I guess their calculus is how much does it cost to support 10-20 streaming users. Is it worth getting $18/mo for? I don't know the answer, but that seems to be their approach.

It feels the same as back when the music industry thought that those that pirated music would automatically purchase it if the "free" version was removed. They were wrong then and the streaming services are just as wrong now.

I think Netflix (and others) are looking at that 10-20 x $18/month and salivating, not realizing that the money just isn't there. They need to take a page from the Microsoft book and let people "steal" some of the content so they can have a least some paying customers. It beats having no paying customers.

iTunes was very successful before the age of streaming and for awhile was the number one Music Store.

Today, who would waste time pirating music instead of paying for a streaming service?

I'm pretty out of the loop. Is pirating still easy? I thought tbp isn't reliable any more, and finding reliable torrent sites is kind of hard now? Younger people aren't really on the computer anymore. Like your not going to be torrenting off ipads and stuff

TBP is now proxy software that anyone can install[0] which talks to a central API[1] for torrent listings. Each provider can tailor the experience and add ads or donation buttons as they desire. You can search for "TPB proxy list"[2] to find a list of TPB sites. I currently use tpb.party which I find the fastest and least intrusive.

[0] https://piratebayproxy.info/setup.html

[1] https://apibay.org It has no public-facing site, probably to keep it off the radar.

[2] https://piratebayproxy.info/ is what I use.

> Definitely the case for me. I am able to help out 10-20 family members across 4 countries,

You're sharing an account with 20 people across 4 countries? It's honestly kind of amazing that they let this level of sharing go on for so long.

It's hard for me to believe that out of 20 different people, every single one of them would decide to boycott Netflix forever because of this. If even 1 of those people decides to re-subscribe, Netflix has lost nothing. If 2 or more subscribe, they win.

Extrapolate this across their userbase and it's not hard to see why they're doing it. Obviously some people will cancel, but I guarantee Netflix has run pilot trials and analyzed the net effect to their bottom line.

> If even 1 of those people decides to re-subscribe, Netflix has lost nothing. If 2 or more subscribe, they win.

While extrapolating over a large dataset, it's important to get the initial numbers as correct as possible. Since the person you're replying to is paying for the most expensive plan (probably to get the 4x devices-at-a-time perk for so many people), the plan those people would re-subscribe at is important (and less likely to be the same plan if only for one person).

They'd need at least 3 people to re-subscribe on either of the two cheapest plans to net a profit, or they'd need at least 2 people to re-subscribe on the "Standard" $16/mo plan to net a profit. Anything less is a net negative. It's a favorably-biased population for Netflix, but that'd still require a 15%-30% conversion rate for users.

I'm sure they'll come ahead in the end, but I imagine a high % of the expected profit comes from cutting costs from serving 20x "free" users per plan rather than converting them into paying users themselves.

You’re assuming they have no variable costs (content fees, peak demand services) in delivering the service. One person at $12.99 a month is certainly more profitable than 10+ at < $1.799/mo.

Reading your comment makes me sympathize greatly with Netflix. I don't think they should care about customers who demands a "measly" price to continue their subscriptions.

I was on the fence about it since I share it with 2 people who wouldn't get a subscription otherwise due to technical reasons... but this is really shameless.