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Comment by aodin | Hacker News Reader

> "One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue"

Gabe Newell of Valve, Oct 2011

[1] https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...

I struggle to understand how services like Netflix or Max have an issue with providing service. How could they possibly make it easier to access their content with various apps?

The issue is that Neflix, Max and the others are a bridge between you and the content you want to watch. When this content starts to shift around and things that were available in one place now are in another, consuming content becomes problematic.

In addition to that, prices are going up while overall catalogue size seems to be going down (at least the catalogue of quality content)

On top of that you have an increasing tendency of just canceling things left and right because the ROI from the companies perspective is not as high as they were hoping and so fuck the people who were invested in that TV series.

The end result is that the entire streaming landscape is a mess, everything is becoming more expensive and you get no real benefit in return and at a certain point, if I want to watch TV series X or Movie Y my best bet is to just pirate the damn thing and call it a day.

MAX, YouTube Premium, Spotify, Netflix, Disney+ can all be had for about $100/mo. Even assuming someone only makes $20/hour, that's about 15 minutes of work per day for a month to access effectively unlimited content. If you can't find what you want to watch there, swap providers or just buy the content on Apple TV/Google Play/etc.

Again, I struggle to see how these platforms don't provide massive value. Like that's one meal out any more for a family of four. Pirating content when it's so cheap seems entitled to me, like not tipping when you go out to eat (in the US) because you have personal issues with tipping.

100/month can be A LOT depending on where you live.

Only referring to the US here as I’m not sure of pricing in the hundreds of other countries out there.

You said that you struggle to see how these platforms don't provide massive value which is fair from your point of view but I personally struggle to see how any of the platforms provide 5€/month worth of value, let alone 10 or 20.

I guess it's a matter of perspective and what do we find valuable in life.

As for tipping, that's a can of worms I'm not going to open because as a european I find the whole concept insane.

You struggle to see how Netflix provides five Euros a month in value. I… ok.

Yes. There’s Netflix set up on the tv at my home. I don’t pay for it and I watched < 10 hours of content in the last 3 years.

That’s definitely not worth 5€/month for me.

Not saying it’s not worth it for everyone, just saying the value streaming services provide is not all that absolute.

People want the same for TV shows and movies that they already have with music. They want a spotify like experience but with movies. One subscription where they can access everything they want. This is how you could make it easier.

I am not saying it is realistic as the hosting and production costs are just not the same. And exclusives are a standard way to attract subscribers.

If I remember correctly as well while music has consolidated, the revenue artists get from it is much lower than what they used to get with the old model. I can see why that does not really motivate the industry to provide a more convenient solution. Spotify showed them that it might hurt their bottom line so why would they go that route.

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