As for Netflix I found a great alternative. Many people are selling their DVD/BluRay collections on eBay as bundles. With the rise of streaming services, there is usually not a whole lot of competition on these auctions.
I somehow managed to get 30 pretty decent movies/series on DVD and 20 on BluRay for 25€ including shipping.
Sure, these are usually not very new movies, but I like to watch older movies and its a lot better than subscribing to dozens of streaming services just to watch one specific movie.
As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix, but if you have a decent NAS at home anyways, Plex still makes a great experience.
This really resonates with me. I realise a lot of people will pay for individual Twitch subscriptions, YouTube memberships, and Patreon memberships, but it can be quite a hard sell in comparison to some of the things you list above.
I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer.
YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).
Many decades ago, when I was a young adult, I probably spent around $30 a month purchasing music (CD's and, before that, vinyl records), $30 a month on newspapers, $30 on magazines, another $40 a month on books, $20 a month on cable TV and maybe another $30 month on video movie theaters/VCR/DVD/rentals. All up, around $150 to $200 a month on various entertainment media. With inflation, that's probably $300 or $400 a month these days. For my income range, this was not at all extreme. For this, I got much much less than what you can get for $300 a month these days.
I have a baseline expected cost for passive entertainment at probably about $2-3/hour and judge things based on that whether to keep it when I see the charge show up on my bill.
Some services I have kept for years, others I've started/cancelled several times, many I get some enjoyment from and then move on.
If you aren't afraid to cancel things, and don't sign up for things you can't cancel, I think it's a fairly efficient system that can align your money and time.
Many of these are either optional or compete with one or more of the other services. Podcasts are either completely free or they should go under Spotify/Patreon. Twitch/Youtube subscriptions and Patreon are entirely optional. And I don't see how you can justify both Youtube Premium and Spotify at the same time or all three of Netflix/Disney+/Prime - I just wouldn't have the time to make any use of all these subscriptions in a month.
This kind of disgusts me. Products aren’t being developed to complete a task, or give you enjoyment, they’re being made to hold your attention. They’re being made to distract you while you’re used as a product to sell to advertisers
I try very hard (and still often fail) to put myself in the shoes of people who are meaningfully not like me, and one thing that's come from that is understanding how motivation doesn't always track equally for everyone (and trying to come to terms with the fact that this might be okay).
Finding things that give enjoyment and deliberately distract from the things going on in a person's life has potentially immense value, depending on what those things going on in their life are.
The implicit agreement made here is that both parties know what you're saying, and both parties agree to not talk about it -- for the seller, because it's an ethical quandary, for the buyer because they don't want to have to confront the things in their life they're trying to ignore.
It doesn't always have to be so sinister of course (maybe I just want to relax and am otherwise keeping my responsibilities), but it can be sinister, which I think is what you're getting at. My argument is that both parties know this, and it may be the whole point.
The interesting part is competitors can co-exist as long as the user see them as worth the monthly fee. For instance a user can have Amazon Prime and Nintendo Online, with Spotify, and be happy with the mix. It's not completely zero-sum, even if your attention is finite.
There might be frictions on adding Netflix to this, but Netflix can still be added in with incredibly great content that a user would be willing to pay monthly to keep seeing it (the same way Nintendo Online doesn't need all your attention if you're happy to keep it just for Animal Crossing, for instance)
If find it globally healthier than the alternative advertisement based services, which look to be more cut-throat places.
What you said is true for some services, but TFA is talking about something applicable to all services: consider all the limited "resources" being asked from customers. Money, attention, a monthly trip to the movies, a meal, etc.
Facebook competes for your time and attention. The ringtone company was competing for a share of a kid's allowance. A local outdoor skating rink competes with building snowmen, even though the latter isn't a company-provided service.
Nearly all products and services compete for a user's time, even if it's only the time spent deciding to buy it. Facebook wants more of our time, but that's because it's an advertising platform. Most services try to cut down user time.
Phrased in a different way, they are developed to entertain you in your free time and help you relax. When they do this, they compete against all other forms of entertainment.
Well, this is true for paid entertainment at least. You are absolutely right about ad driven stuff though.
This could be a positive thing though - if people have resources left over after fulfilling everything they actually need then society is doing pretty well, even if that means people will waste their extra resources on unnecessary garbage.
The book Blue Ocean Strategy basically brings up a similar concept. When running a business, you need to think of the bigger purpose your potential customers try to fulfill by spending money.
Say you're a high-class italian restaurant, you'll find that you compete
- not only with high-class italian restaurants
- not only with all high-class restaurants in general
But in fact with all businesses that allow the customer to spend the same order of magnitude of money in return for the same high-class treatment, leisure, and relaxation.
It may sound daunting, but it in fact also means that your potential market is much bigger than you might initially believe.
It's so sad that in the USA candy is dominated by handful of brands that produce more or less the same limited range of cloyingly sweet and uninteresting confections of nougat, caramel, cheap chocolate, nuts, and a few other things.
I find it impossible to believe that this "sameness" is what people really want. I suspect candy vendors have specifically conditioned the candy market in much the same way as the film industry has conditioned audiences into go to see mass-market films-- endless re-hashes of the same stuff, endless sequels, formulaic plots, god forbid an edgy wildly different film gets out every once in a while.
Things are different in most European and Asian countries where you can easily find a mind-blowing variety of candies that are truly distinct from each other.
I read a similar article a while back, can't remember from where, that argued:
If you're selling a part-time educational product or service, your biggest competitor is Netflix. Even if you convince someone to do an evening course instead of watching Netflix and then they choose someone else's evening course, you've still grown the market in a way that will probably benefit you.
This is very much in the vein of Jobs to Be Done theory[0]. If you haven't heard of JTBD before, I would implore you to check-out Clayton Christensen's famous "milkshake" video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfGtw2C95Ms
It goes into enlightening detail about the same framing of competition as the author here does.
> It’s the same for most services. You’re not competing against the other players in your industry. You’re fighting for attention with Minecraft and Mario. There are only 24 hours in the day – who does the customer choose to spend it with?
I went to PAX 2012 and they had a panel literally called, "Free-to-Play Games: Brilliant, Evil, or Brilliantly Evil?". I directly asked the question of how they were going to deal with attention being the currency and competing with each other. Especially given that there was a limited amount of attention, while money can be easily spent in parallel.
I don't remember receiving any kind of satisfactory answer.
I seem to remember Netflix saying their biggest competitor was sleep as well.
I wonder if there is an economics model for a kind of product that competes against not other products, but against a users needs and behaviour. Kind of like a "radical monopoly" before it gets there.
On designing the products, Nir Eyal's "Hooked," model describes them.
>While we didn’t exactly market directly to kids, we knew that they were buying.
squares with:
>Every time a kid has 25p to spare, they have a choice. They can choose to buy a chocolate bar, or they can choose to buy a ringtone. Our job is to encourage them to buy digital goods, rather than sugary treats.
I saw it as a two different points in a time line. They knew kids where buying, they were fine with it, but didn't tune their marketing or strategy around it.
Then comes a Marketing person and says "You do realize that your main customer group is choosing between you and a mars bar"
I don't even understand how these kids were paying for these. From what I remember of old ringtones that you could buy for your phone, you pretty much just texted a paid number and got the ringtone sent to you. And that paid number will just go into your phone bill, which kids weren't even paying themselves.
Microtransactions, mainly popularized on smartphones, are super trivial to pay for if you have credit or a payment method attached to e.g. your Apple account. They even give a satisfying 'ding' sound when you've made a purchase. With face ID, spending money is a matter of double-pressing the standby button.
There were shops which had ways to get data on and off mobile phones possibly with custom cables, I'm not sure how they did it. I had a Nokia data transferred to a Samsung once.
I think they could also SMS the ringtones to the phones.
I’m not sure this is true. People are much more willing to buy a coffee/pastry rather than spend £2 on an app. It seems to me, that people definitely compartalize their spending, with most consumer software and apps expected to me free.
Reminds me of "The Ride" from the Sopranos, where Tony is mad at Paulie for being cheap with carnie rides, and that they're competing for peoples' attention and that they can't afford to fuck things up.
Maybe that was true for kids in 90s and ringtones, but how many people do you know that stopped buying chocolate bars or coffee because they subscribed to Netflix?
After reading I began to think: penny money first, available free time comes next, attention "capacity" and then we end overloaded.
Not wanting to miss the opportunity to express my thoughts and I've spent time, attention... I consider that it was well spent: short article, right to the point, gave me an insight. But when it isn't useful? Sight...
I thought this was going to be about people remote working during the pandemic not getting enough exercise and eating candy.
According to a cross-sectional web-based survey taken on 995 people between August 15 and August 30, 2020 across various cities, towns and villages in India:
"Almost nine months of the pandemic marginally improved people’s eating behaviour, yet a third of participants gained weight as physical activity declined while screen and sitting time increased, a study conducted by AIIMS researchers to evaluate Covid’s impact on lifestyle changes has found. Mental health was also adversely affected and quarantine-induced stress and anxiety showed an increase by a unit in nearly one-fourth of the participants."[1]
Even pets are getting fatter, according to a Kelton Global survey of 1,021 U.S. dog and cat owners and 257 veterinarians between November 23 and November 30, 2020. 33% of those with an overweight pet said their pet became overweight during the pandemic.[2]
[+] [-] kuu|5 years ago|reply
Where I live:
- Spotify is 10€/month
- Netflix is 10€/month
- Amazon is 30-40€ year (just Prime; primevideo+ or whatever is called, is even 5€/month more)
- Disney+ 10€/month
- Youtube Premium x€/month
- PSN plus / Xbox gamepass / Nintendo online x€/month
- Twitch subscriptions 5€/month
- Youtube subscriptions x€/month
- Patreons x€/month
- Podcasts x€/month
How much am I willing to spend on entertainment per month?
At the end I have to choose, so PSN may be competing with Spotify or some Patreon with Disney+....
Interesting to see this is happening and this was already happening before...
[+] [-] moooo99|5 years ago|reply
I somehow managed to get 30 pretty decent movies/series on DVD and 20 on BluRay for 25€ including shipping.
Sure, these are usually not very new movies, but I like to watch older movies and its a lot better than subscribing to dozens of streaming services just to watch one specific movie.
As for comfort, sure DVDs are not as comfortable as clicking on Netflix, but if you have a decent NAS at home anyways, Plex still makes a great experience.
[+] [-] mrkwse|5 years ago|reply
I wish there was a better funding model as those creators. I'd like to direct more money to that category of creator. However paying one person (or team of people) around as much a year as I pay for my TV Licence just cannot compare in terms of value to me as a consumer.
YouTube Premium is apparently a reasonable compromise from what I've seen some channels report (a decent bump in income for them for each premium view and for the end-user a decent enhancement in experience across the platform), but I wish there was a similar scheme for more niche web/news publications (Apple News+ looks reasonable, but has a limited catalogue in the UK).
[+] [-] pas|5 years ago|reply
Spotify is basically a RIAA subscription with added steps. Netflix subscription is a subsidy for series/movie production houses.
One's personal cashflow toward Amazon has less actual influence on what the Jeff channel will air than the Utah monolith's stolen shadow.
... that said, so far this seems like an improvement over Big TV. Though, maybe it's just the YouTube addiction talking.
[+] [-] wodenokoto|5 years ago|reply
Wasn't it during the PS2 launch, that Sony said "A girlfriend" when asked what they considered their biggest competitor?
[+] [-] rmah|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] efsavage|5 years ago|reply
Some services I have kept for years, others I've started/cancelled several times, many I get some enjoyment from and then move on.
If you aren't afraid to cancel things, and don't sign up for things you can't cancel, I think it's a fairly efficient system that can align your money and time.
[+] [-] loughnane|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vangelis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TruthHurts44|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] st1x7|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] permo-w|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TameAntelope|5 years ago|reply
Finding things that give enjoyment and deliberately distract from the things going on in a person's life has potentially immense value, depending on what those things going on in their life are.
The implicit agreement made here is that both parties know what you're saying, and both parties agree to not talk about it -- for the seller, because it's an ethical quandary, for the buyer because they don't want to have to confront the things in their life they're trying to ignore.
It doesn't always have to be so sinister of course (maybe I just want to relax and am otherwise keeping my responsibilities), but it can be sinister, which I think is what you're getting at. My argument is that both parties know this, and it may be the whole point.
[+] [-] hrktb|5 years ago|reply
There might be frictions on adding Netflix to this, but Netflix can still be added in with incredibly great content that a user would be willing to pay monthly to keep seeing it (the same way Nintendo Online doesn't need all your attention if you're happy to keep it just for Animal Crossing, for instance)
If find it globally healthier than the alternative advertisement based services, which look to be more cut-throat places.
[+] [-] vharuck|5 years ago|reply
Facebook competes for your time and attention. The ringtone company was competing for a share of a kid's allowance. A local outdoor skating rink competes with building snowmen, even though the latter isn't a company-provided service.
Nearly all products and services compete for a user's time, even if it's only the time spent deciding to buy it. Facebook wants more of our time, but that's because it's an advertising platform. Most services try to cut down user time.
[+] [-] proto-n|5 years ago|reply
Well, this is true for paid entertainment at least. You are absolutely right about ad driven stuff though.
[+] [-] tsjq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onion2k|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Synaesthesia|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k_sze|5 years ago|reply
Say you're a high-class italian restaurant, you'll find that you compete
- not only with high-class italian restaurants
- not only with all high-class restaurants in general
But in fact with all businesses that allow the customer to spend the same order of magnitude of money in return for the same high-class treatment, leisure, and relaxation.
It may sound daunting, but it in fact also means that your potential market is much bigger than you might initially believe.
[+] [-] edent|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crispyambulance|5 years ago|reply
I find it impossible to believe that this "sameness" is what people really want. I suspect candy vendors have specifically conditioned the candy market in much the same way as the film industry has conditioned audiences into go to see mass-market films-- endless re-hashes of the same stuff, endless sequels, formulaic plots, god forbid an edgy wildly different film gets out every once in a while.
Things are different in most European and Asian countries where you can easily find a mind-blowing variety of candies that are truly distinct from each other.
That reminds me, there's a fun book of essays, Candy Freak (https://www.amazon.com/Candyfreak-Journey-through-Chocolate-...) which is all about the vanishing fringe candy makers in the USA.
[+] [-] endemic|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MiguelVieira|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mountain_Skies|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sixhobbits|5 years ago|reply
If you're selling a part-time educational product or service, your biggest competitor is Netflix. Even if you convince someone to do an evening course instead of watching Netflix and then they choose someone else's evening course, you've still grown the market in a way that will probably benefit you.
Similarly, Netflix's biggest competitor is sleep.
[+] [-] sarreph|5 years ago|reply
It goes into enlightening detail about the same framing of competition as the author here does.
[0] - https://jtbd.info/
[+] [-] oblio|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flarg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdmichal|5 years ago|reply
I went to PAX 2012 and they had a panel literally called, "Free-to-Play Games: Brilliant, Evil, or Brilliantly Evil?". I directly asked the question of how they were going to deal with attention being the currency and competing with each other. Especially given that there was a limited amount of attention, while money can be easily spent in parallel.
I don't remember receiving any kind of satisfactory answer.
[+] [-] newbie578|5 years ago|reply
Currently, it is truly a battle between companies for the user's attention.
[1] - https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnarcher/2019/01/17/netflix-r...
[+] [-] motohagiography|5 years ago|reply
I wonder if there is an economics model for a kind of product that competes against not other products, but against a users needs and behaviour. Kind of like a "radical monopoly" before it gets there.
On designing the products, Nir Eyal's "Hooked," model describes them.
[+] [-] mattcdrake|5 years ago|reply
>While we didn’t exactly market directly to kids, we knew that they were buying.
squares with:
>Every time a kid has 25p to spare, they have a choice. They can choose to buy a chocolate bar, or they can choose to buy a ringtone. Our job is to encourage them to buy digital goods, rather than sugary treats.
[+] [-] wodenokoto|5 years ago|reply
Then comes a Marketing person and says "You do realize that your main customer group is choosing between you and a mars bar"
[+] [-] fishbacon|5 years ago|reply
The difference is what their goal is and what they can actually legally do.
It is illegal to market to kids, however it is not illegal to sell products which kids want.
[+] [-] optimalsolver|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|5 years ago|reply
Try the same with digital goods. Now with gift cards it's easier, still, it's mildly non-trivial.
[+] [-] Hamuko|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jinglebells|5 years ago|reply
I think they could also SMS the ringtones to the phones.
[+] [-] wyiske|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Dirlewanger|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Waterluvian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edent|5 years ago|reply
I used Mars Bar in the title because I'm writing for an international audience. And I don't think Freddo travels as widely.
[+] [-] jinglebells|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LudwigNagasena|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] woliveirajr|5 years ago|reply
Not wanting to miss the opportunity to express my thoughts and I've spent time, attention... I consider that it was well spent: short article, right to the point, gave me an insight. But when it isn't useful? Sight...
[+] [-] draw_down|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] studius|5 years ago|reply
According to a cross-sectional web-based survey taken on 995 people between August 15 and August 30, 2020 across various cities, towns and villages in India:
"Almost nine months of the pandemic marginally improved people’s eating behaviour, yet a third of participants gained weight as physical activity declined while screen and sitting time increased, a study conducted by AIIMS researchers to evaluate Covid’s impact on lifestyle changes has found. Mental health was also adversely affected and quarantine-induced stress and anxiety showed an increase by a unit in nearly one-fourth of the participants."[1]
Even pets are getting fatter, according to a Kelton Global survey of 1,021 U.S. dog and cat owners and 257 veterinarians between November 23 and November 30, 2020. 33% of those with an overweight pet said their pet became overweight during the pandemic.[2]
[1]: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/aiims-study-f...
[2]: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/new-study-reveals-c...
[+] [-] draw_down|5 years ago|reply
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