The golden age of streaming has come to an end. There are no longer streaming services offering a wide selection of shows and movies, but silos of self-produced or owned content.
In the next 12-24 months it'll be obvious the way to consume media will change from a monthly netflix/apple/cbs/peacock/hbo/anyone else fee to a 30 day run. People will sign up and churn based on what they want to see. Services will pop up around this and handle your memberships for you. Those service will become the new cable companies.
Netflix is still a good value for the money charged.
I switched to that model a while ago. I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously. So I queue up shows I want to watch on a given platform, buy a month of that platform, and then switch to the next platform in the queue the next month.
It requires more overhead (i.e. manually cancelling and re-enabling services), but it saves probably $200-300+ per year vs. having 4 simultaneous subscriptions.
The next step is "discounted" year-long subscriptions as the month-to-month price steadily rises. And suddenly we've returned to the world of annual contracts as the standard.
My experience is that everyone is sharing with everyone. This person share their Netflix. The next their Disney+. A third, their Hulu. End result is that each person subscribed to only one, but ends up with access to many.
It's been a while, we went full circle. Look at youtube, they display more ads than the TV channels I was watching 10 years ago. The content is spread over more and more services, so you end up paying for a few of them, exactly like we used to do for TV channels, it's ridiculous.
It's ironic how copyright itself prevents these companies from properly competing with "piracy". They just can't offer a better service no matter how hard they try.
I wonder if we've come to a point where people will watch what's promoted at the top of the streaming services they subscribe to, with the exception of virally popular shows or shows recommended to them by friends and family. A good chunk of TV watching is just watching to pass the time. Whatever's trending on Netflix is good enough, coupled with a few shows you and your family are rotating through. Some exceptional shows do drive subscriptions for a particular service. But I think Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian are the exception. More common is watching Friends reruns or the new comedy that pops up on the front page of your streaming service.
Agreed ! In the beginning (golden age ?) I spend way less time on P.B and torrents.
Now with more services than ever I'm only have access to two services:
a) Netflix - (via gf account)
b) Amazon Prime (own account). The last year or two I'm back to doing a lot more torrenting !
We've never had it so good in terms of overall content, yet we have never had it as expensive to access say my "top15 Films/Shows" if they are widely spread across service providers.
PS/Sidenote: I do miss channel hopping (click-click oh what is this ?)
Gonna save my money and just put a few bucks towards a VPN. Streaming was a fun ride while it lasted, but I can get higher quality video through torrents and the selection is limitless.
Maybe in 20 years these streaming services will collapse and be replaced by something better, and then those services will once again split up.
I really always wondered why people thought this wasn't going to happen, because at the end of the day all the institutions that produced the dynamics of cable television exist on the internet, nothing has changed.
It doesn't really matter whether you send information over an ethernet cabel or a satellite dish.
I kind of hope that the silo packages via Amazon Video or Hulu become easier and/or more popular to integrate. I'm a bit disheartened at the pricing model that has one likely to only subscribe or unsubscribe in waves. Also, being able to conveniently search across different services is a huge issue... a unifying experience is needed.
Similar to how Spotify membership packaged Hulu membership for me, we might see this "bundling" packages among service providers. OR a startup can provide an abstraction layer on top. Eg. 39$ membership with us will get you Netflix & Amazon Prime. For $59 we'll add Hulu & Disney+ on top. etc.,
Nah people will just go with whatever junk is on the service they signed up for in the past 2 years, which is why these guys are so aggressively trying to get market share.
It reminds me of cable TV now: cheaply produced shlock, with less and less premium TV.
The last thing I watched that was truly wonderful on Netflix was Mindhunter -- which I heard was canceled by Netflix because it's too expensive.
Meanwhile there's a dozen or more new "reality TV" knock offs seemingly every week.
We've switched most of our viewing to HBO now -- it has a lot of fantastic content, like Raised by Wolves, Lovecraft Country, His Dark Materials, Chernobyl, etc. And they actually stand behind their product because they believe in it -- they aren't constantly pulling the rug out from under their viewers like Netflix does.
Haven't read every comment, but I read quite a few and I'm shocked that people are thinking the new world of streaming is "the same" as cable.
What I get from streaming that I didn't get from cable is: no commercials and the ability to watch on demand without recording or other hassle. I would pay more than cable prices for those two features.
I don't except to pay one company and get all companies' products - in any context. You don't get Whoppers at McDonald's, Ford doesn't sell Toyotas. Intermediaries create their own islands of exclusivity (you can only get X on Door Dash and Y on Uber Eats).
What I'm worried about is streaming services not letting me pay to not have to watch commercials.
Last thought - if you think there's "nothing good" on platform Z you may be burning through content way too fast. I don't think we can or should put out endless hours of great new TV content aligned to each person's tastes.
1. Grading system changed from 1-5 to 1-2 (thumbs up/down). They thought that the users where full of crap when rating. I do believe some bosses just looked "bad" when buying in the next Adam Sandler movie. This started a cozy culture where no one in Netflix was wrong. Recommendation engine becomes comically bad, even with the best and the brightest.
2. They started to buy everything under the sun. South park made an episode about it even. All the comedians got their own stand up specials. It was now way easier to get a top score (thumbs up). Bosses where happy.
3. As they no longer focuses on quality which they no longer can measure (measuring time watched and churn is not that useful!), they start to strive for quantity. Which is expensive, very expensive.
I guess that in the next decade Netflix will become the next Comcast and cost 35 USD per month, and it all started in an innocent change to the grading system.
This is how I do it now, sign up and then insta cancel.
That way I know the timeline and plan to watch accordingly, and then when it comes up expired on login I decide to resubscribe or try another one. Can only watch a few things concurrently anyway!
Ya, we currently subscribe to pretty much all of them and that's already excessive, but it becomes more so as the prices keep going up. So, we'll definitely cancel some of them soon, just out of principal and a service to help would be useful.
I don't even need it to activate/deactivate my accounts. The real benefit to me would be tracking and notifying me when the shows I follow have a new season available. Then when I exhaust whichever platform I'm currently subscribed to, I'll know which one to subscribe to next.
Also, tracking the Series and Movies that I want to watch would be helpful, especially the ones that can potentially appear/disappear from different streaming services.
I'd say the endgame for content is for everyone to just pay some fee (tax?), regardless of how much you watch, and it gets apportioned over the providers of whatever content you end up viewing. That gets the incentives right all around.
Seems long overdue given the value that most users are getting from Netflix plus the relative inability for most traditional Hollywood studios to produce films at previous rates for the foreseeable future.
Apart from a few notable exceptions (like The Queen's Gambit), there is an enormous difference in quality between Netflix and Hollywood productions. Netflix redefined the meaning of 'pulp'.
You have a perfectly valid Credit Card, you try to re-start your account (or maybe create a new account), and you get a "payment form not valid". Your bank says Netflix isn't even trying to authorize the payment, netflix support says they know there is no issue with your card, the issue is on their side, but they cannot fix it, the only proposed solution is to buy a netflix gift card...
They have a bug that I am sure technical people would jump in and solve in a matters of hours, they have tech support people who understand the issue, but the company has provided no way to connect the two!
The key differentiator between the future and past, isn't strictly cheaper prices, it is flexibility.
Satellite/Cable had a huge lock-in factor due to equipment contracts and even monopoly/duopoly issues. A lot of consumers found themselves either hard or soft locked in as prices continued to rise/quality declined (and many still are).
The future is different not because content is guaranteed to be inexpensive, but because competition can exist and users get the choice (including choosing nothing for periods). In this case Netflix is raising prices which sucks, but the market is rich in high quality competitors, some of which are cheaper.
We’ve come full circle sadly. YouTube TV raised fares with more channels I don’t watch or want. Netflix increases rates and further creates walled garden.
Everyone wanting to cut the cord isn’t better off then we were 5 years ago.
Netflix stopped working on linux for me a few months ago. I finally figured out it was probably a wildvine related issue (and if you don't know what wildvine is, omg what a rabbit hole), and Netflix just doesn't care to fix it because fuck linux users I guess. Fuck netflix, I guess. HBO did the same thing... Showtime still works, and I finally gave into Amazon, on which I can watch my HBO shows. I think Amazon is going to come out much better in the streaming wars than many anticipate.
Is it wise to raise prices now when you have more people watching than every and more people who can not pay more because of this pandemic? Ok, it's just $2 but still...
Glad they kept the $9 single stream price. If I do go back to streaming service, that's a fair price.
As a single person, I've watched as most of these services have increased their prices for single users but made it much more reasonable for a family.
Why am I paying the same price for Amazon Prime as a family of 5 with a 3K square house who orders from Amazon 2x/day and watches 5x the video?
Why am I paying $70/month for cable for maybe 7 hours/week when some family is watching 100 hours combined per week?
Why am I still paying a premium for AT&T post-paid mobile service when a family who is constantly adding and changing new lines for the kids gets a brand new IPhone or two each year during their upgrade deals, yet AT&T won't ever offer an existing user a discount on a new phone?
It looks like in the end we will end up back where we started with cable TV package deals. For example - I just want to watch European football and to do that right now I have two options, either pay almost $70/month for fubo.tv (which was just 20$ before it started adding crap channels and was focused on football only), or I have to sign up for CBS to watch champions league, fanatiz to watch bein sports, peacock to watch some premier league games, NBC cable to watch other premier league games, and espn plus to watch Italian and French league, ridiculous.
Some people cancel and then once it has stopped reactivate useing their VPN to renew in Turkey or Argentina at much cheaper rates. Long as they already have a verified payment card on their account.
Tbh I still think Netflix is a very good deal. For $14/month you get access to a huge selection of movies and TV shows that you can watch with no commercials. Where I'm from a ticket to the cinema costs about that much (excluding popcorn) and will plough you with 10 minutes of commercials and movie trailers for the privilege.
People will happily pay $30 per person for dinner in a restaurant multiple times a month, but are reluctant to pay $14/month for access to a huge library of endless entertainment. Why?
I share various streaming and news subscriptions with a small network of friends and family. I pay for 7 services myself and have access to 5 others. (5 television, 3 music, 3 news, 1 podcast)
The messed up part is, that's still only a sampling of the services that are out there! But most of the remaining are regional newspapers and niche streaming video services.
[+] [-] pgrote|5 years ago|reply
In the next 12-24 months it'll be obvious the way to consume media will change from a monthly netflix/apple/cbs/peacock/hbo/anyone else fee to a 30 day run. People will sign up and churn based on what they want to see. Services will pop up around this and handle your memberships for you. Those service will become the new cable companies.
Netflix is still a good value for the money charged.
[+] [-] umvi|5 years ago|reply
It requires more overhead (i.e. manually cancelling and re-enabling services), but it saves probably $200-300+ per year vs. having 4 simultaneous subscriptions.
[+] [-] anthony_romeo|5 years ago|reply
Source: Wild speculation
[+] [-] germinalphrase|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lm28469|5 years ago|reply
It's been a while, we went full circle. Look at youtube, they display more ads than the TV channels I was watching 10 years ago. The content is spread over more and more services, so you end up paying for a few of them, exactly like we used to do for TV channels, it's ridiculous.
[+] [-] matheusmoreira|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pradn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zelly|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seldonnn|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rawoke083600|5 years ago|reply
Now with more services than ever I'm only have access to two services:
a) Netflix - (via gf account)
b) Amazon Prime (own account). The last year or two I'm back to doing a lot more torrenting !
We've never had it so good in terms of overall content, yet we have never had it as expensive to access say my "top15 Films/Shows" if they are widely spread across service providers.
PS/Sidenote: I do miss channel hopping (click-click oh what is this ?)
[+] [-] tjoff|5 years ago|reply
Take it further instead, just give me the option to rent a single episode/movie.
[+] [-] fiblye|5 years ago|reply
Maybe in 20 years these streaming services will collapse and be replaced by something better, and then those services will once again split up.
[+] [-] Barrin92|5 years ago|reply
It doesn't really matter whether you send information over an ethernet cabel or a satellite dish.
[+] [-] el_dev_hell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tracker1|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] the_arun|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RcouF1uZ4gsC|5 years ago|reply
Most of my watching is mainly looking for stuff to kill the time and not specific movies or shows so this works for me.
[+] [-] ulfw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fullshark|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] dwild|5 years ago|reply
At least we can still easily cancel and subscribe from each one. It's still a gains I guess!
[+] [-] Slikey|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] nostromo|5 years ago|reply
It reminds me of cable TV now: cheaply produced shlock, with less and less premium TV.
The last thing I watched that was truly wonderful on Netflix was Mindhunter -- which I heard was canceled by Netflix because it's too expensive.
Meanwhile there's a dozen or more new "reality TV" knock offs seemingly every week.
We've switched most of our viewing to HBO now -- it has a lot of fantastic content, like Raised by Wolves, Lovecraft Country, His Dark Materials, Chernobyl, etc. And they actually stand behind their product because they believe in it -- they aren't constantly pulling the rug out from under their viewers like Netflix does.
[+] [-] lostphilosopher|5 years ago|reply
What I get from streaming that I didn't get from cable is: no commercials and the ability to watch on demand without recording or other hassle. I would pay more than cable prices for those two features.
I don't except to pay one company and get all companies' products - in any context. You don't get Whoppers at McDonald's, Ford doesn't sell Toyotas. Intermediaries create their own islands of exclusivity (you can only get X on Door Dash and Y on Uber Eats).
What I'm worried about is streaming services not letting me pay to not have to watch commercials.
Last thought - if you think there's "nothing good" on platform Z you may be burning through content way too fast. I don't think we can or should put out endless hours of great new TV content aligned to each person's tastes.
[+] [-] cambalache|5 years ago|reply
So far, but still Hulu shows commercial in some plans, and netflix shove their "commercials" . Expect it to get worst.
> ability to watch on demand without recording or other hassle.
You still have hassle , you need to move from one application to the other, hardly convenient.
[+] [-] danielscrubs|5 years ago|reply
1. Grading system changed from 1-5 to 1-2 (thumbs up/down). They thought that the users where full of crap when rating. I do believe some bosses just looked "bad" when buying in the next Adam Sandler movie. This started a cozy culture where no one in Netflix was wrong. Recommendation engine becomes comically bad, even with the best and the brightest.
2. They started to buy everything under the sun. South park made an episode about it even. All the comedians got their own stand up specials. It was now way easier to get a top score (thumbs up). Bosses where happy.
3. As they no longer focuses on quality which they no longer can measure (measuring time watched and churn is not that useful!), they start to strive for quantity. Which is expensive, very expensive.
I guess that in the next decade Netflix will become the next Comcast and cost 35 USD per month, and it all started in an innocent change to the grading system.
[+] [-] vsskanth|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehwebguy|5 years ago|reply
That way I know the timeline and plan to watch accordingly, and then when it comes up expired on login I decide to resubscribe or try another one. Can only watch a few things concurrently anyway!
[+] [-] fastball|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bonestamp2|5 years ago|reply
I don't even need it to activate/deactivate my accounts. The real benefit to me would be tracking and notifying me when the shows I follow have a new season available. Then when I exhaust whichever platform I'm currently subscribed to, I'll know which one to subscribe to next.
Also, tracking the Series and Movies that I want to watch would be helpful, especially the ones that can potentially appear/disappear from different streaming services.
[+] [-] SilasX|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chanfest22|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] centimeter|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dorfsmay|5 years ago|reply
You have a perfectly valid Credit Card, you try to re-start your account (or maybe create a new account), and you get a "payment form not valid". Your bank says Netflix isn't even trying to authorize the payment, netflix support says they know there is no issue with your card, the issue is on their side, but they cannot fix it, the only proposed solution is to buy a netflix gift card...
https://twitter.com/dorfsmay/status/1315402870661902336
This totally puzzles me.
They have a bug that I am sure technical people would jump in and solve in a matters of hours, they have tech support people who understand the issue, but the company has provided no way to connect the two!
[+] [-] Someone1234|5 years ago|reply
Satellite/Cable had a huge lock-in factor due to equipment contracts and even monopoly/duopoly issues. A lot of consumers found themselves either hard or soft locked in as prices continued to rise/quality declined (and many still are).
The future is different not because content is guaranteed to be inexpensive, but because competition can exist and users get the choice (including choosing nothing for periods). In this case Netflix is raising prices which sucks, but the market is rich in high quality competitors, some of which are cheaper.
[+] [-] huntermeyer|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notyourwork|5 years ago|reply
Everyone wanting to cut the cord isn’t better off then we were 5 years ago.
[+] [-] xoxoy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arminiusreturns|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sschueller|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hiram112|5 years ago|reply
As a single person, I've watched as most of these services have increased their prices for single users but made it much more reasonable for a family.
Why am I paying the same price for Amazon Prime as a family of 5 with a 3K square house who orders from Amazon 2x/day and watches 5x the video?
Why am I paying $70/month for cable for maybe 7 hours/week when some family is watching 100 hours combined per week?
Why am I still paying a premium for AT&T post-paid mobile service when a family who is constantly adding and changing new lines for the kids gets a brand new IPhone or two each year during their upgrade deals, yet AT&T won't ever offer an existing user a discount on a new phone?
Same with Spotify, Apple Music, HBO, etc.
[+] [-] usaphp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] larrik|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gandalfian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] commonturtle|5 years ago|reply
People will happily pay $30 per person for dinner in a restaurant multiple times a month, but are reluctant to pay $14/month for access to a huge library of endless entertainment. Why?
[+] [-] frankydp|5 years ago|reply
Along with functionally absent parental controls.
Price is irrelevant.
[+] [-] standardUser|5 years ago|reply
The messed up part is, that's still only a sampling of the services that are out there! But most of the remaining are regional newspapers and niche streaming video services.