All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and lost less than 1% of their subscriber base in that environment could almost be seen as a positive.
The there is definitely a question whether, now that they have moved so solidly into content production, Netflix is actually a scalable / viable company any more. When they were just sending other people's content around and doing it much cheaper and better that was innovative and different. But content production is an expensive treadmill you can never get off and unless they find a way to innovate on that front, they are up against much more experienced and well established players with no differentiator at all.
But reading the sky falling into the current reported figures seems a little over the top.
Honestly for me I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad. I wish instead of pushing shows to me best on algorithms, it would just let me browse categories and recent additions etc in a simpler way. Maybe categorised by year.
Absolutely, Netflix would be 1000 times better if they just let me sort, filter and find content based on concrete metadata. Instead, I'm forced to rely on their recommendation algorithms that purport to know what I want to watch, but for some reason keep recommending low quality content in languages I'm just not interested in. I'd be happy if I could just filter Netflix to only show me content with original audio in languages I speak. The few shows I'm interested in watching with subtitles or dubbed audio are things I can search for on a case by base basis. And don't get me started on Netflix's non-intuitive categories which seem more intent on forcing me to view ideologically motivated content than on helping me to find content in a category I'm interested in. I don't want to search for "Christian Films with Family Values" nor do I want to watch "Films With Black Female Leads". Nothing wrong with those types of films, but I'm searching by "Action", "Romance", "Comedy", "Sci-Fi" etc.
I cancelled my Netflix premium subscription some years ago due to the UI.
I just want to read what the movie/show is about without it starting to play some distraction, or worse, revealing trailer/intro.
When I'm done I want to easily find relevant movies and shows on my own, not get some random suggestion on auto-play shoved in my face which I have 3 seconds to get rid of.
Since then they've lost a lot of content and produced a lot of terrible stuff, so slim chance I'll sign up again anytime soon.
Agreed. I have never used such a non-deterministic UI. Every time I load the app I have to hunt around to find the show I last watched and continue it. It feels like it’s in a different place every single time.
And actually trying to browse the catalog is painful.
I like some of their content but I really hate the Netflix apps. (Not to mention weird subtitle issues and play position sync issues).
The one thing I will say though is I cannot remember the last time I saw a single bit of buffering. Everything starts playing immediately, every time. The actual reliability of the streaming itself is superb.
The recommendation system crash is coming. Name a recommendation system that shouldn't be replaced with simple rules based on obvious and transparent metrics like popularity and ratings, or by organizing things into categories.
Less fancy ML nonsense, more working hard to gather high quality simple metrics.
I've always preferred to use https://unogs.com/ which lets you search with a lot of advanced search parameters and the resulting pages are much easier to browse, and then just pull up specific titles on Netflix itself.
I particularly hate the way they keep pushing serial killer documentaries, and there seems to be little way to get them to stop. When it's late at night and I'm trying to find something relaxing to watch before going to bed, the last thing I want to see is a serial killer's face staring at me and then footage of them starting to play. It ruins my night. Honestly that's been the last straw for me. They're happy to force their customers to see disturbing things, as long as it boosts engagement.
The sorts should be partitioned. For a given category, that list they show you? Movies you have seen and rated down should be the very, very last on the list. Then movies you seen and rated up would be just before that. Then movies you haven't seen, but are older. Up front should be movies you haven't seen but are new to Netflix.
A movie should appear in no more than three categories, because they like to pack these with spam. I marked horror as my #1 category, why do I have to scroll through a ton of stuff like "Strong Female-Led Dramas" to get to it?
Algorithms? Netflix hasn't done actual recommendation algorithms since the DVD days. These days it just relentlessly pushes its own third-rate content to viewers, presumably because it's cheaper than licensed content.
After all major content providers dripped out of Netflix (Disney, Warner Brothers, just to name two biggest ones), Netflix can't afford to show you "all the content" because they don't really have any content.
So they are in a desperate situation to try and make you watch anything at all.
I'll watch a tutorial video then suddenly that's the _only_ thing my feed recommends to me. None of my subscriptions. None of my established preference. Just dozens of videos on a topic that I likely don't actually care that much about.
> I just do not know all the content Netflix has because the browsing is so bad
Yeah, you can't rest your mouse anywhere, all the things pop up and autoplay even without clicking. Same thing happens on Twitter, everything reacts to clicks. If 95% of the screen space is listening for clicks and mouse-over's then you have to be really careful not to misclick on something. It's even worse if you like to run everything through TTS - just try to double-click select something without triggering the click event listeners.
Back when Netflix had DVDs the recommendation algorithm worked pretty well, at least for me. It's gotten gradually worse over the years. Or perhaps they no longer have much good content, so no recommendation algorithm would work well? Either way I guess it's time to cancel my subscription.
I can't agree with this more. I find it extremely difficult to find something I want to watch, because I simply can't find out how to look at their entire library.
I have to agree. If I remember a show, I can search by name but I can only browse through the stuff that their algorithm shows to me. And that's just a few dozen titles.
I stopped using Netflix a long time ago, when the "algorithm" started ramming content through my throat;
I couldn't disable automatically playing previews on the home screen, it automatically started skipping over intro's and outro's, automatically playing the next show, etc. etc.
Everything just screams "thou shall consume more".
I find it interesting that so many people spend so much time watching tv in the first place. Growing up, I was one of those people but about a decade ago I lost interest in pretty much anything on television. There are certain shows that I will watch on occasion that get me hooked, but I usually struggle to find anything that is actually worth my time and end up just turning the tv off after surfing the streaming options for 10 minutes. It boggles my mind when I hear things like “golden age” of content. Sure there is a ton of content, but it’s all so vapid.
It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then.
This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its successor Movies Anywhere, in which Paramount, MGM, and Lions Gate are not participating.
I see a lot of focus on the "lost 200 000 subscribers", but less acknowledgement that they kicked 700 000 Russians off the subscriber list, meaning they actually grew by 500 000 subscribers (still well short of wall streets expectation of 2.5 million.)
So in one sense it's a one-time drop, not a trend.
Does Netflix have more competition than before? sure. Is it growing as fast as before? no, especially as they reach saturation in some markets. Is this the "end of netflix"? um... no
The thing I find interesting with Netflix is how much they spend on content and what a terrible rate of return it has. Look at Apple TV+, they're absolutely TINY compared to Netflix in both library size and money spent on new production, but they have arguably more hits than Netflix. Like, since when has any drama on Netflix been as buzzy or as good as Severance on Apple TV+? When was the last time they had a comedy success like Ted Lasso?
They have a couple of things that are very good (including Russian Doll, which is better than the article gives it credit for). But it's the ratio the that's troubling: the value of [good shows] / [shows produced] is absurdly much lower for Netflix than for Apple TV+, HBO Max or Disney+. All their spending seems to result in is endless mediocre True Crime documentaries that try recapture the magic of the first season of Making a Murderer, and the occasional golden nugget you binge in a weekend.
The article makes a big deal of the binging thing, and I agree it's a terrible model compared to weekly releases. But I feel like Netflix's real problem is that they just don't make enough good stuff.
Netflix always had a terrible business model dependent on transient properties of the media environment. I thought from the beginning they were not masters of their own fate (remember Redbox's hack to get around publisher restrictions? Weird streaming windows even from the streaming era's earliest days?) and once they started spending the big bucks to try and stay afloat it was clear they were doomed. They were only in "FAANG" to make the acronym funny.
I expect the entire streaming business to follow the cable TV model: 1 - start with a paid, high quality and/or increased supply without ads; 2 - bleed ads into some of the streams because the first stage was unsustainable; 3 - race to the bottom with bundles, because the individual streams are too expensive. Expect Comcast to be the big winner here through a roll up and cross-sale of carriage to their cable channels into streaming bundles (because aggregated bundle fees will provide at least some revenue without the cost of running your own streaming platform.
Youtube ought to win this battle but have to date demonstrated little competence. Comcast is the superpredator.
I blame Netflix for popularizing the stack of horizontal scrolling carousel of thumbnails. It is a terrible way to browse, and so many companies mindlessly copy it.
The entire TV/movie streaming industry is pushing the world back to a cable-like one, and that's already pushing people back to pirating. There are a lot of people who were content to pay for a couple services, but even without any sports, you can easily be paying for 3 streaming services for ~$60, just to get content that used to be on Netflix (plus whatever's been released since). Once you add one or two sports, you can be looking at prices above $100 per month.
It's easier just to pirate than keep up with all these streaming services.
- You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering.
- Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content.
- Edit: Plex et al are not the *only* ways to download content, not sure why some replies are thinking so. I too can type in a show into a piracy site, click the magnet icon, and start immediately watching it. I personally don't even use Plex, Radarr or Sonarr myself, it was just a suggestion. In contrast, I can't just type any show into Netflix and watch it, since it might not even be on Netflix! Then I'd need to get on justwatch.com just to figure out which streaming service is playing the show. This is harder than piracy in my view.
- You can use whatever media player you want without having to go through a browser and its DRM. I use mpv and filters like Anime4k to automatically upscale my content, something that I cannot do via a browser or otherwise without the physical file on my hard drive.
- You're not geo-locked to content, just because you're not in the target country doesn't mean you wouldn't want to watch it.
- Oh, and you can share with as many of your friends as you want without a restrictive password sharing penalty like Netflix seems to want to start enforcing.
Now, what would be a good model to stop such piracy? Something like Steam or Spotify but for movies and shows:
Perhaps a paid Plex server where I get all content from every distributor for a flat fee, and the service provider can then pay out to each distributor their portion of my subscription based on number of views. I retain access to the physical files without DRM so that I can do with them what I want, such as applying mpv filters.
Hell, it's probably in the best interest of all distributors to band together because clearly everyone having their own subscription service is a race to the bottom. See Netflix here struggling to make original content because major distributors like Disney and Paramount have already left. See CNN+ that shut down one month after starting. Due to the tragedy of the commons, where each distributor thinks they can make more money via starting their own service, this hypothetical new service would have to be some sort of joint venture between them all so that no one is incentivized to start their own.
Netflix after canceling all of its best shows during a period when piracy has never been easier: "Let's start doing ads!"
I wonder if anybody at Netflix has seen the UX of popular streaming apps like (now defunct I believe) terrarium and its successors. They're easier to use, just as fast as Netflix, have much larger libraries, allow DRM-free downloads, ad-free, no algorithmic spam, etc. It is incredible that when faced with that as another consumer option they've gone for "severely degrade user experience" as the strategy.
At this point, some vulture private equity firm should just take them private and sell it for parts. Clearly they've spent far too much time being the biggest player and have completely disconnected from what their customers want.
I'd been looking for reason to get rid of Netflix once they made it impossible to adequately curate the user experience — they kept shoving content I didn't want to see at me, as well as content I'd already seen, and gave me no way to exclude shows or types of shows from being presented to me. Netflix is amazingly anti-user, and anti-user choice. The autoplay of short clips they introduced made it actively anti-user.
The straw that broke the camel's back for us was the disappearance of a deep catalog and only one or two new shows which were worth attention — if we really want to see them, we'll sign on for a month next year and binge-watch through them, then drop the service again. This is the model we're going to be going forward with any such service.
One of the most overlooked trends of the 21st century is we have too much entertainment. When I was growing up, when a movie came out, you went and saw it because it wasn't going to be on TV for at least 8 months and then you could get a VHS like years afterward if you were lucky. When it came on TV it was a big deal. Everyone got home in time to watch it. Now entertainment is everywhere. It's in massive and overwhelmingly cheap quantities. The point of diminishing marginal returns has been reached and now quality becomes paramount. Netflix just doesn't have the quality, so they are going to slowly bleed off attention and subscribers because people just don't have the time to watch everything. When Netflix came out, sure it was incredible, watch as much as you want for free, but now that's not as enticing.
> One of the most overlooked trends of the 21st century is we have too much entertainment.
That's some deep insight right there.
I used to watch netflix while eating alone only. I unsubscribed Jan 2022, and now I read a book on an ereader on a stand at eye level. Much more value for me and as entertaining if not more.
It's not entertainment, it's education.
The challenge now is to find and filter 'useful books' (most are not, and don't deliver on the promise on the cover).
Well it's simple.. The movie industry almost killed itself, and now it's getting greedy again. More and more people are simply downloading again. Not because they refuse to pay, but because they refuse to pay for 6 platforms, and get annoyed by not being able to find where they can watch things.
I'm not even against piracy but this comment smacks of entitlement and lack of nuance. The "movie industry" isn't some monolithic thing and no one needs 6 platforms. Pirate content if you want, but don't pretend you're entitled to tv or movies.
I very recently downloaded because I just couldn't manage to acquire the movie I wanted to watch in any other way.
I looked for it in all platforms, Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, YouTube, Play Store, and it wasn't available in my country. I then connected to the US through a VPN and tried to buy it or rent it but my PayPal account didn't work because it isn't associated to the US. I finally found it in YouTube posted by a page that seemed official! But it had no captions... argh!
I wasted 2 hours trying to have anyone accept money to let me watch it, but got nothing. Then I tried torrenting and 3 min after I had the movie ready to watch and a captions file ready to add. In the end I couldn't finish watching the movie because it had already taken too long.
At this point, you would think a branch of the media industry realized establishing a unified platform before a 3rd party inevitably does it and then also wants to be cut in (Steam for games, Spotify and Apple Music for music) is the only move. You would think.
I'd be careful to make a claim as big as "the bottom is dropping out," but Netflix is facing a few headwinds.
- Lots of competition, some more serious (Disney+) than others (Amazon)
- Nearing the top of the streaming adoption curve
- End of the stay-at-home covid bump
The covid impact is noise in the long (5+ years) term.
Reaching full adoption is a sign of maturity overtaking growth. You run the company differently, but it's not "the bottom dropping out."
Competition is rough. The competitors have deep pockets and back catalogs, but consumers have no appetite for 6 separate services. This is where I'd be worried.
I empathize with the recommendation and UI gripes, but I doubt they're driving Netflix's woes.
Moving from a growth company to a stable company just implies it deserves a much lower valuation multiple, which is what the market is adjusting to.
My question is, how did people not expect this given that a huge XX% of the first world already uses it, and there are tons of viable competing streaming services popping up like weeds? They had a first mover advantage, and that was pretty much it, but streaming is a solved technology now. Competition took much longer to mobilize than it should have, but it's finally here now.
At the end of the day the only differentiator for Netflix is as a production company. Up to you to decide what their moat is there
2. Their recommendation algorithms didn't solve 1.
The root cause of it all is their odd focus on expensive originals over third party content. Their catalogue is just not deep enough if you remove all the subpar content. Before using Netflix I engaged in massive piracy for over ten years, and I'm considering it again - this time in smaller amounts, because I don't have that much free time anymore.
In addition to these things: the way the force us to browse content is awful and it's been copied by all of the vendors. Netflix and Prime are particularly terrible because of the volume of content, much of it absolute garbage, they have online.
1. I want to find my own shit with filters, not by scrolling through endless reams of D- grade cable TV quality shows.
2. I want major efforts from networks and studios, not homemade content. I know I may be in the minority here, but I strongly prefer HBOMax right now (which I get for 'free' with my phone plan) because the content is aligned here coupled with their own solid content, not D+ grade self-created content.
Came here to say the same. I cancelled two months back and I really don't miss it. On the other hand if HBOMax hiked their prices to $30/mo I wouldn't blink.
For me I associate the big red "N" with bad content. So when I open Netflix and see the red "N" plastered on every thumbnail the algo serves up, I immediately wanted to close the app. I eventually felt tired of batting away their originals to find good content so I unsubscribed.
I don't know how many other people actually feel the same way, but it seems pretty clear to me that their subscriber base doesn't like Netflix's original content as much as Netflix does.
On bad quarter for subscription losses-- driven by dropping out of the Russian marked-- (they'd be up 500k subscribers if not for that) and people are jumping on the "Netflix is doomed" bandwagon.
That seems very premature to me. Subscription growth has slowed and they may still lose some more, but saying the bottom is dropping out is hyperbole at best & clickbait at worst. (though why not both?). They're facing more competition, and coming out of COVID lockdowns probably means people aren't home as much to binge watch shows. Not enough to doom them unless they start hitting a bunch of own goals.
> Instead of producing two mediocre shows and an algorithmically designed movie every single week
I'm actually kinda torn about that statement. While i usually prefer shows by other studios for quality, i've watched some Netflix Originals that were rather good, and especially some "foreign language" ones that i would most likely never have watched otherwise.
Most of the Netflix Originals are not huge budget productions, but especially their foreign stuff sometimes proves that less is more. They tell interesting stories in "good enough" settings for them to be enjoyable.
Algorithmically designed movies are pretty good though.
Every Pixar movie is exactly the same, and they're all great. It's a good formula. My problem with movies is that they're built for two many audiences. Pick China xor America, and the will be more enjoyable to watch
These suggestions are pretty weak. Mostly boil down to making better stuff for cheaper. Which is obvious and something everyone is trying.
IMHO, Netflix is the classic .com company where they think they can do everything better than the incumbents. That's true when there is a paradigm technology shift (internet ordering and then streaming). But it's almost never true when you're talking about core competencies.
Since Netflix is sticking with the binge-watch release model they pioneered, I wish they would provide a 1 or 2 week-long "binge" one-time payment option. They could charge as much as for a month's subscription, but you wouldn't have to deal with canceling your subscription when you're done watching the 2 or 3 shows you actually signed up to watch. $20 for a limited time, no hassle binge is a pretty good deal; it's cheaper than buying a single movie on Prime Video and much cheaper than buying movie tickets for me and my partner.
[+] [-] zmmmmm|3 years ago|reply
The there is definitely a question whether, now that they have moved so solidly into content production, Netflix is actually a scalable / viable company any more. When they were just sending other people's content around and doing it much cheaper and better that was innovative and different. But content production is an expensive treadmill you can never get off and unless they find a way to innovate on that front, they are up against much more experienced and well established players with no differentiator at all.
But reading the sky falling into the current reported figures seems a little over the top.
[+] [-] ilrwbwrkhv|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yosito|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magicalhippo|3 years ago|reply
I just want to read what the movie/show is about without it starting to play some distraction, or worse, revealing trailer/intro.
When I'm done I want to easily find relevant movies and shows on my own, not get some random suggestion on auto-play shoved in my face which I have 3 seconds to get rid of.
Since then they've lost a lot of content and produced a lot of terrible stuff, so slim chance I'll sign up again anytime soon.
[+] [-] tailspin2019|3 years ago|reply
And actually trying to browse the catalog is painful.
I like some of their content but I really hate the Netflix apps. (Not to mention weird subtitle issues and play position sync issues).
The one thing I will say though is I cannot remember the last time I saw a single bit of buffering. Everything starts playing immediately, every time. The actual reliability of the streaming itself is superb.
[+] [-] civilized|3 years ago|reply
Less fancy ML nonsense, more working hard to gather high quality simple metrics.
[+] [-] aiiane|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway042122|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] at_a_remove|3 years ago|reply
The sorts should be partitioned. For a given category, that list they show you? Movies you have seen and rated down should be the very, very last on the list. Then movies you seen and rated up would be just before that. Then movies you haven't seen, but are older. Up front should be movies you haven't seen but are new to Netflix.
A movie should appear in no more than three categories, because they like to pack these with spam. I marked horror as my #1 category, why do I have to scroll through a ton of stuff like "Strong Female-Led Dramas" to get to it?
[+] [-] the_biot|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everdrive|3 years ago|reply
It was beautiful:
- There were no video previews.
- All selection was text-based only.
- There was no algorithmic feed: only lists based on category / genre / etc.
If Netflix offered this, I might actually pay for it. For now, I'm just using a relative's login, and I won't be paying if they boot us off.
[+] [-] dmitriid|3 years ago|reply
So they are in a desperate situation to try and make you watch anything at all.
[+] [-] SkyPuncher|3 years ago|reply
I'll watch a tutorial video then suddenly that's the _only_ thing my feed recommends to me. None of my subscriptions. None of my established preference. Just dozens of videos on a topic that I likely don't actually care that much about.
[+] [-] cynusx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] visarga|3 years ago|reply
Yeah, you can't rest your mouse anywhere, all the things pop up and autoplay even without clicking. Same thing happens on Twitter, everything reacts to clicks. If 95% of the screen space is listening for clicks and mouse-over's then you have to be really careful not to misclick on something. It's even worse if you like to run everything through TTS - just try to double-click select something without triggering the click event listeners.
[+] [-] nradov|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timmahoney|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xhkkffbf|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DavideNL|3 years ago|reply
I stopped using Netflix a long time ago, when the "algorithm" started ramming content through my throat;
I couldn't disable automatically playing previews on the home screen, it automatically started skipping over intro's and outro's, automatically playing the next show, etc. etc.
Everything just screams "thou shall consume more".
[+] [-] jeffmc|3 years ago|reply
I forgot where I got the original list of links
[+] [-] andrew_|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sudden_dystopia|3 years ago|reply
I find it interesting that so many people spend so much time watching tv in the first place. Growing up, I was one of those people but about a decade ago I lost interest in pretty much anything on television. There are certain shows that I will watch on occasion that get me hooked, but I usually struggle to find anything that is actually worth my time and end up just turning the tv off after surfing the streaming options for 10 minutes. It boggles my mind when I hear things like “golden age” of content. Sure there is a ton of content, but it’s all so vapid.
[+] [-] ripe|3 years ago|reply
This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its successor Movies Anywhere, in which Paramount, MGM, and Lions Gate are not participating.
[Old HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19046108]
[+] [-] bruce511|3 years ago|reply
So in one sense it's a one-time drop, not a trend.
Does Netflix have more competition than before? sure. Is it growing as fast as before? no, especially as they reach saturation in some markets. Is this the "end of netflix"? um... no
[+] [-] OskarS|3 years ago|reply
They have a couple of things that are very good (including Russian Doll, which is better than the article gives it credit for). But it's the ratio the that's troubling: the value of [good shows] / [shows produced] is absurdly much lower for Netflix than for Apple TV+, HBO Max or Disney+. All their spending seems to result in is endless mediocre True Crime documentaries that try recapture the magic of the first season of Making a Murderer, and the occasional golden nugget you binge in a weekend.
The article makes a big deal of the binging thing, and I agree it's a terrible model compared to weekly releases. But I feel like Netflix's real problem is that they just don't make enough good stuff.
[+] [-] gumby|3 years ago|reply
I expect the entire streaming business to follow the cable TV model: 1 - start with a paid, high quality and/or increased supply without ads; 2 - bleed ads into some of the streams because the first stage was unsustainable; 3 - race to the bottom with bundles, because the individual streams are too expensive. Expect Comcast to be the big winner here through a roll up and cross-sale of carriage to their cable channels into streaming bundles (because aggregated bundle fees will provide at least some revenue without the cost of running your own streaming platform.
Youtube ought to win this battle but have to date demonstrated little competence. Comcast is the superpredator.
[+] [-] WillPostForFood|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xTJ|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cercatrova|3 years ago|reply
- You get the benefit of high quality (true 4k, not stream compressed "4k") and no buffering.
- Plex, Radarr, Sonarr automatically downloads and categorizes your content for you, you can just sit back and enjoy your content.
- You can use whatever media player you want without having to go through a browser and its DRM. I use mpv and filters like Anime4k to automatically upscale my content, something that I cannot do via a browser or otherwise without the physical file on my hard drive.- You're not geo-locked to content, just because you're not in the target country doesn't mean you wouldn't want to watch it.
- Oh, and you can share with as many of your friends as you want without a restrictive password sharing penalty like Netflix seems to want to start enforcing.
Now, what would be a good model to stop such piracy? Something like Steam or Spotify but for movies and shows:
Perhaps a paid Plex server where I get all content from every distributor for a flat fee, and the service provider can then pay out to each distributor their portion of my subscription based on number of views. I retain access to the physical files without DRM so that I can do with them what I want, such as applying mpv filters.
Hell, it's probably in the best interest of all distributors to band together because clearly everyone having their own subscription service is a race to the bottom. See Netflix here struggling to make original content because major distributors like Disney and Paramount have already left. See CNN+ that shut down one month after starting. Due to the tragedy of the commons, where each distributor thinks they can make more money via starting their own service, this hypothetical new service would have to be some sort of joint venture between them all so that no one is incentivized to start their own.
[+] [-] MillenialGran|3 years ago|reply
Netflix after canceling all of its best shows during a period when piracy has never been easier: "Let's start doing ads!"
I wonder if anybody at Netflix has seen the UX of popular streaming apps like (now defunct I believe) terrarium and its successors. They're easier to use, just as fast as Netflix, have much larger libraries, allow DRM-free downloads, ad-free, no algorithmic spam, etc. It is incredible that when faced with that as another consumer option they've gone for "severely degrade user experience" as the strategy.
At this point, some vulture private equity firm should just take them private and sell it for parts. Clearly they've spent far too much time being the biggest player and have completely disconnected from what their customers want.
[+] [-] flenserboy|3 years ago|reply
The straw that broke the camel's back for us was the disappearance of a deep catalog and only one or two new shows which were worth attention — if we really want to see them, we'll sign on for a month next year and binge-watch through them, then drop the service again. This is the model we're going to be going forward with any such service.
[+] [-] narrator|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] urlwolf|3 years ago|reply
It's not entertainment, it's education.
The challenge now is to find and filter 'useful books' (most are not, and don't deliver on the promise on the cover).
[+] [-] jbverschoor|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] diogenescynic|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwpp034578|3 years ago|reply
I looked for it in all platforms, Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, YouTube, Play Store, and it wasn't available in my country. I then connected to the US through a VPN and tried to buy it or rent it but my PayPal account didn't work because it isn't associated to the US. I finally found it in YouTube posted by a page that seemed official! But it had no captions... argh!
I wasted 2 hours trying to have anyone accept money to let me watch it, but got nothing. Then I tried torrenting and 3 min after I had the movie ready to watch and a captions file ready to add. In the end I couldn't finish watching the movie because it had already taken too long.
[+] [-] jstummbillig|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dehrmann|3 years ago|reply
- Lots of competition, some more serious (Disney+) than others (Amazon)
- Nearing the top of the streaming adoption curve
- End of the stay-at-home covid bump
The covid impact is noise in the long (5+ years) term.
Reaching full adoption is a sign of maturity overtaking growth. You run the company differently, but it's not "the bottom dropping out."
Competition is rough. The competitors have deep pockets and back catalogs, but consumers have no appetite for 6 separate services. This is where I'd be worried.
I empathize with the recommendation and UI gripes, but I doubt they're driving Netflix's woes.
[+] [-] adam_arthur|3 years ago|reply
My question is, how did people not expect this given that a huge XX% of the first world already uses it, and there are tons of viable competing streaming services popping up like weeds? They had a first mover advantage, and that was pretty much it, but streaming is a solved technology now. Competition took much longer to mobilize than it should have, but it's finally here now.
At the end of the day the only differentiator for Netflix is as a production company. Up to you to decide what their moat is there
[+] [-] rc_mob|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkl95|3 years ago|reply
1. Netflix is boring
2. Their recommendation algorithms didn't solve 1.
The root cause of it all is their odd focus on expensive originals over third party content. Their catalogue is just not deep enough if you remove all the subpar content. Before using Netflix I engaged in massive piracy for over ten years, and I'm considering it again - this time in smaller amounts, because I don't have that much free time anymore.
[+] [-] garciasn|3 years ago|reply
1. I want to find my own shit with filters, not by scrolling through endless reams of D- grade cable TV quality shows.
2. I want major efforts from networks and studios, not homemade content. I know I may be in the minority here, but I strongly prefer HBOMax right now (which I get for 'free' with my phone plan) because the content is aligned here coupled with their own solid content, not D+ grade self-created content.
[+] [-] thadjo|3 years ago|reply
For me I associate the big red "N" with bad content. So when I open Netflix and see the red "N" plastered on every thumbnail the algo serves up, I immediately wanted to close the app. I eventually felt tired of batting away their originals to find good content so I unsubscribed.
I don't know how many other people actually feel the same way, but it seems pretty clear to me that their subscriber base doesn't like Netflix's original content as much as Netflix does.
[+] [-] ineedasername|3 years ago|reply
That seems very premature to me. Subscription growth has slowed and they may still lose some more, but saying the bottom is dropping out is hyperbole at best & clickbait at worst. (though why not both?). They're facing more competition, and coming out of COVID lockdowns probably means people aren't home as much to binge watch shows. Not enough to doom them unless they start hitting a bunch of own goals.
[+] [-] ehsankia|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vmception|3 years ago|reply
Thank you. The only reason I break my Netflix embargo (and log into my profile on a friends account) is so I know what some viral meme is about.
Nobody[1] talks about or remembers shows from there two weeks later.
[1] this is hyperbole validated by 200,000 - 2,000,000 others seeing the light
[+] [-] 8fingerlouie|3 years ago|reply
I'm actually kinda torn about that statement. While i usually prefer shows by other studios for quality, i've watched some Netflix Originals that were rather good, and especially some "foreign language" ones that i would most likely never have watched otherwise.
Most of the Netflix Originals are not huge budget productions, but especially their foreign stuff sometimes proves that less is more. They tell interesting stories in "good enough" settings for them to be enjoyable.
[+] [-] 8note|3 years ago|reply
Every Pixar movie is exactly the same, and they're all great. It's a good formula. My problem with movies is that they're built for two many audiences. Pick China xor America, and the will be more enjoyable to watch
[+] [-] treis|3 years ago|reply
IMHO, Netflix is the classic .com company where they think they can do everything better than the incumbents. That's true when there is a paradigm technology shift (internet ordering and then streaming). But it's almost never true when you're talking about core competencies.
[+] [-] zach_garwood|3 years ago|reply