Back in the days, Netflix was a one-to-see-all service and that was also one of the reasons why it took people from torrenting to paying for movies.
Nowadays, if you want to watch a particular movie, you have maybe a 10% chance that it is available on the streaming service that you are currently paying for. And it makes more sense to just buy it directly, than pay monthly.
Want to hear an album? it's on Spotify / Apple Music / Deezer / Qobuz...
You pick the one that offers the best user experience (or unique features like HD songs).
Exclusives are basically non-existent.
Stranger Things is on Netflix only for X days (a month?) and then it's everywhere.
The hype train will still give Netflix its edge, because a lot of people want to watch in the first few days after release.
The economics just don't work the same.
How's that dr watson?
In an extreme example you are paying a long term subscription, let's say $200, for the exclusive privilege to access say 2 shows. That's $100 for one aficionado, per production.
What you are advocating for is Why does it not work the same for music?
First, it used to. Apple, in the good old Steve Jobs days, did it good to break the practice. With iTunes. Which managed to catch up with every other platform and integrate well to provide a UX leaving the competition far behind. Pressure power, and master maneuvers accomplished the exploit. Apple TV didn't show the same prouesse, maybe Jobs started to fade away, Apple didn't make a great screen display like they did with the iPod to gain that consumer pressure against the trad distributors, and it was simply a much harder battle due to the second reason below.
A great tune is played many many many times. An average one at least far less. So the prorata formula used to compensate the owners, works OK. The pareto distribution applies where great hits get accordingly rewarded.
With movies/series, unless it is one of those rare non thriller/mystery gem, it is watched once and for all. A one to one view to reward system puts greater productions at a deficit.
Does it make it right? Legally it seems that they win, those exclusivity contracts are legal. Building a platform and funnel your productions through it only as well. Although legislators needs to step up their game, end the lobbying thr led to this abuse of Intellectual Property rights, to finally enforce what it is and just it: ownership of the art, not of its distribution.The most generous film studio is .. Mosfilm. I suppose it's fitting that the Communist movies are available for free.
(Criterion looks promising but is a long way from all movies and US/CA only)
The entertainment market is stagnating (if not quantity, at least quality-wise) because the copyright laws stiffle innovation instead of fostering it. Early-comers (Hollywood & co) are comfortably sitting on their stash of content, content with rehashing the same franchises. New-comers are forced to low-risk - low-quality content, sprinkled with anything they can get their hands on from other sources.
It seems like it's copyright laws working as intended. (I may not love that I have to pay to access a 25 year old movie legally, but it hardly feels objectively unfair or ridiculous that I have to do that.)
The purpose of copyright is to incentivize creativity, but society does not need to pay for 180 years of monopoly protection to incentivize creativity.
What investment is “society” making in tv shows and movies?
Suppose copyright law was 15 years instead of 100 years or whatever. Society still gets the tax receipts and benefits from creation of the media, but the shareholders who own the media do not get to collect a price premium from the extra 85 years. That money can now be spent by consumers elsewhere as opposed to supporting media owners who already had sufficient incentive to create the media.
The question at the end of the day is, does a 100 year copyright term incentivize the creation of media with so much utility compared to copyright term of 15 years such that it makes sense for society to transfer extra resources to the media owners for an additional 85 years? Amongst other externalities to consider.
The only thing keeping cable alive today is live sports, but that eventually will be folded into existing streaming services or they will have their own services. Which brings me to my next point. There will very likely be 200 subscription services (if there aren't already), but the more there are, the more niche and specialized they will be. But importantly, you will be able to choose what you want (a la carte). This is a far cry from cable because cable has never been a la carte. They've always required you to purchase at least a basic package with 30-50 + channels, and each channel getting a couple bucks each month. The consumer's total cost is at least $50 / mo, probably more
Compare that to one of the typical big streamers which are $10 - $15 per month. Netflix, Max, Hulu, Disney - each of these alone has more content than you could ever watch. As long as they are all around to stay in competition, then prices will remain low. The absolute worst thing that could happen for consumers is for streamers to combine and form a conglomerate. Now that would be like cable - they'd have a monopoly and they'd end up charging you more overall than you were paying before, and then singling out "premium" content for even more money.
If you feel like you have to subscribe to all of them, that is simply a marker of their success in marketing to you. There is enough content (good content that you WILL enjoy) on any one of them. Or hell - even on Youtube which you can watch for free, there will be enough content to keep you from getting bored.
Sadly people focus as definitely shifted toward serial shows rather than films so movie streaming is not really an interesting market to address. I’m really confused by that because the feeling I get from 90% of the show I try to watch and always fail to finish is that there is a good movie hiding in the indulgent editing. Even prestige TV shows are full of padding.
From another old movie kind of guy: it's full of beautiful 1080p Bluray x265 torrents out there. Teams like VXT or RARBG release more old movies than one can watch.
Other surprising sources: Tubi which often has better quality video processing for the stuff where the VHS/DVD master is all that exists (protip: yt-dlp works), and Internet Archive where people upload all kinds of stuff, including Blu-Ray rips.
A ton of stuff is also on YouTube but it's often a low-quality master and/or edited for content so it's usually a last resort.
That said, I also buy their Blu-Rays during the sales, so I might just be a fanboy.
Some of the films they review are either only available on YouTube[2] or on second hand VHS tapes.
1. https://videoarchivespodcast.com/
2. Until the someone helpfully gets them taken down. Cheers for that.
I'd rather pay for the single item I'm consuming than for thousands I'm not paying.
The big innovation streaming services really brought was lowering the price for the crap content people watch and subsidising with people who buy the service and don't use it a lot. That's how they become better than piracy, not by centralisation (piracy is also incredibly decentralised) but by offering content at a reasonable price.
Let's say netflix costs 10$ a month and I watch 20 movies a month. 50c is a reasonable amount so I'm happy with my netflix subscription. Of course if I could pay 0.50$ to watch a movie I like I would just outright buy it - and not pirate it.
The problem with the industry is that content is overpriced. When piracy was a thing that just meant people were valuing the content at less than it was being sold. Sure, a percentage would convert anyway no matter the price, the rest would pirate it.
I sincerely hope we get rid of centralised services and we just end up with micro transactions to buy movies for cheap.
I think once AI will be used more in content production we will get there.
Urgh.
If there’s a critical mass of consumers unhappy with the current streaming landscape, the providers will be forced to improve or risk being replaced by superior competitors. That’s what happened to Blockbuster as well, and what I suspect is going to happen to many major providers in the coming years.
If Steam is the only platform to get PC games, then I can just install Steam and get access to any game I want to play. I know how the service works, I don't need to install multiple things, my credit card is only tied to one service, etc. But if it's not, and I need to juggle between multiple places, then I need multiple clients, know how multiple different things operate, give my information to multiple companies, etc. I'd much rather only have Steam if Steam keeps their prices and service quality good. Would they if they were the only game in town? No idea, but the incentive wouldn't really be there.
Netflix as one-to-see-all was never sustainable at the old price. Netflix have been raising prices the last few years, and stopping account sharing as per this article. All while having less content than ever.
Free market just means the market movements aren’t controlled, regulated, or otherwise changed by outside forces like a government.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt anyone considers a non-free market for entertainment like this. Isn’t entertainment the epitome of what you want to be a free market?
There is nothing "free market" about the crazy copyright regulations we have today.
a free market in content would be requiring the copyright holder to following something like FRAND for patents, and disallow them from making "exclusive" deals with one provider, this would then mean the market would be on price, speed, other competitive factors not on content library
BTW back to the current situation with streaming services, we nearly would have had the same with movie theaters. But United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc. shut that down, thankfully. Wouldn't expect such a ruling these days, though :(
What are you talking about?
So I now either go into my basement and look for the BluRay/DVD like twenty years ago or ... :)
Netflix streaming never had a good library of the most popular movies - especially after the initial STARZ partnership.
I don't know why anybody could possibly be surprised by this.
Businesses do not optimize for customer satisfaction, they optimize for profit. Customer satisfaction is merely a pathway to profitability.
When $STUDIO decides to pull their content from Netflix so they can put it on their own streaming service, nobody should be surprised. They're trying to optimize their profits. They don't care customers will be annoyed paying for two streaming services, they're betting they'll make more from customers paying them directly than from Netflix's licensing fees.
I think you mean "the only game in town" because the selection was worse back then!
Plus HBO and Hulu were around. I still remember Hulu commercials with Alec Baldwin. He hadn't shot anyone yet, that we know of.
I also remember getting GOT dvds mailed from netflix because i didn't want to pay for HBO service.
Nowadays, there are more shows, including more prestige shows, more movies, more comedies, more kids shows, as well as a lot of stuff that never would have been made twenty years ago. And it's all cheaper now than having cable ever was, even when you add them all up. And that's making a big assumption that you actually want/need to see "all". Which you don't. Any one of them would be totally sufficient to fill your time with quality programming. Netflix today is filled with way more content of all types than Netflix ten years ago.
Ah yes, free market competition funded by insane amounts of quantitative easing pumping equity into NFLX which took that money and lowballed customers to pick them up early. And of course, this is all somehow "worse" than the universe before Netflix existed, when you'd have to physically go rent movies and return them.
I'm surprised you achieved that at all. Google accounts are locked down hardcore... As it should be
My gf wanted me to share my ChatGPT plus account but I signed up via Gmail and it was impossible.
All of these sites can easily lock it down but choose not to. We're probably living in the Golden era. Although I still think Netflix's multi location accounts are far more expensive than their utility. And I fully see Netflix as an essential service but spending $35CAD/m is a serious consideration when I already buy 4 streaming devices that will very likely result in $18/m max if I pull the trigger.
If you actually lived in a Golden Era entertainment would be free, quality, and meant to enrich the people instead of advertise and moralize to them.
I really don’t understand how a DVD collection is an “essential service” either. Or why you would effectively choose not to look at your watching statistics and then simply buy the media you watch the most.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/134503468553
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/285243804109
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/145050977289
Why not just buy what you like?
I feel the current crop of writers employed by Disney, Netflix, Amazon etc. cannot tell the difference between these two.
Shows like Star Trek, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, etc. which would question or discuss complex ideas without turning them into soap operas or basic dramas.
The only shows that I can think of like that now are Black Mirror or perhaps your odd HBO offering, but those are not shining examples, and often, even if they do discuss or engage with deeper concepts or ideas, it’s not handled in a way that allows for nuance. (Black Mirror is happy to be quite crass at moments, same with HBO and other “top-tier” shows.)
There's something in this. Tickbox diversity is a lazy solution that doesn't really satisfy people who want broader representation while at the same time causes the rightwing culture warriors to go increasingly berzerk. Writers need to get better at doing incidentally diverse shows, because "hello I'm a token look at me" is bad characterization. Or address it by commissioning a broader range of shows from different settings; not everything needs to be a flagship.
While at the same time there are still lots of odd misses (Ghost in the Shell 2017 managed to annoy almost everybody in this regard).
Your memory of these shows differs dramatically from my own. None of the ideas discussed in any of them were complex or nuanced, much less culturally transgressive (no, not even Star Trek) and they were often ham-fisted and moralizing. I mean Star Trek and Twilight Zone so much so they became tropes and subjects of parody.
I guess if you think it recommending you “MegaShark vs. Giant Octopus Cat”… because you liked Jaws is helpful? I think personally it is not.
At least ask why I'm not pirating it 24/7 when I already have an Android box connected to my TV w/ Kodi installed with 3rd party pirate extensions which gives me up-to-date lists of every show/movie available on Netflix/Hulu/Disney/etc (including their trending and genre based lists) with each show being a single click backed via 10 different HTTP pirate streaming servers they index...with the alternative of another app which let's me search any torrent movie ever and stream them on demand via my Fibre internet connection.
I use Netflix etc because
a) the recommendation algorithms are better than any 3rd party service like Reelgood hopes to be even with OSS plugins that track my torrents
b) I live with 3 "normal" people in my house who don't care to navigate the imperfect UI of my Kodi streaming/torrent apps no matter how many times I tell them it's better and has everything they need and more for "free"
Just fool the normal people into a better UX.
How does morality not enrich people? Isn't moral behaviour a good thing?
Ethics, on the other hand, is a set of self-imposed rules or rules of a group that you wilfully accept and join.
Who would foot the bill to produce this content? You suggest that content would be "free"... but free to who? The consumer, right? It certainly isn't possible to produce high quality films for free. People pour their blood, sweat and tears into these productions. Why should the fruits of their labors be given away for free? Would you wake up early every day and proceed to work eight hours for free?
It's the same in this case.
It's funny that they didn't explicitly kick me out. They simply asked me to contact their customer support and certify that I did indeed live in the same household.
If people turn out to not watch that much content to warrant 3-4 subscriptions per (strict) household, I wonder if this could lead to a Highlander-like streaming showdown: There can be only one. The thing there is that Netflix should try to avoid the showdown, not push towards it, because they are the least equipped to win:
- Disney+, HBO Max (Warner) -> Own/produce AAA content.
- Prime Video -> Deep pockets, bundled as value added service, own distribution infra.
- Apple -> Very deep pockets, customer loyalty.
- Netflix -> ???
[1] https://tbivision.com/2022/12/09/exclusive-streamers-push-ba...
American shows do of course get wild budgets and can do some crazy stuff, but there’s good international tv
Doing TV is a marathon, perhaps Dark showrunners are more of sprinter people and should do movies instead.
Dark, I'd agree, faded in terms of the plotting as it got kind of all twisted up in itself toward the end, but I still liked it quite a bit. And you could say similar things about some of your other picks, like Mr. Robot (or Game of Thrones for that matter). Sustained excellence season after season is really hard to achieve.
Rings of power looks and is written like a cheap SyFy series. No-name actors, shoddy costumes, horrendous writing. I have no idea where their money went, but money!=quality.
The boys was good and went to shit.
Invincible was alright, supposedly season 2 is coming 'some day'.
By the time they bought The Expanse it had fallen off a cliff.
Netflix and amazon are not worth the subscription to me and haven't been for a long while.
Point taken, though. Still, if they only have a 1/10 chance at being good I am not taking the chance. It's like the netflix stamp is a kiss of death to me now. On the rare occasions they get it right they muck it all up after season 1.
If I hear good word of mouth about a show I may check it out, but I don't waste my time giving Hollywood the benefit of the doubt anymore. They have to prove they are worth my time and at the moment no streaming services are worth the amounts they charge.
If I could afford it in terms of money and time I would probably subscribe to all of them, I mean why not? To go see one movie costs about as much as a month of subscription to one streaming service. So subscribing to Netflix, Prime, Apple and HBO costs like going to see 4 movies per month, except you get more than 4 movies (I think a season of a good TV show easily worth multiple movies).
Aside from that it didnt start with 5 in mind, it just kept going till the creators decided to nix it.
That's not the same as having a 5 season vision and completing the story you wanted to tell.
And for sure to each their own, if you enjoy the services by all means continue being a patron.
I'm over all of them personally, even disney+ is going to start charging to watch new movies on it.
If there was one place to watch everything I'd be interested.
But I'm tired of lack of content worth watching, constant fluctuations in what's available, and horrible UX designs for no discernable reason.
All that coupled with the constant preaching has me watching more older movies, and occasionally something new worth watching like Super Mario.
So the money I used to spend on subs I now use on watching the occasional movie in the theater, and more storage for my ever growing media collection I know will always be there.
> Aside from that it didnt start with 5 in mind, it just kept going till the creators decided to nix it.
Many good shows are that way, it's good when they know when to stop. It's never good if it drags on or if it's cut early
Sure, own media collection is always better if you have the physical space for it...
Sure, all of Apple, Amazon, Netflix have dipped their toes into AAA movie production, but their collective throughput isn't anywhere close to becoming "players" in the field.
If you're not watching 4 hours of TV per day it's not that expensive to rent content, but I'm saying this from the point of a westerner. For other parts of the world a $5 USD for a movie for 48 hours doesn't make any sense over straight up piracy.
This really depends on how good of a pirate you are. If you put in some effort, you'll be watching 4k blu-ray movies in a higher bitrate than streaming services offer.
Never again will I rent / buy anything from YouTube, ever.
Either Netflix has it, or down to pirate bay it is.
Given our combined minor usage, the day they lock one of us out it's all over, I'm cancelling them all!
I don't invest in streaming produced series any more as they have a tendency to want to eat their cake and have it too. They won't tie up a series but don't commit to producing a second one to tie it up, then arbitrary cancel them. It's like reading The Hobbit and the last two chapters are missing, never to be written, and there are plenty of actually finished books out there!
Also my ex shared my Disney with friends, so 2 other families are now also using it.
Ah well, as long as no issues, the more the merrier.
I've had Netflix since it was DVDs by mail. I still pay for Netflix, but rarely use it. First time my sisters can't use it I'll delete my account. I honestly just don't use it enough to justify the price.
That's a strange thing to say, when Netflix blessed the behavior: https://twitter.com/netflix/status/840276073040371712?lang=e...
It was part of the business model. I've certainly kept my subscription longer because family was using it, so they've gotten more money from me by allowing password sharing.
The math makes sense to me. If the average "sharer" shares with three people, they could lose 66% of the active users in the "sharing" population, before losing a single paying customer. Who knows what the average actually is [2].
[1] https://mobilesyrup.com/2023/04/18/netflix-password-sharing-...
[2] sharing with everyone at work? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35719281
Maybe other people are in the same situation as me. There's a tenuous balance in the streaming service subscriptions thanks to the fact that people can share their accounts. If they close the door to account sharing, maybe the subscriptions will start falling like domino pieces.