Compared to 6+ years ago, it's getting harder and harder to find specific content on services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+. There comes a point when the content pie is split up into so many pieces that there just isn't enough content that interests me. And good luck trying to find a lot of movies from the 1980s and 1990s! At least my local video store kept a variety of older movies around. Now content becomes unobtainium after a few years because content creators don't understand the value in sharing over exclusivity. <sigh> I don't see this getting better any time soon. Consolidation in this market can't come soon enough.
I don't really want consolidation, I want to be able to pay to play each work once or for a certain period of time, or indefinitely. I don't want to subscribe to a whole streaming service just for one movie, or one live event, or whatever it is.
I feel like we've swapped manipulated unnecessary cable bundling with manipulated unnecessary streaming service bundling. Give people a discount for subscribing to the service as a whole, but let people just buy or rent one content item.
I'm so sick of tech and media companies adversarially trying to get money from you through monopolies, network effects, and rent seeking. You want to get your customers to hate you, and to start agitating for government intervention? This is how.
To me it's absurd. Imagine if, in the 1980s, you couldn't just go to a theater and pay to see a movie, that you had to buy a monthly membership to a theater chain that produced the movie. Same thing.
My (sadly passed now) brother in law ran a convenience store in a small town that also rented out videos. The big difference between a video store and a streaming service is that the video store doesn't have its content clawed back by the content producer "just because they feel like it". Sure, they had to buy video cassettes or DVDs at a somewhat higher price than those available to consumers to compensate the content producer for the increased distribution usage, but that was fundamentally a one time cost for an otherwise perpetual license.
And I have the same problem with Apple's streaming music service. Content I previously paid for has been revoked as no longer being available in my region. It sucks!
I think there's a clear need for better consumer protection laws or copyright reform. Loss of the first sale doctrine has been a net negative for consumers in my opinion.
Yes, when I migrated from one phone to another when the screen died. The listing for several tracks is still in the library, but the listing is greyed out and tapping on them pops up a dialog box stating "This song is not currently available in your country or region." Apparently buying a track is not a perpetual license to listen to it. I've lost 67 tracks that I had bought previously.
It worked great until Apple decided that they wanted to be a streaming music provider a few years ago. I hate the new music app. Back when the iPod Touch was still a separate product, the music app was far better. Then an update broke all my playlists.
The sad thing is that this kind of feature breakage of software is pretty much universal across the industry today. Unless one is using whatever seems to be the current new-shiny thing, you're a support burden that needs to be eliminated. Why don't developers accept that old features are still used by people? Maybe I'm just some stupid old kernel developer that places too much emphasis on not breaking other people's shit, as my values are certainly not reflected by most of the products I have to use every day (from websites to phones to user interfaces).
> I don't really want consolidation, I want to be able to pay to play each work once or for a certain period of time
I'm confused. As awful as streaming is currently, doesn't it really excel at the one thing you say you want to have, but don't?
Let's take my IMDb watchlist as a relevant examples. I've seen the majority of popular films that I'm interested in, so this is a list of ~500 relatively obscure, but mostly well-reviewed movies.
Of this list:
14 films are free with Amazon Prime. Only 14. That highlights the common refrain about the state of streaming. Because of fragmentation, someone with the money for only one or two services will quickly find themselves with nothing to watch.
317 films are available to rent or buy with Amazon. That's remarkable! Even if you want to stick with a single service or app out of convenience, the majority of the relatively-obscure films on my list are available for online viewing.
The real issue, for me, is the cost of $3-5 for an HD rental of a film. I simply don't have that kind of money. A lot of people don't, and that's one of the reasons subscription services are so popular. On top of that, DRM means that I frequently can't be guaranteed the best quality HD stream on my hardware, it falls back to a ~3000k bitrate 720p stream which is noticeably inferior.
But I'm really not understanding your complaint. Granted, it would be great if we could solve the problem of availability for the last ~40% of media not available to stream or vendor-locked, but in general making rentals available is one of the strong suits of the status quo, IMO.
> And good luck trying to find a lot of movies from the 1980s and 1990s!
I tried a bunch and found them all in my iOS TV app. The app gives me an option to stream it “free” due to having been logged into Amazon Prime or HBO Max, or worst case, I can rent it for $3 to $5 I think. I also get the option to subscribe to the streaming service that does offer it.
I can pretty much find all non Netflix content in the TV app in iOS/macOS and be watching it within seconds. And that is only because Netflix has opted to not be included in the TV app’s searches.
It's interesting how the story seems to repeat itself over and over. There's a start up, they use VC capital to generate a fantasy version of their end product that can seem amazing because, for a time, it is free from the constraints of profit maximisation.
But inevitably the screws have to turn, and even after reaching profitability they keep turning. Google starts putting lengthy ads all over YouTube, Amazon mistreats its staff and turns a blind eye to unscrupulous sellers, Facebook promotes anything which drives engagement even if it enables political extremism... And here Netflix is, driving away subscribers with rapidly increasing fees and declining content quality. Of course these are just some examples and there are many more even within those same companies.
I think maybe people are slowly but surely becoming more skeptical to this sort of behaviour. Whereas in the past maybe users would have stuck it out during these changes, they realise now that this is the turning point where the organisation is going to get worse for them rather than better so are jumping ship instead.
I once run a pirate streaming site in another life.
It got big like 5M registered accounts. 2M Uniques a day.
I got sued by hollywood, I won.
Then I got the site stolen by trusting the keys to the wrong person, and decided to move on and learned to code so I can build my own things again.
Might re-do a global nicer version of this with a web3/DAO project that archives video content like the web archive. Only members can watch. Maybe hollywood doesn't care until we get too big and pay them royalties (in our crypto)
they didn't just 'lose 200K subscribers', its much worse than that - they said they were going to gain 2.5 million, so a losing 200K means they missed the target by closer to 2.7 million.... epic miss.
To be fair, while they would have missed targets, they would not have broken their streak for subscriber growth if they hadn't kicked Russia out of the service. It would still have been a big drop from their expectations, but not quite the same magnitude of a set back.
I can't say I'm surprised when their content catalogue keeps shrinking because every company has its own streaming service nowadays. I cancelled my subscription a few weeks ago, I have started cycling between the different streaming services instead. I might cancel them all eventually because it's a hassle to switch. The whole experience has become very anti-consumer.
Cancelled my subscription after the last price increase. $17.99 (AUD) for HD with their already reduced library because we’re an island noone has content rights for just wasn’t worth it. I still have my Amazon subscription because it has other utility, free shipping etc. and it’s already cheaper to start with.
Prior to Netflix launching here, Australia had some of the highest content piracy rates in the western world because stuff just wasn’t available. With all the different companies now wanting a piece, I’d be surprised if those numbers didn’t start increasing again, and that’s a shame because early Netflix and Spotify showed that people would pay for content if it was easy, convenient, and well priced.
Only reason I have Netflix (New Zealand) is that it comes included with my mobile phone plan.
I wouldn’t pay for it.
I do, however, pay for Apple TV+, Disney+, Prime Video, and would pay for HBO Max if we could get it also, but I imagine it hasn’t launched for the same reason it’s not in Australia.
At this point, there are enough shows that we spend most of our evenings catching up on past shows that have withstood some sense of time. I think the constant barrage of new and low-quality content is a problem for all the streaming platforms, but Netflix is the worst offender. Just a non-stop endless shotgun of content that Netflix can't even bother to care about.
I've got to agree. I used to like seeing some old favorites and some big screen classics. The made-for-streaming shows take so long to binge watch and they're often turning up the dial on creepiness just to get attention. I start tuning out when I feel icky and that's often pretty early.
Netflix is getting expensive and it adds things I don’t care about and don’t want to pay for, such as the games. I am reconsidering my Netflix subscription.
