It’s not even surprising anymore platforms do this & act all Pikachu face why piracy is spiking
Netflix & all these streaming platforms have completely lost touch & they will lose more customers in the long run
To quote Gabe Newell on Piracy
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
I accidentally pirate crap I have legitimate access to because I can’t be bothered to figure out which damn platform its on. I have access to quite a few through work due to my industry at no out of pocket costs.
The times I try to actually search for something, it’ll be listed on multiple platforms but 0 to 1 of those platforms will actually have what I’m looking for included with the subscription forcing me to manually check each one.
It is easier to just pirate.
when you need the modern equivalent of TV Guide just to find a show …
Yeah that’s called the *arr suite
Looks like it’s written by AI.
Your case would apply for the legitimate use of streamio, where you can log into all the services and you can watch whatever through that service’s credentials.
What services can I connect to Stremio? Max?
I have never used the intended features (torrentio ftw) but in this page they have a stack of app icons. There’s prime video, netflix, HBO, disney…
Rotten Tomatoes will usually say where it’s streaming. Or a quick Google search of “(TV show) where streaming” will get you there. At least it used to, Google is shit these days so who knows.
Justwatch.com is my go to
Cerement linked it in their comment
JustWatch also has direct links to IMBD in their descriptions.
Yes. I use it as my first step for sailing. See if it’s on a service I have then grab the imdb identifier if it’s not. Very handy if you sail old school manually like I do.
Depends on the country though as well. Its probably pretty easy to figure out for big ones like the USA, but in smaller countries its often a mess…
That info can go stale quickly as content licensing changes. I’ve ran into that plenty.
Cable TV exists
Customers hate it and people start pirating
Netflix comes around, other streaming services
People happy, piracy goes down
Streaming services go back to the way cable was, increased prices, reduced content, started bundling shit you don’t want.
Customers start pirating again
Surprised Pikachu face
Maybe if we put ads in and take away the ability to download content foe offline use?
NO! I’ve got something better!
We make the ads guilt you into using ad blockers! Then we pepper your active streaming with ADs every 30 seconds! YOU WILL BUY! YOU WILL CONSOOME!
deleted by creator
Netflix comes around, other streaming services
The (admittedly inevitable) appearance of other streaming services was shit already since with it came exclusive content.
I despise ads. I can’t even bring myself to watch Netflix or Amazon Prime. If there is advertising, it ain’t worth it, no matter how cheap.
There’s not enough of us, but I still don’t care. I refuse to pay to watch ads. Also, I had Prime and they wouldn’t let me watch high def with firefox on Linux, so even though I paid for it, I had to hit the high seas to watch content in high def.
There’s not enough of us, but I still don’t care. I refuse to pay to watch ads.
i had this conversation with my dad recently about how shitty everything is now with ads etc, and his response boiled down to “i don’t care enough”. sucks to see people being complacent in being subject to greedy corporate whims. as much as i want people with that mindset to care, i have no idea how to effectively argue against “i don’t care”.
Idk what age your dad is, but I’m 53 (gen-x) and my generation are notorious for being difficult to market to. Maybe he just blanks it out, like an automatic mute button. I used to do that but ads are far too mentally disruptive for me these days. I’ve had enough.
Relate it to something that they do care about and show how it negatively affects that.
Mass market subscription services won’t offer ad-free precisely because of the mass market exposure available to advertisers. You need to look to niche services instead, where a critical proportion of subscribers (say 30%) won’t tolerate ads as opposed to 1%. Maintaining an ad-free option in such a case is basic business sense. Not only that, you’ll find the ads-on tiers are more respectful of people’s attention and intellect when it comes to ad content and presentation.
very much a convenience factor – Apple broke the MP3 sharing scene with the simplicity (at the time) of iTunes – video streaming started out simple but now it’s turned into cable TV, trying to find out which service is streaming a particular show, if it’s region-locked, or gated behind a premium upgrade, or just been dropped completely, or two services are still arguing over who gets the rights, or find out all the seasons are on one service except one season is on another service …
Was iTunes popular outside of the US? Everyone I know hated they intrusive software and DRM that prevented you from playing the songs elsewhere. Don’t think I know a single person who actually purchased music there.
I did, back in… 2005-6? Somewhere around there. I’m from the US, so the first part of your comment applies to me, but at the time iTunes let you put music from the CDs you owned into your collection, and made it very easy to load music onto an iPod. I was 16, with some of my first disposable income from my first job. Couldn’t get music easily from anything but CDs or iTunes (Or Kazaa/Limewire, but that’s a different story) at the time so it just made sense. Around the time I realized I was locked into the platform by my purchases I stopped buying there and started streaming or buying CDs again.
(Not US). I was burnt by Sony’s Mini disc DRM BS, so when iTunes came along I recognised the slimy DRM and steered well clear so much so I have never owned an apple device much less bought music from them.
Not from US. iTunes wasn’t even considered/known as an option here, let alone having people using it.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Dear Netflix, I’ve been a loyal customer since 2013. I’ve been perfectly happy with our arrangement. YOU are the one terminating our contract, not me. It seems you’d prefer to get rid of a happy, paying customer in the hopes you can somehow persuade them to embrace a higher cost or shittier experience (ads). That’s a bold move Cotton. Buh-bye dons pirate hat
YARR MATEYS
AOL still has 1.5 million active monthly subscribers. People forget to cancel subscriptions all the time.
Subscriptions are a great way to sell a service to someone who isn’t using it, and when they want to cancel it getting the spent money on something never used is generally impossible.
IMO for something like a streaming service… if you don’t stream a minute of video in a month you shouldn’t have to pay anything.
thing is, most of us should of known, they pulled this same crap back when they tried forcing everyone to drop the physical discs and switch to streaming only …
they first succeeded in curbing piracy before the moved to ruining the value of their offerings.
Because i aint spending 3 figures a month on 5+ different sports streaming services to follow one team. Simple.
Infamous implies somebody is famous in a negative way. If anything, Gabe is a shining example that should be upheld.
“Infamous” - that means more than famous!
Found the El Guapo fan.
I think in this example it could go either way, depending on who is viewing it.
Regular people would say he’s famous.
People running streaming platforms and other big corpos (especially Tim Sweeny) might say he’s infamous.
It’s infamous among big business execs. It’s famous for everyone else.
They have billions of dollars i have hundreds. I’m sure they’ll survive me not giving them any of my hard earned money
Yeah but for a publicly traded company, quarterly growth is the name of the game. If the numbers go down long enough, it’s game over for them.
Won’t somebody please think about the shareholders?
I’ll dance for them as I prance around the fire of their failed BSD l business model. Stupid, selfish cunts…
Fuck em
…with a baseball bat covered in nails. Rusty nails.
I don’t know the context but I am aroused
I’m crying for them.
it’s game over for them
Hopefully.
then what’s the point of pirating if you want the company to fail?
Piracy saves money. Reboots are literally cringe.
They don’t even have to go down. Staying stable or even going up at a consistent rate are both considered failure states, or at least unfavorable. If the rate of growth is not itself growing then they start worrying.
It’s insane.
The funny bit to me is how obvious they are about restructuring their business model. Netflix clearly wants a greater proportion of their revenue to come from advertisers, so they’re charging exorbitant prices for the 4K and, in particular, standard plan while keeping the “ad-supported” plan fairly low. They were probably seeing waves of short-term subscribers in response to big releases and are trying to bait those people into staying subscribed permanently while also milking then through advertisements. I wouldn’t be surprised if the standard plan is removed at some point because it’s such bad value now.
Edit: I see now the article is about Australia. And the price is higher, but converting to USD the new price is still less than US $15.49 which I feel is fair. It costs me about $13.50/month in electricity for plex.
How is the standard plan a bad value? It’s $15.49 for 1080p no ads. I dropped 4k a while ago because they went stupid on the price, and I will never use ad supported. If they made the ad tier free, I’d still pay the $15.49/month. Standard plan hasn’t been hit with the last several price increases, which is why I still think it’s a good value, and why I’m still subscribed.
I’m sure with the way things are going Netflix will end up pushing me away eventually, but they haven’t yet. Dropping standard would cause me to cancel. I also have the Disney/Hulu bundle for $20 and plex for anything else. I could easily get anything on Netflix on plex.
How is the standard plan a bad value?
Because of how it is priced relative to the other tiers. It is significantly closer in price to the highest tier ($7 gap) despite being almost identical to the lowest tier in terms of features ($11 gap). The only meaningful difference is ads. It’s very clear that Netflix is trying to price out customers who are unwilling or uninterested in paying for all the features limited to the highest tier (4K, double the simultaneous streams, better audio, etc) and force them on to the cheaper, ad-supported plan instead because they believe they can make more money this way.
Additionally, the middle tier is priced closer to the highest tier to imply that the highest tier is great value (because it has so many extra features for a smaller price increase than between the lowest tier and the middle tier). This is a classic retail strategy designed to trick consumers into spending more money than they originally needed or wanted to because “it’s better value”. Consumers often conflate “better value” with “saving money”, even though they are doing the complete opposite when they pay $7 more for features they didn’t initially care about at all.
There is a pretty big gap between ad supported and standard. Wonder if ads actually makes up for the difference or if it’s just under priced to push people towards it. But seeing as ads are like cancer to me I don’t even consider that tier as existing. So 15.49 1080p 2 screen, or 22.49 I think for 4k 4 screens. I sit far enough away that I don’t notice the benefits of 4k and don’t need the extra screens so I just judge the value from the content and price. Honestly I’d rather just have everything on plex instead of jumping between services, but some stuff that family watches is hard to find. Sonarr has probably 100+ episodes of reality TV crap that won’t download as no seeders.
Wonder if ads actually makes up for the difference or if it’s just under priced to push people towards it.
The ads are almost certainly making up the difference and then some, otherwise I don’t see why Netflix would pursue that strategy at all. The only other theory I can think of is that people are less likely to initially cancel an $8 monthly subscription than a $19 subscription, and are therefore more likely to forget to cancel it in the future.
Like the rest of the tech industry, Netflix is way past the point of making a loss just to drive growth and is now obsessed with driving maximum profits because their shareholders are demanding (or are owed) returns on the big investments they made in a different financial climate years ago. That’s why Netflix is introducing ads, pushing up prices and cracking down on shared subscriptions (and now even a one-off payment to “add” an account member from outside of your household) and cancelling projects with real artistic merit at short notice when they don’t show immediate signs of becoming the next massive hit. It’s all about making as much money as possible now. We are no longer in the age of focusing on providing a reasonably priced and objectively good service and that will drive people back to piracy, just as it has done previously.
Wonder if ads actually makes up for the difference or if it’s just under priced to push people towards it.
I reckon you guys are on the right track with your comments. Something to add in relation to why streaming services are introducing an ad tier. Introducing adverts introduces variable pricing for the streaming services. Meaning they can earn the same base rate, but for say the next season of Bridgerton, or one of their other really popular shows they can make a kind of ‘super profit’ by selling the ad space on top of their base rate per subscriber account.
Reed Hastings: “But our stock price shows customers love enshittification?”
Gee, we’ve tried taking content away, raising prices, injecting adverts and forcing them to use our crappy clients.
Why are people turning to piracy?
Advertising and lobbying are the only thing these people know how to do.
Not to mention removing features, like Netflix removing the ability to download media.
If only there was a way for media to exist as a file.
Alas, it’s just not possible.
The only thing that keeps me with subscriptions is the cartoons my daughter watches, because they are hard to find dubbed in my language (Portuguese). It’s still more convenient to subscribe than try to find the dubbed cartoons online. For everything I watch I use my arr stack.
Depending on her age of course… But you can find SRT (subtitle) files for literally almost everything, often in dozens of languages. They’re super tiny too since it’s basically just a txt file
There are still plenty of good deals in streaming if you have shifted to on-demand. If you want live TV or sports, they’re out to gouge the fuck out of you. Luckily my Wife came around to on-demand only and an antenna. Of course, they’re trying hard to take away the antenna option from everyone with ATSC 3.0.
Happens here in Germany too. We were not informed via mail but via a message when we started the app on the TV (not even on a phone). Since there are two other people on that account I decided to not just cancel but talk with both of them. We moved one tier down… Yet.
The studio cash grab explosion of streaming services is simply too inconvenient.
Subbing to everything you want to watch would still be cheaper than renting it all before streaming.
But Netflix has changed the value proposition and the stuidios are slitting their own throats trying to catch up.
