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Comment by ianlevesque | Hacker News Reader

All four examples you gave are in decline. His viewpoint is shared by a growing segment of the population.

They are only declining because products that you don't pay for, where you are the product are booming.

Which just reinforces the point that you are not the product and paying at the same time.

Despite that the US newspaper industry alone makes more revenue than the US video games industry. So you are indeed both the product and the consumer and will continue to be both far into the future.

Wait, really? What are we including in "US newspaper industry?" Also, source?

Advertisements are not the reason they're in decline. People don't sign up for Netflix because it's ad-free, they sign-up for convenience.

And yet Hulu+, with more timely content is doing no where near as well as Netflix.

Hint: One of those services has ads.

Hint: One of those services has movies and disc mailings.

Bonus Hint: One of those services was released to game consoles and Roku in 2008 while the other was added late 2010, early 2011.

People don't sign up for Netflix because it's ad-free,

Speak for yourself, please.

Ditto

It may be a convenience that many enjoy, myself included, but I'd argue that plenty of Netflix subscribers would have subscribed anyway even if ads were shown from the start. Personally, I signed up for the convenience of movies, so ads weren't even a consideration. I doubt I'm alone in that respect.

In addition, you can easily get the same ad-free content on iTunes, but I never see it compared as a replacement for Netflix. It's just not as convenient.

THe ad freeness is a great pull though..

That is fairly wrong. Netflix is barely more convenient than pirating. I would gladly pay for Hulu+ as well if it had 0 ads, since Hulu+ happens to have a lot of content I would watch. However, with having to watch several ads each time, it simply becomes much easier to simply torrent what I want to see.

Netflix is only barely more convenient than pirating for tech-savvy individuals. I'm willing to bet if you were to ask the average person if they know where to get and how to use torrents, you'd find that pirating is not all that convenient for most.

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