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They're losing subscribers, because of multiple reasons, most of which are their own fault: - Subscription prices keep rising, and they were already very high.

They're losing subscribers, because of multiple reasons, most of which are their own fault: - Subscription prices keep rising, and they were already very high. - Libraries decreasing as they lose the licensing to other streaming services. - Originals are hit and miss, mostly miss, and get cancelled constantly after 1 season. - Crackdown on VPN and password sharing. - COVID lockdowns are mostly over in Europe, US and Canada. -Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. - More competition than ever, and it's only growing. Increasing the sub prices and cracking down further, isn't going to bring in more customers on an already diluted competitive market. Also on the password sharing specifically. We pay for 2 or 4 simultaneous streams on Netflix. It doesn't matter if I'm at home streaming, while someone 15min away from me is also streaming it on the same account. I paid you for the connections, you shouldn't tell me who can use them or from where.

mschuster91 4y ago
> Originals are hit and miss, mostly miss, and get cancelled constantly after 1 season. The latter thing is precisely what causes the most "misses". Hard to get invested even despite minor issues when you know it will get cancelled anyway. Also means no one will produce or buy merch aside from coffee mugs, further cutting into profits. > Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. I believe that only mandatory licensing laws will solve that issue. Particularly Disney... it's time someone finally steps in and either breaks them up or forces them to license their content to competitors. The level of control this company has over the most popular/profitable entertainment brands (MCU, Star Wars, Avatar) is just insane - they own everything from the core IP over studios to distribution, and I would not be surprised at all if they'll announce to buy up AMC and other regional cinema chains.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I wonder how many people on HN would be okay if the government forced open software to be licensed for use in a way that was contrary to the way that authors wanted? Would regulation also set prices for how much license holders can charge? Should the latest Marvel movie be licensed for the same amount as an indy film?
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    We're already having precedence for enforced FRAND licensing with patents relevant for standards (particularly in the telephony, networking and codec world). It should not be too hard to adapt these as regulations for the media world, especially when anti-trust regulations come into play - and given how much control Big Mouse has, it's time to do so. Alternatively, break up Big Mouse or force them to divest from certain assets to make sure there is room for healthy competition. Currently, Big Mouse can pump out massive amounts of work that drown out indy filmmakers - people only go to cinemas four, five times a year, and when all of that is reserved for the MCU and Harry Potter (which is about the only major franchise that Big Mouse does not yet own) and cinemas are forced to extend runs for their movies despite almost no audience left simply because Big Mouse demands it by threatening to cut off cinemas from future blockbusters, who is left to watch movies by other studios?
    - scarface74 4y ago
      The government doesn’t “force” patents to be under FRAND. Companies “voluntarily” put their patents under FRAND to be included in standards. There are plenty of successful indy film houses that have better ROIs than Disney and get widespread circulation. The two that come to mind are Blumhouse and Tyler Perry. This isn’t the 50s. There are plenty of more profitable ways to distribute movies than the theatre - streaming, distributing via VOD, etc. My local theatre always has at least three non mainstream foreign language films.
Phurist 4y ago
I would also add that competition by now has voice and subtitles in local languages for users outside of US, which is a huge + in case you have kids who want to watch some movies, shows or cartoons.
thatbfromt 4y ago
> Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. What regions do you mean? In Eastern Europe I have popular shows like "The Office" and "Friends" in my Netflix, for example, that are not available to the US customers.
imglorp 4y ago
Add to that region locking. As a consumer, it's immensely frustrating that a global service needs to maintain geofencing to satisfy the bazillion content contracts. This is an artificial scarcity. Example: in the US, Better Call Saul season 1-5 is on NF. Season 6 is on NF in many countries, but NOT in the US -- presumably an embargo for AMC. Splitting series across platforms is such a shitty, anti-consumer maneuver. It forces people to either hop services, in and out of contract, or just pirate and be done with it. They have people lined up to pay for the product and they can't deliver it without hurt.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  Region Locking isn't NF's fault. Different people own different seasons of shows, and some won't sell to NF.
  - WelcomeShorty 4y ago
    What I understood, it is very often the rights to the music that makes it so fragmented.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      I believe that's true of pre-2000 content. Modern produced content is better about bundling all the streaming rights into acquisition so it's less of an issue.
- ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
  > This is an artificial scarcity. This is a foolish truism. (1) Intellectual property creates an intentional natural monopoly over the rights to sell that good. That's the whole point of a copyright. Thus, by design, they can make it as scarce as they want. (2) Since the good is digital, the good is, by definition, non-rival in economic terms (i.e. consumption by one consumer does not prevent simultaneous consumption by other consumers). Thus, ALL digital intellectual property is "artificially scarce" unless it is made totally freely available on the internet. However, the entire point of a copyright is to enable the content creator to get maximum value for their product (obviously subject to competition with other products). This is handled through distribution deals AND price discrimination. If Netflix had to make ALL content available EVERYWHERE for the monthly SAME PRICE, then most of the world would suffer. By being able to charge different amounts for different content, they are actually resulting in less dead-weight loss compared to normal monopolistic pricing (which again, the copyright grants a monopoly). > Splitting series across platforms is such a shitty, anti-consumer maneuver You could analogize this to "not releasing a movie for streaming at the same time as it is released in theaters is such a shitty, anti-consumer behavior". You aren't wrong that is true, ceteris paribus (i.e. with other conditions remaining the same). BUT you are ignoring that producer revenue effects of this simultaneous release. If a movie cannot force customers who have the highest demand to go to the theater first and pay a premium and then release it for home streaming, they would make substantially less money. That would (and is) totally devastating the film industry (currently) as they cannot afford to produce a big blockbuster. James Cameron summed this up well when reflecting on if the Avatar sequels (which were green-lit before the pandemic) will end up making any money: "The big issue is: Are we going to make any damn money?" Cameron says of his planned sequels. "Big, expensive films have got to make a lot of money. We're in a new world post-COVID, post-streaming. Maybe those [box office] numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It's all a big roll of the dice."[1] Similarly, TV distribution follows a model of first-run distribution paying the highest price for the exclusive rights within a certain market. I totally get (and agree) that it is incredibly frustrating to have this kind of system. The problem is that, by design, these copyrights are monopolies. And if you don't enable some kind of price discrimination when you have a monopoly, then the incentive of the monopolist is to charge the HIGHEST price / most exclusionary set up so that they can get the maximum profit, at the expense of substantial dead-weight loss. Using things like the time-value of money to separate your customers into a cohort that doesn't want to wait and will pay and one that is willing to wait for the content to come to streaming months later is quite effective. So my question to you if -- how would solve this otherwise given the monopolistic nature of copyrights AND ensure we don't have a substantial decrease in available content? This question deserves serious attention by the entertainment industry. The music industry basically had piracy annihilate artist revenue from record sales 20 years ago and then they settled on a system that seems great to customers (i.e. virtually all music is available on any single streaming service) however it has created a situation where artists make virtually no material income from streaming and make most of their income from live concerts. That seems like a bad outcome for the artist. Basically their monopolistic rights to their copyright were shattered by a standardized pricing scheme for streaming. The difference -- music is extremely cheap to make and can be made by the band themselves at home. Sure, plenty of video content for things like tiktok or youtube can be done that way as well. But movies and higher production value TV shows absolutely cannot. They require several hundred people to be paid wages for specialized roles to make. [1] https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-teases-avatar-sequel/ https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-teases-avatar-sequel/
AnssiH 4y ago
In this Q1, they lost 700k subscribers in Russia. Without that they would have had positive growth. From shareholder letter PDF: https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/FINAL-Q1-22-Shareholder-Letter.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q1... > The suspension of our service in Russia and winding-down of all Russian paid memberships resulted in a -0.7m impact on paid net adds; excluding this impact, paid net additions totaled +0.5m.
- scarab92 4y ago
  Yes, but they forecast growth of 2.5m and analysts were expecting 2.7m - 3.0m, so 200k is still a big miss, albeit only a single data point at this stage.
  - colburnmh 4y ago
    True, but it's an enormous miss. If they missed the projections by a few hundred thousand, there wouldn't be as much of a panic. But they only got 8%-11% of the subscriber growth they projected, depending on whether you account for the Russian business wind-down--that's not a trivial miss. And as others have pointed out, part of the problem that companies like Netflix are going to encounter is the result of the long-running erosion of worker pay (while corporations have had years of record profits), coupled with sudden and rapidly rising inflation. This is going to cause a serious lack of available cash for households to spend on anything that isn't critical--like 37 different streaming services. The first part, Netflix can't do anything about other than ensure that they pay their workers fairly. But streaming has been an area of increasing specialization, rather than service consolidation. And that causes problems for Netflix as they continue to lose portions of their catalogue to others like Disney, Hulu, Apple, etc., as they start their own services. Users are either going to just cancel, or will start "service hopping" (where they pay for one service for a month, cancel/suspend that service, then go to another) to be able to watch the shows they want. And that will represent a significant revenue loss to the entire segment, and ultimately force contraction.
atomicfiredoll 4y ago
This is good list. I'd also call out the common complaints I see about the recommendations. Further, it seems like there are a number of people unhappy with the homepage UI, which may be tangentially associated to recommendations. When the same things keep getting recommended in multiple categories for several months, it gives the impression the library is even smaller than it actually is. Personally, in terms of UI, especially regarding player functionality, I would take Netflix over Hulu and HBO Max every time. But, I am slightly bitter about them replacing the 5 star rating system with a two star system and now a 3 star system.
- cupofpython 4y ago
  The most annoying part of the UI for me, and netflix isnt alone in this, is that the last thing I was watching is not the most easily accessible content after i sign in. I have to scroll down through 2-3 categories to get to "continue watching" . . it's like something out of a comedy skit Am I crazy, or should it be expected behavior that if I click nothing but "ok / enter" after opening the app that I should end up on the last thing I was watching? Also it's always making noise or doing something and the only way to shut it up for a minute is to play something and pause it
  - utucuro 4y ago
    You should really try Amazon Prime Video on Android TV; you'll learn to appreciate Netflix, a LOT at that... Netflix is definitely guilty of mishandling "continue watching" though, not even showing everything I've watched recently while insisting on keeping things I haven't touched for months easily accessible. The noise thing, I believe, has to do with your settings though, because the only thing I hear, other than what I'm watching, is the app opening sound with the NF logo.
    - cupofpython 4y ago
      > insisting on keeping things I haven't touched for months easily accessible I think this highlights their entire UI goal design i think. They constantly pressure you to watch new things. They want to inflate their unique viewer counts on as many shows as possible. They want to hook you on something new before you finish what you're watching. >The noise thing, I believe, has to do with your settings makes sense, ill check it out. maybe there is a setting in there for continue watching priority too
RHSeeger 4y ago
> We pay for 2 or 4 simultaneous streams on Netflix I was under the impression that you're paying for "household access", up to a limited number of simultaneous streams; where household means the people that live with you. Does the agreement wording you accept when you sign up say otherwise?
- cupofpython 4y ago
  my household is in the metaverse, we share a common chatroom
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    Convert to Judaism and then your "private space" can be all of manhatten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv
    - cupofpython 4y ago
      TIL there is a fishing line encircling all of manhatten that costs "between $125,000 and $150,000 a year to maintain" https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-encircles-manhattan-protecting-sanctity-of-sabbath https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...
croutonwagon 4y ago
Would agree. Heck Netflix is one of the few services I still have, and that is mostly because I let others use it. They even removed Star Trek:TNG (while i was mid binge) last month. That was the first time actually using the service in a while.
- HWR_14 4y ago
  > They even removed Star Trek:TNG (while i was mid binge) last month. Why isn't this phrased as "Paramount pulled ST:TNG (mid binge) last month to drive people to Paramount+" If you want NF to retain ST, advocate people don't sign up for Paramount+. If it fails, they'll go back to licensing their content to everyone.
  - distances 4y ago
    This is honestly the first time I'm hearing of Paramount+. Can't predict too much of a success for them if they already launched but with this little noise about it.
    - HWR_14 4y ago
      They've pushed it in the US. Maybe you're outside the US? I started to write something explaining why I hear about them but since I want them to fail I don't want to advertise any good things they have.
      - distances 4y ago
        Yep, I'm in Europe. Probably not available here even so that'd explain it!
verve_rat 4y ago
>- Originals are hit and miss, mostly miss, and get cancelled constantly after 1 season. This is the big one for me. TV people used to hit it big when their show got enough episodes (usually 100 i think) to go into syndication. Obviously with a global streaming service buying your show, that isn't possible. So to compensate and compete for shows Netflix gives show runners a guaranteed two seasons up front, with escalating payments for each season after that. Basically Netflix bakes rising cost for its shows in to the contracts. Couple that with a practice of making decisions about shows based on early numbers (how many people watch the show in the first week, maybe two, of release) and we end up in the situation where, I'm pretty sure Netflix is cancelling shows a couple of weeks after release because the early numbers don't predict enough viewers to justify the expensive later seasons. When streaming first started becoming a thing, I thought Netflix had the content business locked down. A streaming service can service the long tail. It doesn't need to worry about sweaps. It has repeat syndication built in. A show that has a slow burn would fit nicely because it will always be picking up new viewers as new people discover it, which is great for subscriber retention because people like finding new (to them) shows to watch. But it seems like I thought the opposite of the people running Netflix. It weirds me out that Disney is the service with the best long tail catalogue. Disney have been doing this sort of thing for a long time and the difference is pretty clear.
ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
I think the biggest reason they are losing subscribers is they have reached near 100% market penetration. (1) There are 75 million Netflix subscribers in the US and Canada [1] (2) Netflix alleges that 30 million subscribers in the US and Canada are sharing their accounts with another household* [2] (3) There are 133 million households in the US and Canada [3], [4] Thus, if those 30 million shared US/CA accounts are added to the 75 million current subscribers, you reach 105 million. That is almost 80% of all households. It is unrealistic to go beyond 90% of households. Thus, they NEED to stop password sharing to prevent cannibalization within the US. * A note: that sharing isn't always with ANOTHER household. It could be multiple members of the same household. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250937/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/250937/quarterly-number-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/19/netflix-warns-password-sharing-crackdown-is-coming.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/19/netflix-warns-password-shari... [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+us&oq=number+of+households+in+us https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+us&o... [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+canada&oq=number+of+house https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+cana...
lemoncookiechip 4y ago
Seems like they're introducing an ad-supported plan now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31090319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31090319
smileybarry 4y ago
> -Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. I already suspected this but I just checked and you're absolutely right. US Netflix is between 6000-7000 titles, while Israel Netflix is around 1000. And yet subscriptions cost even slightly more -- $19.99 for 4K vs ₪69.90 ($21.17). It's almost entirely Netflix originals here, with some other network shows here and there, and a few cult favorite shows & movies. There's a few outliers in "stuff available here but not in US Netflix" like Friends but that's probably because there's no HBO Max here, I suspect they'll take Friends back once they launch.

mschuster91 4y ago

> Originals are hit and miss, mostly miss, and get cancelled constantly after 1 season. The latter thing is precisely what causes the most "misses". Hard to get invested even despite minor issues when you know it will get cancelled anyway. Also means no one will produce or buy merch aside from coffee mugs, further cutting into profits. > Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. I believe that only mandatory licensing laws will solve that issue. Particularly Disney... it's time someone finally steps in and either breaks them up or forces them to license their content to competitors. The level of control this company has over the most popular/profitable entertainment brands (MCU, Star Wars, Avatar) is just insane - they own everything from the core IP over studios to distribution, and I would not be surprised at all if they'll announce to buy up AMC and other regional cinema chains.

scarface74 4y ago
I wonder how many people on HN would be okay if the government forced open software to be licensed for use in a way that was contrary to the way that authors wanted? Would regulation also set prices for how much license holders can charge? Should the latest Marvel movie be licensed for the same amount as an indy film?
- mschuster91 4y ago
  We're already having precedence for enforced FRAND licensing with patents relevant for standards (particularly in the telephony, networking and codec world). It should not be too hard to adapt these as regulations for the media world, especially when anti-trust regulations come into play - and given how much control Big Mouse has, it's time to do so. Alternatively, break up Big Mouse or force them to divest from certain assets to make sure there is room for healthy competition. Currently, Big Mouse can pump out massive amounts of work that drown out indy filmmakers - people only go to cinemas four, five times a year, and when all of that is reserved for the MCU and Harry Potter (which is about the only major franchise that Big Mouse does not yet own) and cinemas are forced to extend runs for their movies despite almost no audience left simply because Big Mouse demands it by threatening to cut off cinemas from future blockbusters, who is left to watch movies by other studios?
  - scarface74 4y ago
    The government doesn’t “force” patents to be under FRAND. Companies “voluntarily” put their patents under FRAND to be included in standards. There are plenty of successful indy film houses that have better ROIs than Disney and get widespread circulation. The two that come to mind are Blumhouse and Tyler Perry. This isn’t the 50s. There are plenty of more profitable ways to distribute movies than the theatre - streaming, distributing via VOD, etc. My local theatre always has at least three non mainstream foreign language films.

Phurist 4y ago

I would also add that competition by now has voice and subtitles in local languages for users outside of US, which is a huge + in case you have kids who want to watch some movies, shows or cartoons.

thatbfromt 4y ago

> Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. What regions do you mean? In Eastern Europe I have popular shows like "The Office" and "Friends" in my Netflix, for example, that are not available to the US customers.

imglorp 4y ago

Add to that region locking. As a consumer, it's immensely frustrating that a global service needs to maintain geofencing to satisfy the bazillion content contracts. This is an artificial scarcity. Example: in the US, Better Call Saul season 1-5 is on NF. Season 6 is on NF in many countries, but NOT in the US -- presumably an embargo for AMC. Splitting series across platforms is such a shitty, anti-consumer maneuver. It forces people to either hop services, in and out of contract, or just pirate and be done with it. They have people lined up to pay for the product and they can't deliver it without hurt.

HWR_14 4y ago
Region Locking isn't NF's fault. Different people own different seasons of shows, and some won't sell to NF.
- WelcomeShorty 4y ago
  What I understood, it is very often the rights to the music that makes it so fragmented.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    I believe that's true of pre-2000 content. Modern produced content is better about bundling all the streaming rights into acquisition so it's less of an issue.
ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
> This is an artificial scarcity. This is a foolish truism. (1) Intellectual property creates an intentional natural monopoly over the rights to sell that good. That's the whole point of a copyright. Thus, by design, they can make it as scarce as they want. (2) Since the good is digital, the good is, by definition, non-rival in economic terms (i.e. consumption by one consumer does not prevent simultaneous consumption by other consumers). Thus, ALL digital intellectual property is "artificially scarce" unless it is made totally freely available on the internet. However, the entire point of a copyright is to enable the content creator to get maximum value for their product (obviously subject to competition with other products). This is handled through distribution deals AND price discrimination. If Netflix had to make ALL content available EVERYWHERE for the monthly SAME PRICE, then most of the world would suffer. By being able to charge different amounts for different content, they are actually resulting in less dead-weight loss compared to normal monopolistic pricing (which again, the copyright grants a monopoly). > Splitting series across platforms is such a shitty, anti-consumer maneuver You could analogize this to "not releasing a movie for streaming at the same time as it is released in theaters is such a shitty, anti-consumer behavior". You aren't wrong that is true, ceteris paribus (i.e. with other conditions remaining the same). BUT you are ignoring that producer revenue effects of this simultaneous release. If a movie cannot force customers who have the highest demand to go to the theater first and pay a premium and then release it for home streaming, they would make substantially less money. That would (and is) totally devastating the film industry (currently) as they cannot afford to produce a big blockbuster. James Cameron summed this up well when reflecting on if the Avatar sequels (which were green-lit before the pandemic) will end up making any money: "The big issue is: Are we going to make any damn money?" Cameron says of his planned sequels. "Big, expensive films have got to make a lot of money. We're in a new world post-COVID, post-streaming. Maybe those [box office] numbers will never be seen again. Who knows? It's all a big roll of the dice."[1] Similarly, TV distribution follows a model of first-run distribution paying the highest price for the exclusive rights within a certain market. I totally get (and agree) that it is incredibly frustrating to have this kind of system. The problem is that, by design, these copyrights are monopolies. And if you don't enable some kind of price discrimination when you have a monopoly, then the incentive of the monopolist is to charge the HIGHEST price / most exclusionary set up so that they can get the maximum profit, at the expense of substantial dead-weight loss. Using things like the time-value of money to separate your customers into a cohort that doesn't want to wait and will pay and one that is willing to wait for the content to come to streaming months later is quite effective. So my question to you if -- how would solve this otherwise given the monopolistic nature of copyrights AND ensure we don't have a substantial decrease in available content? This question deserves serious attention by the entertainment industry. The music industry basically had piracy annihilate artist revenue from record sales 20 years ago and then they settled on a system that seems great to customers (i.e. virtually all music is available on any single streaming service) however it has created a situation where artists make virtually no material income from streaming and make most of their income from live concerts. That seems like a bad outcome for the artist. Basically their monopolistic rights to their copyright were shattered by a standardized pricing scheme for streaming. The difference -- music is extremely cheap to make and can be made by the band themselves at home. Sure, plenty of video content for things like tiktok or youtube can be done that way as well. But movies and higher production value TV shows absolutely cannot. They require several hundred people to be paid wages for specialized roles to make. [1] https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-teases-avatar-sequel/ https://ew.com/movies/james-cameron-teases-avatar-sequel/

AnssiH 4y ago

In this Q1, they lost 700k subscribers in Russia. Without that they would have had positive growth. From shareholder letter PDF: https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q1/FINAL-Q1-22-Shareholder-Letter.pdf https://s22.q4cdn.com/959853165/files/doc_financials/2022/q1... > The suspension of our service in Russia and winding-down of all Russian paid memberships resulted in a -0.7m impact on paid net adds; excluding this impact, paid net additions totaled +0.5m.

scarab92 4y ago
Yes, but they forecast growth of 2.5m and analysts were expecting 2.7m - 3.0m, so 200k is still a big miss, albeit only a single data point at this stage.
- colburnmh 4y ago
  True, but it's an enormous miss. If they missed the projections by a few hundred thousand, there wouldn't be as much of a panic. But they only got 8%-11% of the subscriber growth they projected, depending on whether you account for the Russian business wind-down--that's not a trivial miss. And as others have pointed out, part of the problem that companies like Netflix are going to encounter is the result of the long-running erosion of worker pay (while corporations have had years of record profits), coupled with sudden and rapidly rising inflation. This is going to cause a serious lack of available cash for households to spend on anything that isn't critical--like 37 different streaming services. The first part, Netflix can't do anything about other than ensure that they pay their workers fairly. But streaming has been an area of increasing specialization, rather than service consolidation. And that causes problems for Netflix as they continue to lose portions of their catalogue to others like Disney, Hulu, Apple, etc., as they start their own services. Users are either going to just cancel, or will start "service hopping" (where they pay for one service for a month, cancel/suspend that service, then go to another) to be able to watch the shows they want. And that will represent a significant revenue loss to the entire segment, and ultimately force contraction.

atomicfiredoll 4y ago

This is good list. I'd also call out the common complaints I see about the recommendations. Further, it seems like there are a number of people unhappy with the homepage UI, which may be tangentially associated to recommendations. When the same things keep getting recommended in multiple categories for several months, it gives the impression the library is even smaller than it actually is. Personally, in terms of UI, especially regarding player functionality, I would take Netflix over Hulu and HBO Max every time. But, I am slightly bitter about them replacing the 5 star rating system with a two star system and now a 3 star system.

cupofpython 4y ago
The most annoying part of the UI for me, and netflix isnt alone in this, is that the last thing I was watching is not the most easily accessible content after i sign in. I have to scroll down through 2-3 categories to get to "continue watching" . . it's like something out of a comedy skit Am I crazy, or should it be expected behavior that if I click nothing but "ok / enter" after opening the app that I should end up on the last thing I was watching? Also it's always making noise or doing something and the only way to shut it up for a minute is to play something and pause it
- utucuro 4y ago
  You should really try Amazon Prime Video on Android TV; you'll learn to appreciate Netflix, a LOT at that... Netflix is definitely guilty of mishandling "continue watching" though, not even showing everything I've watched recently while insisting on keeping things I haven't touched for months easily accessible. The noise thing, I believe, has to do with your settings though, because the only thing I hear, other than what I'm watching, is the app opening sound with the NF logo.
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    > insisting on keeping things I haven't touched for months easily accessible I think this highlights their entire UI goal design i think. They constantly pressure you to watch new things. They want to inflate their unique viewer counts on as many shows as possible. They want to hook you on something new before you finish what you're watching. >The noise thing, I believe, has to do with your settings makes sense, ill check it out. maybe there is a setting in there for continue watching priority too

RHSeeger 4y ago

> We pay for 2 or 4 simultaneous streams on Netflix I was under the impression that you're paying for "household access", up to a limited number of simultaneous streams; where household means the people that live with you. Does the agreement wording you accept when you sign up say otherwise?

cupofpython 4y ago
my household is in the metaverse, we share a common chatroom
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Convert to Judaism and then your "private space" can be all of manhatten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eruv
  - cupofpython 4y ago
    TIL there is a fishing line encircling all of manhatten that costs "between $125,000 and $150,000 a year to maintain" https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-encircles-manhattan-protecting-sanctity-of-sabbath https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...

croutonwagon 4y ago

Would agree. Heck Netflix is one of the few services I still have, and that is mostly because I let others use it. They even removed Star Trek:TNG (while i was mid binge) last month. That was the first time actually using the service in a while.

HWR_14 4y ago
> They even removed Star Trek:TNG (while i was mid binge) last month. Why isn't this phrased as "Paramount pulled ST:TNG (mid binge) last month to drive people to Paramount+" If you want NF to retain ST, advocate people don't sign up for Paramount+. If it fails, they'll go back to licensing their content to everyone.
- distances 4y ago
  This is honestly the first time I'm hearing of Paramount+. Can't predict too much of a success for them if they already launched but with this little noise about it.
  - HWR_14 4y ago
    They've pushed it in the US. Maybe you're outside the US? I started to write something explaining why I hear about them but since I want them to fail I don't want to advertise any good things they have.
    - distances 4y ago
      Yep, I'm in Europe. Probably not available here even so that'd explain it!

verve_rat 4y ago

>- Originals are hit and miss, mostly miss, and get cancelled constantly after 1 season. This is the big one for me. TV people used to hit it big when their show got enough episodes (usually 100 i think) to go into syndication. Obviously with a global streaming service buying your show, that isn't possible. So to compensate and compete for shows Netflix gives show runners a guaranteed two seasons up front, with escalating payments for each season after that. Basically Netflix bakes rising cost for its shows in to the contracts. Couple that with a practice of making decisions about shows based on early numbers (how many people watch the show in the first week, maybe two, of release) and we end up in the situation where, I'm pretty sure Netflix is cancelling shows a couple of weeks after release because the early numbers don't predict enough viewers to justify the expensive later seasons. When streaming first started becoming a thing, I thought Netflix had the content business locked down. A streaming service can service the long tail. It doesn't need to worry about sweaps. It has repeat syndication built in. A show that has a slow burn would fit nicely because it will always be picking up new viewers as new people discover it, which is great for subscriber retention because people like finding new (to them) shows to watch. But it seems like I thought the opposite of the people running Netflix. It weirds me out that Disney is the service with the best long tail catalogue. Disney have been doing this sort of thing for a long time and the difference is pretty clear.

ryan_j_naughton 4y ago

I think the biggest reason they are losing subscribers is they have reached near 100% market penetration. (1) There are 75 million Netflix subscribers in the US and Canada [1] (2) Netflix alleges that 30 million subscribers in the US and Canada are sharing their accounts with another household* [2] (3) There are 133 million households in the US and Canada [3], [4] Thus, if those 30 million shared US/CA accounts are added to the 75 million current subscribers, you reach 105 million. That is almost 80% of all households. It is unrealistic to go beyond 90% of households. Thus, they NEED to stop password sharing to prevent cannibalization within the US. * A note: that sharing isn't always with ANOTHER household. It could be multiple members of the same household. [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250937/quarterly-number-of-netflix-streaming-subscribers-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/250937/quarterly-number-... [2] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/19/netflix-warns-password-sharing-crackdown-is-coming.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/19/netflix-warns-password-shari... [3] https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+us&oq=number+of+households+in+us https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+us&o... [4] https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+canada&oq=number+of+house https://www.google.com/search?q=number+of+households+in+cana...

lemoncookiechip 4y ago

Seems like they're introducing an ad-supported plan now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31090319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31090319

smileybarry 4y ago

> -Libraries outside the US are a fraction of the size of the US library, some legitimately have less than 10% of its content, while asking for the same amount of money. I already suspected this but I just checked and you're absolutely right. US Netflix is between 6000-7000 titles, while Israel Netflix is around 1000. And yet subscriptions cost even slightly more -- $19.99 for 4K vs ₪69.90 ($21.17). It's almost entirely Netflix originals here, with some other network shows here and there, and a few cult favorite shows & movies. There's a few outliers in "stuff available here but not in US Netflix" like Friends but that's probably because there's no HBO Max here, I suspect they'll take Friends back once they launch.