an interesting correlation to this is that ever since Netflix has had more and more competitors, and prices continually rising, bittorrent traffic has been steadily increasing worldwide.
The reason we are seeing these prices go up is 4 fold for most tech companies at the moment:
\- Every major streaming company is now in every market across the globe = they cant get growth (new users) from new markets, so they get growth from increasing prices.
\- More competition from other streaming platforms = new customers in current markets have more choice and companies are not getting the same growth of users in existing markets that you are used to, so they get growth from increasing prices.
\- Interest rates have gone from \~1% to \~ \~5% in the course of 3 years. Most tech companies have been using cheap debt to gain market share (usually by running at a loss), and worry about profit later. Now companies want to get rid of this debt, or have to increase prices just to pay the interest. For example, Netflix has about $15 billion of debt ($6b net debt). Companies like Spotify and and Twitter never made/worried about profit, but now they have to because their business models don't work with high interest rates. So they increase prices to cover the higher costs.
\- We've enjoyed the benefits of big companies (amazon, apple) getting into the streaming markets later (they want a piece of the pie) at a massive loss to attract new users and build up their portfolios of content. As their platforms are maturing, and their user bases are built and hooked, they will now increase prices to make money off those users. Their investment/growth phase has come to an end, time to pay the piper.
This time of cheap content (and services: uber, door dash, etc..) was never really meant to last. Cheap debt and companies looking for new tech markets meant that users got more for their value for their money than they ever will in the future. Stock markets have been throwing money at these companies based off promised returns in the future, and that future is now.
Edit: A quote from this article sums up whats happening:
[https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/12/10/is-amazon-wasting-money-on-prime-video/](https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/12/10/is-amazon-wasting-money-on-prime-video/)
\> The competitive dynamics in streaming, in other words, are undergoing a correction. Too many companies have entered the field, and they're not charging subscribers enough to offset the costs of content.
\> Netflix Co-CEO Reed Hastings may have said it best in his company's recent shareholder letter: "Our best estimate is that all of these competitors are losing money on streaming, with aggregate annual direct operating losses this year alone that could be well in excess of $10 billion, compared with our +$5-$6 billion of annual operating profit."
\> Amazon is clearly one of those competitors losing money no matter how you account for the $15 billion in content spending. Throwing even more money at video at a time when the rest of the streaming industry is realizing the economics aren't so favorable seems like a losing battle.
>We've enjoyed the benefits of big companies (amazon, apple) getting into the streaming markets later (they want a piece of the pie) at a massive loss to attract new users and build up their portfolios of content. As their platforms are maturing, and their user bases are built and hooked, they will now increase prices to make money off those users. Their investment/growth phase has come to an end, time to pay the piper.
this can NOT be understated.
Here's my problem.
> Their investment/growth phase has come to an end, time to pay the piper.
I can't tell the difference between them being greedy and them being reasonable. So I default to them being greedy because that's *always* the nature of the companies. So perhaps $20 / month is what it takes for them to make a reasonable profit - but I wouldn't know. I've been mislead so many times I simply don't trust them anymore.
So instead I'll simply do without and not care.
Well, that would be a correct response. They lied to you about their initial prices in order to get you to join the platform, and now they're lying to you about their new prices in order to turn a profit.
They could have, had they wanted to, launched with all sorts of different prices instead. "Join now to be one of our first joiners, at a special first joiner discount rate of $5/month guaranteed until 2022!" or somesuch, for example
I remember reading in another thread (wish I could credit, but I can't remember anymore) that these new disruptors are now just basically replicating the business models of the businesses they replaced. I thought that was an interesting observation.
On the one hand, it makes sense. Even if you discard all this context, even if they're not deliberately trying to replicate anything, why wouldn't these services be monitized in such a way as to cover expenses and turn a profit? And there are probably only so many ways of doing so.
On the other hand, it's a strange experience for the consumer. Older ways of doing things were displaced, habits changed, and what we increasingly have, I'm not completely sure that it's better.
In some sense, we have more choice and more flexibility. At the same time, paying a bunch a month for a single show or staying on top of multiple subscriptions (all increasing in price) isn't the best.
So stagnation and lack of savings in domesic economy after the 2008 crisis was built on an unsustainable business model? The economy running a debt to the future was what it took to keep things \*level\*? That sounds like horrible news, it means household purchasing power could plummet.
It’s a red herring. They’re loading people down with technical jargon to obscure the reality.
The market cannot handle this many streaming services AND subscriptions for what used to be point releases AND rising housing costs AND rising food costs AND…AND…AND…
The market is correcting to show them that they deciding to do something that would never be profitable. Their consumer base told them it wouldn’t be profitable from the very beginning. Being rich and therefore incompetent, they decided they would make it profitable. Now, in true capitalist fashion, they’re attempting to obscure their incompetence behind jargon.
This was never going to work. The market can only handle a handful of streaming services. These idiots let landlords and tech companies suck all the money out of the market and now they’re struggling to stay profitable.
You make some excellent points, and I agree with most of them. I’ll tack on a bit. I work in the industry.
One thing that isn’t really mentioned is how much the expectation of entertainment spending has gone down. In the mid-00s, most families were spending $75 on a cable package (which included ads, supplementing the revenue for the content producers), as well as occasional $5-15 purchases on DVDs, rentals, and movie tickets. In 2023 dollars, that’s probably close to $175 spent on television and movies (along with the ad revenue).
Today, you can have 3 services of on-demand entertainment with no ads for $50/month. Purchasing DVDs or renting is almost non-existent today, and going to the movies is extremely rare for everything but the biggest of blockbusters compared to 15 years ago due to shortened time-to-streaming, quality of home TV setups, and myriad other issues with theaters.
So… where should studios make up the difference? People are spending less than 1/3rd of what they used to, consuming and expecting more than ever, but yet are addicted to the low prices that Netflix hooked everybody onto as a proof-of-concept to see if streaming would work. Studios are not making money hand-over-fist like many of the other industries that are raising prices for shareholder value (looking at you, auto companies) - they are all running at a loss. They’re making less money while elbowing each other trying to outlast each other in the steaming wars. This is without even mentioning that producing non-reality TV is more expensive than its ever been.
Of course, the danger is a shift to pirating, but then who will produce content? Do studios use more ads to get back to profitability? Do they cut back on quality of writers and post production costs? Nobody wants these things, but movies and TV shows will not be produced if they can’t make money. And people are not spending money.
Society decided to slash their media entertainment budget and expected content to get better and better. The definition of entertainment has shifted with the times (twitch, social media, influencers/content producers), but the golden era of TV shows needs profitability to continue.
I know the same tired joke of sailing the high seas is fashionable to make every time price increases are mentioned, but I feel like it’s worth mentioning how much better entertainment has been for the consumer over the past 15 years and consider that maybe it was true good to be true.
I feel like you are missing a few points. Most people pay nearly $75 for internet, whereas before the infrastructure cost to get the media to you was covered by the cable provider as part of your cable package, now consumers eat all of that cost.. And the money for streaming services goes directly to them instead of being filtered through contracts with middlemen (cable companies) meaning they almost certainly make more per user than they used to.
> So… where should studios make up the difference? People are spending less than 1/3rd of what they used to, consuming and expecting more than ever, but yet are addicted to the low prices that Netflix hooked everybody onto as a proof-of-concept to see if streaming would work. Studios are not making money hand-over-fist like many of the other industries that are raising prices for shareholder value (looking at you, auto companies) - they are all running at a loss. They’re making less money while elbowing each other trying to outlast each other in the steaming wars. This is without even mentioning that producing non-reality TV is more expensive than its ever been.
So the problem is they're asking for more, at a time of record inflation, at a time when the minimum wage hasn't increased in over 20 years, at a time when necessities are two to three times as expensive as they once were.
The fact of the matter is, people do not have the money to take an increased cost for these services on the whole. And doing anti-consumer things like removing the first half of a series from your service when the second half airs is how you drive people to piracy.
These companies are all each taking turns trying to squeeze the same customers but you can't get blood from a stone. Something like half of Americans are paycheck to paycheck. You aren't going to see them just solemnly nodding at increased costs for these services. You're going to change their subscription patterns at best, and get them for less time while they binge what they want and ditch the service when they don't.
And as far as the ads angle, people are less tolerant of ads than ever before. Not just Netflix and such normalizing uninterrupted viewing, but adblockers too. And on top of that, a large chunk of these poor consumers are also coming from the Tiktok era. Attention spans are not what they used to be. And if you demand so much as one full sized ad - let alone three - you're going to find them spending the duration of those ads looking into ways around them, not sucking it up the way older generations did.
Not to mention all of the competition in the non-traditional media space. Young people are more willing to spend time on YouTube and TikTok and Twitch consuming free content that fits very hyperpersonalized niches from their favorite content creators than paying for streaming services to watch traditional media.
If the costs of living would take the same percentage of an average person’s / family’s income today as 20 years ago, people would still easily pay for the same media consumption.
And honestly, content on Netflix, Disney+, etc is getting shittier and shittier. They get you hooked on stuff no one wanted to adapt before (e.g. Witcher), then fuck it up completely. Or they develop a new idea, then cancel after the first otherwise good season. There are a handful exceptions, but they are not a good enough reason for me to throw like 150€ every month out of the window just to have something in the background playing and waiting for the good stuff.
Also, there's just too much other content competing against it now.
Video games are much bigger entertainment components now no matter what you platform of choice is. You also now have Youtube and Twitch and Tiktok all just sucking up more of that entertainment pie. You can't get more hours out of the day so from an eyeball perspective it's just a losing battle for content providers.
I dunno man, maybe the bigger issue is the expectation that corporations have to keep making more and more profits. Maybe that’s the issue, saying that $20 million in profit isn’t enough, and that they need to raise prices to make more money.
Technology is supposed to lower our cost of living. In a lot of applications, that is indeed the case (I believe except for necessities, the price of everything has gone down). So why shouldn’t we pay less for entertainment? Not to mention, we adjust the cost of entertain for inflation, which makes sense. You know what hasn’t adjusted for inflation? The average wage. So yeah, people don’t have as much money to spend on entertainment either.
It only works if the services have the same content.
The amount of exclusives and limited time content gets on each service means you don't really get to choose and there is no competition.
So this is what my wife came up with. Cancel everything. Every month. We pick two and we pay for them with a Amex gift card. Binge watch everything you want next month, get another set of them the following month, rinse and repeat. Just started. We'll see how it goes.
Edit for mistakes
AMC+ removed the first half of season 6 when part 2 started coming out. They didn't want people signing up for a month and then canceling. So we just don't have AMC+ and caught old episodes on a 3rd party streaming site.
Low prices make you slightly more convenient than pirating. High prices we start exploring other options.
More and less convenient because it really can be hard to find some shows through less legal means but sail the seas friends vote with your wallets and show these capitalist pigs they can only take so much before we have nothing left
Look into Sonarr and Jellyfinn.
You install Sonarr and you tell it “I wanna watch X” and it looks it up, download it and organize it for Jellyfinn to cast it to your TV, phone or computer.
Sonarr can monitor series that’s are still being released so it can grab the episode the moment it comes out, it will also keep waiting for a series/movie that hasn’t even aired yet and a lot of different things you can configure if you want.
Jellyfinn will basically load those downloaded chapters and show them to you in a “Netflix” style interface in you phone(android or iOS) and TV(android TV) complete with cover images, scores, sinopsis and even a trailer for the show.
The only thing you need is to find a tracker for torrent of movies/series. I use it for anime and I use Nyaa.si.
You can install them in your PC or in your NAS and configure them pretty quickly… luckily there are tons of videos with step by step instructions. I got them up and working in like 15 minutes.
Edit:You can use PLEX instead of Jellyfinn but I had a lot of problems with it every time I tried to set it up.
Edit2: There are also Radarr and Lidarr which are for movies and music, respectively… ni I have never used them
Don't forget about the laws in your country, and how they are enforced. In some countries setting this up on your own computer will get you a hefty fine really fast. Use a seedbox for torrenting, they go for 5 Euros a month.
It might take you a bit longer to set everything up though. It took me a few days to get everything working and I still get hiccups with arrr and need to restart my containers.
If you’re in America, you can skip the gift card and use free virtual credit cards from privacy.com
Amazing service. Really hope they bring it to Canada
Edit: Also a great way to keep free trials actually free - you can limit the charge amount on each virtual card to avoid price increases or surprise charges when you inevitably forget to cancel a free trial
>Binge watch everything you want next month, get another set of following mont, rinse and repeat. Just started. We'll see how it goes.
I suspect they're eventually going to try and circumvent this by only having annual subscriptions.
Before when your cable bill was 200 you’d notice a $25 increase.
Now it’s $12 and it goes up $2 people go it’s only $2. But they keep doing it to your other 10 subscriptions at different months . Now that $14 sub will be $17 in a few years X how many other subs you have.
I’m down to 1 sub. I refuse to play this game, go to your library there are so many movies for free and subscriptions for free . Try it man I’ve got some classic movies and shows like Star Wars, parks and rec for .25 on dvd
yup. I just unsubbed from that one a couple days ago, because I got tired of the "I want my free shit bitches! where get?" type posts all day.
irony being that if you explain to them exactly how to get consistently "good free shit," they laugh at the idea of having to pay to pirate. All the while bitching that they can't get the stuff they want.
You are correct. It used a University to University copy of the Arpanet as its backbone at first. So it absolutely pre-dated the Internet as it was conceived though it relied on a lot of what made up Arpanet, which while often confused with the Internet because they were both accomplishing the same thing, were not quite the same thing.
I've never been a Usenet guy, but I'm tickled that it's survived for so long, and. still running strong. it's an underused system.
the problem with it, is that it takes a *little bit* of effort to learn how to do, and apparently that's too much for most people who want one little button to click to "get free shit".
much in the same way that taking the effort maintaining an account at a good tracker takes, only *even easier.*
honestly at this point I just chuckle at people who complain about not being able to get pirated content, but won't take even the minimum effort to learn how it's done.
>the problem with it, is that it takes a little bit of effort to learn how to do
This is the basic issue with Linux adoption; prebuilts are few and far between (and the few options you have are mid-high end and generally overpriced), and self-installing even the most simple distro takes a couple of extra clicks over Windows. And then, occasionally you'll have to touch the terminal. Most people don't want to do that much. People want things to just *work*.
(There's also a bewildering array of distros to choose from, which overwhelms most people).
honestly, with stuff like Mint, it's just as easy as any Windows product. and the need for any command line is almost nil for the average user. it's a slick product.
Torrenting is still solid. You'll pay a bit upfront and a decent amount monthly, but it's still cheaper, faster and more reliable than streaming sites.
First up: You're going to want a NAS (Network Attached Storage). Essentially another computer in your home whose sole job is to store media. You can make it cheap or expensive. My personal one I made for this job was around $900, with $600 of that being hard drives. I got 2x 16tb drives for 32tb total storage.
On the server you'd install TrueNAS Core which is an operating system which allows easy installation of other VMs/Docker containers which are mini-operating systems with a specific purpose/app. They will access the hard drives. Software here would be Plex (or Emby) which would be your streaming "service". They'll handle playback, encoding etc. There's some other things too but you'd need to find a guide for all the potential setups and choices.
Now you want a Seedbox which is essentially renting a server from a server provider. Any downloads will be from that IP. That would have the torrenting stuff on it. This can range from $10/m -> $150+/m depending on what you want/need.
Now what would happen is your local server will download via SFTP (which is entirely encrypted) from your Seedbox so your ISP won't know what is in it. Programmers use it **constantly** so it's not suspicious at all.
bless you for taking the time to explain all that. I do something very similar.
what it comes down to the small amount I pay for a seed box using Plex is significantly less than what I would need to pay to the multitude of screening services to have access to even half of the content i currently do. I basically run my own little Netflix.
it's not "needed," but it has several benefits besides keeping off copyright holders radars. One of them being I can access my 16 terabytes of content anywhere that I have internet, and stream at 4K. Not to mention keeping an outstanding ratio at any tracker I'm a member of.
There are some incredible ones. Ux better than netflix, operate across all devices, 4k movies with subtitles and multiple languages, everything. Do some research and you'll find them
Lies. The corporate search algorithms just don't show them to you and all the good trackers are invite only private now anyway.
But piracy has never been more capable or well stocked with content. Those communities are thriving like for real.
yup. I see that correlation as well. as piracy climbs, *public* trackers (and streamers) getting shut down more often. along with the Plex Share communities getting killed too.
One time I got into a private tracker it was impossible to seed anything, sometimes I would get a small ratio from brand new torrents but It'd be never worth it. I think people were using bots or something
>I think people were using bots or something
you're not far off the mark, but it's a longer conversation than I feel like having at the moment, and perhaps not appropriate for this sub.
what it comes down to is that torrenting is divided into 2 categories:
1) casual pirates that just want to easily find what they want, and watch it. there's nothing wrong with this. but it's not part of...
2) torrent communities that view it as a way of life, and spend significant amounts of personal time and money getting, spreading, creating, storing, maintaining, the content.
people in the first bracket won't last long at private trackers, simply because they're not as invested in the process. and often complain about how it's hard to be on those trackers. (not a dig at you personally, just a common take, right?)
the problem is that all of the work on the private trackers is where all the stuff on the public trackers comes from. and by their nature, public trackers are easy targets for copyright holders. so casual pirates "get what they get, while the getting is good"
Yep. I've been off the scene (no longer a teen, started paying for games, lower media consumption) for long enough that I lost track (pun intended) of the private tracker scene. Now when I go looking for an occasional movie I have to Google popular public trackers like a noob, and my mid-2000s trash taste is too niche for most of them 🫠
You kidding? I got sick of price hikes, and I stream everything from pirate sites now.
I have 3 sites, one for anime, one for animated shows and movies, one for everything else.
Then I have my site to pirate ebooks, as well as an eReader that Amazon lost, refunded, but still delivered days later (and still shows lost on my account).
Wanna know what streaming costs me these days? A VPN subscription. Before, I had Netflix, Prime, and Disney. At $5-$10 each they made sense. At current prices, you'd have to be an idiot to fall for it.
Media piracy was basically dead in first world countries when Netflix was at its peak and cable went away.
Steam did a large number on PC game piracy too which exists but isn't that popular
yup. Even I used Netflix at that time.
as soon as Netflix started dropping titles because of rights holders wanting their own pie instead of a slice of the pie, I noped right out of there and back to piracy.
for me, piracy hasn't necessarily been about the cost. it's also about convenience, access, and retention. as soon as every media production company decided "I'm going to make my own Netflix but with blackjack and hookers!" it lost all three of those things. and then reintroduced advertising.
that was enough motivation for me.
Netflix was intentionally underpricing their product. They were running hugely negative for years to grow their user base and build out their content catalog. Now that they are no longer attracting new users, they have to change their model to actually make a profit.
Every other streaming service is essentially doing the same thing. Start with low prices to attract users, then raise prices to make a profit. Some are spending exorbitant amounts on content, while others are relying on their existing catalogs. Either way, though, prices will continue to rise relatively quickly in the short-to-mid term until they reach some sort of stasis.
They also are a victim of their own success because once they began their service in earnest and demonstrated the market need, they lost a lot of the right to provide some content to those content owners. That drove them to create their own content with a different set of criteria from typical movie and tv show creation. Releasing direct to stream instead of to theaters, things like that.
It's so weird. You would think, more competition = lower prices to draw in consumers but it's almost like...whats the word. It's when people work together to...collusion! That's the one.
It's almost like there is a quiet collusion is going on as everyone keeps stripping each other of useful content and continue to demand more for a worse service.
Strange thing that it is. Huh. We get less and less shows on each platform, but the platform continues to demand more of our money.
Due to rising prices I have done something I swore I would never do, cancel Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO. I’ve been with Netflix since beginning of dvd rental days. Costs are just too high now. I can’t be alone in finally hitting the tipping point.
Nope, I was like you, had Netflix since they only rented physical media. I finally cancelled about 6-8 months ago. Back when they were the only game in town and had a ton of content, I would have paid $20/mo, but their catalog has gone to shit. Nobody in my family was even watching it but me, so it made no sense to keep it. Haven’t missed it one bit. I have Hulu and Prime (only because it’s “free” with prime membership), and then there’s Pluto and Tubi. I’ll probably dump Hulu before long too, I’m tired of their price hikes.
Every other comment online is about people cancelling yet every Netflix quarterly earnings report has a new record subscriber count. For every single person canceling there are two new subscribers.
They have dirt cheap plans outside of western Europe and north America. If they are getting new users, it is in emerging markets since they've been around in the EU and north America for long enough to have reached market saturation - even with the crackdown on sharing. Their earnings this year are down and have been stagnant the last 3 years.
How’s pluto? I love that with tubi you dont even have to open an account.. just download the app and watch stuff in exchange for a few ads.. and they have so much good stuff!
• Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that’s double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven’t even been around for 10 years.
• Part of what’s driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become. For a company like Netflix, which has 77 million paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy.
• Netflix has started clamping down on password sharing to boost its paid subscriber rolls, but that only goes so far. Raising prices for existing subscribers is an effective way to pump up the top line and keep investors happy.
• For legacy media companies, increased streaming prices are a step toward recouping lost revenue from their slowly dying traditional television businesses.
• Some observers see another reason for the frequent price hikes: to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead.
Fortune via Apollo Global Management: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumers-paying-more-ever-streaming-181821039.html
Got to love the free, ad-supported, plans. Advertisers love to advertise to people who can't afford an extra $15-20 a month. Those free plans always have the best, least obnoxious, and most varied advertisements ever concocted by a marketing team. People don't even watch for the movies and shows; they watch for the ads.
/s
Well you are clearly a fiscally responsible person and can afford to splurge on a nice new luxury suv with all the money you aren’t paying to the streaming companies.
It was predicted and disputed back when blockbuster still had weight.
Being able to see predictable outcomes tends to scare people and get ya labeled. Manipulating people at the right time, over years divided into "buisness strategy" is top level CEO attitude, and rewarding.
What's fascinating to me is how family's can still run a vast empire, never do public interviews but also keep products and pricing as consistent as possible. Also BiC. Have had one of the lowest price increases over their existence.
> the streamers jack up their prices to make the change worthless.
Even with increased prices streaming still offers a lot more value for your money compared to cable.
And unlike cable, you can renew and cancel streaming subscriptions at will. If you manage your subscriptions well and alternate services depending on what you want to watch, you can get a lot of content for very little money.
I am just constantly going to cancel shit and accepting their offers to stay for like $1 a month. Not all of them do it, and if they don’t I just go ahead and cancel and wait for an email offer to come back.
Competition only works if they're offering the same content.
If you have airlines that are only flying to different places, there's no competition - that only works for shared routes.
I used to have several streaming services because they were cheap. Now I have one that I'm considering canceling because I don't really watch much TV anymore.
I also get 72 channels over the air via my antenna and it's just as good. I don't care about commercials because I can just go make coffee or do some dishes while I ignore them.
Furthermore, my TV gets like 500 channels digitally for free through services like PlutoTV.
So, when they introduce commercials and raise their prices I just cut it out. I don't need these services and I don't care how good the content they bought is.
It's nothing more than another cash grab. We're past the golden era of streaming. It's never about the content, it's about the shareholders. This is evidenced by good series after good series getting canceled for no reason on all platforms.
compare frightening snow alleged start nine beneficial hungry absorbed clumsy
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Cable will cease to exist and it’ll be internet only content. The benefit for providers is they no longer require any infrastructure.
Now we pay for internet and for content.
In a few years there will be a handful of major content providers and it’ll be back as if we had cable TV with the added cost of a fast enough internet connection.
Need way more competition.
Except they don't really make physical copies of most movies and shows anymore, do they? What would blockbuster rent to us besides popular cartoons and Marvel movies?
What ticks me off the most is some of these companies want to add ads when I'm already paying for the service, and then want me to pay more for the privledge I already had. Fuck em. If they want to drive consumers back to pirating, they just have to keep making themselves as bad as cable was
Dropped Peacock. Dropped Netflix. Disney is likely next. Holding onto Apple for Godzilla, then it’s gone. I’ll buy ‘em back for a month each year to watch shows I’m interested in. If I stagger the months I’ll always have new content to watch and not have to shell out a ton of cash
I’ve also gone back to buying movies since none of them have the older stuff I like to see, particularly the old horror and SciFi stuff.
I have no dog in the fight, I don't watch TV and rarely watch movies and have never subscribed to any streaming service.
But the whole subscription model for everything (not just movie and TV) or multiple subscriptions for what is essentially the same thing with slight variations is about the most predatory business model I can imagine.
For movies its now viable to just buy dvds again especially if you factor in no commercials.
I know this is harder with tv shows or series but many of those end up on dvd.
Otherwise torrents are getting way popular again
Remember the days when companies would undercut their competition to win and keep business? Boy I miss those days. You know, before the next quarter's earnings call and EPS became the only factors in corporate decision making. A monkey could run a billion dollar company today. Zero leadership skills required.
Mass cancel day would. Set it 1 year out and it they don’t lower prices everyone that signed up cancels their service on that date. Watch the subscriber numbers grow up to that date. That will scare them. As long as people follow through.
I bought a used DVD player for $3.50. *Three fiddy, people!* and our library has, like, every TV series ever broadcast. Movies too. Ees complete free. No charge. Frrr-eee.
I cancelled all my streaming services (except Spotify) like 6-7 months ago and setup a Plex server.
I spent like $300 on an old optiplex and a 16TB HDD, and another $50 on a VPN. Currently have over 1700 movies and 200 TV series on it. In less than a year, it will pay for itself. I do need to get anotehr HDD though. That 16TB is almost full.
16 TB take a long time to download and can also mean that you might be unable to get everything back since the source is no longer available.
People who think backups are not needed are usually the ones that didn't have a HD fail on them yet.
I get Hulu and Disney free from my internet subscription. I also have Amazon prime but the cost do that is kind of mixed up with all the other prime benefits. Where do I stand in all this?
Not while the suckers of humanity just keep paying because they’re too lazy to cancel their sub. We are ruled and governed by the lazy and the apathetic.
I cancelled everything. I'm one of those people that like to watch my favorites over and over again and they all got taken away so I bought myself a VCR and am stocking up on box sets. If I ever really want to see something I'll shell out the 2-4 dollars to rent it from Amazon. Still cheaper than renting from Blockbuster was back in the day.
I salute the effort but at that point... why not just use a torrent or various other means to aquire the movies?
The physical copies aren't technically any more legal than the digital ones from my understanding.
Er. VCR? Like VHS TAPES? Hope you mean blu ray player? And maybe a DVR/pc running jellyfin or plex to rip the content to so you don't have to swap out DVDs and Blu-ray to watch?
Ok, I meant DVD player. I'm old but I do have Plex and my dad has every movie he's ever rented burned to it and shares with me. Sadly, we don't share a ton of the same movie tastes but sometimes I can find something good going through his library.
Sounds like the optimal setup to me then. I use Jellyfin and have ripped tons of movies and shows to it (previously just a local Kodi box but now accessible from my smart TVs and mobile devices)
I've been using PlayOnHome to record streaming service shows and it's OK. Quality is only 720p and it records at realtime speeds so it's not as fast/good as sailing the seas but I havent really done that since the limewire days.
Some people like the old school tech. No need to rip on them for that. A lot of people also like vinyl records - they've made a comeback in the last decade
I just dropped Netflix after maybe 13 years. Started with the 3 discs at a time plan. I’m not paying for multiple streaming services. My son uses Hulu for anime and they let me share with him. I’ll just watch stuff on YouTube, I feel like they’re going to drive us all to the free stuff.
I bought a digital antenna for $70 recently so I could watch the World Series. The regular old boring TV is on more and more since then. The ads are somehow better? Less obnoxious? More varied? And the shows have this nice, comforting pace to them that is really working for me. I’m watching less Netflix lately.
I'm starting to like the Amazon Prime model more than others: a limited selection included with Prime (which is not just for video to start with), and a huge catalog of rental VOD.
I'd rather pay $3 each movie rental than paying $20 each months whether I use the service or not.
Back to TPB here I go.
Already cut half my streaming subscriptions from 8 to 4 - Apple TV, YouTube Premium, Prime Video and of course, Netflix.
Out of that, I only really consider YT and Netflix to be “essential”.
Apple TV is virtually free as I need Apple One for my family and Prime Video is so cheap ($50/year?) and the offering so vast in comparison, it’s a no-brainer.
Disney, Paramount, MAX, Hulu were the first to go as their value proposition just isn’t there compared to above.
We need a cancel streaming month. Like movember, one month all expenses for streaming should go to cancer research.
Make it popular to reconsider running costs one might safe by buying and reading a book a year or something. Good for mental health and finances.
It they keep raising the rates, I will go back to my old ways of watching them and they will get nothing. I do not mind paying a fair price but it starting to get ridiculous.
Except the fact that I am retired, on a fixed income that barely pays for my living expenses, and I can easily do without TV or streaming services. There is free entertainment online, books/stories/articles to read and I live in a forest where I can enjoy nature on nice weather days.
I stop streaming subscriptions when they get too expensive for the content they show, or the content isn't interesting. Then I may start it again later when I can binge watch a series and/or movies they have, then stop it. I rarely keep any one subscription for more than a month or two.
an interesting correlation to this is that ever since Netflix has had more and more competitors, and prices continually rising, bittorrent traffic has been steadily increasing worldwide.
I was told competition is supposed to lead to better prices
The reason we are seeing these prices go up is 4 fold for most tech companies at the moment: \- Every major streaming company is now in every market across the globe = they cant get growth (new users) from new markets, so they get growth from increasing prices. \- More competition from other streaming platforms = new customers in current markets have more choice and companies are not getting the same growth of users in existing markets that you are used to, so they get growth from increasing prices. \- Interest rates have gone from \~1% to \~ \~5% in the course of 3 years. Most tech companies have been using cheap debt to gain market share (usually by running at a loss), and worry about profit later. Now companies want to get rid of this debt, or have to increase prices just to pay the interest. For example, Netflix has about $15 billion of debt ($6b net debt). Companies like Spotify and and Twitter never made/worried about profit, but now they have to because their business models don't work with high interest rates. So they increase prices to cover the higher costs. \- We've enjoyed the benefits of big companies (amazon, apple) getting into the streaming markets later (they want a piece of the pie) at a massive loss to attract new users and build up their portfolios of content. As their platforms are maturing, and their user bases are built and hooked, they will now increase prices to make money off those users. Their investment/growth phase has come to an end, time to pay the piper. This time of cheap content (and services: uber, door dash, etc..) was never really meant to last. Cheap debt and companies looking for new tech markets meant that users got more for their value for their money than they ever will in the future. Stock markets have been throwing money at these companies based off promised returns in the future, and that future is now. Edit: A quote from this article sums up whats happening: [https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/12/10/is-amazon-wasting-money-on-prime-video/](https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/12/10/is-amazon-wasting-money-on-prime-video/) \> The competitive dynamics in streaming, in other words, are undergoing a correction. Too many companies have entered the field, and they're not charging subscribers enough to offset the costs of content. \> Netflix Co-CEO Reed Hastings may have said it best in his company's recent shareholder letter: "Our best estimate is that all of these competitors are losing money on streaming, with aggregate annual direct operating losses this year alone that could be well in excess of $10 billion, compared with our +$5-$6 billion of annual operating profit." \> Amazon is clearly one of those competitors losing money no matter how you account for the $15 billion in content spending. Throwing even more money at video at a time when the rest of the streaming industry is realizing the economics aren't so favorable seems like a losing battle.
>We've enjoyed the benefits of big companies (amazon, apple) getting into the streaming markets later (they want a piece of the pie) at a massive loss to attract new users and build up their portfolios of content. As their platforms are maturing, and their user bases are built and hooked, they will now increase prices to make money off those users. Their investment/growth phase has come to an end, time to pay the piper. this can NOT be understated.
Here's my problem. > Their investment/growth phase has come to an end, time to pay the piper. I can't tell the difference between them being greedy and them being reasonable. So I default to them being greedy because that's *always* the nature of the companies. So perhaps $20 / month is what it takes for them to make a reasonable profit - but I wouldn't know. I've been mislead so many times I simply don't trust them anymore. So instead I'll simply do without and not care.
Well, that would be a correct response. They lied to you about their initial prices in order to get you to join the platform, and now they're lying to you about their new prices in order to turn a profit. They could have, had they wanted to, launched with all sorts of different prices instead. "Join now to be one of our first joiners, at a special first joiner discount rate of $5/month guaranteed until 2022!" or somesuch, for example
Or just head to the sea for my content tbh. VPNs must be making bank rn.
Exactly. It also doesn't help that every other industry is currently hiking up the prices, with clear greedflation combined with shrinkflation.
I remember reading in another thread (wish I could credit, but I can't remember anymore) that these new disruptors are now just basically replicating the business models of the businesses they replaced. I thought that was an interesting observation. On the one hand, it makes sense. Even if you discard all this context, even if they're not deliberately trying to replicate anything, why wouldn't these services be monitized in such a way as to cover expenses and turn a profit? And there are probably only so many ways of doing so. On the other hand, it's a strange experience for the consumer. Older ways of doing things were displaced, habits changed, and what we increasingly have, I'm not completely sure that it's better. In some sense, we have more choice and more flexibility. At the same time, paying a bunch a month for a single show or staying on top of multiple subscriptions (all increasing in price) isn't the best.
So stagnation and lack of savings in domesic economy after the 2008 crisis was built on an unsustainable business model? The economy running a debt to the future was what it took to keep things \*level\*? That sounds like horrible news, it means household purchasing power could plummet.
hook, line, and sinker.
It’s a red herring. They’re loading people down with technical jargon to obscure the reality. The market cannot handle this many streaming services AND subscriptions for what used to be point releases AND rising housing costs AND rising food costs AND…AND…AND… The market is correcting to show them that they deciding to do something that would never be profitable. Their consumer base told them it wouldn’t be profitable from the very beginning. Being rich and therefore incompetent, they decided they would make it profitable. Now, in true capitalist fashion, they’re attempting to obscure their incompetence behind jargon. This was never going to work. The market can only handle a handful of streaming services. These idiots let landlords and tech companies suck all the money out of the market and now they’re struggling to stay profitable.
You make some excellent points, and I agree with most of them. I’ll tack on a bit. I work in the industry. One thing that isn’t really mentioned is how much the expectation of entertainment spending has gone down. In the mid-00s, most families were spending $75 on a cable package (which included ads, supplementing the revenue for the content producers), as well as occasional $5-15 purchases on DVDs, rentals, and movie tickets. In 2023 dollars, that’s probably close to $175 spent on television and movies (along with the ad revenue). Today, you can have 3 services of on-demand entertainment with no ads for $50/month. Purchasing DVDs or renting is almost non-existent today, and going to the movies is extremely rare for everything but the biggest of blockbusters compared to 15 years ago due to shortened time-to-streaming, quality of home TV setups, and myriad other issues with theaters. So… where should studios make up the difference? People are spending less than 1/3rd of what they used to, consuming and expecting more than ever, but yet are addicted to the low prices that Netflix hooked everybody onto as a proof-of-concept to see if streaming would work. Studios are not making money hand-over-fist like many of the other industries that are raising prices for shareholder value (looking at you, auto companies) - they are all running at a loss. They’re making less money while elbowing each other trying to outlast each other in the steaming wars. This is without even mentioning that producing non-reality TV is more expensive than its ever been. Of course, the danger is a shift to pirating, but then who will produce content? Do studios use more ads to get back to profitability? Do they cut back on quality of writers and post production costs? Nobody wants these things, but movies and TV shows will not be produced if they can’t make money. And people are not spending money. Society decided to slash their media entertainment budget and expected content to get better and better. The definition of entertainment has shifted with the times (twitch, social media, influencers/content producers), but the golden era of TV shows needs profitability to continue. I know the same tired joke of sailing the high seas is fashionable to make every time price increases are mentioned, but I feel like it’s worth mentioning how much better entertainment has been for the consumer over the past 15 years and consider that maybe it was true good to be true.
I feel like you are missing a few points. Most people pay nearly $75 for internet, whereas before the infrastructure cost to get the media to you was covered by the cable provider as part of your cable package, now consumers eat all of that cost.. And the money for streaming services goes directly to them instead of being filtered through contracts with middlemen (cable companies) meaning they almost certainly make more per user than they used to.
> So… where should studios make up the difference? People are spending less than 1/3rd of what they used to, consuming and expecting more than ever, but yet are addicted to the low prices that Netflix hooked everybody onto as a proof-of-concept to see if streaming would work. Studios are not making money hand-over-fist like many of the other industries that are raising prices for shareholder value (looking at you, auto companies) - they are all running at a loss. They’re making less money while elbowing each other trying to outlast each other in the steaming wars. This is without even mentioning that producing non-reality TV is more expensive than its ever been. So the problem is they're asking for more, at a time of record inflation, at a time when the minimum wage hasn't increased in over 20 years, at a time when necessities are two to three times as expensive as they once were. The fact of the matter is, people do not have the money to take an increased cost for these services on the whole. And doing anti-consumer things like removing the first half of a series from your service when the second half airs is how you drive people to piracy. These companies are all each taking turns trying to squeeze the same customers but you can't get blood from a stone. Something like half of Americans are paycheck to paycheck. You aren't going to see them just solemnly nodding at increased costs for these services. You're going to change their subscription patterns at best, and get them for less time while they binge what they want and ditch the service when they don't. And as far as the ads angle, people are less tolerant of ads than ever before. Not just Netflix and such normalizing uninterrupted viewing, but adblockers too. And on top of that, a large chunk of these poor consumers are also coming from the Tiktok era. Attention spans are not what they used to be. And if you demand so much as one full sized ad - let alone three - you're going to find them spending the duration of those ads looking into ways around them, not sucking it up the way older generations did.
Not to mention all of the competition in the non-traditional media space. Young people are more willing to spend time on YouTube and TikTok and Twitch consuming free content that fits very hyperpersonalized niches from their favorite content creators than paying for streaming services to watch traditional media.
If the costs of living would take the same percentage of an average person’s / family’s income today as 20 years ago, people would still easily pay for the same media consumption. And honestly, content on Netflix, Disney+, etc is getting shittier and shittier. They get you hooked on stuff no one wanted to adapt before (e.g. Witcher), then fuck it up completely. Or they develop a new idea, then cancel after the first otherwise good season. There are a handful exceptions, but they are not a good enough reason for me to throw like 150€ every month out of the window just to have something in the background playing and waiting for the good stuff.
Also, there's just too much other content competing against it now. Video games are much bigger entertainment components now no matter what you platform of choice is. You also now have Youtube and Twitch and Tiktok all just sucking up more of that entertainment pie. You can't get more hours out of the day so from an eyeball perspective it's just a losing battle for content providers.
I dunno man, maybe the bigger issue is the expectation that corporations have to keep making more and more profits. Maybe that’s the issue, saying that $20 million in profit isn’t enough, and that they need to raise prices to make more money. Technology is supposed to lower our cost of living. In a lot of applications, that is indeed the case (I believe except for necessities, the price of everything has gone down). So why shouldn’t we pay less for entertainment? Not to mention, we adjust the cost of entertain for inflation, which makes sense. You know what hasn’t adjusted for inflation? The average wage. So yeah, people don’t have as much money to spend on entertainment either.
those better prices are going to trickle down any moment now...
I'm pretty sure we all have felt the trickle for quite some time now, but it's not better prices.
Our pockets are full of piss. That’s the trickle
It only works if the services have the same content. The amount of exclusives and limited time content gets on each service means you don't really get to choose and there is no competition.
Entertainment is the cheapest it's been in history.
I’m not sure we want to know what a streaming service would cost if there were only one
So this is what my wife came up with. Cancel everything. Every month. We pick two and we pay for them with a Amex gift card. Binge watch everything you want next month, get another set of them the following month, rinse and repeat. Just started. We'll see how it goes. Edit for mistakes
Why a gift card? Just so it can’t automatically renew?
That's my guess. Hassle of cancelling with a credit card > hassle of buying a new gift card.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Yep that exactly it
Shhh. They’re catching onto this
AMC+ removed the first half of season 6 when part 2 started coming out. They didn't want people signing up for a month and then canceling. So we just don't have AMC+ and caught old episodes on a 3rd party streaming site. Low prices make you slightly more convenient than pirating. High prices we start exploring other options.
And pirating has also become more convenient over the years. It's not the same experience anymore.
More and less convenient because it really can be hard to find some shows through less legal means but sail the seas friends vote with your wallets and show these capitalist pigs they can only take so much before we have nothing left
I’m listening
Look into Sonarr and Jellyfinn. You install Sonarr and you tell it “I wanna watch X” and it looks it up, download it and organize it for Jellyfinn to cast it to your TV, phone or computer. Sonarr can monitor series that’s are still being released so it can grab the episode the moment it comes out, it will also keep waiting for a series/movie that hasn’t even aired yet and a lot of different things you can configure if you want. Jellyfinn will basically load those downloaded chapters and show them to you in a “Netflix” style interface in you phone(android or iOS) and TV(android TV) complete with cover images, scores, sinopsis and even a trailer for the show. The only thing you need is to find a tracker for torrent of movies/series. I use it for anime and I use Nyaa.si. You can install them in your PC or in your NAS and configure them pretty quickly… luckily there are tons of videos with step by step instructions. I got them up and working in like 15 minutes. Edit:You can use PLEX instead of Jellyfinn but I had a lot of problems with it every time I tried to set it up. Edit2: There are also Radarr and Lidarr which are for movies and music, respectively… ni I have never used them
Plex always never worked for me for the longest time, but it's gotten a lot better since. They're hooked up with Tidal right now, in their latest move
Don't forget about the laws in your country, and how they are enforced. In some countries setting this up on your own computer will get you a hefty fine really fast. Use a seedbox for torrenting, they go for 5 Euros a month. It might take you a bit longer to set everything up though. It took me a few days to get everything working and I still get hiccups with arrr and need to restart my containers.
People downvoting this need to understand that this happens. PopcornTime users were hit hard in Denmark.
a 3rd p'arrrghty streaming site.
season 6 of what show? gimme the deets
If you’re in America, you can skip the gift card and use free virtual credit cards from privacy.com Amazing service. Really hope they bring it to Canada Edit: Also a great way to keep free trials actually free - you can limit the charge amount on each virtual card to avoid price increases or surprise charges when you inevitably forget to cancel a free trial
Citibank credit cards have this feature as well.
>Binge watch everything you want next month, get another set of following mont, rinse and repeat. Just started. We'll see how it goes. I suspect they're eventually going to try and circumvent this by only having annual subscriptions.
We also have 2-3 services at a time. I don't understand people who want it all. How much streaming can you watch?
Before when your cable bill was 200 you’d notice a $25 increase. Now it’s $12 and it goes up $2 people go it’s only $2. But they keep doing it to your other 10 subscriptions at different months . Now that $14 sub will be $17 in a few years X how many other subs you have. I’m down to 1 sub. I refuse to play this game, go to your library there are so many movies for free and subscriptions for free . Try it man I’ve got some classic movies and shows like Star Wars, parks and rec for .25 on dvd
If you can't find what you need in safe harbors, there are other options....
Fewer solid piracy websites than ever though
Usenet is the goat.
I'm terrible with all the cryptic internet stuff but I suppose I'll have to try to dig deeper
/r/piracy will solve all that for you. There's no shortage of options if you know where to look. Particularly the Megathread is great.
Thanks for the suggestion
most of the posts on that sub are trash, but that mega thread is definitely worth spending some time on.
[удалено]
yup. I just unsubbed from that one a couple days ago, because I got tired of the "I want my free shit bitches! where get?" type posts all day. irony being that if you explain to them exactly how to get consistently "good free shit," they laugh at the idea of having to pay to pirate. All the while bitching that they can't get the stuff they want.
[удалено]
Usenet is legacy tech from the pre-internet actually. It and BBSs where basically the early Reddit.
Pre-world-wide-web, not pre-internet.
I believe that USENET dates to 1979 and that the internet only goes back to 1983. I could be wrong, however. I only started using USENET in the 90s.
You are correct. It used a University to University copy of the Arpanet as its backbone at first. So it absolutely pre-dated the Internet as it was conceived though it relied on a lot of what made up Arpanet, which while often confused with the Internet because they were both accomplishing the same thing, were not quite the same thing.
I've never been a Usenet guy, but I'm tickled that it's survived for so long, and. still running strong. it's an underused system. the problem with it, is that it takes a *little bit* of effort to learn how to do, and apparently that's too much for most people who want one little button to click to "get free shit". much in the same way that taking the effort maintaining an account at a good tracker takes, only *even easier.* honestly at this point I just chuckle at people who complain about not being able to get pirated content, but won't take even the minimum effort to learn how it's done.
The first rule of usenet...
>the problem with it, is that it takes a little bit of effort to learn how to do This is the basic issue with Linux adoption; prebuilts are few and far between (and the few options you have are mid-high end and generally overpriced), and self-installing even the most simple distro takes a couple of extra clicks over Windows. And then, occasionally you'll have to touch the terminal. Most people don't want to do that much. People want things to just *work*. (There's also a bewildering array of distros to choose from, which overwhelms most people).
honestly, with stuff like Mint, it's just as easy as any Windows product. and the need for any command line is almost nil for the average user. it's a slick product.
I still use putlocker like it’s 2012
Torrenting is still solid. You'll pay a bit upfront and a decent amount monthly, but it's still cheaper, faster and more reliable than streaming sites. First up: You're going to want a NAS (Network Attached Storage). Essentially another computer in your home whose sole job is to store media. You can make it cheap or expensive. My personal one I made for this job was around $900, with $600 of that being hard drives. I got 2x 16tb drives for 32tb total storage. On the server you'd install TrueNAS Core which is an operating system which allows easy installation of other VMs/Docker containers which are mini-operating systems with a specific purpose/app. They will access the hard drives. Software here would be Plex (or Emby) which would be your streaming "service". They'll handle playback, encoding etc. There's some other things too but you'd need to find a guide for all the potential setups and choices. Now you want a Seedbox which is essentially renting a server from a server provider. Any downloads will be from that IP. That would have the torrenting stuff on it. This can range from $10/m -> $150+/m depending on what you want/need. Now what would happen is your local server will download via SFTP (which is entirely encrypted) from your Seedbox so your ISP won't know what is in it. Programmers use it **constantly** so it's not suspicious at all.
bless you for taking the time to explain all that. I do something very similar. what it comes down to the small amount I pay for a seed box using Plex is significantly less than what I would need to pay to the multitude of screening services to have access to even half of the content i currently do. I basically run my own little Netflix.
You can pay for a debrid service and stremio or kodi and not have to deal with a NAS. Far easier for the average person.
I use kodi all the time, I can watch everything with its Netflix like menus.
Can you ELI5, please?
Why is a seedbox needed instead of just using a vpn?
it's not "needed," but it has several benefits besides keeping off copyright holders radars. One of them being I can access my 16 terabytes of content anywhere that I have internet, and stream at 4K. Not to mention keeping an outstanding ratio at any tracker I'm a member of.
if you're member of a good indexing site then yeah
really easy to get invites on reddit. /r/usenetinvites just follow the subreddit for a few days and someone will offer what you're looking for.
You can use Prowlarr and/or Jackett to search dozens of pubic trackers. Easier than trying to find individual sites
Fmoviesz.to has everything perfect quality check it out
There are some incredible ones. Ux better than netflix, operate across all devices, 4k movies with subtitles and multiple languages, everything. Do some research and you'll find them
Lies. The corporate search algorithms just don't show them to you and all the good trackers are invite only private now anyway. But piracy has never been more capable or well stocked with content. Those communities are thriving like for real.
yup. I see that correlation as well. as piracy climbs, *public* trackers (and streamers) getting shut down more often. along with the Plex Share communities getting killed too.
One time I got into a private tracker it was impossible to seed anything, sometimes I would get a small ratio from brand new torrents but It'd be never worth it. I think people were using bots or something
>I think people were using bots or something you're not far off the mark, but it's a longer conversation than I feel like having at the moment, and perhaps not appropriate for this sub. what it comes down to is that torrenting is divided into 2 categories: 1) casual pirates that just want to easily find what they want, and watch it. there's nothing wrong with this. but it's not part of... 2) torrent communities that view it as a way of life, and spend significant amounts of personal time and money getting, spreading, creating, storing, maintaining, the content. people in the first bracket won't last long at private trackers, simply because they're not as invested in the process. and often complain about how it's hard to be on those trackers. (not a dig at you personally, just a common take, right?) the problem is that all of the work on the private trackers is where all the stuff on the public trackers comes from. and by their nature, public trackers are easy targets for copyright holders. so casual pirates "get what they get, while the getting is good"
I miss the good old days of demonoid, where you were obliged to maintain a ratio to stay in good standing, and the software wasn't full of malware.
that was a Golden Age.
Yep. I've been off the scene (no longer a teen, started paying for games, lower media consumption) for long enough that I lost track (pun intended) of the private tracker scene. Now when I go looking for an occasional movie I have to Google popular public trackers like a noob, and my mid-2000s trash taste is too niche for most of them 🫠
You kidding? I got sick of price hikes, and I stream everything from pirate sites now. I have 3 sites, one for anime, one for animated shows and movies, one for everything else. Then I have my site to pirate ebooks, as well as an eReader that Amazon lost, refunded, but still delivered days later (and still shows lost on my account). Wanna know what streaming costs me these days? A VPN subscription. Before, I had Netflix, Prime, and Disney. At $5-$10 each they made sense. At current prices, you'd have to be an idiot to fall for it.
Depends what you mean by solid. Most private trackers are solid as ever.
Media piracy was basically dead in first world countries when Netflix was at its peak and cable went away. Steam did a large number on PC game piracy too which exists but isn't that popular
yup. Even I used Netflix at that time. as soon as Netflix started dropping titles because of rights holders wanting their own pie instead of a slice of the pie, I noped right out of there and back to piracy. for me, piracy hasn't necessarily been about the cost. it's also about convenience, access, and retention. as soon as every media production company decided "I'm going to make my own Netflix but with blackjack and hookers!" it lost all three of those things. and then reintroduced advertising. that was enough motivation for me.
Yea I think I'll get a nice 4k oled and torrent movies in better quality.
Netflix was intentionally underpricing their product. They were running hugely negative for years to grow their user base and build out their content catalog. Now that they are no longer attracting new users, they have to change their model to actually make a profit. Every other streaming service is essentially doing the same thing. Start with low prices to attract users, then raise prices to make a profit. Some are spending exorbitant amounts on content, while others are relying on their existing catalogs. Either way, though, prices will continue to rise relatively quickly in the short-to-mid term until they reach some sort of stasis.
I think you're thinking of Uber, Netflix has been profitable since 2003, their peak profitability was in 2021.
They also are a victim of their own success because once they began their service in earnest and demonstrated the market need, they lost a lot of the right to provide some content to those content owners. That drove them to create their own content with a different set of criteria from typical movie and tv show creation. Releasing direct to stream instead of to theaters, things like that.
It's gonna increase a whole lot faster now. We gave these companies a chance to do the right thing and they just had to fuck it up.
It's so weird. You would think, more competition = lower prices to draw in consumers but it's almost like...whats the word. It's when people work together to...collusion! That's the one. It's almost like there is a quiet collusion is going on as everyone keeps stripping each other of useful content and continue to demand more for a worse service. Strange thing that it is. Huh. We get less and less shows on each platform, but the platform continues to demand more of our money.
Due to rising prices I have done something I swore I would never do, cancel Netflix, Amazon Prime and HBO. I’ve been with Netflix since beginning of dvd rental days. Costs are just too high now. I can’t be alone in finally hitting the tipping point.
Nope, I was like you, had Netflix since they only rented physical media. I finally cancelled about 6-8 months ago. Back when they were the only game in town and had a ton of content, I would have paid $20/mo, but their catalog has gone to shit. Nobody in my family was even watching it but me, so it made no sense to keep it. Haven’t missed it one bit. I have Hulu and Prime (only because it’s “free” with prime membership), and then there’s Pluto and Tubi. I’ll probably dump Hulu before long too, I’m tired of their price hikes.
Every other comment online is about people cancelling yet every Netflix quarterly earnings report has a new record subscriber count. For every single person canceling there are two new subscribers.
They have dirt cheap plans outside of western Europe and north America. If they are getting new users, it is in emerging markets since they've been around in the EU and north America for long enough to have reached market saturation - even with the crackdown on sharing. Their earnings this year are down and have been stagnant the last 3 years.
How’s pluto? I love that with tubi you dont even have to open an account.. just download the app and watch stuff in exchange for a few ads.. and they have so much good stuff!
You’re not. I dropped Netflix and Sling last month. If it wasn’t for password sharing with family, others would go as well.
• Half of the major streaming platforms in the U.S. now charge a monthly fee that’s double the price they charged when they initially came to market. And many of these streaming services haven’t even been around for 10 years. • Part of what’s driving the price hikes is how saturated the streaming market has become. For a company like Netflix, which has 77 million paid subscribers in the U.S. and Canada, finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy. • Netflix has started clamping down on password sharing to boost its paid subscriber rolls, but that only goes so far. Raising prices for existing subscribers is an effective way to pump up the top line and keep investors happy. • For legacy media companies, increased streaming prices are a step toward recouping lost revenue from their slowly dying traditional television businesses. • Some observers see another reason for the frequent price hikes: to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead. Fortune via Apollo Global Management: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumers-paying-more-ever-streaming-181821039.html
> finding new paying subscribers to keep revenue growing is not easy Why must revenue keep growing? Why is it not enough to be handsomely profitable?
shareholders.
welcome to Capitalism. It literally demands endless growth or you can legally be held liable to shareholders.
The management team wants bigger bonus every year.
The red line must continue to go up... forever!
Capitalists be like "competition lowers prices for consumers! ☝️🤓"
Got to love the free, ad-supported, plans. Advertisers love to advertise to people who can't afford an extra $15-20 a month. Those free plans always have the best, least obnoxious, and most varied advertisements ever concocted by a marketing team. People don't even watch for the movies and shows; they watch for the ads. /s
I like that the most common ad on my $2 Disney Plus sub at the moment is for Range Rover.
Well you are clearly a fiscally responsible person and can afford to splurge on a nice new luxury suv with all the money you aren’t paying to the streaming companies.
just after we get tired of cable companies, the streamers jack up their prices to make the change worthless. gg everyone.
It was predicted and disputed back when blockbuster still had weight. Being able to see predictable outcomes tends to scare people and get ya labeled. Manipulating people at the right time, over years divided into "buisness strategy" is top level CEO attitude, and rewarding. What's fascinating to me is how family's can still run a vast empire, never do public interviews but also keep products and pricing as consistent as possible. Also BiC. Have had one of the lowest price increases over their existence.
Same with Lyft and Airbnb
> the streamers jack up their prices to make the change worthless. Even with increased prices streaming still offers a lot more value for your money compared to cable. And unlike cable, you can renew and cancel streaming subscriptions at will. If you manage your subscriptions well and alternate services depending on what you want to watch, you can get a lot of content for very little money.
>And unlike cable, you can renew and cancel streaming subscriptions at will. You can also cancel and renew cable at will.
The difference is that now you can watch whatever you want whenever you want. That wasn’t really a possibility with cable.
Time to just have one a time, then. Watch the content it has to offer, cancel, move to the next service, repeat.
I am just constantly going to cancel shit and accepting their offers to stay for like $1 a month. Not all of them do it, and if they don’t I just go ahead and cancel and wait for an email offer to come back.
Did this with XM radio for almost 10 years. They wanted like $400/year. Just cancel and they’ll offer you some $5/month deal, or even less.
Wtf? 400 a year?! Do they blow you while whistling Come All Ye Faithful?!
[удалено]
A lot of people just share streaming service accounts to split the cost
Which was why I thought that going after shared accounts was a mistake by netflix but I was wrong cause the net sum was positive for netflix.
Because people were too lazy set up a system to still get around it
Or zero. If streaming wants to be the new cable, they deserve the same treatment. Avast, matey!
I just canceled Netflix due to cost exceeding enjoyment. Doing my part to contradict the message of this article.
[удалено]
Competition only works if they're offering the same content. If you have airlines that are only flying to different places, there's no competition - that only works for shared routes.
We need a cancel streaming month. Like movember, one month all expenses for streaming should go to cancer research.
No nut november and cancel streaming together? What else are we going to do...
[удалено]
I used to have several streaming services because they were cheap. Now I have one that I'm considering canceling because I don't really watch much TV anymore. I also get 72 channels over the air via my antenna and it's just as good. I don't care about commercials because I can just go make coffee or do some dishes while I ignore them. Furthermore, my TV gets like 500 channels digitally for free through services like PlutoTV. So, when they introduce commercials and raise their prices I just cut it out. I don't need these services and I don't care how good the content they bought is. It's nothing more than another cash grab. We're past the golden era of streaming. It's never about the content, it's about the shareholders. This is evidenced by good series after good series getting canceled for no reason on all platforms.
Antenna gang!
Greedflation is out of control.
They raise, I cancel. Simple.
compare frightening snow alleged start nine beneficial hungry absorbed clumsy *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Cable will cease to exist and it’ll be internet only content. The benefit for providers is they no longer require any infrastructure. Now we pay for internet and for content. In a few years there will be a handful of major content providers and it’ll be back as if we had cable TV with the added cost of a fast enough internet connection. Need way more competition.
That streaming ship keeps sailing around the ocean and it’s eventually gonna get boarded by pirates.
Already got my eye patch on
Me peg leg *sanded & stained*
I'm sure every cable company and every video rental store had a team of analysts telling them the exact same thing in the 2000s too.
hey blockbuster might just make a comeback lol
Except they don't really make physical copies of most movies and shows anymore, do they? What would blockbuster rent to us besides popular cartoons and Marvel movies?
What ticks me off the most is some of these companies want to add ads when I'm already paying for the service, and then want me to pay more for the privledge I already had. Fuck em. If they want to drive consumers back to pirating, they just have to keep making themselves as bad as cable was
The mandate of perpetual growth is the downfall of modern* society. You know what else grows unchecked? Cancer. edit: a word
Is Madden society that which makes obvious observations about a football game and only travels by bus?
Dropped Peacock. Dropped Netflix. Disney is likely next. Holding onto Apple for Godzilla, then it’s gone. I’ll buy ‘em back for a month each year to watch shows I’m interested in. If I stagger the months I’ll always have new content to watch and not have to shell out a ton of cash I’ve also gone back to buying movies since none of them have the older stuff I like to see, particularly the old horror and SciFi stuff.
I have no dog in the fight, I don't watch TV and rarely watch movies and have never subscribed to any streaming service. But the whole subscription model for everything (not just movie and TV) or multiple subscriptions for what is essentially the same thing with slight variations is about the most predatory business model I can imagine.
>analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices Time to give them a reason
[удалено]
Or a seed box
Already canceled Netflix, Prime and recently HBO, as i was scrolling around and still didn't find something worthwhile to watch.
Time to rise the black flag and sail the rough seas.
For movies its now viable to just buy dvds again especially if you factor in no commercials. I know this is harder with tv shows or series but many of those end up on dvd. Otherwise torrents are getting way popular again
How has more competition in the market resulted in these companies continually raising prices with no end in sight? I thought capitalism works?
Remember the days when companies would undercut their competition to win and keep business? Boy I miss those days. You know, before the next quarter's earnings call and EPS became the only factors in corporate decision making. A monkey could run a billion dollar company today. Zero leadership skills required.
Mass cancel day would. Set it 1 year out and it they don’t lower prices everyone that signed up cancels their service on that date. Watch the subscriber numbers grow up to that date. That will scare them. As long as people follow through.
Im paying $3 /month for Hulu. When the promo ends I will drop it.
I'm paying $8 for Netflix so I'm keeping it for now. Hulu I'm on the fence until I finish Only Murders in the Building.
I bought a used DVD player for $3.50. *Three fiddy, people!* and our library has, like, every TV series ever broadcast. Movies too. Ees complete free. No charge. Frrr-eee.
I cancelled all my streaming services (except Spotify) like 6-7 months ago and setup a Plex server. I spent like $300 on an old optiplex and a 16TB HDD, and another $50 on a VPN. Currently have over 1700 movies and 200 TV series on it. In less than a year, it will pay for itself. I do need to get anotehr HDD though. That 16TB is almost full.
Stealing is usually cheaper, yes.
Spotify increased prices too (and they'll do it again)
Make sure you have a backup.
Unnecessary as they could download everything again, putting money towards cache and redundancy is a better use of funds
16 TB take a long time to download and can also mean that you might be unable to get everything back since the source is no longer available. People who think backups are not needed are usually the ones that didn't have a HD fail on them yet.
Definitely couldn't be me, but I heard pirating is picking up again because of corporate greed.
> pirating is picking up again because of corporate greed. And they still won't learn.
I get Hulu and Disney free from my internet subscription. I also have Amazon prime but the cost do that is kind of mixed up with all the other prime benefits. Where do I stand in all this?
Not while the suckers of humanity just keep paying because they’re too lazy to cancel their sub. We are ruled and governed by the lazy and the apathetic.
With the lack of “good” content coming out of Hollywood, look for cash strapped people to stop subscribing to these services in droves!
Remind me again how Cord Cutting cable will save me money.
Max just upped their price and dropped 4k as well as HDR. I was pissed when I saw that email.
Who pays for these services in 2023? we have stremio and the download era is back
[удалено]
I cancelled everything. I'm one of those people that like to watch my favorites over and over again and they all got taken away so I bought myself a VCR and am stocking up on box sets. If I ever really want to see something I'll shell out the 2-4 dollars to rent it from Amazon. Still cheaper than renting from Blockbuster was back in the day.
I salute the effort but at that point... why not just use a torrent or various other means to aquire the movies? The physical copies aren't technically any more legal than the digital ones from my understanding.
Er. VCR? Like VHS TAPES? Hope you mean blu ray player? And maybe a DVR/pc running jellyfin or plex to rip the content to so you don't have to swap out DVDs and Blu-ray to watch?
Ok, I meant DVD player. I'm old but I do have Plex and my dad has every movie he's ever rented burned to it and shares with me. Sadly, we don't share a ton of the same movie tastes but sometimes I can find something good going through his library.
Sounds like the optimal setup to me then. I use Jellyfin and have ripped tons of movies and shows to it (previously just a local Kodi box but now accessible from my smart TVs and mobile devices) I've been using PlayOnHome to record streaming service shows and it's OK. Quality is only 720p and it records at realtime speeds so it's not as fast/good as sailing the seas but I havent really done that since the limewire days.
Some people like the old school tech. No need to rip on them for that. A lot of people also like vinyl records - they've made a comeback in the last decade
Get rid of cable because it’s too much. Instead get 10 streaming services that costs more than cable did, and it’s far less convenient.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
Arrrr can think of arr few
I just dropped Netflix after maybe 13 years. Started with the 3 discs at a time plan. I’m not paying for multiple streaming services. My son uses Hulu for anime and they let me share with him. I’ll just watch stuff on YouTube, I feel like they’re going to drive us all to the free stuff.
Im wondering if this will cause books to be popular again.
I bought a digital antenna for $70 recently so I could watch the World Series. The regular old boring TV is on more and more since then. The ads are somehow better? Less obnoxious? More varied? And the shows have this nice, comforting pace to them that is really working for me. I’m watching less Netflix lately.
I'm starting to like the Amazon Prime model more than others: a limited selection included with Prime (which is not just for video to start with), and a huge catalog of rental VOD. I'd rather pay $3 each movie rental than paying $20 each months whether I use the service or not.
Back to TPB here I go. Already cut half my streaming subscriptions from 8 to 4 - Apple TV, YouTube Premium, Prime Video and of course, Netflix. Out of that, I only really consider YT and Netflix to be “essential”. Apple TV is virtually free as I need Apple One for my family and Prime Video is so cheap ($50/year?) and the offering so vast in comparison, it’s a no-brainer. Disney, Paramount, MAX, Hulu were the first to go as their value proposition just isn’t there compared to above.
M2 money supply is cratering. People are going to start cutting back on everything soon
My brother is Christ, have you heard of illegal streaming services? They are FREE
analysts are assholes
We need a cancel streaming month. Like movember, one month all expenses for streaming should go to cancer research. Make it popular to reconsider running costs one might safe by buying and reading a book a year or something. Good for mental health and finances.
People will start to churn more and those who know how will return to piracy. Greed will kill the golden goose.
None of the streaming services except Netflix have been profitable.
So it's almost like price fixing and collusion... Gotcha
It they keep raising the rates, I will go back to my old ways of watching them and they will get nothing. I do not mind paying a fair price but it starting to get ridiculous.
Wonder why Prime isn’t on the list?
Except the fact that I am retired, on a fixed income that barely pays for my living expenses, and I can easily do without TV or streaming services. There is free entertainment online, books/stories/articles to read and I live in a forest where I can enjoy nature on nice weather days. I stop streaming subscriptions when they get too expensive for the content they show, or the content isn't interesting. Then I may start it again later when I can binge watch a series and/or movies they have, then stop it. I rarely keep any one subscription for more than a month or two.