12 ms·

The golden age of streaming has come to an end. There are no longer streaming services offering a wide selection of shows and movies, but silos of self-produced

by pgrote 6y ago

The golden age of streaming has come to an end. There are no longer streaming services offering a wide selection of shows and movies, but silos of self-produced or owned content. In the next 12-24 months it'll be obvious the way to consume media will change from a monthly netflix/apple/cbs/peacock/hbo/anyone else fee to a 30 day run. People will sign up and churn based on what they want to see. Services will pop up around this and handle your memberships for you. Those service will become the new cable companies. Netflix is still a good value for the money charged.

umvi 6y ago
I switched to that model a while ago. I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously. So I queue up shows I want to watch on a given platform, buy a month of that platform, and then switch to the next platform in the queue the next month. It requires more overhead (i.e. manually cancelling and re-enabling services), but it saves probably $200-300+ per year vs. having 4 simultaneous subscriptions.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  I'm sure the next step will be to require annual subscriptions. Amazon Prime has already normalized it.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Amazon Prime has already normalized it. many people might have prime on an annual basis but amazon seems content with offering prime on a monthly basis as well. In fact the only way to get prime video (without prime) is monthly. https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime
    - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
      Indeed. I historically have gotten Prime for a month around Christmas shopping season each year, and that's been more than enough Prime for me.
  - ojbyrne 6y ago
    In my opinion the next step is going to be what network TV did. Single episodes available for a week, then available in reruns a year later. You can see the beginnings of this in shows like “The Boys” that have a weekly release cycle.
    - tracker1 6y ago
      Services have been doing that for a while though... it's to prevent you from joining on a mass drop, binging the season then only staying for a month... with a 10 week run, you're subscribed for 3 months... and you can watch the back catalog any time. Even Netflix has shifted their drops this way.
    - evandijk70 6y ago
      To be honest, for some shows, I prefer a weekly release schedule over release of everything at once. It gives you a chance to discuss an episode with friends and speculate about what will happen next.
- mandeepj 6y ago
  > I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously. It could be a great startup idea - buy proxy access to all these content services for you, and in turn, you have to maintain only one account
  - clintonb 6y ago
    That sounds...illegal.
    - edgyquant 6y ago
      They said buy the proxy access
      - mwcremer 6y ago
        Not sure that will fly. The Supreme Court was not convinced last time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
        inyorgroove 6y ago
        And yet Locast is a thing: https://www.locast.org/ https://www.locast.org/
        bdowling 6y ago
        Locast limits access to users within the geographic broadcast range of the relevant TV stations. Apparently that falls within the same legal framework that allows cable TV operators to rebroadcast TV signals over their cable networks, which are similarly geographically limited.
        ballenf 6y ago
        That was very different. This could be done as a power of attorney to avoid almost any TOS issue they could draft.
        6y ago
- tpmx 6y ago
  After a bunch of churning I just realized I'm not currently subscribing to any of the services, and I'm okay! There's not really any/much new content now anyway, due to the covid shutdown in Hollywood.
- tsjq 6y ago
  This is nice. r/frugal would certainly love this LPT
- phatfish 6y ago
  I pay for one (so i don't feel too guilty), torrent what is exclusive to the others and buy Blu-Ray for the content that is genuinely good. Currently Netfix gets some cash out of me because i have no interest in giving Amazon or Disney any more money than i have to.
- arsome 6y ago
  Yeah, I switched back to just plain old piracy last year. One button on Sonarr and it's on my NAS and playable on Plex on all my devices a few minutes later. I'm done. They had the right model, but it's gone now. Oh well.
  - toxik 6y ago
    Curiously it seems to be a problem of rent seeking. “I’ll start my own streaming service, with blackjack and hookers” said every rights holder. And why is it so expensive to “rent” a movie from for example Apple? Rent two movies and you’ve paid for a month of Netflix. How did that compute?
    - tendersej 6y ago
      Maybe someone with experience in the field and more up to date info will correct me, but I did some research on the subject 10 years ago while entertaining the idea to launch a VOD service in France, and the right holders expected that such a service would: - pay them a percentage of the price of the rental, which could not go below a certain amount, - pay a yearly license (~3500€/year just for my country for a popular movie) per language audio track, - handle on their own sending technicians to rip the masters to then host them on the platform. I don’t exactly remember the minimum price per rental, but the economics didn’t make sense in terms of what we wanted to attempt, so we gave up. One would have to pay an enormous amount in upfront license costs without being able to generate a big volume of views by undercutting the competition in the case where technical excellence could allow us to cut prices.
      - interestica 6y ago
        > per language audio track I guess this explains why Netflix will have different audio options for the same movie dependent on region.
        AnssiH 6y ago
        Partially. The other reason is simply to remove clutter in UI. You can get more tracks to appear if you change Netflix UI language in settings, as described here in 2015 by Netflix CPO: https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-all-subtitles-available-in-all-countries-on-Netflix/answer/Neil-Hunt?srid=slw https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-all-subtitles-available-in-a... This is also mentioned in various Netflix help pages, like here, which says 5-7 subtitle languages are shown by default, and you need to change UI language to see the rest: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13245 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13245
- chinolex1 6y ago
  hi, try joinkeyring.com. We're launching a bundle with a 7 services for $35/mo: Disney +, Showtime, CBS, Philo, Starz, HBOMAX, and Peacock on computer only. Venmo me @chinolex today and I'll give you a months free (I'm the Founder).
Barrin92 6y ago
I really always wondered why people thought this wasn't going to happen, because at the end of the day all the institutions that produced the dynamics of cable television exist on the internet, nothing has changed. It doesn't really matter whether you send information over an ethernet cabel or a satellite dish.
pradn 6y ago
I wonder if we've come to a point where people will watch what's promoted at the top of the streaming services they subscribe to, with the exception of virally popular shows or shows recommended to them by friends and family. A good chunk of TV watching is just watching to pass the time. Whatever's trending on Netflix is good enough, coupled with a few shows you and your family are rotating through. Some exceptional shows do drive subscriptions for a particular service. But I think Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian are the exception. More common is watching Friends reruns or the new comedy that pops up on the front page of your streaming service.
matheusmoreira 6y ago
It's ironic how copyright itself prevents these companies from properly competing with "piracy". They just can't offer a better service no matter how hard they try.
- kgwxd 6y ago
  I think a good first step would be to stop making exclusivity deals. Is there some good (for them) reason they do that?
  - gruez 6y ago
    Same reason why every other industry has exclusivity deals (eg. video game consoles): to attract customers. If you're a TV/streaming network, and you want to attract customers, how else are you going to do it? Good ux can only get you so far.
    - tortarga 6y ago
      Music streaming solved this problem by remembering they were combating piracy not each other. Each music service has all the music and they all pay royalties. TV streaming services have come full circle and are repeating the same cable tv mistakes that caused piracy to flourish in the first place.
      - airstrike 6y ago
        The key difference is the music streaming services aren't necessarily owned by the content producers. I'm assuming Spotify and Apple Music dominate streaming (could be wrong), whereas Hulu/Disney+/etc are all owned by the content producers. Netflix eventually merged into a production company too, which has only made it worse
      - gruez 6y ago
        I knew someone was going to bring up music streaming. Yes, it's indeed true that releases there are (mostly) available across the major platforms. The difference I think, is that music is a loss leader. record/streaming sales is a small drip in the bucket compared to other sources like touring/events and merchandising[1]. Streaming to them is basically another way for them to promote themselves, to get more customers so they can earn the real bucks via the other methods. The same can't be said for tv/movie releases. [1] random source: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-musicians-make-money-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-musicians-make-money-... > According to a recent Citigroup report, the music industry generated a record $43 billion in 2017, but recording artists saw just 12% of that revenue, or $5.1 billion, and the "bulk" of their revenues came from touring.
tjoff 6y ago
Which by itself is almost more effort than it is worth... Take it further instead, just give me the option to rent a single episode/movie.
anthony_romeo 6y ago
The next step is "discounted" year-long subscriptions as the month-to-month price steadily rises. And suddenly we've returned to the world of annual contracts as the standard. Source: Wild speculation
- xur17 6y ago
  And.... then piracy.
  - droopyEyelids 6y ago
    I don't know if you follow the piracy news much, but the crackdown has only increased in viciousness. Tools like youtube-dl get banned from github, and private torrent servers are taken down, and the data the site has is used to subpoena email providers and ISPs for individuals to sue. I know we all come from the background of imagining information wants to be free, but it's only going to be another 20 years or so until having a general purpose computer in your house will be as suspicious as having a chemistry lab in your basement. The next step I'm expecting is some blurring of the line between civil and criminal penalties for piracy, and for police to seize someone's house because it was used for piracy.
    - novok 6y ago
      Until foreign VPN companies become illegal, all of that is solvable with a $2/month VPN subscription.
      - hombre_fatal 6y ago
        Not in the long term since more and more services do VPN detection which is trivial any time a VPN has static servers. Though even residential proxies (https://luminati.io/ https://luminati.io/) are being detected with greater and greater frequency.
        novok 6y ago
germinalphrase 6y ago
My experience is that everyone is sharing with everyone. This person share their Netflix. The next their Disney+. A third, their Hulu. End result is that each person subscribed to only one, but ends up with access to many.
- jaimex2 6y ago
  My experience is everyone is running Kodi with addons because the once centralised anti-piracy solution that was Netflix is very much dead.
  - mark2996 6y ago
    I suspect you have a very warped sense of 'everyone' I doubt more than 0.1% of consumers have any idea what Kodi is.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Yep, currently in this boat. Had a group of ~5 friends since about 4 years ago, where we subscribe to pretty much every streaming service out there and share the accounts within the group. This way we get every single subscription, while paying for the price of just one each (on average). And streaming services realize that a lot of people use it that way, so they have nice individual profile functionality within a single account, so my shows and my recommendations don't get mixed up with those of other people using the account. Not every single streaming service had that feature at the beginning, but by now iirc they all got it.
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    Well, I'm pretty sure those multi-account features are meant for multiple members of a single household. I'm sure they know that people are sharing among friends, but I don't think they are trying to encourage that.
    - filoleg 6y ago
      >Well, I'm pretty sure those multi-account features are meant for multiple members of a single household. You are correct, I think it is one of those technically grey areas. However in my scenario, given that the same group of 5 shares pretty much every single service subscription and physically spends a lot of time watching it together, I think, even in the intended spirit of household sharing, it sorta follows. Regardless of that, imo there would be a lot of outrage if streaming services started cracking down on that, and, my guess, streaming services are intentionally not letting that happen.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seldonnn 6y ago
You overestimate the amount of mental energy people are willing to spend to figure out what the “right” streaming service will be for that month.
- astrod 6y ago
  I usually look through a site like IMDB[1] who regularly updates what new releases are coming out on services. [1]https://www.imdb.com/whats-on-tv/ https://www.imdb.com/whats-on-tv/
- dwild 6y ago
  I use JustWatch for that, it's amazing to find where to get my content. The biggest issue is to unsubscribe each time on the different service. At one point we will have a middle man that does this for us, we will go full circle.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
One thing that I do is rotate my services. I do two months of Netflix, two months of Disney, two months of Hulu. Those are the ones I do now. Most of my watching is mainly looking for stuff to kill the time and not specific movies or shows so this works for me.
zelly 6y ago
It's called torrents. All the content on all the streaming platforms for an even cheaper price ($0).
- lethologica 6y ago
  I wish I could buy torrent files direct from the creative forces behind the entertainment I watch. Imagine if a single TV episode torrent file cost, say, $2. A season torrent file could be say $16 for a 10 episode long season and a movie could be $12 or so. (Numbers just plucked out of the air, but you get the idea) Let me give the creative forces the money they deserve for the content they produce, but let me keep the file without being bound to a subscription service where I lose everything the moment I cancel.
  - jshen 6y ago
    This is more or less how I buy content through Apple. But, I feel like you meant something else, so what am I missing?
    - Infernal 6y ago
      That if the creator is seeding paid torrents, there is no middle man (Apple) to collect a fee.
      - jshen 6y ago
        Maybe, just maybe, the middleman is adding some value? Otherwise creators would have skipped the middleman a long time ago? Also, how is the money getting to the creator exactly?
        paulryanrogers 6y ago
        My guess is a middleman like Apple isn't necessarily a problem if the content were DRM free. It's the sword dangling overhead which may invalidate ones license without reimbursement, or limit access arbitrarily that is burdensome. When I downloaded a movie from Netflix I couldn't watch it on vacation because of region locking.
fullshark 6y ago
Nah people will just go with whatever junk is on the service they signed up for in the past 2 years, which is why these guys are so aggressively trying to get market share.
el_dev_hell 6y ago
I suspect that might be the case for some people. I also suspect a large portion of users will migrate back to torrenting (or Popcorn Time).
Slikey 6y ago
And making it more complicated will breed piracy. We are coming full circle.
ulfw 6y ago
Exactly this. It's a transition from the old cable product portfolio over cable to a new internet-"cable" product portfolio over cable/fibre/dsl/etc
rawoke083600 6y ago
Agreed ! In the beginning (golden age ?) I spend way less time on P.B and torrents. Now with more services than ever I'm only have access to two services: a) Netflix - (via gf account) b) Amazon Prime (own account). The last year or two I'm back to doing a lot more torrenting ! We've never had it so good in terms of overall content, yet we have never had it as expensive to access say my "top15 Films/Shows" if they are widely spread across service providers. PS/Sidenote: I do miss channel hopping (click-click oh what is this ?)
- tracker1 6y ago
  Similar here... though I'm more and more inclined to just torrent what I watch even if I'm paying for the services. For live-tv, I've had lots of issues with more popular feeds. For example, when the fiance watches Big Brother, it's the worst experience, I swear I've had to download almost every episode this season for her to be able to watch... it's been pretty bad. Not to mention trying to remember what is where etc... was so much easier when I had a list of shows, I'd check the torrent site(s) about once a week for new episodes, snag them all to a seedbox and download and watch local over the following week as time permitted. At least with less TV I'm getting more done.
the_arun 6y ago
Similar to how Spotify membership packaged Hulu membership for me, we might see this "bundling" packages among service providers. OR a startup can provide an abstraction layer on top. Eg. 39$ membership with us will get you Netflix & Amazon Prime. For $59 we'll add Hulu & Disney+ on top. etc.,
fiblye 6y ago
Gonna save my money and just put a few bucks towards a VPN. Streaming was a fun ride while it lasted, but I can get higher quality video through torrents and the selection is limitless. Maybe in 20 years these streaming services will collapse and be replaced by something better, and then those services will once again split up.
tracker1 6y ago
I kind of hope that the silo packages via Amazon Video or Hulu become easier and/or more popular to integrate. I'm a bit disheartened at the pricing model that has one likely to only subscribe or unsubscribe in waves. Also, being able to conveniently search across different services is a huge issue... a unifying experience is needed.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
lm28469 6y ago
> The golden age of streaming has come to an end. It's been a while, we went full circle. Look at youtube, they display more ads than the TV channels I was watching 10 years ago. The content is spread over more and more services, so you end up paying for a few of them, exactly like we used to do for TV channels, it's ridiculous.
dwild 6y ago
> Those service will become the new cable companie At least we can still easily cancel and subscribe from each one. It's still a gains I guess!

by pgrote 6y ago

umvi 6y ago

I switched to that model a while ago. I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously. So I queue up shows I want to watch on a given platform, buy a month of that platform, and then switch to the next platform in the queue the next month. It requires more overhead (i.e. manually cancelling and re-enabling services), but it saves probably $200-300+ per year vs. having 4 simultaneous subscriptions.

kgwxd 6y ago
I'm sure the next step will be to require annual subscriptions. Amazon Prime has already normalized it.
- gruez 6y ago
  >Amazon Prime has already normalized it. many people might have prime on an annual basis but amazon seems content with offering prime on a monthly basis as well. In fact the only way to get prime video (without prime) is monthly. https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime https://www.amazon.com/amazonprime
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    Indeed. I historically have gotten Prime for a month around Christmas shopping season each year, and that's been more than enough Prime for me.
- ojbyrne 6y ago
  In my opinion the next step is going to be what network TV did. Single episodes available for a week, then available in reruns a year later. You can see the beginnings of this in shows like “The Boys” that have a weekly release cycle.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    Services have been doing that for a while though... it's to prevent you from joining on a mass drop, binging the season then only staying for a month... with a 10 week run, you're subscribed for 3 months... and you can watch the back catalog any time. Even Netflix has shifted their drops this way.
  - evandijk70 6y ago
    To be honest, for some shows, I prefer a weekly release schedule over release of everything at once. It gives you a chance to discuss an episode with friends and speculate about what will happen next.
mandeepj 6y ago
> I refuse to pay for Netflix/Disney+/Hulu/Crunchyroll simultaneously. It could be a great startup idea - buy proxy access to all these content services for you, and in turn, you have to maintain only one account
- clintonb 6y ago
  That sounds...illegal.
  - edgyquant 6y ago
    They said buy the proxy access
    - mwcremer 6y ago
      Not sure that will fly. The Supreme Court was not convinced last time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo
      - inyorgroove 6y ago
        And yet Locast is a thing: https://www.locast.org/ https://www.locast.org/
        bdowling 6y ago
        Locast limits access to users within the geographic broadcast range of the relevant TV stations. Apparently that falls within the same legal framework that allows cable TV operators to rebroadcast TV signals over their cable networks, which are similarly geographically limited.
      - ballenf 6y ago
        That was very different. This could be done as a power of attorney to avoid almost any TOS issue they could draft.
      - 6y ago
tpmx 6y ago
After a bunch of churning I just realized I'm not currently subscribing to any of the services, and I'm okay! There's not really any/much new content now anyway, due to the covid shutdown in Hollywood.
tsjq 6y ago
This is nice. r/frugal would certainly love this LPT
phatfish 6y ago
I pay for one (so i don't feel too guilty), torrent what is exclusive to the others and buy Blu-Ray for the content that is genuinely good. Currently Netfix gets some cash out of me because i have no interest in giving Amazon or Disney any more money than i have to.
arsome 6y ago
Yeah, I switched back to just plain old piracy last year. One button on Sonarr and it's on my NAS and playable on Plex on all my devices a few minutes later. I'm done. They had the right model, but it's gone now. Oh well.
- toxik 6y ago
  Curiously it seems to be a problem of rent seeking. “I’ll start my own streaming service, with blackjack and hookers” said every rights holder. And why is it so expensive to “rent” a movie from for example Apple? Rent two movies and you’ve paid for a month of Netflix. How did that compute?
  - tendersej 6y ago
    Maybe someone with experience in the field and more up to date info will correct me, but I did some research on the subject 10 years ago while entertaining the idea to launch a VOD service in France, and the right holders expected that such a service would: - pay them a percentage of the price of the rental, which could not go below a certain amount, - pay a yearly license (~3500€/year just for my country for a popular movie) per language audio track, - handle on their own sending technicians to rip the masters to then host them on the platform. I don’t exactly remember the minimum price per rental, but the economics didn’t make sense in terms of what we wanted to attempt, so we gave up. One would have to pay an enormous amount in upfront license costs without being able to generate a big volume of views by undercutting the competition in the case where technical excellence could allow us to cut prices.
    - interestica 6y ago
      > per language audio track I guess this explains why Netflix will have different audio options for the same movie dependent on region.
      - AnssiH 6y ago
        Partially. The other reason is simply to remove clutter in UI. You can get more tracks to appear if you change Netflix UI language in settings, as described here in 2015 by Netflix CPO: https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-all-subtitles-available-in-all-countries-on-Netflix/answer/Neil-Hunt?srid=slw https://www.quora.com/Why-arent-all-subtitles-available-in-a... This is also mentioned in various Netflix help pages, like here, which says 5-7 subtitle languages are shown by default, and you need to change UI language to see the rest: https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13245 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/13245
chinolex1 6y ago
hi, try joinkeyring.com. We're launching a bundle with a 7 services for $35/mo: Disney +, Showtime, CBS, Philo, Starz, HBOMAX, and Peacock on computer only. Venmo me @chinolex today and I'll give you a months free (I'm the Founder).

Barrin92 6y ago

I really always wondered why people thought this wasn't going to happen, because at the end of the day all the institutions that produced the dynamics of cable television exist on the internet, nothing has changed. It doesn't really matter whether you send information over an ethernet cabel or a satellite dish.

pradn 6y ago

I wonder if we've come to a point where people will watch what's promoted at the top of the streaming services they subscribe to, with the exception of virally popular shows or shows recommended to them by friends and family. A good chunk of TV watching is just watching to pass the time. Whatever's trending on Netflix is good enough, coupled with a few shows you and your family are rotating through. Some exceptional shows do drive subscriptions for a particular service. But I think Game of Thrones and The Mandalorian are the exception. More common is watching Friends reruns or the new comedy that pops up on the front page of your streaming service.

matheusmoreira 6y ago

It's ironic how copyright itself prevents these companies from properly competing with "piracy". They just can't offer a better service no matter how hard they try.

kgwxd 6y ago
I think a good first step would be to stop making exclusivity deals. Is there some good (for them) reason they do that?
- gruez 6y ago
  Same reason why every other industry has exclusivity deals (eg. video game consoles): to attract customers. If you're a TV/streaming network, and you want to attract customers, how else are you going to do it? Good ux can only get you so far.
  - tortarga 6y ago
    Music streaming solved this problem by remembering they were combating piracy not each other. Each music service has all the music and they all pay royalties. TV streaming services have come full circle and are repeating the same cable tv mistakes that caused piracy to flourish in the first place.
    - airstrike 6y ago
      The key difference is the music streaming services aren't necessarily owned by the content producers. I'm assuming Spotify and Apple Music dominate streaming (could be wrong), whereas Hulu/Disney+/etc are all owned by the content producers. Netflix eventually merged into a production company too, which has only made it worse
    - gruez 6y ago
      I knew someone was going to bring up music streaming. Yes, it's indeed true that releases there are (mostly) available across the major platforms. The difference I think, is that music is a loss leader. record/streaming sales is a small drip in the bucket compared to other sources like touring/events and merchandising[1]. Streaming to them is basically another way for them to promote themselves, to get more customers so they can earn the real bucks via the other methods. The same can't be said for tv/movie releases. [1] random source: https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-musicians-make-money-2018-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-musicians-make-money-... > According to a recent Citigroup report, the music industry generated a record $43 billion in 2017, but recording artists saw just 12% of that revenue, or $5.1 billion, and the "bulk" of their revenues came from touring.

tjoff 6y ago

Which by itself is almost more effort than it is worth... Take it further instead, just give me the option to rent a single episode/movie.

anthony_romeo 6y ago

The next step is "discounted" year-long subscriptions as the month-to-month price steadily rises. And suddenly we've returned to the world of annual contracts as the standard. Source: Wild speculation

xur17 6y ago
And.... then piracy.
- droopyEyelids 6y ago
  I don't know if you follow the piracy news much, but the crackdown has only increased in viciousness. Tools like youtube-dl get banned from github, and private torrent servers are taken down, and the data the site has is used to subpoena email providers and ISPs for individuals to sue. I know we all come from the background of imagining information wants to be free, but it's only going to be another 20 years or so until having a general purpose computer in your house will be as suspicious as having a chemistry lab in your basement. The next step I'm expecting is some blurring of the line between civil and criminal penalties for piracy, and for police to seize someone's house because it was used for piracy.
  - novok 6y ago
    Until foreign VPN companies become illegal, all of that is solvable with a $2/month VPN subscription.
    - hombre_fatal 6y ago
      Not in the long term since more and more services do VPN detection which is trivial any time a VPN has static servers. Though even residential proxies (https://luminati.io/ https://luminati.io/) are being detected with greater and greater frequency.
      - novok 6y ago

germinalphrase 6y ago

My experience is that everyone is sharing with everyone. This person share their Netflix. The next their Disney+. A third, their Hulu. End result is that each person subscribed to only one, but ends up with access to many.

jaimex2 6y ago
My experience is everyone is running Kodi with addons because the once centralised anti-piracy solution that was Netflix is very much dead.
- mark2996 6y ago
  I suspect you have a very warped sense of 'everyone' I doubt more than 0.1% of consumers have any idea what Kodi is.
filoleg 6y ago
Yep, currently in this boat. Had a group of ~5 friends since about 4 years ago, where we subscribe to pretty much every streaming service out there and share the accounts within the group. This way we get every single subscription, while paying for the price of just one each (on average). And streaming services realize that a lot of people use it that way, so they have nice individual profile functionality within a single account, so my shows and my recommendations don't get mixed up with those of other people using the account. Not every single streaming service had that feature at the beginning, but by now iirc they all got it.
- jjeaff 6y ago
  Well, I'm pretty sure those multi-account features are meant for multiple members of a single household. I'm sure they know that people are sharing among friends, but I don't think they are trying to encourage that.
  - filoleg 6y ago
    >Well, I'm pretty sure those multi-account features are meant for multiple members of a single household. You are correct, I think it is one of those technically grey areas. However in my scenario, given that the same group of 5 shares pretty much every single service subscription and physically spends a lot of time watching it together, I think, even in the intended spirit of household sharing, it sorta follows. Regardless of that, imo there would be a lot of outrage if streaming services started cracking down on that, and, my guess, streaming services are intentionally not letting that happen.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seldonnn 6y ago

You overestimate the amount of mental energy people are willing to spend to figure out what the “right” streaming service will be for that month.

astrod 6y ago
I usually look through a site like IMDB[1] who regularly updates what new releases are coming out on services. [1]https://www.imdb.com/whats-on-tv/ https://www.imdb.com/whats-on-tv/
dwild 6y ago
I use JustWatch for that, it's amazing to find where to get my content. The biggest issue is to unsubscribe each time on the different service. At one point we will have a middle man that does this for us, we will go full circle.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

One thing that I do is rotate my services. I do two months of Netflix, two months of Disney, two months of Hulu. Those are the ones I do now. Most of my watching is mainly looking for stuff to kill the time and not specific movies or shows so this works for me.

zelly 6y ago

It's called torrents. All the content on all the streaming platforms for an even cheaper price ($0).

lethologica 6y ago
I wish I could buy torrent files direct from the creative forces behind the entertainment I watch. Imagine if a single TV episode torrent file cost, say, $2. A season torrent file could be say $16 for a 10 episode long season and a movie could be $12 or so. (Numbers just plucked out of the air, but you get the idea) Let me give the creative forces the money they deserve for the content they produce, but let me keep the file without being bound to a subscription service where I lose everything the moment I cancel.
- jshen 6y ago
  This is more or less how I buy content through Apple. But, I feel like you meant something else, so what am I missing?
  - Infernal 6y ago
    That if the creator is seeding paid torrents, there is no middle man (Apple) to collect a fee.
    - jshen 6y ago
      Maybe, just maybe, the middleman is adding some value? Otherwise creators would have skipped the middleman a long time ago? Also, how is the money getting to the creator exactly?
      - paulryanrogers 6y ago
        My guess is a middleman like Apple isn't necessarily a problem if the content were DRM free. It's the sword dangling overhead which may invalidate ones license without reimbursement, or limit access arbitrarily that is burdensome. When I downloaded a movie from Netflix I couldn't watch it on vacation because of region locking.

fullshark 6y ago

Nah people will just go with whatever junk is on the service they signed up for in the past 2 years, which is why these guys are so aggressively trying to get market share.

el_dev_hell 6y ago

I suspect that might be the case for some people. I also suspect a large portion of users will migrate back to torrenting (or Popcorn Time).

Slikey 6y ago

And making it more complicated will breed piracy. We are coming full circle.

ulfw 6y ago

Exactly this. It's a transition from the old cable product portfolio over cable to a new internet-"cable" product portfolio over cable/fibre/dsl/etc

rawoke083600 6y ago

Agreed ! In the beginning (golden age ?) I spend way less time on P.B and torrents. Now with more services than ever I'm only have access to two services: a) Netflix - (via gf account) b) Amazon Prime (own account). The last year or two I'm back to doing a lot more torrenting ! We've never had it so good in terms of overall content, yet we have never had it as expensive to access say my "top15 Films/Shows" if they are widely spread across service providers. PS/Sidenote: I do miss channel hopping (click-click oh what is this ?)

tracker1 6y ago
Similar here... though I'm more and more inclined to just torrent what I watch even if I'm paying for the services. For live-tv, I've had lots of issues with more popular feeds. For example, when the fiance watches Big Brother, it's the worst experience, I swear I've had to download almost every episode this season for her to be able to watch... it's been pretty bad. Not to mention trying to remember what is where etc... was so much easier when I had a list of shows, I'd check the torrent site(s) about once a week for new episodes, snag them all to a seedbox and download and watch local over the following week as time permitted. At least with less TV I'm getting more done.

the_arun 6y ago

Similar to how Spotify membership packaged Hulu membership for me, we might see this "bundling" packages among service providers. OR a startup can provide an abstraction layer on top. Eg. 39$ membership with us will get you Netflix & Amazon Prime. For $59 we'll add Hulu & Disney+ on top. etc.,

fiblye 6y ago

Gonna save my money and just put a few bucks towards a VPN. Streaming was a fun ride while it lasted, but I can get higher quality video through torrents and the selection is limitless. Maybe in 20 years these streaming services will collapse and be replaced by something better, and then those services will once again split up.

tracker1 6y ago

I kind of hope that the silo packages via Amazon Video or Hulu become easier and/or more popular to integrate. I'm a bit disheartened at the pricing model that has one likely to only subscribe or unsubscribe in waves. Also, being able to conveniently search across different services is a huge issue... a unifying experience is needed.

deleted 6y ago

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lm28469 6y ago

> The golden age of streaming has come to an end. It's been a while, we went full circle. Look at youtube, they display more ads than the TV channels I was watching 10 years ago. The content is spread over more and more services, so you end up paying for a few of them, exactly like we used to do for TV channels, it's ridiculous.

dwild 6y ago

> Those service will become the new cable companie At least we can still easily cancel and subscribe from each one. It's still a gains I guess!