26 ms·

Netflix loses subscribers for the first time in 10+ years

253 points by gordon_freeman 4y ago

gordon_freeman 4y ago
Here are the key numbers: EPS: $3.53 vs $2.89 expected. Revenue: $7.78 billion vs $7.93 billion expected. Global paid net subscriber additions: A loss of 200,000 compared with 2.73 million adds expected. Stock down 23% after-market
- belter 4y ago
  Stock is down 42% since 3 Jan 2022
  - gordon_freeman 4y ago
    I wonder if Bill Ackman is having second thoughts about investing in Netflix during this time of its losing subscribers and slowing growth.
    - belter 4y ago
      Warren Buffet is considered the guru of investment, and was loosing money on IBM for a decade until he exited :-)
    - drexlspivey 4y ago
      He is probably going to buy more, Netflix is in deep value territory at $260 per share
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Funding secured! Take it private. ;)
- riffraff 4y ago
  how is earning per share higher than expected while revenue is lower than expected? Did they do an unplanned buy back?
  - hammock 4y ago
    Earnings is net income, not revenue
    - gordon_freeman 4y ago
      So raising prices of their subs offering did the trick in extracting more earnings out of declining revenue then?
      - bombcar 4y ago
        Or the content costs dropped more than revenue did.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    They spent less than expected
reducesuffering 4y ago
18.3 P/E ratio (~6% yearly real profits as opposed to -8% real in a bank account) going forward by today's earnings. High morale unparalleled technical talent in the market. Founder-led. COGS (cost of goods sold) approaches nothing as content library accumulates. No brainer buy.
- deleted 4y ago
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- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Why subtract inflation from cash but not earnings? You have to subtract from both. 20 PE in 8% inflation environment implies -3% return, ignoring growth. However people tend to refer to the 10y breakeven rate for forward inflation expectations as CPI is backwards looking. Forward long term inflation expectations are around 3% atm, per the bond market. And the reason -3% is preferable sometimes, is because you would have lost 70% buying NFLX a few months ago. Overvalued companies aren't a very good inflation hedge when discount rates increase dramatically, despite the common narrative
  - reducesuffering 4y ago
    Say a co. is $1b market cap and earned $50m last year. 20 P/E, but 8% inflation means that $50m is now worth last years $46m real. So the company has an extra 4.6% value in the bank but also, because inflation they’re earning $54m next year, the same real value. So by a 20 P/E, they’re worth $1.08b now because inflation ate away the dollar. So you’ve gained 8% nominal, 0% real, but also 4.6% real. Meanwhile $1b in the bank is still $1b but now worth $920m, so -8% real. That’s why you subtract inflation from cash but stock assets are mostly inflation resistant. People can tend to do whatever they want, it doesn’t make it correct. Last year, the 10y was like 1.2% while inflation turned out to be 8.5%. Clearly the 10y is not a good reliable indicator of inflation. Ya -3% can be preferable to a stock going down 70%. But that’s not the reason to own stock assets. You could of also owned Netflix from 2019 to 2021 and been up 250%. What matters is the true value of future expected earnings of the company, compared to what the value is now. By my estimation, Netflix is trading well below those future earnings in this inflationary environment, even with hefty interest rate hikes that bring inflation down, simultaneously shrinking stock premiums from both sides. I wouldn’t be surprised if Berkshire bought in at this level.
twblalock 4y ago
When they raised prices a few months ago, I saw it on the news and that reminded me that I was paying for a Netflix subscription I wasn't using. So I cancelled it. I bet a lot of other people did the same thing.
deleted 4y ago
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belter 4y ago
The main problem of Netflix, more than competition, is quality of content. They need to think like a Hollywood studio, and less like a Video Supermarket. You need to be a Disney or PBS , Universal or MGM, and the subscribers will pay for high quality content. The only notable Netflix content seems to be the one purchased externally. Internally developed content, tends to follow a common amorphous pattern, that becomes very predictable as it gets extended into multiple episodes of the same script. They need charismatic movies and set free artists with risky content. Not 20 episodes of Ozark.
- gordon_freeman 4y ago
  Ozark is good, I love that show. But I do agree, in general, that the quality of their 95% of the content is crap and it is far below the level of Disney+ and even HBO.
- dannykwells 4y ago
  This is so true. We have Disney+, HBO, Apple, Netflix, and Hulu. Of those, the very clear ordering in terms of taste and vision is: Disney+, Apple, HBO >>>> HBO, Hulu. Apple is the most amazing one to me - they came from nowhere, and are bringing original content like CODA or Severance after only a few years. Maybe it's because Apple - the largest (tech) company on Earth still has at its core the idea of beautiful things designed by humans, and Netflix never has.
  - brimble 4y ago
    Apple has been good at quality, but the quantity's still really low. I keep meaning to cancel because I go months without watching anything on it. Unfortunately for them, it'd be an excellent one to start subbing just one month a year.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      While it has less quantity, Apple TV+ is also much cheaper at $5 per month.
gregoryl 4y ago
They raised prices and have considerably less content in a market with more and more competition. No surprises!
deleted 4y ago
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revlolz 4y ago
I canceled after the price hike sharing charge wombo combo. Im pissing in the wind, but at some point you just have to go.
bluWolf 4y ago
Good.
rvz 4y ago
I don't understand why this company is even part of "FAANG" in the first place as you can see it is nothing more than a side project of the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google, Disney etc. This company has been long heralded for its engineering, contraptions and its overall technology, but when it comes to competition, subscribers, pricing increases and its content it is not good enough and with the increase of prices on consumers everywhere, Netflix is one of the first unnecessary things that they will cancel. That is even before I even mentioned the competitors like Apple, Amazon, Disney, etc, eating their lunch as a side project.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  I think it's because they're said to pay a heck of a lot of money to engineers. Perhaps they also have similar interviews. But the acronym seems to be employment related more than what the company actually does.
- Traster 4y ago
  Well, there’s a simple reason- FAANG was an acronym to describe a group of companies’ stock market performance not their underlying value. Of course it’s a ridiculous grouping - Facebook and Google are ad tech companies, Amazon is a logistics company, Apple is a hardware company and Netflix is a Hollywood studio .
  - commandlinefan 4y ago
    That and, if you took out the N, a lot of people would be uncomfortable saying it...
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Especially since the original was just FANG - i suspect this has way more to do with it than Netflix particularly.
  - rvz 4y ago
    > Netflix is a Hollywood studio. A side project of Apple, Google, Amazon and Disney. Netflix is proving to be suffocated by them and they are struggling. It's stock performance is quite woeful and has crashed 58% from its high since it was found to be inflated with hype during the 2020 lockdown gains. A crash like that in its price is due to the hype and speculation around its slowing growth and opportunity to find any remaining lucky pumps in the stock price. Now it's found to be in survival mode torn apart by its competitors and customers cancelling their subscriptions. It's not the end of the world when they cancel subscriptions with their competitors, but for Netflix, it is more than the end of the world. In fact it is the end of the universe and movie streaming subscriptions is their whole universe. Microsoft is more than worthy of this 'group' rather than struggling 'Netflix'.
smm11 4y ago
We got Netflix long ago to see movies we never caught in theaters. Now, it's nearly entirely Netflix productions, and we're not into that. So long.
li2uR3ce 4y ago
They lost 700,000 from Russia gained 500,000 elsewhere net -200,000. I don't know how much they normally gain but I suspect a lot are jumping to conclusions from the headline. Loosing Russia wasn't really a consumer choice type of thing. I do wish they'd pick up a few more good Sci-Fi shows and then cancel them to confirm my personal grudge. It's so hard to waste my time on today's Sci-Fi...get off my lawn, etc, etc.
- gordon_freeman 4y ago
  Let's ignore their Russian subscribers loss for the time being. Analysts were expecting them to add 2.7m and they added 500K elsewhere (taking the number from your comment) so they are still way off and it proves that their growth is slowing at a rapid pace because of increasing competition from Apple, Amazon, Disney and HBO.
  - altdataseller 4y ago
    How much more growth can Netflix really muster? They really have penetrated most regions including APAC. Adding 500k is a major accomplishment when viewed thru that lens.
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      > Netflix previously told shareholders it expected to add 2.5 million net subscribers during the first quarter. It wasn't just the analysts. Netflix itself missed big in their forecast.
      - EnKopVand 4y ago
        I’m curious as to when the forecast is from. We missed our expected q1 target by quite a margin as well because the market, and I mean any market, has been hit by the war and the inflation.
        rchaud 4y ago
torstenvl 4y ago
There's a simple way Netflix can stop the bleeding. It isn't that difficult and doesn't involve any technical innovation whatsoever. Just stop being assholes. They made record profits during the COVID era, seeing huge subscriber increases during lockdown and work-from-home. So they increased prices. And nickel-and-dimed customers. And got rid of the best parts of their catalog. And threw a fit about sharing passwords. Geez. Hey I'm stuck several states away from my family for two years but God forbid we try to connect by sharing our movie and TV watch lists. Meemaw can't watch Peppa Pig with her grandson in person, so we'd better watch out for her wanting to check out his Netflix Kids list and try to connect with what's interesting him. Netflix used to be great. Now they're just jerks with mediocre content that charge 3-4x what Discovery does.
- zethus 4y ago
  My best guess is that the password-sharing crackdown is a response to slowed subscriber growth in an attempt to keep that growth at some astronomically high target. "Got rid of the best parts of their catalog" is definitely a subjective take. I'm going to assume you're referring to much of their licensed content which is a hard-to-scale problem unless you continue to throw money at it. One of Netflix's problems is that the profits it takes today doesn't get realized into "good content" until a much later date when production is wrapped and released.
- data-ottawa 4y ago
  > Meemaw can't watch Peppa Pig with her grandson in person, so we'd better watch out for her wanting to check out his Netflix Kids list and try to connect with what's interesting him. That’s something Disney and Apple are both embracing with shared viewing sessions. It’s an excellent feature and it has been so much easier watching Disney content together than trying to count down and sync pause/play of content, so guess where we go when it’s remote movie night?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    How exactly does that work? I’ve seen it as an option but haven’t tried it.
MBCook 4y ago
Let’s review. Average quality has taken an absolute nose dive. There is so much garbage it’s hard to find new/interesting things. They keep raising their prices. They charge a fortune extra for 4K when the other big streamers don’t (they have more content, but see #1). They cancel stuff so fast it’s not worth getting into. They refuse to integrate with Apple TV’s “Watch Now” unlike everyone else. They act like they’re “Netflix, king of the hill, above all others and different from wannabes”. Like HBO vs basic cable. Like it’s 2014 still and all the other services are jokes. It’s not. The others have caught up in many ways, or surpassed. With MUCH better prices. And the Netflix crap ratio has gotten out of control. One huge hit every few years won’t save you. Apple TV+ is firing on all cylinders. HBO Max, Hulu, and Disney all nice have originals and great back catalogs for nostalgia. If I could find Apple TV+ quality on Netflix I’d be happier. But I can’t. And I pay 4x as much for that privilege thanks to 4K.
- sdenton4 4y ago
  I think you completely misunderstand what they're trying to do. What you read as a proliferation of crap is really trying to find a 'big hit' in lots of small niches. Some niche hits will become crossover success stories, and draw people into new genres, etc. But others will quietly be classics in their small niche, often for being the first serious effort. Of course, Sturgeon's Law is still in effect, so 90% of everything will be crap. But producing non-crap for smaller audiences builds loyalty, which is worth something in the subscriber model. Or at least that's my read of their strategy. There's a real discovery problem that comes with it that I don't think they've solved. But overall it's an interesting approach.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    There was also this element of "We have all this data so we have an unfair advantage over all these studios with pitch meetings." And it seems as if they're just another studio who isn't really in a better position to predict breakout hits than anyone else. Of course, they also license content but that's just about spreading around the dollars from a bag of money. Personally, I find Netflix to be worth the subscription at the moment. But there are a ton of other streaming services and I'm not going to subscribe to them all. And, while I have gone in and out of Netflix' DVD service, the back catalog has sufficiently rotted I don't find it worthwhile.
SteveNuts 4y ago
It's probably time for them to cut back their aggressive push to create content and start spending it on external content contracts again. Focus on a few high quality originals rather than rapid fire as much crap content.
- ihumanable 4y ago
  It's a losing strategy though, with whitelabeling of streaming services it's easy for a content holder to just stick their stuff behind their own label or play Netflix vs Hulu vs Amazon Prime vs HBO. Content generation was a good move, but they seem to be pursuing a strategy of trying to always have some mega-hit. This causes them to cancel shows that could grow into valuable content anchors. Consider "The Office." I'm not going to say that everyone loves The Office, but a lot of people like it and enjoy tossing it on the TV when they are just looking for some background noise or just want to binge something they find enjoyable. How much of Netflix's content fits this mold though? If you take a look at their longest running shows https://screenrant.com/longest-running-netflix-originals-ranked/ https://screenrant.com/longest-running-netflix-originals-ran... they just don't run their series for very long. On the plus side this means that they can go invest in other series, but it creates series that don't have the same sticking power. They also seem to have a real hard time keeping quality up within a series, so you can have a show start off really strong with a great season 1, then season 2 is meh, and then they cancel it. I think this fundamentally makes their catalog less sticky because instead of their original content being something you can come back to again and again, it is disposable. I've watched my fair share of Netflix original series, but where other series have grown to hold a special place in my memory and I can watch them over and over (Deep Space Nine, King of the Hill, {fill in your favorite long running series here}) I rarely find myself rewatching their original content. With 2 or 3 seasons, the series end up feeling like long mini-series, and not a whole arc that you can sit down and enjoy again and again. And when I compare Netflix today to Netflix of year's gone by, the thing I find myself missing from the external content catalog was more of those "old favorites" of just watching through Breaking Bad again or enjoying the episode of Bones where they somehow scan a computer virus off of a bone and into their hologram thing.
- kevincox 4y ago
mrlonglong 4y ago
Netflix for me is the only decent one that always subtitled (closed captions to the US-entric folks) their output and they do put on some decent films now and then. But Amazon prime video? Fuck that and fuck the morons who add crud on their catalogue and don't even bother adding subtitles? Grossly insulting to an avid deaf viewer.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It’s even worse when you see how relatively decent YouTube’s autosubtitling is- Prime is just lazy on “never shown on TV” content.
- MrRiddle 4y ago
  On the other hand, Netflix refuses to translate subtitles to my language (Serbian) for years. HBO Max translated pretty much everything, while most kids shows are even dubbed. They literally just have to hire one person in Serbia and pay them 1000 EUR a month, maybe another one to validate.
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transcriptase 4y ago
If anyone from Netflix is lurking, I have a wild suggestion: If I’ve recently watched a movie or series, don’t relentlessly show it in the “recommended-content-looping-screensaver”. I know it exists, because I’ve watched it. And you know that too.
- deleted 4y ago
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- lp0_on_fire 4y ago
  I'd like a quick and easy way to get back to "my list" and "continue watching" without having to page through the feed. Neither ever seem to be in a consistent place. (I have the same gripe with Amazon Prime).
- everybodyknows 4y ago
  Amazon Prime does this as well. Wonder if the database server expense figures into the decision?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    I call it the “kids filter” as if your kid just watched Frozen they likely want to watch it again.
    - transcriptase 4y ago
      Part of me wonders if it isn’t ML gone wrong based on that very occurrence. Kids watching something dozens of times making that a valid recommendation in the models view. Sadly I don’t want to watch a late 90s action movie more than once, especially not 3 days after I’ve seen it for the first time.
    - wil421 4y ago
      Bingo. I use it all the time for my kids in Disney+.
- deleted 4y ago
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emadabdulrahim 4y ago
The last good show I watched on Netflix was Mindhunter.
jqpabc123 4y ago
Let's face facts, streaming video on the internet is really not that hard or unique any more. It was only a matter of time before most other media companies offered their own streaming services. So what does Netflix have to offer that is unique in today's world of streaming? Not much.
- fullshark 4y ago
  No commercials, which is why their strategy seems to be to become a commercial free basic cable.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Netflix builds the commercials directly into the content. Not that they are alone in this.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The commercials will come soon enough. It’ll start with the $10 plan (get HD content with o ly some commercials!) and spread from there. Remember when the selling point of cable was commercial free?
  - jqpabc123 4y ago
    Their CEO just announced they will be adding commercials soon.
ProfessorLayton 4y ago
Anyone have experience commenting on how total compensation and employee retention is handled when a company's stock becomes volatile? $NFLX has gone from ~679 > ~260 in the span of about 6mo. Anyone who got their RSUs last fall has seen their TC vastly cut, but Netflix is known for paying very well. My limited experience working at a public company has seen tons of employee turnover, especially in this extremely hot job market. I'm considering shopping around as well, but my TC has been going up through promotions, which relieve the pressure to look around a bit.
- drewg123 4y ago
  Netflix doesn't generally do RSUs for engineers (they might for execs, I don't know), so total comp for engineers is not impacted.
- deleted 4y ago
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- Cyberdogs7 4y ago
  My understanding is Netflix does not pay in RSU's, they pay all cash. This has been one of their main draws. To answer your question, using Meta as an example, nothing happens. The employees are exposed to both the upside and the downside of RSUs.
  - twblalock 4y ago
    Actually some companies whose stock drops significantly have felt the need to issue more stock to employees to retain them. Doordash is a notable recent example.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- Beaver117 4y ago
  Netflix is an outlier because they pay mostly cash. But I'm currently at a different company that had a huge stock dip, and during the perf review they gave top performers a huge stock refresher (enough to get them back to their original TC, sometimes more). And well, if you didn't get one, that's like the company saying you're worth X% less now.
cglong 4y ago
One of the perks you get with T-Mobile US is free (or heavily subsidized) Netflix. I suspect we're not the only ones who would've cancelled our subscription if not for this deal.
- deleted 4y ago
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- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I think we will see a lot of bundling by media sellers to engage in price discrimination and price obfuscation. ATT unlimited mobile network plans can get you HBO Max thrown in, Amazon Prime includes Prime Video, Apple One bundles include Apple TV+. Different people have different amounts they are willing to pay for content, and there is zero marginal cost to serve it to them for the content's owner. The question is how can the content owner get the most each individual is willing to pay for the same content. Bundling it with infrastructure like mobile network is a good way, as well as subsidizing it with credit card offers, etc.
- timmytokyo 4y ago
  T-Mobile subsidizes Netflix. I was paying $3 per month for Netflix. This morning I got a text from T-Mobile warning me that they were about to start charging $4.50 a month. After getting the text, I thought about how often I watch Netflix and realized I haven't watched a single thing in the past month. Subscription is now cancelled. Price hikes, lack of quality content, and increased competition are going to hurt Netflix in the long run. I find myself watching quality shows on Apple TV+ and HBO Max.
  - cglong 4y ago
    I think it depends on the Netflix plan you choose; we picked the lowest level (SD resolution?) and it's free for us. Agree that the constant price increases is the last thing they need right now.
gfody 4y ago
I wonder if Netflix would consider not charging you when you don't use their service. Then there would be no reason to cancel and your subscription payments could just resume whenever Netflix has content you're interested in. Netflix then would have a more natural incentive to focus on quality content as well.
- deleted 4y ago
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- zethus 4y ago
  Not sure how that incentivizes them to produce higher quality content? The existing loop today is still for users to resume their billed subscription when something of interest is released.
  - gfody 4y ago
    I'm assuming that practically nobody actually cancels their Netflix whenever there's nothing to watch and resubscribes when there is and so they probably consider existing subscribers money-in-the-bank and mostly try to acquire new subscribers. If they were instead trying to get their existing subscribers to use the service every month then they should focus on content (not necessarily Netflix original content, maybe just buy a blockbuster now and then, w/e).
- sp527 4y ago
  Charging you when you’re not using it is literally what makes the business model work. There’s a certain level of average utilization that, if achieved, would sink the business.
  - sebazzz 4y ago
    That is really why every company has a subscription service: there are so many sleeping subscriptions, and no set moment to evaluate if a new purchase is worth it
- mongol 4y ago
jeffybefffy519 4y ago
Can Netflix improve their app: - their chrome cast connecting implementation is worse then all the others, it never auto connects and the UI is confusing around the state its in. - the “are you still watching dialog” is way too aggressive and generally buggy. If i resume a show from a day ago it doesnt reset the episode counter. So annoying.
lordnacho 4y ago
The way I see it, a family can only have a handful of subscriptions, and it might not just be streaming that is competing for that budget. Probably less than 5, maybe 3 on average, just based on what I hear from people. If you have kids, one of those has to be Disney. Somehow they make some great movies, with incredible longevity. Very good songs, and you might not know it but the songs are sung in dozens of languages, and translated well, by local stars. Good, modern storylines too, and nothing awkward. Plus your kids will want to watch the movies over and over, so Disney is a must have. If you're a sports person, maybe you go for Sky Sports or BT Sport or whatever the old dinosaur is in your country. It's expensive and you aren't going to watch all those games, but a fair few people will go for it. So what have you got left? One or two slots maybe? Between Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, that documentary one that doesn't spend enough on ads targeted at me, and probably some others. It's hard to see how to capture that last slot, for anyone. Amazon already has a foot in the door of course. So it's going to be a big dogfight in this space. You'll get occasional winners in terms of content but what could ever last as a permanent advantage?
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  > a family can only have a handful of subscriptions My kids beg to differ.
eric4smith 4y ago
Most Netflix originals are unwatchable these days. It used to be that I’d binge most originals - but no more. Example is Altered Carbon. First season excellent. Next season almost unwatchable because of “the message” above story quality. Same with Witcher. I mostly keep it around for the “Netflix and Chill” dates.
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  The Altered Carbon ordeal is interesting. Like you mentioned, everyone I know who watched it loved the first season and hated the second season. I thought second season was ok. Ok, then it's immediately cancelled, I'm guessing for lack of viewership after the first season (and man, if they maintained the first season it could've been such an epic 6 season show. There was a lot of story left to tell). But what's really interesting, maybe related to "the message" you mention, is that critics were the complete opposite of the audience and liked the second season even more! There was an article on HN recently about how critics seem out-of-touch with the audience. This was quite the glaring example. Season 1: 70% critics, 90% audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s01 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s01 Season 2: 81% critics, 37% audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s02 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s02
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    There was just too much that changed between S1 and S2 for your average audience member. Viewers like evolutionary changes and not revolutionary changes season to season
  - dudul 4y ago
    Critics love shows/movies with The Message. It's more important than good writing to them.
    - eric4smith 4y ago
      Damn, that is so true!
muttantt 4y ago
Everyone ran out of crap to watch on Netflix. This was inevitable.
whywhywhywhy 4y ago
Honestly I’m one free weekend from canceling it. Gonna go back to a pc under the tv. Just need the afternoon to find the best machine for plex. The selection of older content on Netflix is really weak on the whole and their original content is getting worse and worse. There is only so many times I can watch a mid-level 80 minute movie script be dragged out across 10 hours in series it really is awful tv and watching the writers struggle to spin tires to drag it to 10 hours is exhausting. Not to mention the executive meddling is extremely apparent in many of their scripts where you can tell whole sections were added at exec request because the story goes off at a tangent and then when it returns the stakes are exactly the same as before the tangent.
- fullshark 4y ago
  Your third paragraph is hardly unique to Netflix, all scripted serialized dramas seem to suffer this problem these days.
  - ghostly_s 4y ago
    Most? Maybe. Certainly not all.
  - ahartmetz 4y ago
    I've become a little tired of series with continuous plots at this point. It's really hard to create content for so many episodes that isn't repetitive, irrelevant to the main story, or hard to believe because of the piling up of coincidences. Then you often have implausible character changes and other typical series-but-not-movies problems piling up. It's an art form that seems very difficult to get right, and so it usually goes wrong.
    - imbnwa 4y ago
      BBC gets this right, only as many episodes as necessary.
      - pixxel 4y ago
paulpauper 4y ago
Netflix' problem is that it's not indispensable. If Netflix vanished, people would find entertainment elsewhere, such as cable, YouTube, google, amazon, Disney, etc. Any major company like google or amazon can license content even at loss, so what advantage does Netflix bring.
- RandallBrown 4y ago
  That's exactly why Netflix started producing their own content.
  - OrderlyTiamat 4y ago
    If the goal is for that content to make netflix indispensible, I feel like it's a bad strategy to make customers accustomed to shows canceling after 2 seasons. It commoditizes the shows, so customers will be happy to switch platforms if/when their favorite shows go out and another platform has a shiny new show.
40acres 4y ago
I can't help but wonder if Netflix is considering going after password sharing. It may be a short term boost but at least then we can gauge the true subscriber base.
- paulpauper 4y ago
  this must be so common
- mbustamanter 4y ago
  If I recall correctly, they are planning/about to do this in Chile.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Look for a “security breach” followed by mandatory two factor auth coming to a Netflix device near you soon …
pipeline_peak 4y ago
People don’t want to pay $15 a month to watch “fierce kweens” and drug documentaries…..
jmyeet 4y ago
Straight up: it's too expensive. At $8-10/month it was an always have whether I watched it or not, particularly before all the "me too" balkanized streaming platforms limped into existence. I understand that in this changing world, Netflix needed to produce original content. IMHO how they went about it was completely wrong: they just threw money at the problem and that's just not a way to effectively create good content. A really hard problem to avoid is to have all your content feel a bit "same-y". Netflix has this problem. They have a proclivity for one-word names (some executive think sthey'l be easier to remember), for example. Your favourite restaurant can get this way too. Here's what they should've done: create studios to make independent localized content for particular languages. Have a studio in Spain (and probably Mexico) producing Spanish-language TV aimed specifically at Spanish speakers. The indepedent part cannot be ovverstressed. But here's where scale comes in: for content with wider appeal, you dub it and push it to a wider audience. Some of Netflix's most interesting content has been foreign language (eg The 3%). So Netflix is doing this to some degree but it's not their core strategy. Instead they're seemingly spending most of their money on big-budget productions. Movies in particular are a loser (IMHO). Theaters is what makes movies profitable. For some reason the voice actors that end up getting used for dubbing are (IME) universally terrible and it seems to be like the same 8 people. They're awful. This could be done so much better. The point here is that lower-budget locale-specific content is likely to be more appealing and what becoems popular is a good indicator of what might have wider appeal. But anyway, Netflix is now $15.50/month for HD (who is going to pay $9.99 for 480p?!?!? Or $20/month for 4K?!?!). That's more than HBO and HBO is still way better at producing original content and has a much deeper library of such content. Personally I'll now just sign up to Netflix for 1-3 months a year to catch up on things I care about instead of having it all the time.
- miohtama 4y ago
  Remember times when one spent $15 on video rentals on a month. (Not sure what video rental prices were globally.)
- vimy 4y ago
  > Here's what they should've done: create studios to make independent localized content for particular languages. Have a studio in Spain (and probably Mexico) producing Spanish-language TV aimed specifically at Spanish speakers. The indepedent part cannot be ovverstressed. That's what they did. Although I don't know how independent the Spanish studio is. > News of expansion at Netflix’s Madrid studio complex, launched in April 2019 as its first European Production Hub, comes just a week after Netflix held an online roadshow to unveil seven new projects – movies, series and reality shows – including “If Only,” a Spanish adaptation of the canceled Netflix Turkish original. Covering the next few months, the new project announcement suggested that Netflix has now achieved an unprecedented level of production in Spain that makes it one of the biggest investors in Spanish series and films in the country. Netflix has released more than 50 titles made in Spain since 2016 and participated in more than 70 films from the time of its first original movie, “7 Years,” released in 2016. It has worked with over 35 independent production houses and has created 7,500 jobs for casts and crews. This year’s current productions are expected to hire over 1,500 professionals and create over 21,000 days of work for extras, Netflix estimated. https://variety.com/2021/streaming/global/netflix-spain-studios-expansion-1234957707/ https://variety.com/2021/streaming/global/netflix-spain-stud...
lbj 4y ago
Go Woke Go Broke, that's how it goes.
- smegsicle 4y ago
  they posted cringe, it was only a matter of time
wolverine876 4y ago
How do people here see quality content (I happen to love the more innovativ and artistic stuff) without subscribing to all these different services? Netflix seems to have the best general collection for my tastes - genres, various countries, etc. I read about things on other services, but I am not subscribing to everything.
- RandallBrown 4y ago
  I subscribe (and immediately cancel) to everything. If I want to watch a show/movie (like Jackass Forever on Paramount+) I'll subscribe and then immediately cancel it. This gives me 1 month of the service. If I want to keep watching something on that service, I'll just resubscribe once it runs out. Some services like Netflix and Hulu, I know I'll get enough value out of them so I don't usually bother canceling. I hear friends complain about having to sign up for so many things to watch all the shows they want, but Apple makes this so easy I don't really think much about it. Back in the pre-streaming days most everyone wanted a-la-carte channels and that's exactly what we have now.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    Many friends of mine do this. It has to be obvious, but I suppose Netflix/Disney/etc would rather have at least a month or two out of you rather than $0 or torrents.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  Torrents
- dgeiser13 4y ago
  You might want to check out Kanopy. https://www.kanopy.com/ https://www.kanopy.com/
  - wolverine876 4y ago
    Kanopy's content is fantastic, maybe the best. It has so many gems I've never heard of. However, last I knew, it requires you have a library card at a public library that uses Kanopy, and then limits you to a few films per month.
sillyinseattle 4y ago
A bit OT: Simple frequency counts (this page, @ 104 comments). Netflix -> 103 Apple -> 39 HBO -> 24 Disney -> 19 Amazon -> 14 Hulu -> 5
Animats 4y ago
In an effort to continue to gain share in the market, Netflix has increased its content spend, particularly on originals. To pay for it, it’s hiked prices of its service. The company said Tuesday those price changes are helping to bolster revenue, but were partially responsible for a loss of 600,000 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada during the most recent quarter. Yeah, raise prices, sales go down. It works like that.
freyr 4y ago
I’m currently subscribed to a bunch of streamers. I usually turn first to HBO or Hulu, then YouTube or Amazon Prime, then Apple TV+ (which has less content overall but really good shows lately), and finally Netflix as a last resort. In fact I rarely open Netflix unless I’ve already heard about something I want to check out. I really don’t like wading through their recommendations. With the frequent price increases, it’s getting harder and harder to justify.
standardUser 4y ago
I have a friend in another state who is disabled and on a fixed income. He is the only person I share my Netflix account with. I'd be happy to pay something in order to share it with him. But I don't like that a household of 6 can pay $15 for the service, whereas two single person households are expected to pay $30 for the same service. Shouldn't the cost be per profile, not per distinct physical address?
- SnowHill9902 4y ago
  It’s just the easiest heuristic to minimize abuse. By the way, you can still access from different households in some countries.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Some very old VHS movies still have a warning about not showing them to a group of more than 20 or so or only licensed for home/family viewing. Trying to limit sharing is basically pointless, make it a bit harder perhaps but those extra viewers probably weren’t going to subscribe anyway.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I am pretty sure Netflix has something in the pipe for extra viewers. They are trying it in some countries. Definitely not in the States yet though.
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
Love Bridgerton. But most of what I watch is on Prime. Severance on Apple was just too dark. Stuff like Paramount I get through Prime too. HBO made half of a really interesting series and then just walked away.
pcurve 4y ago
fun facts: Netflix now has P/E ratio lower than Coca cola, proctor gamble, Walmart. In fact, it's barely half of Costco.
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  Costco is severely overvalued, seemingly either through blind index investing (QQQ) or investors following a defensive narrative without paying any attention to the fundamentals. Its valuation multiple is 2x GOOG
carlhung 4y ago
Netflix sucks. I just cancelled my account few days ago.
mawadev 4y ago
I like to go outside and just look at a tree waving in the wind and feeling the ground with my bare feet sometimes. I couldn't do that a year ago freely, but now I can. Netflix can just freeze me in place, just like my 9-5 and then extract my hard earned money. No thanks boomers...
rdiddly 4y ago
I'm one of the ones they lost. I suddenly noticed the experience is inferior. The search doesn't seem to even take into account the thing I typed in. Maybe it's just that they've been so utterly gutted by the loss of all the Fox content to Disney+, that they're trying to cover it up with "well we don't have that, but perhaps you would like..." Speaking of "perhaps you would like," what do you call it when someone flashes something poorly targeted, unwanted and irrelevant in front of your eyeballs and pushes it a bit too hard? I call that an ad. I'm paying for advertising. Or rather, I was.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It reminds me of the “grandma bait” movies you’d see in the checkout line at the dollar store, things clearly designed to look like big budget movies that grandma heard the kids liked. Things like https://smile.amazon.com/Animated-Feature-Films-Vol/dp/B00MIKOX0S/ https://smile.amazon.com/Animated-Feature-Films-Vol/dp/B00MI...
  - maximus-decimus 4y ago
    Good old Atlantic Rim movie.
icytrumpet 4y ago
I'm about to cancel for two reasons. 1. The auto-play preview feature is incredibly annoying and there is no way to disable it. If I want to watch a preview, I'll click the damn button. Let me read a description in peace. 2. The overt propaganda makes watching any new content all but impossible for me. It seems that this is not unique to Netflix, but they are the worst in my opinion.
- shaman1 4y ago
  Cancelled mine, but I remember you can disable the previews. Quite annoying 'feature'.
  - icytrumpet 4y ago
    It must be buried in the Fire Stick UI because I can't seem to find it anywhere. I'll have to check again.
    - allenu 4y ago
      I believe the option only exists in the web settings page. It turns it off for all devices though.
- UberFly 4y ago
  Agreed on both. There are autoplay settings on previews here: How to turn autoplay previews on or off https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 Yes, every service is a Clockwork Orange reeducation campaign any more. It gets old.
- kobalsky 4y ago
  one of the reasons I can't stand netflix is their ctr-maximizing screenshots, they are awful. if they had an option to browse movies with high def posters instead it would be beautiful.
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bumper_crop 4y ago
Netflix is another one of those "Poison Pill" companies that ensures executives can't be ousted for making bad decisions. Russia was a large source of growth in memberships, and on a whim the C-levels cut it off.
everybodyknows 4y ago
From inside the industry: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflix-q1-2022-earnings-1235132028/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflix-q...
lvl102 4y ago
I am a big fan of Netflix but I do think their UI is crap. It’s hard to search for shows. They should have an insanely great recommendation system since they’ve been at it for such a long time. But it’s basically the same system they had in place for decade plus. Think outside the box please.
danielfoster 4y ago
Netflix is a very performance-focused company. Any employee who missed a target so widely would be fired under their cut-throat management system. Why does Reed get to stay?
tssva 4y ago
Netflix was more expensive than their competitors even prior to the recent price increase. After the price increase the only way I can justify the cost at all is the fact that my account is shared across 2 households. If they crack down on account sharing I will cancel my account. I suspect that many others will do the same and the net result will not be the increase in subscriptions they are looking for.
Markoff 4y ago
that's what raising prices, fighting account sharing, fragmentation of these subscription services, etc. does to you
Fnoord 4y ago
My (speculative) take: Covid crisis ended and people are going outside, and they lost subs in RU and UA (why would you have Netflix sub if you are fighting a war and are broken).
danielrpa 4y ago
I cancelled my Netflix subscription. Their show lineup is increasingly focused on series without commitment to closure and featuring heavy virtue signaling/woke content. I respect those who enjoy this, but that's not me.
kosikond 4y ago
Going forward instead of "Netflix & Chill" I'm going to have "Jellyfin & No Worries"
greedo 4y ago
Netflix is screwed. It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you could find it on Netflix, put it in your DVD queue and in a few days receive the DVD in the mail. Their inventory was really good, (with some exceptions) and the service had pretty fast turnaround. Phase 1. Then broadband started becoming more available, so streaming became a natural extension. Here's where Netflix faced bigger challenges. Initially, IP owners were happy to sell streaming rights for pennies since they didn't have any idea of the real value. Netflix leveraged this to build up an even bigger catalog that wasn't constrained by the number of DVDs in their inventory. Netflix started to dabble in producing (and buying) content for their streaming. Good stuff like Stranger Things. The Crown. Dark. Babylon Berlin. And IP owners started raising the prices for renewals for movies and series in their catalogs. Netflix decided to cheap out on the quality of their shows. And they started to cut down on their DVD catalog as well. Now you have all of the IP owners with their own streaming services, so Netflix will find it really hard to stream anything but the crappiest stuff. And they've shown little ability to consistently produce quality series or movies. Contrast this with ATV+. Apple knew that it had a huge potential customer base, but that licensing IP wasn't going to be sustainable; whatever they streamed had to be exclusive. So they started slow, trying to replace HBO for high quality content. And they had some meh shows like "See." Not bad, but not HBO. Then "The Morning Show," followed by "Ted Lasso." Now they're starting to get some traction. Having an infinite amount of money always helps, but they became pretty good at saying no. "For All Mankind" grabbed a chunk of sci-fi viewers. Greyhound captured the war nerds. Slowly, carefully, they've been building up a pretty solid catalog. Now you have shows like "Servant," "Slow Horses," "The Mosquito Coast," "Foundation." Cap it off with a series and a movie that have set ATV+ on par with any streaming service: Severance and Coda. Now ATV+ will never have the catalog that Disney+ has. They might be fine with that. But where does this leave Netflix? Netflix has no serious movies that could compete for an Oscar. They don't seem to have the ability to create must see TV anymore. Perhaps they're too driven by algorithms to give the viewer what Netflix "thinks" they want? I just can't see a path forward for Netflix as other than crappy shows. Even with their foreign content, they face increased price pressure and competition from the other SVODs.
- imbnwa 4y ago
  Wasn't Campion's Power of the Dog an Oscar-rated Netflix film? I agree overall however, Apple is competing with the legacy content monsters the right way. Severance was great art, Slow Horses is compelling, Foundation had its issues but also better moments than any Netflix Sci-Fi show I've seen the past few years (Nightflyers, Another Life, etc don't even come close), and For All Mankind is well-written.
mrbonner 4y ago
Raises price every year, stops password sharing (within family), trashes contents. My nightly routine becomes surfing Netflix one title at a time, 10-15 minutes a title for about 40 minutes until I give up and just rewatch old shows, movies. I start to reconsider my subscription of Netflix now.
zwilliamson 4y ago
I would come back if they added the entire criterion collection and made it available on DVD/BluRay. Streaming access is too much of a fire hose. I like a little build up and anticipation with my movies.
1970-01-01 4y ago
They haven't jumped the shark until they push a credit card or pizza. "Earn free movies with every purchase!" "$10 off 3 pizzas with Grubflix" It's only a matter of time. You can't grow one service forever, no matter how hard you try.
dkrich 4y ago
Anecdotally the other streaming services have good stuff from time to time, but behaviorally they simply don’t compare to Netflix. My wife and I spend probably 80% our streaming time in Netflix just out of habit and the sheer amount of content. Then, every few months hbo or Hulu comes out with a show we want to watch but then once it’s over we default back to Netflix. Again you can argue that the content is crap but people have demonstrated they prefer quantity over quality. The strategy is something like a hub and spoke. Create a handful of high budget shows that are spaced out to keep people interested then fill the rest with crap. As an aside I’ve never paid for Netflix because we’ve had my wife’s account that’s linked to her parent’s for several years. It’s borderline ridiculous they’ve allowed password sharing as long as they have. If Netflix forced the account to be split we’d pay Without a second thought. I suspect most are like us despite all the cynicism. I think once they start instituting that change alone the sub base will expand rapidly. I’m very bullish on Netflix after this decline.

Here are the key numbers: EPS: $3.53 vs $2.89 expected. Revenue: $7.78 billion vs $7.93 billion expected. Global paid net subscriber additions: A loss of 200,000 compared with 2.73 million adds expected. Stock down 23% after-market

belter 4y ago
Stock is down 42% since 3 Jan 2022
- gordon_freeman 4y ago
  I wonder if Bill Ackman is having second thoughts about investing in Netflix during this time of its losing subscribers and slowing growth.
  - belter 4y ago
    Warren Buffet is considered the guru of investment, and was loosing money on IBM for a decade until he exited :-)
  - drexlspivey 4y ago
    He is probably going to buy more, Netflix is in deep value territory at $260 per share
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Funding secured! Take it private. ;)
riffraff 4y ago
how is earning per share higher than expected while revenue is lower than expected? Did they do an unplanned buy back?
- hammock 4y ago
  Earnings is net income, not revenue
  - gordon_freeman 4y ago
    So raising prices of their subs offering did the trick in extracting more earnings out of declining revenue then?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Or the content costs dropped more than revenue did.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  They spent less than expected

reducesuffering 4y ago

18.3 P/E ratio (~6% yearly real profits as opposed to -8% real in a bank account) going forward by today's earnings. High morale unparalleled technical talent in the market. Founder-led. COGS (cost of goods sold) approaches nothing as content library accumulates. No brainer buy.

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adam_arthur 4y ago
Why subtract inflation from cash but not earnings? You have to subtract from both. 20 PE in 8% inflation environment implies -3% return, ignoring growth. However people tend to refer to the 10y breakeven rate for forward inflation expectations as CPI is backwards looking. Forward long term inflation expectations are around 3% atm, per the bond market. And the reason -3% is preferable sometimes, is because you would have lost 70% buying NFLX a few months ago. Overvalued companies aren't a very good inflation hedge when discount rates increase dramatically, despite the common narrative
- reducesuffering 4y ago
  Say a co. is $1b market cap and earned $50m last year. 20 P/E, but 8% inflation means that $50m is now worth last years $46m real. So the company has an extra 4.6% value in the bank but also, because inflation they’re earning $54m next year, the same real value. So by a 20 P/E, they’re worth $1.08b now because inflation ate away the dollar. So you’ve gained 8% nominal, 0% real, but also 4.6% real. Meanwhile $1b in the bank is still $1b but now worth $920m, so -8% real. That’s why you subtract inflation from cash but stock assets are mostly inflation resistant. People can tend to do whatever they want, it doesn’t make it correct. Last year, the 10y was like 1.2% while inflation turned out to be 8.5%. Clearly the 10y is not a good reliable indicator of inflation. Ya -3% can be preferable to a stock going down 70%. But that’s not the reason to own stock assets. You could of also owned Netflix from 2019 to 2021 and been up 250%. What matters is the true value of future expected earnings of the company, compared to what the value is now. By my estimation, Netflix is trading well below those future earnings in this inflationary environment, even with hefty interest rate hikes that bring inflation down, simultaneously shrinking stock premiums from both sides. I wouldn’t be surprised if Berkshire bought in at this level.

twblalock 4y ago

When they raised prices a few months ago, I saw it on the news and that reminded me that I was paying for a Netflix subscription I wasn't using. So I cancelled it. I bet a lot of other people did the same thing.

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belter 4y ago

The main problem of Netflix, more than competition, is quality of content. They need to think like a Hollywood studio, and less like a Video Supermarket. You need to be a Disney or PBS , Universal or MGM, and the subscribers will pay for high quality content. The only notable Netflix content seems to be the one purchased externally. Internally developed content, tends to follow a common amorphous pattern, that becomes very predictable as it gets extended into multiple episodes of the same script. They need charismatic movies and set free artists with risky content. Not 20 episodes of Ozark.

gordon_freeman 4y ago
Ozark is good, I love that show. But I do agree, in general, that the quality of their 95% of the content is crap and it is far below the level of Disney+ and even HBO.
dannykwells 4y ago
This is so true. We have Disney+, HBO, Apple, Netflix, and Hulu. Of those, the very clear ordering in terms of taste and vision is: Disney+, Apple, HBO >>>> HBO, Hulu. Apple is the most amazing one to me - they came from nowhere, and are bringing original content like CODA or Severance after only a few years. Maybe it's because Apple - the largest (tech) company on Earth still has at its core the idea of beautiful things designed by humans, and Netflix never has.
- brimble 4y ago
  Apple has been good at quality, but the quantity's still really low. I keep meaning to cancel because I go months without watching anything on it. Unfortunately for them, it'd be an excellent one to start subbing just one month a year.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    While it has less quantity, Apple TV+ is also much cheaper at $5 per month.

gregoryl 4y ago

They raised prices and have considerably less content in a market with more and more competition. No surprises!

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revlolz 4y ago

I canceled after the price hike sharing charge wombo combo. Im pissing in the wind, but at some point you just have to go.

bluWolf 4y ago

Good.

rvz 4y ago

I don't understand why this company is even part of "FAANG" in the first place as you can see it is nothing more than a side project of the likes of Apple, Amazon, Google, Disney etc. This company has been long heralded for its engineering, contraptions and its overall technology, but when it comes to competition, subscribers, pricing increases and its content it is not good enough and with the increase of prices on consumers everywhere, Netflix is one of the first unnecessary things that they will cancel. That is even before I even mentioned the competitors like Apple, Amazon, Disney, etc, eating their lunch as a side project.

lordnacho 4y ago
I think it's because they're said to pay a heck of a lot of money to engineers. Perhaps they also have similar interviews. But the acronym seems to be employment related more than what the company actually does.
Traster 4y ago
Well, there’s a simple reason- FAANG was an acronym to describe a group of companies’ stock market performance not their underlying value. Of course it’s a ridiculous grouping - Facebook and Google are ad tech companies, Amazon is a logistics company, Apple is a hardware company and Netflix is a Hollywood studio .
- commandlinefan 4y ago
  That and, if you took out the N, a lot of people would be uncomfortable saying it...
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Especially since the original was just FANG - i suspect this has way more to do with it than Netflix particularly.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Netflix is a Hollywood studio. A side project of Apple, Google, Amazon and Disney. Netflix is proving to be suffocated by them and they are struggling. It's stock performance is quite woeful and has crashed 58% from its high since it was found to be inflated with hype during the 2020 lockdown gains. A crash like that in its price is due to the hype and speculation around its slowing growth and opportunity to find any remaining lucky pumps in the stock price. Now it's found to be in survival mode torn apart by its competitors and customers cancelling their subscriptions. It's not the end of the world when they cancel subscriptions with their competitors, but for Netflix, it is more than the end of the world. In fact it is the end of the universe and movie streaming subscriptions is their whole universe. Microsoft is more than worthy of this 'group' rather than struggling 'Netflix'.

smm11 4y ago

We got Netflix long ago to see movies we never caught in theaters. Now, it's nearly entirely Netflix productions, and we're not into that. So long.

li2uR3ce 4y ago

They lost 700,000 from Russia gained 500,000 elsewhere net -200,000. I don't know how much they normally gain but I suspect a lot are jumping to conclusions from the headline. Loosing Russia wasn't really a consumer choice type of thing. I do wish they'd pick up a few more good Sci-Fi shows and then cancel them to confirm my personal grudge. It's so hard to waste my time on today's Sci-Fi...get off my lawn, etc, etc.

gordon_freeman 4y ago
Let's ignore their Russian subscribers loss for the time being. Analysts were expecting them to add 2.7m and they added 500K elsewhere (taking the number from your comment) so they are still way off and it proves that their growth is slowing at a rapid pace because of increasing competition from Apple, Amazon, Disney and HBO.
- altdataseller 4y ago
  How much more growth can Netflix really muster? They really have penetrated most regions including APAC. Adding 500k is a major accomplishment when viewed thru that lens.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    > Netflix previously told shareholders it expected to add 2.5 million net subscribers during the first quarter. It wasn't just the analysts. Netflix itself missed big in their forecast.
    - EnKopVand 4y ago
      I’m curious as to when the forecast is from. We missed our expected q1 target by quite a margin as well because the market, and I mean any market, has been hit by the war and the inflation.
      - rchaud 4y ago

torstenvl 4y ago

There's a simple way Netflix can stop the bleeding. It isn't that difficult and doesn't involve any technical innovation whatsoever. Just stop being assholes. They made record profits during the COVID era, seeing huge subscriber increases during lockdown and work-from-home. So they increased prices. And nickel-and-dimed customers. And got rid of the best parts of their catalog. And threw a fit about sharing passwords. Geez. Hey I'm stuck several states away from my family for two years but God forbid we try to connect by sharing our movie and TV watch lists. Meemaw can't watch Peppa Pig with her grandson in person, so we'd better watch out for her wanting to check out his Netflix Kids list and try to connect with what's interesting him. Netflix used to be great. Now they're just jerks with mediocre content that charge 3-4x what Discovery does.

zethus 4y ago
My best guess is that the password-sharing crackdown is a response to slowed subscriber growth in an attempt to keep that growth at some astronomically high target. "Got rid of the best parts of their catalog" is definitely a subjective take. I'm going to assume you're referring to much of their licensed content which is a hard-to-scale problem unless you continue to throw money at it. One of Netflix's problems is that the profits it takes today doesn't get realized into "good content" until a much later date when production is wrapped and released.
data-ottawa 4y ago
> Meemaw can't watch Peppa Pig with her grandson in person, so we'd better watch out for her wanting to check out his Netflix Kids list and try to connect with what's interesting him. That’s something Disney and Apple are both embracing with shared viewing sessions. It’s an excellent feature and it has been so much easier watching Disney content together than trying to count down and sync pause/play of content, so guess where we go when it’s remote movie night?
- bombcar 4y ago
  How exactly does that work? I’ve seen it as an option but haven’t tried it.

MBCook 4y ago

Let’s review. Average quality has taken an absolute nose dive. There is so much garbage it’s hard to find new/interesting things. They keep raising their prices. They charge a fortune extra for 4K when the other big streamers don’t (they have more content, but see #1). They cancel stuff so fast it’s not worth getting into. They refuse to integrate with Apple TV’s “Watch Now” unlike everyone else. They act like they’re “Netflix, king of the hill, above all others and different from wannabes”. Like HBO vs basic cable. Like it’s 2014 still and all the other services are jokes. It’s not. The others have caught up in many ways, or surpassed. With MUCH better prices. And the Netflix crap ratio has gotten out of control. One huge hit every few years won’t save you. Apple TV+ is firing on all cylinders. HBO Max, Hulu, and Disney all nice have originals and great back catalogs for nostalgia. If I could find Apple TV+ quality on Netflix I’d be happier. But I can’t. And I pay 4x as much for that privilege thanks to 4K.

sdenton4 4y ago
I think you completely misunderstand what they're trying to do. What you read as a proliferation of crap is really trying to find a 'big hit' in lots of small niches. Some niche hits will become crossover success stories, and draw people into new genres, etc. But others will quietly be classics in their small niche, often for being the first serious effort. Of course, Sturgeon's Law is still in effect, so 90% of everything will be crap. But producing non-crap for smaller audiences builds loyalty, which is worth something in the subscriber model. Or at least that's my read of their strategy. There's a real discovery problem that comes with it that I don't think they've solved. But overall it's an interesting approach.
- ghaff 4y ago
  There was also this element of "We have all this data so we have an unfair advantage over all these studios with pitch meetings." And it seems as if they're just another studio who isn't really in a better position to predict breakout hits than anyone else. Of course, they also license content but that's just about spreading around the dollars from a bag of money. Personally, I find Netflix to be worth the subscription at the moment. But there are a ton of other streaming services and I'm not going to subscribe to them all. And, while I have gone in and out of Netflix' DVD service, the back catalog has sufficiently rotted I don't find it worthwhile.

SteveNuts 4y ago

It's probably time for them to cut back their aggressive push to create content and start spending it on external content contracts again. Focus on a few high quality originals rather than rapid fire as much crap content.

ihumanable 4y ago
It's a losing strategy though, with whitelabeling of streaming services it's easy for a content holder to just stick their stuff behind their own label or play Netflix vs Hulu vs Amazon Prime vs HBO. Content generation was a good move, but they seem to be pursuing a strategy of trying to always have some mega-hit. This causes them to cancel shows that could grow into valuable content anchors. Consider "The Office." I'm not going to say that everyone loves The Office, but a lot of people like it and enjoy tossing it on the TV when they are just looking for some background noise or just want to binge something they find enjoyable. How much of Netflix's content fits this mold though? If you take a look at their longest running shows https://screenrant.com/longest-running-netflix-originals-ranked/ https://screenrant.com/longest-running-netflix-originals-ran... they just don't run their series for very long. On the plus side this means that they can go invest in other series, but it creates series that don't have the same sticking power. They also seem to have a real hard time keeping quality up within a series, so you can have a show start off really strong with a great season 1, then season 2 is meh, and then they cancel it. I think this fundamentally makes their catalog less sticky because instead of their original content being something you can come back to again and again, it is disposable. I've watched my fair share of Netflix original series, but where other series have grown to hold a special place in my memory and I can watch them over and over (Deep Space Nine, King of the Hill, {fill in your favorite long running series here}) I rarely find myself rewatching their original content. With 2 or 3 seasons, the series end up feeling like long mini-series, and not a whole arc that you can sit down and enjoy again and again. And when I compare Netflix today to Netflix of year's gone by, the thing I find myself missing from the external content catalog was more of those "old favorites" of just watching through Breaking Bad again or enjoying the episode of Bones where they somehow scan a computer virus off of a bone and into their hologram thing.
kevincox 4y ago

mrlonglong 4y ago

Netflix for me is the only decent one that always subtitled (closed captions to the US-entric folks) their output and they do put on some decent films now and then. But Amazon prime video? Fuck that and fuck the morons who add crud on their catalogue and don't even bother adding subtitles? Grossly insulting to an avid deaf viewer.

bombcar 4y ago
It’s even worse when you see how relatively decent YouTube’s autosubtitling is- Prime is just lazy on “never shown on TV” content.
MrRiddle 4y ago
On the other hand, Netflix refuses to translate subtitles to my language (Serbian) for years. HBO Max translated pretty much everything, while most kids shows are even dubbed. They literally just have to hire one person in Serbia and pay them 1000 EUR a month, maybe another one to validate.

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transcriptase 4y ago

If anyone from Netflix is lurking, I have a wild suggestion: If I’ve recently watched a movie or series, don’t relentlessly show it in the “recommended-content-looping-screensaver”. I know it exists, because I’ve watched it. And you know that too.

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lp0_on_fire 4y ago
I'd like a quick and easy way to get back to "my list" and "continue watching" without having to page through the feed. Neither ever seem to be in a consistent place. (I have the same gripe with Amazon Prime).
everybodyknows 4y ago
Amazon Prime does this as well. Wonder if the database server expense figures into the decision?
- bombcar 4y ago
  I call it the “kids filter” as if your kid just watched Frozen they likely want to watch it again.
  - transcriptase 4y ago
    Part of me wonders if it isn’t ML gone wrong based on that very occurrence. Kids watching something dozens of times making that a valid recommendation in the models view. Sadly I don’t want to watch a late 90s action movie more than once, especially not 3 days after I’ve seen it for the first time.
  - wil421 4y ago
    Bingo. I use it all the time for my kids in Disney+.
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emadabdulrahim 4y ago

The last good show I watched on Netflix was Mindhunter.

jqpabc123 4y ago

Let's face facts, streaming video on the internet is really not that hard or unique any more. It was only a matter of time before most other media companies offered their own streaming services. So what does Netflix have to offer that is unique in today's world of streaming? Not much.

fullshark 4y ago
No commercials, which is why their strategy seems to be to become a commercial free basic cable.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Netflix builds the commercials directly into the content. Not that they are alone in this.
- bombcar 4y ago
  The commercials will come soon enough. It’ll start with the $10 plan (get HD content with o ly some commercials!) and spread from there. Remember when the selling point of cable was commercial free?
- jqpabc123 4y ago
  Their CEO just announced they will be adding commercials soon.

ProfessorLayton 4y ago

Anyone have experience commenting on how total compensation and employee retention is handled when a company's stock becomes volatile? $NFLX has gone from ~679 > ~260 in the span of about 6mo. Anyone who got their RSUs last fall has seen their TC vastly cut, but Netflix is known for paying very well. My limited experience working at a public company has seen tons of employee turnover, especially in this extremely hot job market. I'm considering shopping around as well, but my TC has been going up through promotions, which relieve the pressure to look around a bit.

drewg123 4y ago
Netflix doesn't generally do RSUs for engineers (they might for execs, I don't know), so total comp for engineers is not impacted.
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Cyberdogs7 4y ago
My understanding is Netflix does not pay in RSU's, they pay all cash. This has been one of their main draws. To answer your question, using Meta as an example, nothing happens. The employees are exposed to both the upside and the downside of RSUs.
- twblalock 4y ago
  Actually some companies whose stock drops significantly have felt the need to issue more stock to employees to retain them. Doordash is a notable recent example.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Beaver117 4y ago
Netflix is an outlier because they pay mostly cash. But I'm currently at a different company that had a huge stock dip, and during the perf review they gave top performers a huge stock refresher (enough to get them back to their original TC, sometimes more). And well, if you didn't get one, that's like the company saying you're worth X% less now.

cglong 4y ago

One of the perks you get with T-Mobile US is free (or heavily subsidized) Netflix. I suspect we're not the only ones who would've cancelled our subscription if not for this deal.

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lotsofpulp 4y ago
I think we will see a lot of bundling by media sellers to engage in price discrimination and price obfuscation. ATT unlimited mobile network plans can get you HBO Max thrown in, Amazon Prime includes Prime Video, Apple One bundles include Apple TV+. Different people have different amounts they are willing to pay for content, and there is zero marginal cost to serve it to them for the content's owner. The question is how can the content owner get the most each individual is willing to pay for the same content. Bundling it with infrastructure like mobile network is a good way, as well as subsidizing it with credit card offers, etc.
timmytokyo 4y ago
T-Mobile subsidizes Netflix. I was paying $3 per month for Netflix. This morning I got a text from T-Mobile warning me that they were about to start charging $4.50 a month. After getting the text, I thought about how often I watch Netflix and realized I haven't watched a single thing in the past month. Subscription is now cancelled. Price hikes, lack of quality content, and increased competition are going to hurt Netflix in the long run. I find myself watching quality shows on Apple TV+ and HBO Max.
- cglong 4y ago
  I think it depends on the Netflix plan you choose; we picked the lowest level (SD resolution?) and it's free for us. Agree that the constant price increases is the last thing they need right now.

gfody 4y ago

I wonder if Netflix would consider not charging you when you don't use their service. Then there would be no reason to cancel and your subscription payments could just resume whenever Netflix has content you're interested in. Netflix then would have a more natural incentive to focus on quality content as well.

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zethus 4y ago
Not sure how that incentivizes them to produce higher quality content? The existing loop today is still for users to resume their billed subscription when something of interest is released.
- gfody 4y ago
  I'm assuming that practically nobody actually cancels their Netflix whenever there's nothing to watch and resubscribes when there is and so they probably consider existing subscribers money-in-the-bank and mostly try to acquire new subscribers. If they were instead trying to get their existing subscribers to use the service every month then they should focus on content (not necessarily Netflix original content, maybe just buy a blockbuster now and then, w/e).
sp527 4y ago
Charging you when you’re not using it is literally what makes the business model work. There’s a certain level of average utilization that, if achieved, would sink the business.
- sebazzz 4y ago
  That is really why every company has a subscription service: there are so many sleeping subscriptions, and no set moment to evaluate if a new purchase is worth it
mongol 4y ago

jeffybefffy519 4y ago

Can Netflix improve their app: - their chrome cast connecting implementation is worse then all the others, it never auto connects and the UI is confusing around the state its in. - the “are you still watching dialog” is way too aggressive and generally buggy. If i resume a show from a day ago it doesnt reset the episode counter. So annoying.

lordnacho 4y ago

The way I see it, a family can only have a handful of subscriptions, and it might not just be streaming that is competing for that budget. Probably less than 5, maybe 3 on average, just based on what I hear from people. If you have kids, one of those has to be Disney. Somehow they make some great movies, with incredible longevity. Very good songs, and you might not know it but the songs are sung in dozens of languages, and translated well, by local stars. Good, modern storylines too, and nothing awkward. Plus your kids will want to watch the movies over and over, so Disney is a must have. If you're a sports person, maybe you go for Sky Sports or BT Sport or whatever the old dinosaur is in your country. It's expensive and you aren't going to watch all those games, but a fair few people will go for it. So what have you got left? One or two slots maybe? Between Netflix, Apple, Amazon, Hulu, HBO, that documentary one that doesn't spend enough on ads targeted at me, and probably some others. It's hard to see how to capture that last slot, for anyone. Amazon already has a foot in the door of course. So it's going to be a big dogfight in this space. You'll get occasional winners in terms of content but what could ever last as a permanent advantage?

commandlinefan 4y ago
> a family can only have a handful of subscriptions My kids beg to differ.

eric4smith 4y ago

Most Netflix originals are unwatchable these days. It used to be that I’d binge most originals - but no more. Example is Altered Carbon. First season excellent. Next season almost unwatchable because of “the message” above story quality. Same with Witcher. I mostly keep it around for the “Netflix and Chill” dates.

reducesuffering 4y ago
The Altered Carbon ordeal is interesting. Like you mentioned, everyone I know who watched it loved the first season and hated the second season. I thought second season was ok. Ok, then it's immediately cancelled, I'm guessing for lack of viewership after the first season (and man, if they maintained the first season it could've been such an epic 6 season show. There was a lot of story left to tell). But what's really interesting, maybe related to "the message" you mention, is that critics were the complete opposite of the audience and liked the second season even more! There was an article on HN recently about how critics seem out-of-touch with the audience. This was quite the glaring example. Season 1: 70% critics, 90% audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s01 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s01 Season 2: 81% critics, 37% audience: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s02 https://www.rottentomatoes.com/tv/altered_carbon/s02
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  There was just too much that changed between S1 and S2 for your average audience member. Viewers like evolutionary changes and not revolutionary changes season to season
- dudul 4y ago
  Critics love shows/movies with The Message. It's more important than good writing to them.
  - eric4smith 4y ago
    Damn, that is so true!

muttantt 4y ago

Everyone ran out of crap to watch on Netflix. This was inevitable.

whywhywhywhy 4y ago

Honestly I’m one free weekend from canceling it. Gonna go back to a pc under the tv. Just need the afternoon to find the best machine for plex. The selection of older content on Netflix is really weak on the whole and their original content is getting worse and worse. There is only so many times I can watch a mid-level 80 minute movie script be dragged out across 10 hours in series it really is awful tv and watching the writers struggle to spin tires to drag it to 10 hours is exhausting. Not to mention the executive meddling is extremely apparent in many of their scripts where you can tell whole sections were added at exec request because the story goes off at a tangent and then when it returns the stakes are exactly the same as before the tangent.

fullshark 4y ago
Your third paragraph is hardly unique to Netflix, all scripted serialized dramas seem to suffer this problem these days.
- ghostly_s 4y ago
  Most? Maybe. Certainly not all.
- ahartmetz 4y ago
  I've become a little tired of series with continuous plots at this point. It's really hard to create content for so many episodes that isn't repetitive, irrelevant to the main story, or hard to believe because of the piling up of coincidences. Then you often have implausible character changes and other typical series-but-not-movies problems piling up. It's an art form that seems very difficult to get right, and so it usually goes wrong.
  - imbnwa 4y ago
    BBC gets this right, only as many episodes as necessary.
    - pixxel 4y ago

paulpauper 4y ago

Netflix' problem is that it's not indispensable. If Netflix vanished, people would find entertainment elsewhere, such as cable, YouTube, google, amazon, Disney, etc. Any major company like google or amazon can license content even at loss, so what advantage does Netflix bring.

RandallBrown 4y ago
That's exactly why Netflix started producing their own content.
- OrderlyTiamat 4y ago
  If the goal is for that content to make netflix indispensible, I feel like it's a bad strategy to make customers accustomed to shows canceling after 2 seasons. It commoditizes the shows, so customers will be happy to switch platforms if/when their favorite shows go out and another platform has a shiny new show.

40acres 4y ago

I can't help but wonder if Netflix is considering going after password sharing. It may be a short term boost but at least then we can gauge the true subscriber base.

paulpauper 4y ago
this must be so common
mbustamanter 4y ago
If I recall correctly, they are planning/about to do this in Chile.
bombcar 4y ago
Look for a “security breach” followed by mandatory two factor auth coming to a Netflix device near you soon …

pipeline_peak 4y ago

People don’t want to pay $15 a month to watch “fierce kweens” and drug documentaries…..

jmyeet 4y ago

Straight up: it's too expensive. At $8-10/month it was an always have whether I watched it or not, particularly before all the "me too" balkanized streaming platforms limped into existence. I understand that in this changing world, Netflix needed to produce original content. IMHO how they went about it was completely wrong: they just threw money at the problem and that's just not a way to effectively create good content. A really hard problem to avoid is to have all your content feel a bit "same-y". Netflix has this problem. They have a proclivity for one-word names (some executive think sthey'l be easier to remember), for example. Your favourite restaurant can get this way too. Here's what they should've done: create studios to make independent localized content for particular languages. Have a studio in Spain (and probably Mexico) producing Spanish-language TV aimed specifically at Spanish speakers. The indepedent part cannot be ovverstressed. But here's where scale comes in: for content with wider appeal, you dub it and push it to a wider audience. Some of Netflix's most interesting content has been foreign language (eg The 3%). So Netflix is doing this to some degree but it's not their core strategy. Instead they're seemingly spending most of their money on big-budget productions. Movies in particular are a loser (IMHO). Theaters is what makes movies profitable. For some reason the voice actors that end up getting used for dubbing are (IME) universally terrible and it seems to be like the same 8 people. They're awful. This could be done so much better. The point here is that lower-budget locale-specific content is likely to be more appealing and what becoems popular is a good indicator of what might have wider appeal. But anyway, Netflix is now $15.50/month for HD (who is going to pay $9.99 for 480p?!?!? Or $20/month for 4K?!?!). That's more than HBO and HBO is still way better at producing original content and has a much deeper library of such content. Personally I'll now just sign up to Netflix for 1-3 months a year to catch up on things I care about instead of having it all the time.

miohtama 4y ago
Remember times when one spent $15 on video rentals on a month. (Not sure what video rental prices were globally.)
vimy 4y ago
> Here's what they should've done: create studios to make independent localized content for particular languages. Have a studio in Spain (and probably Mexico) producing Spanish-language TV aimed specifically at Spanish speakers. The indepedent part cannot be ovverstressed. That's what they did. Although I don't know how independent the Spanish studio is. > News of expansion at Netflix’s Madrid studio complex, launched in April 2019 as its first European Production Hub, comes just a week after Netflix held an online roadshow to unveil seven new projects – movies, series and reality shows – including “If Only,” a Spanish adaptation of the canceled Netflix Turkish original. Covering the next few months, the new project announcement suggested that Netflix has now achieved an unprecedented level of production in Spain that makes it one of the biggest investors in Spanish series and films in the country. Netflix has released more than 50 titles made in Spain since 2016 and participated in more than 70 films from the time of its first original movie, “7 Years,” released in 2016. It has worked with over 35 independent production houses and has created 7,500 jobs for casts and crews. This year’s current productions are expected to hire over 1,500 professionals and create over 21,000 days of work for extras, Netflix estimated. https://variety.com/2021/streaming/global/netflix-spain-studios-expansion-1234957707/ https://variety.com/2021/streaming/global/netflix-spain-stud...

lbj 4y ago

Go Woke Go Broke, that's how it goes.

smegsicle 4y ago
they posted cringe, it was only a matter of time

wolverine876 4y ago

How do people here see quality content (I happen to love the more innovativ and artistic stuff) without subscribing to all these different services? Netflix seems to have the best general collection for my tastes - genres, various countries, etc. I read about things on other services, but I am not subscribing to everything.

RandallBrown 4y ago
I subscribe (and immediately cancel) to everything. If I want to watch a show/movie (like Jackass Forever on Paramount+) I'll subscribe and then immediately cancel it. This gives me 1 month of the service. If I want to keep watching something on that service, I'll just resubscribe once it runs out. Some services like Netflix and Hulu, I know I'll get enough value out of them so I don't usually bother canceling. I hear friends complain about having to sign up for so many things to watch all the shows they want, but Apple makes this so easy I don't really think much about it. Back in the pre-streaming days most everyone wanted a-la-carte channels and that's exactly what we have now.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Many friends of mine do this. It has to be obvious, but I suppose Netflix/Disney/etc would rather have at least a month or two out of you rather than $0 or torrents.
ghostly_s 4y ago
Torrents
dgeiser13 4y ago
You might want to check out Kanopy. https://www.kanopy.com/ https://www.kanopy.com/
- wolverine876 4y ago
  Kanopy's content is fantastic, maybe the best. It has so many gems I've never heard of. However, last I knew, it requires you have a library card at a public library that uses Kanopy, and then limits you to a few films per month.

sillyinseattle 4y ago

A bit OT: Simple frequency counts (this page, @ 104 comments). Netflix -> 103 Apple -> 39 HBO -> 24 Disney -> 19 Amazon -> 14 Hulu -> 5

Animats 4y ago

In an effort to continue to gain share in the market, Netflix has increased its content spend, particularly on originals. To pay for it, it’s hiked prices of its service. The company said Tuesday those price changes are helping to bolster revenue, but were partially responsible for a loss of 600,000 subscribers in the U.S. and Canada during the most recent quarter. Yeah, raise prices, sales go down. It works like that.

freyr 4y ago

I’m currently subscribed to a bunch of streamers. I usually turn first to HBO or Hulu, then YouTube or Amazon Prime, then Apple TV+ (which has less content overall but really good shows lately), and finally Netflix as a last resort. In fact I rarely open Netflix unless I’ve already heard about something I want to check out. I really don’t like wading through their recommendations. With the frequent price increases, it’s getting harder and harder to justify.

standardUser 4y ago

I have a friend in another state who is disabled and on a fixed income. He is the only person I share my Netflix account with. I'd be happy to pay something in order to share it with him. But I don't like that a household of 6 can pay $15 for the service, whereas two single person households are expected to pay $30 for the same service. Shouldn't the cost be per profile, not per distinct physical address?

SnowHill9902 4y ago
It’s just the easiest heuristic to minimize abuse. By the way, you can still access from different households in some countries.
bombcar 4y ago
Some very old VHS movies still have a warning about not showing them to a group of more than 20 or so or only licensed for home/family viewing. Trying to limit sharing is basically pointless, make it a bit harder perhaps but those extra viewers probably weren’t going to subscribe anyway.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I am pretty sure Netflix has something in the pipe for extra viewers. They are trying it in some countries. Definitely not in the States yet though.

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

Love Bridgerton. But most of what I watch is on Prime. Severance on Apple was just too dark. Stuff like Paramount I get through Prime too. HBO made half of a really interesting series and then just walked away.

pcurve 4y ago

fun facts: Netflix now has P/E ratio lower than Coca cola, proctor gamble, Walmart. In fact, it's barely half of Costco.

adam_arthur 4y ago
Costco is severely overvalued, seemingly either through blind index investing (QQQ) or investors following a defensive narrative without paying any attention to the fundamentals. Its valuation multiple is 2x GOOG

carlhung 4y ago

Netflix sucks. I just cancelled my account few days ago.

mawadev 4y ago

I like to go outside and just look at a tree waving in the wind and feeling the ground with my bare feet sometimes. I couldn't do that a year ago freely, but now I can. Netflix can just freeze me in place, just like my 9-5 and then extract my hard earned money. No thanks boomers...

rdiddly 4y ago

I'm one of the ones they lost. I suddenly noticed the experience is inferior. The search doesn't seem to even take into account the thing I typed in. Maybe it's just that they've been so utterly gutted by the loss of all the Fox content to Disney+, that they're trying to cover it up with "well we don't have that, but perhaps you would like..." Speaking of "perhaps you would like," what do you call it when someone flashes something poorly targeted, unwanted and irrelevant in front of your eyeballs and pushes it a bit too hard? I call that an ad. I'm paying for advertising. Or rather, I was.

bombcar 4y ago
It reminds me of the “grandma bait” movies you’d see in the checkout line at the dollar store, things clearly designed to look like big budget movies that grandma heard the kids liked. Things like https://smile.amazon.com/Animated-Feature-Films-Vol/dp/B00MIKOX0S/ https://smile.amazon.com/Animated-Feature-Films-Vol/dp/B00MI...
- maximus-decimus 4y ago
  Good old Atlantic Rim movie.

icytrumpet 4y ago

I'm about to cancel for two reasons. 1. The auto-play preview feature is incredibly annoying and there is no way to disable it. If I want to watch a preview, I'll click the damn button. Let me read a description in peace. 2. The overt propaganda makes watching any new content all but impossible for me. It seems that this is not unique to Netflix, but they are the worst in my opinion.

shaman1 4y ago
Cancelled mine, but I remember you can disable the previews. Quite annoying 'feature'.
- icytrumpet 4y ago
  It must be buried in the Fire Stick UI because I can't seem to find it anywhere. I'll have to check again.
  - allenu 4y ago
    I believe the option only exists in the web settings page. It turns it off for all devices though.
UberFly 4y ago
Agreed on both. There are autoplay settings on previews here: How to turn autoplay previews on or off https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/2102 Yes, every service is a Clockwork Orange reeducation campaign any more. It gets old.
kobalsky 4y ago
one of the reasons I can't stand netflix is their ctr-maximizing screenshots, they are awful. if they had an option to browse movies with high def posters instead it would be beautiful.

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bumper_crop 4y ago

Netflix is another one of those "Poison Pill" companies that ensures executives can't be ousted for making bad decisions. Russia was a large source of growth in memberships, and on a whim the C-levels cut it off.

everybodyknows 4y ago

From inside the industry: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflix-q1-2022-earnings-1235132028/ https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/netflix-q...

lvl102 4y ago

I am a big fan of Netflix but I do think their UI is crap. It’s hard to search for shows. They should have an insanely great recommendation system since they’ve been at it for such a long time. But it’s basically the same system they had in place for decade plus. Think outside the box please.

danielfoster 4y ago

Netflix is a very performance-focused company. Any employee who missed a target so widely would be fired under their cut-throat management system. Why does Reed get to stay?

tssva 4y ago

Netflix was more expensive than their competitors even prior to the recent price increase. After the price increase the only way I can justify the cost at all is the fact that my account is shared across 2 households. If they crack down on account sharing I will cancel my account. I suspect that many others will do the same and the net result will not be the increase in subscriptions they are looking for.

Markoff 4y ago

that's what raising prices, fighting account sharing, fragmentation of these subscription services, etc. does to you

Fnoord 4y ago

My (speculative) take: Covid crisis ended and people are going outside, and they lost subs in RU and UA (why would you have Netflix sub if you are fighting a war and are broken).

danielrpa 4y ago

I cancelled my Netflix subscription. Their show lineup is increasingly focused on series without commitment to closure and featuring heavy virtue signaling/woke content. I respect those who enjoy this, but that's not me.

kosikond 4y ago

Going forward instead of "Netflix & Chill" I'm going to have "Jellyfin & No Worries"

greedo 4y ago

Netflix is screwed. It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you could find it on Netflix, put it in your DVD queue and in a few days receive the DVD in the mail. Their inventory was really good, (with some exceptions) and the service had pretty fast turnaround. Phase 1. Then broadband started becoming more available, so streaming became a natural extension. Here's where Netflix faced bigger challenges. Initially, IP owners were happy to sell streaming rights for pennies since they didn't have any idea of the real value. Netflix leveraged this to build up an even bigger catalog that wasn't constrained by the number of DVDs in their inventory. Netflix started to dabble in producing (and buying) content for their streaming. Good stuff like Stranger Things. The Crown. Dark. Babylon Berlin. And IP owners started raising the prices for renewals for movies and series in their catalogs. Netflix decided to cheap out on the quality of their shows. And they started to cut down on their DVD catalog as well. Now you have all of the IP owners with their own streaming services, so Netflix will find it really hard to stream anything but the crappiest stuff. And they've shown little ability to consistently produce quality series or movies. Contrast this with ATV+. Apple knew that it had a huge potential customer base, but that licensing IP wasn't going to be sustainable; whatever they streamed had to be exclusive. So they started slow, trying to replace HBO for high quality content. And they had some meh shows like "See." Not bad, but not HBO. Then "The Morning Show," followed by "Ted Lasso." Now they're starting to get some traction. Having an infinite amount of money always helps, but they became pretty good at saying no. "For All Mankind" grabbed a chunk of sci-fi viewers. Greyhound captured the war nerds. Slowly, carefully, they've been building up a pretty solid catalog. Now you have shows like "Servant," "Slow Horses," "The Mosquito Coast," "Foundation." Cap it off with a series and a movie that have set ATV+ on par with any streaming service: Severance and Coda. Now ATV+ will never have the catalog that Disney+ has. They might be fine with that. But where does this leave Netflix? Netflix has no serious movies that could compete for an Oscar. They don't seem to have the ability to create must see TV anymore. Perhaps they're too driven by algorithms to give the viewer what Netflix "thinks" they want? I just can't see a path forward for Netflix as other than crappy shows. Even with their foreign content, they face increased price pressure and competition from the other SVODs.

imbnwa 4y ago
Wasn't Campion's Power of the Dog an Oscar-rated Netflix film? I agree overall however, Apple is competing with the legacy content monsters the right way. Severance was great art, Slow Horses is compelling, Foundation had its issues but also better moments than any Netflix Sci-Fi show I've seen the past few years (Nightflyers, Another Life, etc don't even come close), and For All Mankind is well-written.

mrbonner 4y ago

Raises price every year, stops password sharing (within family), trashes contents. My nightly routine becomes surfing Netflix one title at a time, 10-15 minutes a title for about 40 minutes until I give up and just rewatch old shows, movies. I start to reconsider my subscription of Netflix now.

zwilliamson 4y ago

I would come back if they added the entire criterion collection and made it available on DVD/BluRay. Streaming access is too much of a fire hose. I like a little build up and anticipation with my movies.

1970-01-01 4y ago

They haven't jumped the shark until they push a credit card or pizza. "Earn free movies with every purchase!" "$10 off 3 pizzas with Grubflix" It's only a matter of time. You can't grow one service forever, no matter how hard you try.

dkrich 4y ago

Anecdotally the other streaming services have good stuff from time to time, but behaviorally they simply don’t compare to Netflix. My wife and I spend probably 80% our streaming time in Netflix just out of habit and the sheer amount of content. Then, every few months hbo or Hulu comes out with a show we want to watch but then once it’s over we default back to Netflix. Again you can argue that the content is crap but people have demonstrated they prefer quantity over quality. The strategy is something like a hub and spoke. Create a handful of high budget shows that are spaced out to keep people interested then fill the rest with crap. As an aside I’ve never paid for Netflix because we’ve had my wife’s account that’s linked to her parent’s for several years. It’s borderline ridiculous they’ve allowed password sharing as long as they have. If Netflix forced the account to be split we’d pay Without a second thought. I suspect most are like us despite all the cynicism. I think once they start instituting that change alone the sub base will expand rapidly. I’m very bullish on Netflix after this decline.