4 ms·

Netflix lost 9% of the market share as competition increases

34 points by elorant 6y ago

2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
And with every single big media corporation now demanding a piece of the streaming cake by turning more productions into exclusive content (and thus turning online streaming into cable again), people will slowly turn back to piracy.
- wincy 6y ago
  PLEX with a gigabit connection is the ultimate streaming service
- tlholaday 6y ago
  People who can’t be arsed to rotate their subscriptions will steal.
  - tablespoon 6y ago
    > People who can’t be arsed to rotate their subscriptions will steal. So most people? About the last thing I want to spend my time doing is figuring out how to rotate my streaming subscriptions so I can watch what I want to watch without paying $100 in subscriptions per month.
- carlhjerpe 6y ago
  I doubt the majority of people will turn to piracy as in downloading torrents, account sharing and pay per use movies might increase instead? Netflix and the likes are too convenient with casting/airplay and rememberong what you've seen. Stremio brings piracy closer to netflix feeling, but it happens that content doesn't match packs, not enough seeds and subtitles might require manual offsets, still quite darn good though.
  - ikerdanzel 6y ago
    All the people I know now has significantly increase pirated content within this last 6mths. A few decide to ignore Disney+ as majority of its content are easily piratable. Netflix has achieve popularity so they have advantage there. Amazon bundled with their delivery, advantage also. The rest, they are piratable without much issue. VPN is near bullet proof of any lawyering.
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > people will slowly turn back to piracy. Wait, when did the people who turned to piracy in the first place turn away so that they could “slowly turn back”? I think its more “the pirate subculture will slowly update its rationalizations”.
  - colordrops 6y ago
    No. People get older, get more income, and prefer the convenience of a service to piracy and eventually stop doing it. But with a proliferation of services now, many are not willing to subscribe to them all, and when their child wants to watch that one movie that all their classmates have seen, and is on the service they don't subscribe to, they go back to firing up the old VPN and torrent client they haven't touched in years. Speaking from experience here. And it's not an isolated experience.
    - eloff 6y ago
      My experience is the same. Used to pirate music, then spotify was good enough not to bother anymore. Used to pirate movies and TV, now I only do it occasionally for titles I want to watch, but aren't being streamed on any service I'm subscribed to. I'm still pissed at Disney for canceling Gina Carano, so I might pirate the next season of the mandalorian if I still care by then.
    - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
      This, the narrative of the evil people pirating stuff because they just don't want to pay for anything is for the most part a myth planted by corporations. Valve realized this [1] when it came to games, Apple and Spotify realized this when it came to music. And there was the study financed by the EU [2] that came to the conclusion that for games, books and music there is "no robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online piracy." So I too subscribe to the evidence and personal experience that the choice between piracy and purchase is a choice of convenience and availability. There are many cases in which the pirates just offer better service and distribution. [1]: https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe... [2]: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_s...
- cloverich 6y ago
  I doubt it because previously, you did not have easy access to shows on demand. You could purchase from a small set of large, expensive packages which contained 80% things you probably did not want to watch, and even then very little of it was on demand. Cable is upwards of $50-100 or more, whereas you can get Disney, Netflix, and HBO for less than that.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
soldehierro 6y ago
Ultimately, the result of this fragmentation in streaming will only be that more people turn to piracy. Yet again the media industry shooting themselves in the foot. The solution is a spotify for films and tv, not an ever-expanding myriad of niche streaming services.
- iscrewyou 6y ago
  Speaking of Spotify, on one hand, I think publishers will drag it down while raising royalties as they see Spotify making profits. Essentially choking Spotify’s profit. On the other hand, I don’t see them doing that so much that the only player left in the market is Apple who then will get to call the shots again like it did before streaming. So, I think Spotify will survive, but barely. And that’s what the networks should’ve done to Netflix if they don’t want piracy in the future. Except Netflix doesn’t have to have everything in its catalog. It can certainly say no to certain media if the terms are unfair. Maybe the studios saw that and think there is no other option. Just thinking out loud at this point.
  - soldehierro 6y ago
    Spotify shouldn't be compared to Netflix, no, but the core product is the same: convience. If I pirate, I have access to a larger catalog than any streaming service, but I have to slog through ad infested sites, constantly remember where I am in the shows I am watching, and face difficulties with localizations or subtitles, and wait for things to download on shady sites. A netflix subscription is very much worth the convience of not having to pirate - but only if they have a vast catalog. No matter what Netflix thinks, though, Netflix originals aren't enough for most users. Eventually piracy will become the more convient option for enough users.
- jdfellow 6y ago
  Comparing the way Hollywood is going as compared to Spotify, imagine if each of the big three music companies (Universal, Warner, and Sony) had their own streaming services. Unline movies though, nobody usually cares what label their favorite band is on, let alone which supergiant owns that label so you'd never be able to find which streaming service each artist is on.
ZephyrBlu 6y ago
Disney+ seems like a force to be reckoned with. I'm not really sure how Netflix can compete with the IP that Disney has.
- willis936 6y ago
  In fairness Disney has never taken a risk. Netflix and HBO are happy to give creative license and see what sticks. A lot of netflix originals are awful, but some are both good and new: something disney will never deliver.
  - unobatbayar 6y ago
    That's true with mostly every big corporations and tech giants. Their "innovation" is mostly 2-3 year research on new ideas and risks of smaller companies, startups and kickstarter projects.
  - ZephyrBlu 6y ago
    I don't think they need to though. Playing safe with their popular IPs seems like a fine strategy.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - willis936 6y ago
      A fine strategy, but not dominant. Many people get tired of the same thing after a few decades. The question was “how to compete with disney”. The answer is “bother to make something new”.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- carlhjerpe 6y ago
  Disney content is still mostly movies right? Netflix is producing many series because it keeps people hooked, not many movies. But yes, Disney+ is definitely a strong contender, specially with Marvel and Lucasfilms in their possession.
vmception 6y ago
Of half of that it was probably people sharing accounts (and cost) that won't bother anymore.
MSM 6y ago
The fact that the metric here is "Market Share" tells me that this is most likely a big nothing burger. Market Share makes sense if you're talking about retail, or browsers.. but a static recurring payment? Why would Netflix care if a customer decides to also pick up another streaming service, effectively cutting their market share in half, while they keep full revenue. There's a dozen+ streaming services out there that people have picked up, but in my personal experience, very few, if any, people I know have cancelled Netflix- they're just spending more and more money on streaming as time goes on.
- cgrubb 6y ago
  Logged in to say this. Market share is a confusing stat when customers don't exclusively use one service. Netflix is still adding subscriptions at a good rate. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/netflix-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/netflix-statistics/
  - tartoran 6y ago
    But Netflix is also losing subs. Their catalog is quite dismal beside a few blockbusters and they know it. Hope this trend reverses and they come on top
- khc 6y ago
  people's time is not unlimited. If a customer uses multiple services, it increases the chance that they may drop netflix. I know people who have kids and signed up for disney+, and then a few months later dropped netflix because they don't have time for both.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    The really annoying thing is that the content is being split up between “channels” again. It was probably inevitable, but it’s annoying that I have to sign up for Disney’s service to see movies from the studios Disney has acquired.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
dghlsakjg 6y ago
> According to a study by the consultancy company Ampere Analysis published today by The Wrap, Netflix market share went from 29% at the beginning of last year to 20% now. A study by a company I've never heard of published in a publication I've never heard of says that Netflix lost 'market share'. This information is so vague as to be useless. How are they measuring market share? How do they count users like me who are technically subscribed to at least 3 of the services they cite (I'm subscribed to Netflix, Prime, and AppleTV. The latter two I got for free from buying other services, and almost never use.) Do hours watched count? or money spent (my amazon subscription is half the price of my netflix one and I only use it for prime shipping, and my apple one was free because I bought a phone)?
ausbah 6y ago
it feels like we reinvented cable without the middlemen
- nkozyra 6y ago
  Well let's be honest: what we all clamored for years to get was a la carte. We got it but it's more expensive than we envisioned it.
  - dehrmann 6y ago
    We did, but it makes more sense when you have "channels." Once the channels are gone, aside from sports, it's not so clear because there aren't necessarily sane content bundles, and no one wants to pay $3 for an episode of 30 Rock (or $1 for Two and a Half Men). It's interesting to compare it to music streaming because music has more replay value, so selling tracks could work there, but it's a huge barrier for discovery. It'd be an even bigger barrier for 20-60 minutes of TV.
- livre 6y ago
  I wonder how long until the "basic subscription" starts including ads and we'll have to pay for a more advanced one to get rid of them. I hope I'm wrong and that never happens.
  - meepmorp 6y ago
    It's called Hulu.
W-Stool 6y ago
Geeze, if only there was a way to pay one amount each month and get all these services and content from one aggregator who also provides the inbound pipe. Might this be called - I dunno - "Pipe TV"? Naw, how about "Cable TV"? That might fly. These content/streaming companies are just making things much worse over the cable situation and will certainly force a certain number of people into piracy, and a certain number will just quit watching, and a certain number of people will just keep on building their own Plex server, even if they have to buy the DVDs at retail (which is certainly not a bad thing). The problem is some of the new content remains streaming only, not available at retail, so back to piracy you go. Congratulations to all the decision makers in this industry. Edit: an example of what I'm talking about: I'm a USA resident and a big fan of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For years I was able to buy a "pass" to stream all of practice, qualifying, and the race, from the FIA (who runs the race). A year or to ago - nope, no more, you have to sign up with "Motor Trend TV" or something like that, buy a subscription, and stream it from there. Not going to happen, I don't need another monthly subscription service that may make it difficult to cancel. I can literally NOT give the FIA my money to stream their race. So what do I do? You know ...
- ericmay 6y ago
  > These content/streaming companies are just making things much worse over the cable situation Yes kind of. Netflix was like “oh here is that great version. You just pay a fee then get content” and then everyone else was like “oh we want to make money doing that”. And here we are. Cable is bad. Streaming services are a shitty evolution of it. I guess at least they’re online and don’t require much setup. I don’t find any of these services worth paying for anymore.
- donw 6y ago
  Not only that, but the current streaming services have done a great job of killing the quality of their content. The Expanse under Sci-Fi was stunning. Under Amazon, it's a meh at best. I was incredibly excited for Season Four, watched it, and came away wondering if Amazon had replaced everybody but the actors with a mixture of part-time interns and bags of slightly off-date produce. Haven't bothered with Season Five. Just don't care. Same for mainstream TV. On the other hand, I watched a short (Overlord) set in the SCP universe done by an independent filmmaker, and loved it. They didn't try and explain things to me. Just straight into the story. The characters behaved about as realistically as I would expect, and showed that the scriptwriter actually did some research. I would pay for full-length movies with this level of storytelling and production value. In short: I don't need to pirate anything, because there's nothing I feel is worth my time to watch.
davmar 6y ago
Ok, I want to give my highest recommendation to this non-netflix show: https://www.viki.com/tv/22943c-nirvana-in-fire https://www.viki.com/tv/22943c-nirvana-in-fire It's one of the best shows I've ever seen. From the plot, the acting, the music, the visuals, it's exceptional. Previously I used to watch only netflix & hbo, but the world outside of western entertainment is rich (as one would expect), but I was only familiar with a limited set of choices. This is my invitation to you to expand beyond netflix, hbo, amazon, disney, apple, etc.
- warent 6y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation. Most of the content on Netflix that I've been seeing lately is pretty much shovelware. After I finished all the good Bollywood films (Aamir Khan!) I've been looking for more good foreign films.
  - davmar 6y ago
    You're quite welcome! Do you have any Bollywood films to recommend? I'll google Aamir Khan in the meantime.
- qwertox 6y ago
  Thank you for this recommendation. But I am a bit confused: is this a legal website? It somehow gives the impression of being one of those illegal streaming sites, trying to imitate Amazon Prime, but then again it claims to be part of "Rakuten Group", which, AFAIK is a well known Japanese company. Am I safe if I just stream this?
  - davmar 6y ago
    Yeah it's a legal site from Rakutan. They have an app and everything. Not that having an app always means it's legit, but maybe it's some kind of signal? Anyway I subscribe to it. Don't know what you mean by "just stream it", but if you do decide to go elsewhere, I can't vouch for the quality of subtitles. The translations on the viki site are good from what I've been told. As compared to some other dramas that are on netflix (The Untamed, for example), which have comparatively poor translations.
preommr 6y ago
The writing on the wall has been there for a while. It's not just about making more money. These companies have executives that need to show that they're creating a streaming service to increase their shareholder value. Hell, even if the service fails and they lose money, the executives don't care - that's what golden parachutes are for. Now that netflix has shown the model works, companies aren't going to be happy sitting back even if they would make more money just selling streaming rights to their shows instead of creating their own service. It's all about maybe, maybe they can pull it off and make more money. That alone is enough to cause this fragmentation to be inevitable.
cletus 6y ago
I moved to the US in 2010, signed up for Netflix soon thereafter (it didn’t exist in Australia at that time) and have been a customer ever since. Forget movies: the big value proposition for me has always been TV. At that time it was $8/month. We’ve had steady price increases (currently $14/month for HD) and less of that content as all the “me too” services have popped up. I think Netflix was right that they had to produce their own content. They’ve certainly had some successes but there has been a lot of (expensive) mediocrity and sameyness to some degree. I think the biggest lesson is you can’t simply throw money at content production, which they clearly have. At $8/month I’d probably subscribe forever but I think I’m at most 1 price hike away from canceling. I just don’t think they’ve doubled their value proposition. Like they’re in HBO territory now and HBO has a much bigger moat of high quality original content (IMHO). Netflix may be doomed (for me) to join a sub rotations with the likes of Hulu and HBO. Prime Video may well become my only permanent fixture as Amazon Prime is just too useful to me.
TeeMassive 6y ago
The shows that sexualize children (it's not only Cuties) didn't help either.
heavymark 6y ago
As an Apple TV user while I use to live and breathe Netflix with all the other services it’s a bit overwhelming but I use the Apple TV app as a hub to access them all in one interface except Netflix blocks apple from integrating with that so over time I’ve watched less and less because it’s just not convenient. I understand Netflix doesny want to hand over that control to apple and others but think not integrating is going to back fire since their content is good but not good enough to be a one stop shop anymore.

34 points by elorant 6y ago

And with every single big media corporation now demanding a piece of the streaming cake by turning more productions into exclusive content (and thus turning online streaming into cable again), people will slowly turn back to piracy.

wincy 6y ago
PLEX with a gigabit connection is the ultimate streaming service
tlholaday 6y ago
People who can’t be arsed to rotate their subscriptions will steal.
- tablespoon 6y ago
  > People who can’t be arsed to rotate their subscriptions will steal. So most people? About the last thing I want to spend my time doing is figuring out how to rotate my streaming subscriptions so I can watch what I want to watch without paying $100 in subscriptions per month.
carlhjerpe 6y ago
I doubt the majority of people will turn to piracy as in downloading torrents, account sharing and pay per use movies might increase instead? Netflix and the likes are too convenient with casting/airplay and rememberong what you've seen. Stremio brings piracy closer to netflix feeling, but it happens that content doesn't match packs, not enough seeds and subtitles might require manual offsets, still quite darn good though.
- ikerdanzel 6y ago
  All the people I know now has significantly increase pirated content within this last 6mths. A few decide to ignore Disney+ as majority of its content are easily piratable. Netflix has achieve popularity so they have advantage there. Amazon bundled with their delivery, advantage also. The rest, they are piratable without much issue. VPN is near bullet proof of any lawyering.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> people will slowly turn back to piracy. Wait, when did the people who turned to piracy in the first place turn away so that they could “slowly turn back”? I think its more “the pirate subculture will slowly update its rationalizations”.
- colordrops 6y ago
  No. People get older, get more income, and prefer the convenience of a service to piracy and eventually stop doing it. But with a proliferation of services now, many are not willing to subscribe to them all, and when their child wants to watch that one movie that all their classmates have seen, and is on the service they don't subscribe to, they go back to firing up the old VPN and torrent client they haven't touched in years. Speaking from experience here. And it's not an isolated experience.
  - eloff 6y ago
    My experience is the same. Used to pirate music, then spotify was good enough not to bother anymore. Used to pirate movies and TV, now I only do it occasionally for titles I want to watch, but aren't being streamed on any service I'm subscribed to. I'm still pissed at Disney for canceling Gina Carano, so I might pirate the next season of the mandalorian if I still care by then.
  - 2pEXgD0fZ5cF 6y ago
    This, the narrative of the evil people pirating stuff because they just don't want to pay for anything is for the most part a myth planted by corporations. Valve realized this [1] when it came to games, Apple and Spotify realized this when it came to music. And there was the study financed by the EU [2] that came to the conclusion that for games, books and music there is "no robust statistical evidence of displacement of sales by online piracy." So I too subscribe to the evidence and personal experience that the choice between piracy and purchase is a choice of convenience and availability. There are many cases in which the pirates just offer better service and distribution. [1]: https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe-Newell-Says-Piracy-Is-a-Service-Problem https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/114391-Valves-Gabe... [2]: https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_study.pdf https://cdn.netzpolitik.org/wp-upload/2017/09/displacement_s...
cloverich 6y ago
I doubt it because previously, you did not have easy access to shows on demand. You could purchase from a small set of large, expensive packages which contained 80% things you probably did not want to watch, and even then very little of it was on demand. Cable is upwards of $50-100 or more, whereas you can get Disney, Netflix, and HBO for less than that.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

soldehierro 6y ago

Ultimately, the result of this fragmentation in streaming will only be that more people turn to piracy. Yet again the media industry shooting themselves in the foot. The solution is a spotify for films and tv, not an ever-expanding myriad of niche streaming services.

iscrewyou 6y ago
Speaking of Spotify, on one hand, I think publishers will drag it down while raising royalties as they see Spotify making profits. Essentially choking Spotify’s profit. On the other hand, I don’t see them doing that so much that the only player left in the market is Apple who then will get to call the shots again like it did before streaming. So, I think Spotify will survive, but barely. And that’s what the networks should’ve done to Netflix if they don’t want piracy in the future. Except Netflix doesn’t have to have everything in its catalog. It can certainly say no to certain media if the terms are unfair. Maybe the studios saw that and think there is no other option. Just thinking out loud at this point.
- soldehierro 6y ago
  Spotify shouldn't be compared to Netflix, no, but the core product is the same: convience. If I pirate, I have access to a larger catalog than any streaming service, but I have to slog through ad infested sites, constantly remember where I am in the shows I am watching, and face difficulties with localizations or subtitles, and wait for things to download on shady sites. A netflix subscription is very much worth the convience of not having to pirate - but only if they have a vast catalog. No matter what Netflix thinks, though, Netflix originals aren't enough for most users. Eventually piracy will become the more convient option for enough users.
jdfellow 6y ago
Comparing the way Hollywood is going as compared to Spotify, imagine if each of the big three music companies (Universal, Warner, and Sony) had their own streaming services. Unline movies though, nobody usually cares what label their favorite band is on, let alone which supergiant owns that label so you'd never be able to find which streaming service each artist is on.

ZephyrBlu 6y ago

Disney+ seems like a force to be reckoned with. I'm not really sure how Netflix can compete with the IP that Disney has.

willis936 6y ago
In fairness Disney has never taken a risk. Netflix and HBO are happy to give creative license and see what sticks. A lot of netflix originals are awful, but some are both good and new: something disney will never deliver.
- unobatbayar 6y ago
  That's true with mostly every big corporations and tech giants. Their "innovation" is mostly 2-3 year research on new ideas and risks of smaller companies, startups and kickstarter projects.
- ZephyrBlu 6y ago
  I don't think they need to though. Playing safe with their popular IPs seems like a fine strategy.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - willis936 6y ago
    A fine strategy, but not dominant. Many people get tired of the same thing after a few decades. The question was “how to compete with disney”. The answer is “bother to make something new”.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
carlhjerpe 6y ago
Disney content is still mostly movies right? Netflix is producing many series because it keeps people hooked, not many movies. But yes, Disney+ is definitely a strong contender, specially with Marvel and Lucasfilms in their possession.

vmception 6y ago

Of half of that it was probably people sharing accounts (and cost) that won't bother anymore.

MSM 6y ago

The fact that the metric here is "Market Share" tells me that this is most likely a big nothing burger. Market Share makes sense if you're talking about retail, or browsers.. but a static recurring payment? Why would Netflix care if a customer decides to also pick up another streaming service, effectively cutting their market share in half, while they keep full revenue. There's a dozen+ streaming services out there that people have picked up, but in my personal experience, very few, if any, people I know have cancelled Netflix- they're just spending more and more money on streaming as time goes on.

cgrubb 6y ago
Logged in to say this. Market share is a confusing stat when customers don't exclusively use one service. Netflix is still adding subscriptions at a good rate. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/netflix-statistics/ https://www.businessofapps.com/data/netflix-statistics/
- tartoran 6y ago
  But Netflix is also losing subs. Their catalog is quite dismal beside a few blockbusters and they know it. Hope this trend reverses and they come on top
khc 6y ago
people's time is not unlimited. If a customer uses multiple services, it increases the chance that they may drop netflix. I know people who have kids and signed up for disney+, and then a few months later dropped netflix because they don't have time for both.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  The really annoying thing is that the content is being split up between “channels” again. It was probably inevitable, but it’s annoying that I have to sign up for Disney’s service to see movies from the studios Disney has acquired.
BurningFrog 6y ago

dghlsakjg 6y ago

> According to a study by the consultancy company Ampere Analysis published today by The Wrap, Netflix market share went from 29% at the beginning of last year to 20% now. A study by a company I've never heard of published in a publication I've never heard of says that Netflix lost 'market share'. This information is so vague as to be useless. How are they measuring market share? How do they count users like me who are technically subscribed to at least 3 of the services they cite (I'm subscribed to Netflix, Prime, and AppleTV. The latter two I got for free from buying other services, and almost never use.) Do hours watched count? or money spent (my amazon subscription is half the price of my netflix one and I only use it for prime shipping, and my apple one was free because I bought a phone)?

ausbah 6y ago

it feels like we reinvented cable without the middlemen

nkozyra 6y ago
Well let's be honest: what we all clamored for years to get was a la carte. We got it but it's more expensive than we envisioned it.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  We did, but it makes more sense when you have "channels." Once the channels are gone, aside from sports, it's not so clear because there aren't necessarily sane content bundles, and no one wants to pay $3 for an episode of 30 Rock (or $1 for Two and a Half Men). It's interesting to compare it to music streaming because music has more replay value, so selling tracks could work there, but it's a huge barrier for discovery. It'd be an even bigger barrier for 20-60 minutes of TV.
livre 6y ago
I wonder how long until the "basic subscription" starts including ads and we'll have to pay for a more advanced one to get rid of them. I hope I'm wrong and that never happens.
- meepmorp 6y ago
  It's called Hulu.

W-Stool 6y ago

Geeze, if only there was a way to pay one amount each month and get all these services and content from one aggregator who also provides the inbound pipe. Might this be called - I dunno - "Pipe TV"? Naw, how about "Cable TV"? That might fly. These content/streaming companies are just making things much worse over the cable situation and will certainly force a certain number of people into piracy, and a certain number will just quit watching, and a certain number of people will just keep on building their own Plex server, even if they have to buy the DVDs at retail (which is certainly not a bad thing). The problem is some of the new content remains streaming only, not available at retail, so back to piracy you go. Congratulations to all the decision makers in this industry. Edit: an example of what I'm talking about: I'm a USA resident and a big fan of the 24 Hours of Le Mans. For years I was able to buy a "pass" to stream all of practice, qualifying, and the race, from the FIA (who runs the race). A year or to ago - nope, no more, you have to sign up with "Motor Trend TV" or something like that, buy a subscription, and stream it from there. Not going to happen, I don't need another monthly subscription service that may make it difficult to cancel. I can literally NOT give the FIA my money to stream their race. So what do I do? You know ...

ericmay 6y ago
> These content/streaming companies are just making things much worse over the cable situation Yes kind of. Netflix was like “oh here is that great version. You just pay a fee then get content” and then everyone else was like “oh we want to make money doing that”. And here we are. Cable is bad. Streaming services are a shitty evolution of it. I guess at least they’re online and don’t require much setup. I don’t find any of these services worth paying for anymore.
donw 6y ago
Not only that, but the current streaming services have done a great job of killing the quality of their content. The Expanse under Sci-Fi was stunning. Under Amazon, it's a meh at best. I was incredibly excited for Season Four, watched it, and came away wondering if Amazon had replaced everybody but the actors with a mixture of part-time interns and bags of slightly off-date produce. Haven't bothered with Season Five. Just don't care. Same for mainstream TV. On the other hand, I watched a short (Overlord) set in the SCP universe done by an independent filmmaker, and loved it. They didn't try and explain things to me. Just straight into the story. The characters behaved about as realistically as I would expect, and showed that the scriptwriter actually did some research. I would pay for full-length movies with this level of storytelling and production value. In short: I don't need to pirate anything, because there's nothing I feel is worth my time to watch.

davmar 6y ago

Ok, I want to give my highest recommendation to this non-netflix show: https://www.viki.com/tv/22943c-nirvana-in-fire https://www.viki.com/tv/22943c-nirvana-in-fire It's one of the best shows I've ever seen. From the plot, the acting, the music, the visuals, it's exceptional. Previously I used to watch only netflix & hbo, but the world outside of western entertainment is rich (as one would expect), but I was only familiar with a limited set of choices. This is my invitation to you to expand beyond netflix, hbo, amazon, disney, apple, etc.

warent 6y ago
Thanks for the recommendation. Most of the content on Netflix that I've been seeing lately is pretty much shovelware. After I finished all the good Bollywood films (Aamir Khan!) I've been looking for more good foreign films.
- davmar 6y ago
  You're quite welcome! Do you have any Bollywood films to recommend? I'll google Aamir Khan in the meantime.
qwertox 6y ago
Thank you for this recommendation. But I am a bit confused: is this a legal website? It somehow gives the impression of being one of those illegal streaming sites, trying to imitate Amazon Prime, but then again it claims to be part of "Rakuten Group", which, AFAIK is a well known Japanese company. Am I safe if I just stream this?
- davmar 6y ago
  Yeah it's a legal site from Rakutan. They have an app and everything. Not that having an app always means it's legit, but maybe it's some kind of signal? Anyway I subscribe to it. Don't know what you mean by "just stream it", but if you do decide to go elsewhere, I can't vouch for the quality of subtitles. The translations on the viki site are good from what I've been told. As compared to some other dramas that are on netflix (The Untamed, for example), which have comparatively poor translations.

preommr 6y ago

The writing on the wall has been there for a while. It's not just about making more money. These companies have executives that need to show that they're creating a streaming service to increase their shareholder value. Hell, even if the service fails and they lose money, the executives don't care - that's what golden parachutes are for. Now that netflix has shown the model works, companies aren't going to be happy sitting back even if they would make more money just selling streaming rights to their shows instead of creating their own service. It's all about maybe, maybe they can pull it off and make more money. That alone is enough to cause this fragmentation to be inevitable.

cletus 6y ago

I moved to the US in 2010, signed up for Netflix soon thereafter (it didn’t exist in Australia at that time) and have been a customer ever since. Forget movies: the big value proposition for me has always been TV. At that time it was $8/month. We’ve had steady price increases (currently $14/month for HD) and less of that content as all the “me too” services have popped up. I think Netflix was right that they had to produce their own content. They’ve certainly had some successes but there has been a lot of (expensive) mediocrity and sameyness to some degree. I think the biggest lesson is you can’t simply throw money at content production, which they clearly have. At $8/month I’d probably subscribe forever but I think I’m at most 1 price hike away from canceling. I just don’t think they’ve doubled their value proposition. Like they’re in HBO territory now and HBO has a much bigger moat of high quality original content (IMHO). Netflix may be doomed (for me) to join a sub rotations with the likes of Hulu and HBO. Prime Video may well become my only permanent fixture as Amazon Prime is just too useful to me.

TeeMassive 6y ago

The shows that sexualize children (it's not only Cuties) didn't help either.

heavymark 6y ago

As an Apple TV user while I use to live and breathe Netflix with all the other services it’s a bit overwhelming but I use the Apple TV app as a hub to access them all in one interface except Netflix blocks apple from integrating with that so over time I’ve watched less and less because it’s just not convenient. I understand Netflix doesny want to hand over that control to apple and others but think not integrating is going to back fire since their content is good but not good enough to be a one stop shop anymore.