9 ms·

I feel bad for Netflix. They're between a rock and a hard place. The content providers want more money and eventually want to cut out the middleman. The users b

I feel bad for Netflix. They're between a rock and a hard place. The content providers want more money and eventually want to cut out the middleman. The users balk when the price is raised, even though unlimited streaming and DVDs for a month still cost less than a decent meal. And every decision they make (like Qwikster, which was likely done so they didn't have to pay content providers a fee for users who weren't streaming) is bashed and mocked.

badclient 15y ago
still cost less than a decent meal So many great things on the web cost less than a single cup of Starbucks. Yet, I myself am so hesitant to pay for them. On my landing pages I design at work, I'm increasingly trying to communicate this via comparisons("less than a morning Starbucks trip"). Another one is showing a dollar bill to communicate that for less than a dollar a day, they will get _____. For a service that we were charging $10, we had 3% conversion rate. Then I showed an actual picture of a $10 bill to show how inexpensive this is and we doubled conversion to 6%. I increased the price to $30 and showed a one dollar bill, an equal sign, and what they would get for a dollar a day. The conversion rate is 3%. Overall, we make $30 more per 100 uniques to that page than at $10 price(we make $60 at 10, $90 at 30). It seems promising though not totally conclusive in terms of increasing conversion rates. The point is, spending a dollar on the web to me seems much more difficult than spending a buck on a Crunch bar. The efforts of my landing page experiments are to align online spend perception with retail. (numbers rounded to nearest % for purpose of this post)
- sliverstorm 15y ago
  This says things about the prices at Starbucks as much as it says things about the web. :) Also, with food, even if it is terrible you can still eat it. It's a no/little risk investment.
  - eropple 15y ago
    even if it is terrible you can still eat it I see you've never been to Friendly's.
- georgemcbay 15y ago
  The reason I think long and hard before signing up for new web services isn't even the cost 99% of the time, but the uncertainty in how difficult it is going to be to cancel should I decide I do not want to continue. I've had it UP TO HERE with services that allow me to subscribe with one click and then make me go through a half-day long ordeal of phone calls to outsourced customer service people (who earn bonuses based on convincing you not to leave the service) in order to cancel. Making it obvious that I can leave at any time just as easily as I joined is a huge greasing agent for getting me to actually put down money to try your service. It is a shame so few sites/services do this and most go with the short-sighted trap-em-in model which hurts the industry as a whole (since it makes people like me far less likely to use any non-essential services just to avoid the potential of a cancellation PITA).
  - AJ007 15y ago
    Cancelling a recurring service is generally no more difficult than saying, "please cancel my subscription quick so I don't have to charge this back."
    - georgemcbay 15y ago
      IME what you said is true, but only once you're talking to the manager of the manager of the person you originally waited on hold 25 minutes to talk to. And this is your second call because the first one got dropped randomly after 20 minutes on hold.
    - Joakal 15y ago
      Companies will find ways to delay you as long possible: http://i.imgur.com/G0qlu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/G0qlu.jpg
      - joelhaasnoot 15y ago
        Except when forced to by law. Illinois doesn't allow Microsoft to do that and Illinois residents can cancel with one click.
    - 15y ago
- larrys 15y ago
  "less than a morning Starbucks trip" I wouldn't think that a comparison like that would work. For one thing there are many people who feel they are pissing away money on Starbucks, or feel some guilt (I myself spend about $4.00 per day and sometimes twice that. That's at least $1500 per year. I don't want to be reminded of that, especially when business is off.) (So you are making a comparison to a potential sore spot. You want a positive association. Comparing to Starbucks but without mentioning price might be an example but that wouldn't make sense for your product, right?) Now, to sell it's product, Starbucks (or any premium brand) doesn't make comparisons to what other things costs. They make you feel special in some way by the product or by the experience or create some value that justifies the price. Making comparisons is good though if you are saving people money. Have you tried raising the price and offering an unconditional money back guarantee? "Cancel at any time and owe nothing". That seems to work with many things I've seen that cause people to be fence sitters as long as the price is high enough. Seo book does that (p1 for seo and search engine optimization) http://www.seobook.com/ http://www.seobook.com/
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  I think it was the SmugMug guys who discovered that they had higher conversion rates at $12/year than $10/year, because people found it easy to think of as $1 / month. Response to pricing on virtual services can be tricky.
  - rokhayakebe 15y ago
    It might have been Funny Or Die
- Alex3917 15y ago
  "So many great things on the web cost less than a single cup of Starbucks. Yet, I myself am so hesitant to pay for them." It's the same thing where if you add up all the things you are supposed to do each day that only take 5 - 10 minutes, you end up with like three hours worth of stuff. Flossing, meditating, abs, showering, etc.
- Mizza 15y ago
  Your web apps don't release dopamine into my bloodstream. Your iPhone game doesn't give me a headache if I don't play it. I can't take a girl on a date to your eBook PDF. The reason that digital goods _seem_ more expensive is because the result we get _is_ less valuable to us as human beings. It's hard to pay money for things that leave you exactly as you were before - sitting in a chair, looking at a screen.
  - tomkarlo 15y ago
    Since when is how much we get from something tied to how it impacts us? Watching a movie doesn't change us physically, but we pay $12 for it because it entertains us, just the same as most digital goods. I don't pay $20 for a book because I want a stack of paper, either. If that was true, you'd get paid to smoke and eat fast food, since they have a negative impact.
  - badclient 15y ago
    Yeah but if you bought my productivity app, you may have more time for your date. Or you may have less headaches from your finances.
- mwexler 15y ago
  It's the nickel and diming of modern services. Every service is just a buck, just a fiver, just a tenner. I used to get usenet with my ISP, now I pay for it. I used to get luggage for free with my flight, now I don't. We've literally turned pricing around: even $1.99 seem like too much for an iphone game... when you realize that too many $1.99s will turn into $20 or more dollars. But I agree, money for services online feels very different from money for product, whether a good deal or not.
- philwelch 15y ago
  So let's say you get a Crunch bar. You unwrap it and take a bite. It fills your mouth, and you taste chocolatey goodness. You chew on a little. Crunch, crunch. Your mind drifts off a bit and you swallow a mouthful before going to take another bite. This is exactly the kind of direct, physiological pleasure $1 can get you, and it's something we've enjoyed for billions of years, and spent all that time evolving new strategies to achieve. You know what doesn't have trouble selling online? Sex. Anything from escorts to live cam shows to porn. Why? Because that's another direct, physiological pleasure we've had for billions of years. Now tell me, what kind of web services compete with eating and fucking in terms of what people really want?
randall 15y ago
I think it's because the lack of tangibility (in any real sense) makes it seem less valuable. I had an experience where I said "pay $7000 for my service with a computer included" or "pay $5000 and byoc" and i've so far had everyone choose the $7000 option. It's just a matter of connection / tangibility. You know what starbucks tastes like, so you're willing to pay. You know what an iPhone feels like, so you can buy it. The software, while awesome, doesn't connect like a physical product you can connect with on multiple senses. My $.02, but I think it's why it's easier to buy a big mac than Rdio.
- frossie 15y ago
  I am not sure in your example people picked the "with computer" option because it was tangible. I am guessing that anyone who can afford 5,000 for a service can afford a couple of grand to avoid the hassle of purchasing and setting up a computer. If your service was worth $100, then I would indeed find that remarkable.
pork 15y ago
I feel bad for them too, but it's important to remember that if they don't work for the customer, then they're not a viable business. No sympathy necessary.
invertd 15y ago
The users balk because they understand that their effective monthly/weekly price was jacked up, by a lot. Regardless of how much Netflix pitches their "unlimited" plan, users understand that their time for (movie) entertainment is not unlimited. Therefore, from their perspective, they see it as it is - a huge price increase - and they move on to better deals or something else entirely.
dustinupdyke 15y ago
Not understanding your customer in this day and age when there are so many effective ways of doing so is inexcusable.
cookiecaper 15y ago
The best potential outcome of this would be accelerating potential copyright/IP reform. Netflix is destined to die unless they can find a way to diversify; as you said, the rights holders want to cut out the middle man. The overhead requisite in old-world rental chains like Blockbuster is sufficiently prohibitive that the media companies did not have an interest in supplanting that market, but now that Netflix has proven the viability of online delivery, apparently media companies don't think it prohibitive to set up some servers and stream reruns. Netflix perhaps should consider transitioning from a consumer-facing service to a white-label technology provider, developing things like the recommendation engine, rental and streaming platform, etc. and licensing to media companies as the basis for their several services. Unfortunately, I think the unified collection in services like Netflix is going to go away as media companies' greed drives them to try to take their own slice of the pie, probably resulting in fewer subscribers all the way around and potentially a resurgence of brick-and-mortar video rental, where, it appears, media companies still are not interested. All that said, $300 was grossly overpriced for a company whose entire existence depends on the benevolence of a handful of major media producers.
- jamesfrank 15y ago
  How would this accelerate copyright/IP reform?
  - cookiecaper 15y ago
    It's a great example of the excessive control given to rights holders, so excessive that a prominent company like Netflix ($300/share is certainly not something to shirk) and similar hypothetical businesses can be totally gutted at the pleasure of a handful of production companies and/or publishers. The diminution of Netflix is no small matter and will hopefully serve as a very visible demonstration of the cruel absurdity of current copyright law. Netflix can only offer a relative few movies without the approval of content holders, mostly only those that are older than my grandparents. They don't even have the option of reverting to classics from the 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s. The hope is that the dramatic demise of Netflix will raise awareness and visibility of these issues, promoting IP reform.
cma 15y ago
Qwikster would have resulted in Netflix paying more credit card fees (two credit card charges a month instead of one); there is a fixed fee for every transaction. It made no sense to try and get out of movie studio bargaining by paying credit card companies a bigger cut--if it worked for existing streaming catalog deals, it would be temporary at best. What is going to really hit Netflix hard is the entire Starz library disappearing from Instant.
beedogs 15y ago
Like Tivo, Netflix defined a market and then proceeded to be crowded out of it by the content producers and distributors until there was nothing left for them. I'd be worried about any company with a similar business plan.
mhb 15y ago
And that's overpriced for the crap that's available to stream. Wouldn't it make more sense to increase the price of the streaming after the supposed improvement to streaming quality which will result from their hugely increased payment to content providers?
jshen 15y ago
"I feel bad for Netflix. They're between a rock and a hard place. The content providers want more money and eventually want to cut out the middleman." This is true, but the content providers are also between a rock and a hard place, but don't seem to realize it. A generation of kids are growing up knowing how to get content for free, but the low cost, convenience, and value add of netflix is worth it if you aren't poor.
- slowpoke 15y ago
  > but the low cost, convenience, and value add of netflix I still find it much more convenient to head over to TPB (or another tracker of my choice), find a torrent of whatever I want to watch, download (and share) it, and then be able to play it with my favorite media player - as many times as I want. I don't see what value a streaming service is supposed to add over a local copy. It's a waste of bandwidth as soon as you watch something more than once, and the quality will never reach that of a local copy. By the way, I'm not exactly poor. Asserting that their financial standing has anything to do with the reason people pirate is a confusion of correlation and causation.
  - km3k 15y ago
    Yeah, the torrents are still a good option, but I like Netflix since it's quicker and easier than torrenting. The streaming is instant. And if you have "unlimited" bandwidth, then the additional streams don't really matter. When I'm on my couch and want to watch a movie, I don't want to search for and download a torrent, I want to watch a movie. Netflix (on my Xbox 360) lets me do that. The interesting thing for Netflix as they raise prices will be finding out where people's threshold is for paying for the convenience and licitness of Netflix versus downloading a torrent instead.
    - slowpoke 15y ago
      >since it's quicker and easier than torrenting. That depends on your watching habits. I maintain a backlog of things to watch which I regularly refill. That also prevents me from wasting time on impulsive decisions - I plan ahead on what to watch. Besides, you can also use direct downloads to get the same advantages (almost instant playback) than streams. >And if you have "unlimited" bandwidth, then the additional streams don't really matter. I talking more about the big picture. The extended usage of streaming is, or at least will become, a burden on the infrastructure. It's unneeded traffic. It's the same as the push towards cloud storage - insanity, and not only from a security and privacy point of view.
bborud 15y ago
The content providers are going to keep playing these games until the only services left standing are companies they cannot boss around easily. This is going to kill small players and concentrate bargaining power and then come back to bite the content providers in the ass. (In addition there's all the petty stuff you have to deal with when it comes to the content industry. From branding requirements, to arbitrary limits in video resolution, to who can encode what how and where etc. There are too many lawyers, too many spoilt brats and not enough people who actually care about the product)
shn 15y ago
I do not believe that Netflix could NOT have avoided this. The bigger they got the easier it should get to make deals. Netflix was a poster child who took down the goliaths of the industry. But as soon as they became dominant they forgot their roots. Don't apologize for other peoples mistake and insensitivities. They screwed up big time. Not because of raising the fee but showing that they can be insensitive and become arrogant as well. I had subscribed and kept the subscription even at times that we were not utilizing the service that much. Firstly it was not expensive, but more importantly I was thinking that I am subsidizing something right, an example of that those big corporations can be replaced with right choice of the consumer with the help of entrepreneurs. I felt betrayed when they raised their fee and only keeping the streaming service since then. As soon as I find alternative I'll nix that as well.

badclient 15y ago

still cost less than a decent meal So many great things on the web cost less than a single cup of Starbucks. Yet, I myself am so hesitant to pay for them. On my landing pages I design at work, I'm increasingly trying to communicate this via comparisons("less than a morning Starbucks trip"). Another one is showing a dollar bill to communicate that for less than a dollar a day, they will get _____. For a service that we were charging $10, we had 3% conversion rate. Then I showed an actual picture of a $10 bill to show how inexpensive this is and we doubled conversion to 6%. I increased the price to $30 and showed a one dollar bill, an equal sign, and what they would get for a dollar a day. The conversion rate is 3%. Overall, we make $30 more per 100 uniques to that page than at $10 price(we make $60 at 10, $90 at 30). It seems promising though not totally conclusive in terms of increasing conversion rates. The point is, spending a dollar on the web to me seems much more difficult than spending a buck on a Crunch bar. The efforts of my landing page experiments are to align online spend perception with retail. (numbers rounded to nearest % for purpose of this post)

sliverstorm 15y ago
This says things about the prices at Starbucks as much as it says things about the web. :) Also, with food, even if it is terrible you can still eat it. It's a no/little risk investment.
- eropple 15y ago
  even if it is terrible you can still eat it I see you've never been to Friendly's.
georgemcbay 15y ago
The reason I think long and hard before signing up for new web services isn't even the cost 99% of the time, but the uncertainty in how difficult it is going to be to cancel should I decide I do not want to continue. I've had it UP TO HERE with services that allow me to subscribe with one click and then make me go through a half-day long ordeal of phone calls to outsourced customer service people (who earn bonuses based on convincing you not to leave the service) in order to cancel. Making it obvious that I can leave at any time just as easily as I joined is a huge greasing agent for getting me to actually put down money to try your service. It is a shame so few sites/services do this and most go with the short-sighted trap-em-in model which hurts the industry as a whole (since it makes people like me far less likely to use any non-essential services just to avoid the potential of a cancellation PITA).
- AJ007 15y ago
  Cancelling a recurring service is generally no more difficult than saying, "please cancel my subscription quick so I don't have to charge this back."
  - georgemcbay 15y ago
    IME what you said is true, but only once you're talking to the manager of the manager of the person you originally waited on hold 25 minutes to talk to. And this is your second call because the first one got dropped randomly after 20 minutes on hold.
  - Joakal 15y ago
    Companies will find ways to delay you as long possible: http://i.imgur.com/G0qlu.jpg http://i.imgur.com/G0qlu.jpg
    - joelhaasnoot 15y ago
      Except when forced to by law. Illinois doesn't allow Microsoft to do that and Illinois residents can cancel with one click.
  - 15y ago
larrys 15y ago
"less than a morning Starbucks trip" I wouldn't think that a comparison like that would work. For one thing there are many people who feel they are pissing away money on Starbucks, or feel some guilt (I myself spend about $4.00 per day and sometimes twice that. That's at least $1500 per year. I don't want to be reminded of that, especially when business is off.) (So you are making a comparison to a potential sore spot. You want a positive association. Comparing to Starbucks but without mentioning price might be an example but that wouldn't make sense for your product, right?) Now, to sell it's product, Starbucks (or any premium brand) doesn't make comparisons to what other things costs. They make you feel special in some way by the product or by the experience or create some value that justifies the price. Making comparisons is good though if you are saving people money. Have you tried raising the price and offering an unconditional money back guarantee? "Cancel at any time and owe nothing". That seems to work with many things I've seen that cause people to be fence sitters as long as the price is high enough. Seo book does that (p1 for seo and search engine optimization) http://www.seobook.com/ http://www.seobook.com/
tomkarlo 15y ago
I think it was the SmugMug guys who discovered that they had higher conversion rates at $12/year than $10/year, because people found it easy to think of as $1 / month. Response to pricing on virtual services can be tricky.
- rokhayakebe 15y ago
  It might have been Funny Or Die
Alex3917 15y ago
"So many great things on the web cost less than a single cup of Starbucks. Yet, I myself am so hesitant to pay for them." It's the same thing where if you add up all the things you are supposed to do each day that only take 5 - 10 minutes, you end up with like three hours worth of stuff. Flossing, meditating, abs, showering, etc.
Mizza 15y ago
Your web apps don't release dopamine into my bloodstream. Your iPhone game doesn't give me a headache if I don't play it. I can't take a girl on a date to your eBook PDF. The reason that digital goods _seem_ more expensive is because the result we get _is_ less valuable to us as human beings. It's hard to pay money for things that leave you exactly as you were before - sitting in a chair, looking at a screen.
- tomkarlo 15y ago
  Since when is how much we get from something tied to how it impacts us? Watching a movie doesn't change us physically, but we pay $12 for it because it entertains us, just the same as most digital goods. I don't pay $20 for a book because I want a stack of paper, either. If that was true, you'd get paid to smoke and eat fast food, since they have a negative impact.
- badclient 15y ago
  Yeah but if you bought my productivity app, you may have more time for your date. Or you may have less headaches from your finances.
mwexler 15y ago
It's the nickel and diming of modern services. Every service is just a buck, just a fiver, just a tenner. I used to get usenet with my ISP, now I pay for it. I used to get luggage for free with my flight, now I don't. We've literally turned pricing around: even $1.99 seem like too much for an iphone game... when you realize that too many $1.99s will turn into $20 or more dollars. But I agree, money for services online feels very different from money for product, whether a good deal or not.
philwelch 15y ago
So let's say you get a Crunch bar. You unwrap it and take a bite. It fills your mouth, and you taste chocolatey goodness. You chew on a little. Crunch, crunch. Your mind drifts off a bit and you swallow a mouthful before going to take another bite. This is exactly the kind of direct, physiological pleasure $1 can get you, and it's something we've enjoyed for billions of years, and spent all that time evolving new strategies to achieve. You know what doesn't have trouble selling online? Sex. Anything from escorts to live cam shows to porn. Why? Because that's another direct, physiological pleasure we've had for billions of years. Now tell me, what kind of web services compete with eating and fucking in terms of what people really want?

randall 15y ago

I think it's because the lack of tangibility (in any real sense) makes it seem less valuable. I had an experience where I said "pay $7000 for my service with a computer included" or "pay $5000 and byoc" and i've so far had everyone choose the $7000 option. It's just a matter of connection / tangibility. You know what starbucks tastes like, so you're willing to pay. You know what an iPhone feels like, so you can buy it. The software, while awesome, doesn't connect like a physical product you can connect with on multiple senses. My $.02, but I think it's why it's easier to buy a big mac than Rdio.

frossie 15y ago
I am not sure in your example people picked the "with computer" option because it was tangible. I am guessing that anyone who can afford 5,000 for a service can afford a couple of grand to avoid the hassle of purchasing and setting up a computer. If your service was worth $100, then I would indeed find that remarkable.

pork 15y ago

I feel bad for them too, but it's important to remember that if they don't work for the customer, then they're not a viable business. No sympathy necessary.

invertd 15y ago

The users balk because they understand that their effective monthly/weekly price was jacked up, by a lot. Regardless of how much Netflix pitches their "unlimited" plan, users understand that their time for (movie) entertainment is not unlimited. Therefore, from their perspective, they see it as it is - a huge price increase - and they move on to better deals or something else entirely.

dustinupdyke 15y ago

Not understanding your customer in this day and age when there are so many effective ways of doing so is inexcusable.

cookiecaper 15y ago

The best potential outcome of this would be accelerating potential copyright/IP reform. Netflix is destined to die unless they can find a way to diversify; as you said, the rights holders want to cut out the middle man. The overhead requisite in old-world rental chains like Blockbuster is sufficiently prohibitive that the media companies did not have an interest in supplanting that market, but now that Netflix has proven the viability of online delivery, apparently media companies don't think it prohibitive to set up some servers and stream reruns. Netflix perhaps should consider transitioning from a consumer-facing service to a white-label technology provider, developing things like the recommendation engine, rental and streaming platform, etc. and licensing to media companies as the basis for their several services. Unfortunately, I think the unified collection in services like Netflix is going to go away as media companies' greed drives them to try to take their own slice of the pie, probably resulting in fewer subscribers all the way around and potentially a resurgence of brick-and-mortar video rental, where, it appears, media companies still are not interested. All that said, $300 was grossly overpriced for a company whose entire existence depends on the benevolence of a handful of major media producers.

jamesfrank 15y ago
How would this accelerate copyright/IP reform?
- cookiecaper 15y ago
  It's a great example of the excessive control given to rights holders, so excessive that a prominent company like Netflix ($300/share is certainly not something to shirk) and similar hypothetical businesses can be totally gutted at the pleasure of a handful of production companies and/or publishers. The diminution of Netflix is no small matter and will hopefully serve as a very visible demonstration of the cruel absurdity of current copyright law. Netflix can only offer a relative few movies without the approval of content holders, mostly only those that are older than my grandparents. They don't even have the option of reverting to classics from the 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s. The hope is that the dramatic demise of Netflix will raise awareness and visibility of these issues, promoting IP reform.

cma 15y ago

Qwikster would have resulted in Netflix paying more credit card fees (two credit card charges a month instead of one); there is a fixed fee for every transaction. It made no sense to try and get out of movie studio bargaining by paying credit card companies a bigger cut--if it worked for existing streaming catalog deals, it would be temporary at best. What is going to really hit Netflix hard is the entire Starz library disappearing from Instant.

beedogs 15y ago

Like Tivo, Netflix defined a market and then proceeded to be crowded out of it by the content producers and distributors until there was nothing left for them. I'd be worried about any company with a similar business plan.

mhb 15y ago

And that's overpriced for the crap that's available to stream. Wouldn't it make more sense to increase the price of the streaming after the supposed improvement to streaming quality which will result from their hugely increased payment to content providers?

jshen 15y ago

"I feel bad for Netflix. They're between a rock and a hard place. The content providers want more money and eventually want to cut out the middleman." This is true, but the content providers are also between a rock and a hard place, but don't seem to realize it. A generation of kids are growing up knowing how to get content for free, but the low cost, convenience, and value add of netflix is worth it if you aren't poor.

slowpoke 15y ago
> but the low cost, convenience, and value add of netflix I still find it much more convenient to head over to TPB (or another tracker of my choice), find a torrent of whatever I want to watch, download (and share) it, and then be able to play it with my favorite media player - as many times as I want. I don't see what value a streaming service is supposed to add over a local copy. It's a waste of bandwidth as soon as you watch something more than once, and the quality will never reach that of a local copy. By the way, I'm not exactly poor. Asserting that their financial standing has anything to do with the reason people pirate is a confusion of correlation and causation.
- km3k 15y ago
  Yeah, the torrents are still a good option, but I like Netflix since it's quicker and easier than torrenting. The streaming is instant. And if you have "unlimited" bandwidth, then the additional streams don't really matter. When I'm on my couch and want to watch a movie, I don't want to search for and download a torrent, I want to watch a movie. Netflix (on my Xbox 360) lets me do that. The interesting thing for Netflix as they raise prices will be finding out where people's threshold is for paying for the convenience and licitness of Netflix versus downloading a torrent instead.
  - slowpoke 15y ago
    >since it's quicker and easier than torrenting. That depends on your watching habits. I maintain a backlog of things to watch which I regularly refill. That also prevents me from wasting time on impulsive decisions - I plan ahead on what to watch. Besides, you can also use direct downloads to get the same advantages (almost instant playback) than streams. >And if you have "unlimited" bandwidth, then the additional streams don't really matter. I talking more about the big picture. The extended usage of streaming is, or at least will become, a burden on the infrastructure. It's unneeded traffic. It's the same as the push towards cloud storage - insanity, and not only from a security and privacy point of view.

bborud 15y ago

The content providers are going to keep playing these games until the only services left standing are companies they cannot boss around easily. This is going to kill small players and concentrate bargaining power and then come back to bite the content providers in the ass. (In addition there's all the petty stuff you have to deal with when it comes to the content industry. From branding requirements, to arbitrary limits in video resolution, to who can encode what how and where etc. There are too many lawyers, too many spoilt brats and not enough people who actually care about the product)

shn 15y ago

I do not believe that Netflix could NOT have avoided this. The bigger they got the easier it should get to make deals. Netflix was a poster child who took down the goliaths of the industry. But as soon as they became dominant they forgot their roots. Don't apologize for other peoples mistake and insensitivities. They screwed up big time. Not because of raising the fee but showing that they can be insensitive and become arrogant as well. I had subscribed and kept the subscription even at times that we were not utilizing the service that much. Firstly it was not expensive, but more importantly I was thinking that I am subsidizing something right, an example of that those big corporations can be replaced with right choice of the consumer with the help of entrepreneurs. I felt betrayed when they raised their fee and only keeping the streaming service since then. As soon as I find alternative I'll nix that as well.