of the work force, because the business will die otherwise in the case of Twitter.
Would you rather run a business with much higher ROI with a small user base and run a lean business, or a fat business with super scale data but bleeding out money? I'm not sure I get the argument against this.
Netflix was good while it lasted but it's over now. Even after this they will want to keep increasing revenue so they will keep adding more barriers. It's the typical platform enshittification, once they reach market saturation there is only the way downhill for the customer.
The others are subsidising their offers now to gain marketshare but once they gain a foothold they will do the same.
Plus losing the old catalogue rights that they got for cheap. Once other companies saw it was viable they were not interested in selling the rights for cheap.
On the other side, every time I use another streaming service (channel4, any German tv, even hbo) the basic player experience is much worse than netflix. I will miss them but, like Blockbuster, it is a matter of time.
Can someone shed some light on the regulations in practice regarding subtitles? As an expat living in Germany, there's plenty of times that the offerings have no subtitles in English and are dubbed. Do they have to pay more license fees to include English subtitles?
It's a fascinating and beautiful artistic experiment, but I don't think it's a successful one. A viewer might well enjoy it better without dialogue, because the dialogue doesn't really make it any clearer.
Yes. I asked the customer service in Japan and they told me that subtitles are licensed separately.
I think they assume they can make more money doing it themselves. They can probably generate more revenue, but the question is whether they end up ahead after accounting for the cost of creating and maintaining the platform.
Is this true? Presumably their intention is to make more money by doing it themselves.
All these centralized platforms (amazon, netflix, ...huge brands acting as a single marketplace) own (or, ... are "aware of") metadata about your content, e.g., what people like, what they buy, etc. Which is what content creators need to build more content.
Shall we even talk about the "copy/paste" of products/shows (see Amazon Basic brands), I guess Netflix did the same (from sellers they became producers). That's when things have to come to a hard stop.
That's my 2 cents.
I am still surprised that services like Spotify and Deezer exist - you pay X euro/month but you get a s*tload of music, which should cover 90% of what people search for. Maybe the "delivery first, producing later" doesn't apply there, I guess.
For more than that, for example you have to pay a full subscription of 10 euros, you consider going back to pirating. By the way I'm in favour that Netflix enforces this policy: so people will start pirating again, and we will see coming back forums that share torrents like it was back in the day.
I think that when we realize that this day with gigabit fibre connections that are the norm and that contrary on when Netflix came out that you needed to leave the computer running all night to download a movie we can download a 4K torrent in a matter of minutes all these streaming companies will fail for good.
I pay for Netflix and Prime but torrent all the US content because they’re not available in my country. If they were available for a fair price maybe I would stop torrenting but they’re not
What I don't like though is when there can only be a fixed number of authenticated devices, whether they are ever used or not. Once you have logged in to N devices (5, for one service I subscribe to) you can't log in to a sixth. Even if the first 3 are phones that are on the bottom of the ocean. At that point you need to call customer support to clear your authenticated devices. Hassle.
What kind of crackdown did they pull here? in legal terms only? Or in number of concurrent streams? or in number of authenticated devices?
Yikes, which services require you to call support in such an instance? In my experience you can often kick out old devices right from the new device that you are trying to use (annoying, but manageable).
I pay for 4 screens not because i use it but because i set it up for my parents and wifes parents who just don’t understand how that all works. Additionally i have a house in two countries and if they make that a pain in the butt for me I’m done as well. I’m paying for convenience I already know how to pirate all of this for free if they want to push me back that way.
Netflix knew this was happening and it’s why they introduced number of active screens. Now they aren’t happy with revenue and need to move the goal posts and paint people using the platform as intended previously as lazy or freeloaders.
Customer support told me I can only watch Netflix in the country I purchased it from.
This was not my first trip so must be a new development.
I did try using a UK-based IP too, but that didn't work (it was a data centre IP, so I guess they block them all).
Through some mystic fuckery it worked via VPN for me, but not for my wife (same exact VPN server).
Even Steam used to be an issue: I could play my existing library abroad, but not purchase more until I was physically back in the country.
I subscribe for a month, watch any new shows or movies I like, cancel and move on. All of my devices are 4K+HDR capable, I don't know why "up to 4 devices" is even relevant anymore if you can't share the account with anyone else. My family? Living elsewhere.
Now that there are dozens if not hundreds of streaming services offering exclusive content there is no paying customer growth possible anymore. What are they counting on? That consumers will pay for more than one subscription on different platforms? While they essentially only watch one at a time? How stupid is that!
From TFA:
> "Globally, more than 100 million people use an account they don’t pay for, according to Netflix."
"They don't pay" is one way to see it. Another way to look at this is that a group of people (wider than Netflix would like) are paying for these accounts. This used to be a cool feature of Netflix! They shouldn't take it down (within reason), otherwise downloading pirated shows becomes way more attractive once again.
For crying out loud, Comcast showed me The Lost City as the first one for about 6 months.
Clue: If I don't watch the popular shows you show me month after month after month, show me something from deeper in the catalog! Or even just throw up random ones.
Even before streaming, this has always been an issue and it ties in with the ludicrous amounts of money paid to movie stars, the cost of which is carried onto us consumers; and yet people blame movie theatres for the ludicrous prices, how fucking shortsighted - do people even think at all?
Why the hell is RDJ making 40M for a Captain America movie? Why is Will Smith being paid 40M for King Richard? Why Did Johnny Depp get a 35M wad for Pirates?
Sure these actors are all skilled professionals, but do we honestly believe those amounts are okay? It's clearly all of our collective, consumer faults at the end of the day; story of human history.
No, they don't. Man is smart, people are dumb.
That said, actors get paid because they employ good negotiators. RDJ took a huge risk pinning a great deal of his career on the Marvel movies back when it was a very niche movie, much like Sir Alec Guinness did with Star Wars. That said, some of the amounts entertainers make is absurd - top athletes make stupid money too, but at least their prime earning years are significantly shorter than actors or musicians.
Entertainers also make a ton because the people paying them also make a ton, and those people can afford to lobby for IP protection (see: Disney) and utilize "creative" accounting strategies such as Hollywood Accounting and collectively, we don't do anything to combat such blatant fraud, because it keeps the circuses coming, and politicians cannot disrupt the bread, nor the circuses, unless they wish to get voted out.
But yeah you're right, it really comes down to consumers and they way that we consume. If people are willing to pay $15 for a movie ticket then companies will charge $20 and people are oblivious to the fact that it could cost $1.
Are their profit margins so tight that a 1:2 paying non-paying user loss ratio is a net win?
Visit one of the very public torrent sites such as rarbg, search or browse for something of interest, copy magnet URI, switch to terminal window, type aria2c "[magnet uri]". Just minutes later have the file in working directory. Now you can play it with MPV and have instantaneous seeks and no garbage web players.
I paid extra for multiple users, that wasn’t enough.
I pay extra for additional screens.
Now they have the gall to suggest I haven’t paid “password sharing.”
> Last week Netflix missed expectations for new subscribers in the first quarter, but the company said that the password-policing plan and a cheaper streaming version with ads will accelerate growth in the second half of 2023.
They’ve ran test in a couple of countries. Maybe an initial drop in subscribers followed by an increase is in line with their expectations.
If the streaming companies start to provide subpar and cumbersome service and charge hundreds of dollars for it per year I can see people going back to proven and free ways that were very popular 15-20 years ago
Since when are HN comments policed for the word "torrent"?
Vouched it so it's visible. It also makes a valid point, torrenting is definitely a reality and denying it will not make it go away.
There was a study a while back (can't find it ATM, I'll have another look later) that suggested those using other people's accounts were more likely to be heavy users in terms of bandwidth than average, so perhaps this sort of thing has been factored in to the plan.
Having said that, I can't imagine they expected 300k dropping their account now they can no longer share it. Perhaps there are a lot of friend groups clubbing together to share the cost of subscription services like Netflix.
Can you explain why? I'd have thought they absolutely do and on top of this their caching strategy becomes even more effective.
Bandwidth isn't an infinite resource. It effectively is up to a certain scale and with a few caveats (the costs are not consistent globally) but I'm sure Netflix is beyond the scale where it can be assumed to be and at that point they will be bidding against other big users for peering priority.
With a dedicate server I have some stuff on I can upgrade to 10gbit unmetered for a lot less than 10x the cost the current 1gbit unmetered link (in my case neither dedicated, but 1-shared-to-10-shared will likely scale in cost similarly to 1-dedicated-to-10-dedicated). With another where I have a total bandwidth cap not a speed cap I could likely extend that cap relatively cheaply. At the scales required by a small company, even one running SaaS services, the same is usually true. But at Netflix's scale a small percent increase in any particular locality is still a huge amount of extra to ask for, and it might not really be available (it could be allowed to eat into slack for a short time, this is one of the reasons why networks are provisioned for more than 100% of expected use, but if the extra is needed permanently then infrastructure upgrades may be needed). They can get around lack of cheap bandwidth by instead temporarily increasing compression rates (this will in fact happen automatically, as dropping overall bit-rate is supported to deal with congestion at the level of a user's connection and that will kick in due to congestion elsewhere too) but this will be easily detectable by some users (particularly those with huge screens and great eyesight) who will compare the quality with other streaming content providers and talk about the difference which may affect future sales.
> on top of this their caching strategy becomes even more effective
Caching in terms of keeping data geographically spread will reduce international bandwidth needs, and ISP-level caching through their local boxes will help considerably again (and get more effective as more users join from the same ISP), but there will always be an amount of traffic that needs to travel costly routes (the ISP level caches will only be large enough to support the best caching candidates, like new high-profile shows, a small proportion of the whole catalogue, and many ISPs do not have that facility at all).
> ““Not only are we placing content on all of these servers around the world, but we are pre-placing them based on what is popular. Because we predict what is popular, we’re able to put it as close as possible under the correct server,” Haspilaire says. “This pre-placement of our films and shows allows us, based on prime time viewing hours, to store 100 percent of our catalog locally."
And they have 17,000 of these boxes. Extra users in these areas will have essentially zero marginal cost. And outside of that, I don't believe the bandwidth market we see - in terms of upgrading our small servers - has any resemblance to the deals they can do.
If these 3 go, i can downgrade my package to 13 Euro (in Germany) and i will only order it 3 - 4 Month a year. Currently i pay every month 18 Euro.
The time changes, Netflix is not the only player on the market, we can choose now from many.
FWIW YMMV and laws change so I wouldn't advise anyone running such a service from spain doxxed. But using it? It's not germany where predatory lawyers will try to sue you out of torrenting ubuntu or whatever
I've always assumed that consuming torrents has been low stakes to the point where its not worth any enforcement
In my case It was link sharing, no torrents, and at that time that didnt constitute -public publishing- as the link linked to some 3rd party host, and it was also user generated content.
FWIW they've only won some fringe cases where they scared the person into accepting the charges.
But Im not 15 anymore and wouldn't risk it tbh
If people were sharing the cost,maybe they won't come back.
There's not alot you can do for $10 these days. You can barely grab lunch in lots of places.
And you're talking about a whole month where many people use it for hours every evening?
Imagine Netflix was $1 or $2 to unlock for 24 hours. I think alot of people would consider that fair. Many would pay the same to tip to someone who took 30 seconds to serve them let alone a couple of hours of entertainment.
But then that can easily escalate to $30-60 a month without batting an eyelid.
If you barely watch Netflix at all, maybe less than 5 times a month, then $10 might seem excessive. But then are those people the ones putting in the effort for a Plex server? Presumably it's not worth the effort either.
While 10$ is not much for some it can be a lot for others. E.g. youth unemployment and job security are big challenges in Spain from what I've heard.
I'm not justifying the password sharing. I think it is wrong to assume that all users can be converted to paying customers.
You’re likely in a high cost of living location. 10 usd goes far in large parts of the world
With this new system, I might decide that I should jump onto my family's account for $5.99 or whatever, since this type of sharing is now blessed by Netflix. That would cut their revenue from our family to $32 (an extra $6 for my parents and me) from $40.
My salary comes from people that buy product from my employer. What you're saying is that I should work for free for you guys. (No, I do not work at either of the streaming services.)
Compare with: right-wing, left-wing, christian, etc. Woke.
I don't want HBO Max to become right-wing or christian. Or woke.
The problem isn't paying for Netflix, it is that their earlier "love is sharing a password", "sharing is caring" etc. campaign made it seem like password sharing is sanctioned and therefore included in the price. I understand that people are upset now that Netflix have changed their stance without changing the price.
Also I think the downvotes are because of your tone, e.g.
> you're saying is that I should work for free for you guys
is unnecessary hyperbole.
Paying $X per month and allowing family and friends to watch is both convenient and cheap enough so it doesn't bother you. It's like paying for electricity in a family house.
But when you are forced to be the only user of your paid account you evaluate if the cost for using a service 5-10 hours a month is truly justified.
Degrading people as "children" is not an interesting analysis. It's obvious that Netflix made their bed by flirting with users that like account sharing (long ago). It will not be easy to take that away now.
I mean: fine, Netflix sux, etc, tt's not worth $X. All fine.
But what's happening here is not that and you all know it. It's easy and cheap to just share passwords. When you do that, you're saying that I should pick up the bill for you. And my answer to you is: tf I'm not! You pay for you, I pay for me.
What I think is happening is that people realized they aren't getting much value from Netflix and this also served as a wake-up call for them to cancel. If you look at other comments you'll see several stating exactly that: they no longer think Netflix is worth paying for even if they have no trouble at all paying for it only for their own usage (and I'd think 99% of the users of HN can afford it easily).
It's also very possible this will end positively for Netflix i.e. they might want to get rid of the "leeches" and end up only with the paying users that obey their rules. If there are enough such people out there to cover their expenses AND turn a decent profit AND if they are loyal then Netflix will find themselves in a businessman's dream scenario.
In the end time will tell, as it happens with everything. I am mostly just offering you explanations for the current reactions to the news.
Then they require you to pay an additional $8 for each extra member, it that would be the premium cost (approx $19 where I live) and an additional ~$16 if you add two users. That's $35 a month for a service that is filled with woke bs content, 10% of what you get in the US due to geofencing. This is the way it usually goes for me and my gf:
1. We finally find a movie we want to watch, after a lot of time researching
2. We search for the movie name and where we can stream it for money
3. Oh it says its available on Netflix, HBO and some other renting stores.
4. Oh they were all not available to us. Sometimes we can "purchase" the movie for like $20+ but since that is just a ridicolous amount to watch a movie once we usually don't watch anything at all or pirate it for free.
I have a really hard time seeing a bright future for Netflix in the EU if they continue down this path. Honestly that is probably a good thing though, since european alternatives can take that market share.
The problem is that for europeans that want to pay for contnent it's STILL hard. I still have to download stuff from pirate sites since most content is not available to us for reasons unknown.
What do you suggest that I would do when I want to watch a movie that is not available anywhere? I am here ready with my wallet but no one seems interested.
If it's not good enough to warrant either $X or $X * 0.2, then cancel it. I.e.: Netflix sucks, cancel it!
Y'all are defending not paying while still using said service with arguments that don't support your case.
I stopped pirating stuff a good 15 years ago and Spotify and Netflix are both part of the why. Now, they both kinda suck and I might actually cancel Netflix. But you won't find me on Piratebay for that reason. It's just going to suck for a while.
I am barely using Netflix though. But yes it happens that sometimes I'll watch something on Netflix, perhaps once or twice a month. Will that warrant a $20 monthly subscription? The answer to that is hell no. They offer a bad service and require us to pay a lot for it so it's simply not worth the money.
I don't pirate that much either anymore tbh. I most often than not just do something else instead. Sometimes I'll pirate it if we really want to watch a movie and it's not available though.
The reason that I've not canceled Netflix even though only using it pretty rarely, is that it's still very cheap and I have the "biggest" option. 179 SEK a month in Sweden which is about $17. This is about a third more than _one_ lunch in the city will set you back. Are we really crying over this amount?
Yes since using 4-5 services will cost like $100 / month and if you pay that amount and still can't get most content it's ridicolously highly priced.
But then this still comes down to a sense of entitlement: I should be able to have access to anything and even though this has value to me, I shouldn't have to pay too much for it.
I do feel this myself as well, however. Definitely not above that. But let's be real here, still.
And don't mention TOS, they can write whatever they want in there. I wouldn't care if they didn't permit me to watch it in bed either, I watch where I please.
The article makes it sound as if there were 660k people who are no longer watching on someone else's account and 330k customers who have cancelled. Not sure if that is a big deal to Netflix or not without more historical data.
The fact you're sometimes being forced to watch something you didn't really want to watch, and forced to negotiate with your friend/neighbour over when exactly toilet breaks are going to happen, would lead to lots of users deciding it isn't worth the hassle and they'll subscribe themselves.
What's the problem here?
If my parents decide they had enough as well, there goes that subscription.
I think Netflix opened Pandoras box with this decision. They made clients aware they can live without it.
Seems like it's going according to their plan. People are free to cancel, but it looks like they ran the numbers and people are willing to pay.
Geez
But you can watch the same video twice.
With food, atoms move irreversibly in one direction. With video, there is no such constraints.
Also it becomes difficult for users to pay for more than 1 or 2 things, monthly.
I feel strongly about it - and I don't even have a product to sell.
You subscribe to a service with declining quality out of inertia. Sometimes you find some stuff to watch.
Then they suddenly ask to almost double what you pay them. You could pay, or you could reconsider why you're paying them at all...
Netflix refuses to hire those people and instead finds the exact opposite kind of person....
I understand content creation is HARD. Like, really hard. I get it. But their strategy in recent years has been "take aim at dartboard, throw, but as soon as something potentially veers off course, even slightly, run and pull the dart out of the air before it hits the dartboard."
They produce and cancel so much content before the content is mature that it turns people off.
Keep in mind Netflix originally grew because they had all the content, and now everyone worth watching has their own platform.
It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Netflix's addiction to data and revenue optimization becomes their demise.
I think with the money they have, Netflix should try producing a show that has 1, or 2 seasons, and has a concrete ending with little to no room for another season....and see how it does. People will invest time into something that they know has a definitive ending....but won't if they know the show might be canned and the story is left on a cliffhanger.
Did they forget that piracy is a service problem? This is just going to have the same effect
It was not enough that they are just putting out low value productions, but they also feel the need to lecture me in every show about their radical political ideas.
I can't even name a really good series that came out on the past 2 years from Netflix, while on HBO and Prime, at least there were some really good ones.
- The Jeffersons
- All In the Family
- Good Times
- Cheers
- Seinfeld
- Three's Company
- The A-Team
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987)
etc.
It would be the 'one streaming service to rule them all' for me.
Or, you could mandate that every account must use a SSO identity service, like Google/FB/Amazon/Twitter. Then small-time account sharers would need to consider whether they should give away keys to the kingdom as well.
They haven’t even had any major hit since Squid Game.
They need to take a leaf out of HBOs book and hire some top tier writers and give them all the freedom.
Part of the fun experience of using Netflix was account sharing with your friends. It was a social aspect that contributed and encouraged keeping the subscription. Without it, using it alone is getting really boring.