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I don't have much sympathy for this argument. If you're a very heavy consumer of the content, it makes good sense that you end up paying more. It used to be th

I don't have much sympathy for this argument. If you're a very heavy consumer of the content, it makes good sense that you end up paying more. It used to be that your only options were cable or satellite packages that included lots of content you didn't want to pay for. People complained, and wished they could only pay for the content they watched. Now we have multiple competing Internet streaming subscription services, and people are complaining it isn't all bundled together. If you only watch a few shows, you can buy them a la carte from Google/Amazon/iTunes/etc. What really matters is pricepoint. A couple of subscriptions still runs far cheaper than a cable package. People will keep complaining until they can get every show there is for a minimal fee, but I don't see why we should expect that to be a realistic possibility.

etripe 6y ago
With all due respect, your post boils down to "we should be glad it isn't as bad as it used to be". That doesn't at all imply that the current state is desirable. It's more about access and convenience than entitlement. Even on Google/Amazon/iTunes, you simply can't access all content. Depending on where you are globally, it might not even be possible to gain access if you subscribe to every available streaming service. It's not like there's a common infrastructure where all content is published, with streaming services as a wrapper on top. And as Gabe Newell said, "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti-piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates." The reality is there are a lot of exclusive, regional licensing schemes that preclude the content from being accessible anywhere for a fee. The media business has been and continues to be distributor centric instead of consumer focused, which is costing them potential revenue while they cling to an outdated business model. This business model likes to pretend the bundle is the product, but makes licensing deals on a per-show or per-franchise basis. The license holder gets to choose whether I'm fed the "one episode a week" bullshit or whether I can watch episodes at my own leisure, whether to limit streaming to a limited time period or a limited subset of a series' seasons, to postpone my local launch date by an arbitrary delay, and so on. The streaming service middlemen get to decide how much of my time to waste by obscuring quality ratings, limiting discoverability, not listing availability dates, not allow viewing of shows because subtitles aren't yet available, and so on. We have the networking and storage infrastructure to have any content available anywhere at the same time. We have the payment infrastructure to allow target audiences to access your content and pay a variable price based on what they watch. We know how to make rich user interfaces where users can indicate their viewing preference. The only conclusion I'm left with is media companies want to compete on status instead of merit. I really wish we didn't live in a time of rent-seeking, "engagement"-driven, anti-consumer walled gardens of crap.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  > your post boils down to "we should be glad it isn't as bad as it used to be". It doesn't. I responded to the complaint that there are now many competing subscription services. > That doesn't at all imply that the current state is desirable. I don't see any problem with there being multiple competing subscriptions, and you've not pointed any out. Your other complaints are valid but are on different topics. > Depending on where you are globally, it might not even be possible to gain access if you subscribe to every available streaming service. I wasn't commenting on this, but I agree it's long overdue to fix these region peculiarities. It's a market failure of a sort. An example from here in the UK: there's no way to buy episodes of The Simpsons on any streaming service. > The license holder gets to choose whether I'm fed the "one episode a week" bullshit or whether I can watch episodes at my own leisure That's not necessarily anti-consumer. For a show like Game of Thrones, releasing an episode a week is important to enable 'water-cooler conversations' about the show, which many viewers enjoy. > whether to limit streaming to a limited time period or a limited subset of a series' seasons Those limitations may be due to licensing/syndication agreements. The streaming provider might only have paid for a limited time window in which they're authorised to stream certain content. I don't think Netflix ever remove content that they own outright. > obscuring quality ratings, limiting discoverability These are both annoying, but streaming services don't have a monopoly on recommendations and reviews. Personally I put very little stock in their recommendations anyway, so I don't much care when they mess about with them. > not allow viewing of shows because subtitles aren't yet available Guessing here but that might be done in the name of inclusiveness. Adding subtitles improves disabled accessibility of the service. A strong policy of all shows must have subtitles might be a good thing; deaf users can then use the service in the knowledge that all available shows are accessible to them. > We have the payment infrastructure to allow target audiences to access your content and pay a variable price based on what they watch. The point of the subscription model is that you pay the same monthly rate no matter how much you watch. If you want to buy a la carte, you already have that option too. I don't see any problem here. If you mean to say you think the prices are too high, that's a different matter. > rent-seeking, "engagement"-driven, anti-consumer walled gardens of crap. It's not rent-seeking. Shows are costly to produce. (I happen to support radically reducing copyright durations, but that's not the same topic.) I agree engagement-driven ecosystems can be very troublesome, but it's more an issue on YouTube (pushing people to watch politically toxic garbage), not so much with paid subscription services. What do you mean by walled garden in this context?

etripe 6y ago

With all due respect, your post boils down to "we should be glad it isn't as bad as it used to be". That doesn't at all imply that the current state is desirable. It's more about access and convenience than entitlement. Even on Google/Amazon/iTunes, you simply can't access all content. Depending on where you are globally, it might not even be possible to gain access if you subscribe to every available streaming service. It's not like there's a common infrastructure where all content is published, with streaming services as a wrapper on top. And as Gabe Newell said, "The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting anti-piracy technology to work. It's by giving those people a service that's better than what they're receiving from the pirates." The reality is there are a lot of exclusive, regional licensing schemes that preclude the content from being accessible anywhere for a fee. The media business has been and continues to be distributor centric instead of consumer focused, which is costing them potential revenue while they cling to an outdated business model. This business model likes to pretend the bundle is the product, but makes licensing deals on a per-show or per-franchise basis. The license holder gets to choose whether I'm fed the "one episode a week" bullshit or whether I can watch episodes at my own leisure, whether to limit streaming to a limited time period or a limited subset of a series' seasons, to postpone my local launch date by an arbitrary delay, and so on. The streaming service middlemen get to decide how much of my time to waste by obscuring quality ratings, limiting discoverability, not listing availability dates, not allow viewing of shows because subtitles aren't yet available, and so on. We have the networking and storage infrastructure to have any content available anywhere at the same time. We have the payment infrastructure to allow target audiences to access your content and pay a variable price based on what they watch. We know how to make rich user interfaces where users can indicate their viewing preference. The only conclusion I'm left with is media companies want to compete on status instead of merit. I really wish we didn't live in a time of rent-seeking, "engagement"-driven, anti-consumer walled gardens of crap.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
> your post boils down to "we should be glad it isn't as bad as it used to be". It doesn't. I responded to the complaint that there are now many competing subscription services. > That doesn't at all imply that the current state is desirable. I don't see any problem with there being multiple competing subscriptions, and you've not pointed any out. Your other complaints are valid but are on different topics. > Depending on where you are globally, it might not even be possible to gain access if you subscribe to every available streaming service. I wasn't commenting on this, but I agree it's long overdue to fix these region peculiarities. It's a market failure of a sort. An example from here in the UK: there's no way to buy episodes of The Simpsons on any streaming service. > The license holder gets to choose whether I'm fed the "one episode a week" bullshit or whether I can watch episodes at my own leisure That's not necessarily anti-consumer. For a show like Game of Thrones, releasing an episode a week is important to enable 'water-cooler conversations' about the show, which many viewers enjoy. > whether to limit streaming to a limited time period or a limited subset of a series' seasons Those limitations may be due to licensing/syndication agreements. The streaming provider might only have paid for a limited time window in which they're authorised to stream certain content. I don't think Netflix ever remove content that they own outright. > obscuring quality ratings, limiting discoverability These are both annoying, but streaming services don't have a monopoly on recommendations and reviews. Personally I put very little stock in their recommendations anyway, so I don't much care when they mess about with them. > not allow viewing of shows because subtitles aren't yet available Guessing here but that might be done in the name of inclusiveness. Adding subtitles improves disabled accessibility of the service. A strong policy of all shows must have subtitles might be a good thing; deaf users can then use the service in the knowledge that all available shows are accessible to them. > We have the payment infrastructure to allow target audiences to access your content and pay a variable price based on what they watch. The point of the subscription model is that you pay the same monthly rate no matter how much you watch. If you want to buy a la carte, you already have that option too. I don't see any problem here. If you mean to say you think the prices are too high, that's a different matter. > rent-seeking, "engagement"-driven, anti-consumer walled gardens of crap. It's not rent-seeking. Shows are costly to produce. (I happen to support radically reducing copyright durations, but that's not the same topic.) I agree engagement-driven ecosystems can be very troublesome, but it's more an issue on YouTube (pushing people to watch politically toxic garbage), not so much with paid subscription services. What do you mean by walled garden in this context?