If I want to watch shows like The Man in the High Castle (Amazon), Game of Thrones (HBO, duh), Difficult People (Hulu), HarmonQuest (Seeso), etc. Is it reasonable to have to subscribe to 5 different streaming services?

Don't get me wrong, $9,99 is likely too cheap to get mostly everything like you do with Spotify, but I'm willing to pay double or triple that, as long as I can keep it in one service, and that it's not five or six times as much, which is a bit steep.

Can we expect anything other than a fractured market, where each service has a lot of content, but not even half of what we want to see?

The availability of Amazon Instant Video sucks. It's not available on a Chromecast. It's not on Apple TV. It's not on a lot of devices that I wanted to buy. I don't want to be forced into buying a crappier device just so I can stream Amazon programming. They went a step further, and stopped selling the Chromecast on Amazon.com. I want a Chromecast. I don't want your stupid Fire TV Stick. If you have to maintain a list of devices compatible with your service like this one...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/ontv/devices

...I don't want to use your streaming video service.

I mean this is basically what the OP is asking for

Spotify pays whatever artists I listen to. If I buy a cable package I pay for a bunch of reality TV I have never watched.

- true a la carte; pay for exactly what you want (on disc or through some provider's store like iTunes, Amazon Video, Xbox Video, etc) - subscribe to a bunch of different services (the situation we're in now) - bundle them up

A la carte pricing will be more expensive than anything else, but you get some greater flexibility over the stuff you own. The situation we have now is annoying, but at least you can turn them on and off as needed (so you can pay for HBO only when Game of Thrones is airing). When you bundle them up, it's only a matter of time until you end up with the traditional cable bundle and all the customer abuses and fleecing that it entails.

Yes, if everyone is charging a fair amount. Add YouTube Red. 6 x $10 = $60/month. That strikes me as a better bargain than most cable packages.

I agree the market is too fractured and everyone subscribes for just a few shows on each service

I want that "last year's movies" that I used to be able to get from them, and now seems to be going to crap.

The quality of their original stuff is very good. And they've got good coverage of non-original TV, too (e.g., reruns of "Friends"). But when you get to movies-from-theatres, they're just not there at all anymore.

I think this is intentional on their part, but they need to be careful, because Amazon also seems to be doing well with a similar strategy (e.g., "Man in the High Castle"). Netflix's original mission of movies could be what sets them apart but it seems to be all but abandoned.

You can't really draw any conclusions from that stat though since part of the issue is some of the non-original content they add is so bad. I looked up some of the ratings for their recently added movies and some had basically 1 star (on imdb, etc). Why even add it in that case? I think concentrating on original content is great, but I think they should be the go-to place for something else as well...I remember years ago people were amazed at how many quality, little-known, niche independent films they had. Why not get back to that in addition to original content?

The Netflix catalog of non-original content does have some bright spots. But there's also a ton of really obscure documentaries, miniscule budget action movies, crappy Adam Sandler movies, reality TV garbage, etc.

Because entertainment is highly subjective, so some people are bound to like it, and stuff which isn't broadly popular is cheap to pick up. Plus, its a cheap way to give the catalog the casual illusion of depth.

> I remember years ago people were amazed at how many quality, little-known, niche independent films they had. Why not get back to that in addition to original content?

The same reason they don't have lots of the other high-quality non-profit all content they used to have -- once they proved the market, plenty of other players jumped in (including, in many cases, the content producers), so much of the content isn't available to them and what is has more people bidding for it, often seeking exclusivity and willing to pay for it.

The same thing happened to HBO when other companies got into the "cable premium movie channel" business, and that's why HBO, for a long time, has also been driven by original programming.

If you don't own the content, and you aren't the only channel in a space, the content owners are going to extract all the value through competition among distribution channels. So, you either have to be essentially a monopoly channel (which usually isn't maintainable), or you have to rely on compelling original content as your main draw.

I just want to pay a cheque and get access to every film & TV show from across the world.

One thing to note about the cost. There's one rather large difference between cable and multiple streaming services (at least where Netflix is concerned) and that is advertising. We may be paying more for this content, but at least we're only getting content and not having to wait through mis-targeted advertising... At least for now.

https://www.streamingobserver.com/netflix-now-31-movies-imdb...

Life happens, and people get old and die. I appreciate their older works for what they are.

https://blog.kissmetrics.com/how-netflix-uses-analytics/

The only difference is in the monetization model - primarily subscription in the US and Ads in China/India - though we're seeing some models of Subscription to do away with ads in China.

When Netflix started instant streaming, they had a solid content repertoire from various places. Today, they have very few good third-party movies, and they try to fill the empty space with lousy Original Content.

Of course people will prefer Originals compared to very few crappy alternatives. I would rather see Netflix spend money on getting programming from other companies instead of throwing money at Adam Sandler.

Chewing Gum is a recent favorite of mine.