10 ms·

An update to paid sharing

84 points by lxm 4y ago

superb-owl 4y ago
This seems like a reasonable middle ground. I'm almost embarrassed at the number of people sharing my password. I hope Netflix can survive their dwindling subscriber growth. They were the ones who kicked off the streaming era, and they've continually put out great original content. They've certainly made some missteps (cancelling great series and overpaying for content) but TV would be worse without them.
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  I don't know if I'd use "continually" versus "throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks". But yes, cancellation is all a part of that model of content creation and curation.
- ceeplusplus 4y ago
  TV would definitely be worse without streaming. That being said, their recent content has been absolute garbage. Contrived writing, poor directing, and it feels like everything is social justice tinged. Can't say the same about HBO. Euphoria has a lot of the same themes around sexuality, race, etc. but they're tastefully written rather than forced in because some director needed to fill their DEI quota. Their moat used to be the streaming platform. Now everyone else has copied it, so content is king.
  - ugjka 4y ago
    Someone shares their Netflix with me, the only thing I watched in last 3 months was Jackass 4.5. If I browse, everything there is B or C class content. If I lose access, I lost nothing
  - superb-owl 4y ago
    > social justice tinged Check out the Dave Chappelle controversy. Likely that will change your opinion of Netflix as a PC-obsessed company.
- dannyphantom 4y ago
  > I hope Netflix can survive their dwindling subscriber growth. They were the ones who kicked off the streaming era Totally agree that they kicked off the streaming area; and with those missteps, have provided ample source material in which competitors can improve on. They have successfully captured as much market as one could reasonably expect and it would be good for the market if they had an contender in the space. Personally, I think users should be able to pass around their passwords as much as they want. Netflix can't lose revenue if it was never going to be bought by the party using the password anyway. I understand account restrictions and the terms of use can explicitly outline that it is not allowed; but I'm paying for your service, I'll use it how I want, respectfully.
  - snoopy_telex 4y ago
    There is a cost associated with the providing of the streaming, so it’s not entirely neutral to Netflix to have never subscribers using the service.
- LordAtlas 4y ago
  > They were the ones who kicked off the streaming era, and they've continually put out great original content. Agree with the first bit, but now their content is the text definition of Sturgeon's Law.
foota 4y ago
What's with the country list? Seems like a weird choice.
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  Start with a small market and expand from there. When I worked on online services for a FAANG we would regularly roll out new features to large markets to test before going global. Brazil was always a great option to get a lot of folks and good feedback.
- bsimpson 4y ago
  They don't want to get it wrong and piss off a major market.
  - gchamonlive 4y ago
    I wouldn't be so quick to explain the country list like that. Sometimes, companies choose to launch features at specific locations that serve as a good proxy for adoption in other areas. Where I live in Brazil, companies constantly launch different brands of products like sodas or snacks NOT because they don't want to disrupt other more demanding markets, but because my city has a very demanding market itself. If the product sticks here it is a good proxy that it will be successful everywhere else, because we are seen as hard to adopt new ideas. Go figure. I am not saying that this is the case here, only offering a different hypothesis. Maybe those countries offer the exact configuration of demographics, content consumption profile and account sharing habits that would make for a good proxy as to whether the new paid sharing features would work well elsewhere.
    - bsimpson 4y ago
      I'm sure it's both. They're not going to run tests in a market they don't think is predictive of a broader population. Also, US-centric companies tend to be US-centric. (Netflix is based in Silicon Valley.) Running a test in a small Latin American economy feels less risky than somewhere like the US (or even Europe), where mistakes will be loudly noticed by personal social ties and the English-speaking media at large.
awinter-py 4y ago
widespread account sharing between households undermines our ability to spend 17b a year on bridgerton clones and report it as 5 billion on our 10-k
bsimpson 4y ago
Family accounts are inherently blurry. There are families where someone moves out (e.g. a teenager graduates) or lives outside the home (e.g. Grandma's in a nursing home). Some groups of friends get together, call themselves a family, and pitch in for an account. Some families spent the summer in a cabin. Some people are away from home for more than 2 weeks at a time (traveling through many destinations). IDK how they support multiple profiles in a way that's fair to everyone. I will say that Netflix hasn't added much value to my life over the past years. Most of my watching has either been with other people (e.g. going to a friend/family member's house and casting from my account), or on an airplane. My parents and my brother have profiles on my account - we live apart, but we're still a family. My main motivator for keeping my Netflix subscription is not interrupting my family members when they do want to watch something. If Netflix starts charging per "house" that you login from, I'm canceling my account.
- alejo 4y ago
  I did the same weeks ago already, for similar reasons. They piloted this change in my home country and there are families that live in different countries…
- spaceman_2020 4y ago
  Bingo. I just keep it because my parents and in-laws use it sometimes. If they’re going to tell me they can’t login from a different house, its adios Netflix for me. Neither my parents or in laws care enough to pay for their own subscription.
goochtek 4y ago
If I visit my in-laws house for a few days, which is a common occurrence, am I unable to watch my Netflix account on one of their TVs? It sounds like I would be restricted to only mobile devices.
- tantalor 4y ago
  Maybe it's one home at a time?
causality0 4y ago
I pay for two streams; I'm going to use two streams however I please. If Netflix doesn't like it they can kick me off and I'll go back to pirating their content. Either way I'm not bothered.
- spoonjim 4y ago
  You don't pay for two streams, you pay for two streams at one address in conformance with their Terms of Service. That of course has nothing to do with whether you pirate their content or not.
  - cptaj 4y ago
    This is the worst kind of right you can be. People do pay for two streams and expect to watch them anywhere. That has been the de facto way to use netflix ever since its inception and it also goes for other streaming services. This is the expectation of service. Nobody cares about terms of service.
    - causality0 4y ago
      Even that's being generous. My expectation of service reflects the situation as it existed when I signed up: half the current price with about three times as many shows that I cared about watching.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      >That has been the de facto way to use netflix ever since its inception The pedantic me wants to remind you that the original way to watch Netflix was to have DVDs delivered to your home. That was the original inception. By developing their backend so that streaming on the internet became so ubiquitous, they dug their own grave. All of the studios got to sit back and watch (popcorn included) as Netflix paved the way by doing all of the expensive R&D, find all the gotchas in delivering video to shitty home connections, mobile, etc. Once it was stable and established, all of the studios said thanks, hired people away, and built their own. They then took their ball and went home to their own platforms. Meanwhile, Netflix has pretty much been thrown a haymaker leaving them in standing knockout.
rnernento 4y ago
I predict a massive backfire on this one.. I know Netflix is struggling but as competitors (see HBOMax) get better and better now is not the time to both raise prices and give people a reason to revisit their active subscription. I know plenty of people who only continue to pay for Netflix because they share it with a bunch of people. They don’t really have any killer content right now and as far as I can tell no streaming service has figured out how to deal with people who just cycle between services… This is not the right problem to focus on right now.
akagusu 4y ago
First we payed for screens, now we need to pay for homes, then what? What will they invent to take more money from us? Interesting how companies invent new ways to take our money as consumers and also invent new ways to pay us less money as employees. I won't give my money to them.
- koolba 4y ago
  I bet their ideal end state is a BBC style license where you pay for every screen capable of receiving a stream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
- gruez 4y ago
  > First we payed for screens, now we need to pay for homes, then what? >What will they invent to take more money from us? You never paid "for screens" (ie. unrestricted access except for number of screens). >4.2. The Netflix service and any content viewed through our service are for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household. [...] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180613033307/https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse https://web.archive.org/web/20180613033307/https://help.netf...
tedunangst 4y ago
What's the breakdown of complainers? Is it mostly paying subscribers who intend to cancel because their parents can't watch for free? Or is it mostly non paying viewers who will do nothing as their parents continue to pay for a subscription they no longer access?
- pseudo0 4y ago
  Rocking the boat is probably a bad idea for Netflix. If they start sparking family discussions about usage, a lot of families will have moments where everyone says "I thought you were using it." And then they just cancel rather than absorb the multi-home price hike for a service they hardly use.
  - audiodude 4y ago
    Exactly. See other comments in this thread, people saying "The only reason I haven't cancelled Netflix already is because I'm pretty sure my brother in law is using it".
  - breput 4y ago
    This is absolutely happening now and is a thing. I downgraded to the $9.99/month SD one screen option because I asked and no one else was watching at all and now I'm rethinking even continuing with that. The upcoming ad-supported tier might be an option but I suspect many subscriptions will become very ephemeral.
    - pseudo0 4y ago
      It prompted me to pull up the handy "recent device streaming activity" tab and it turns out my brother is still using it, so I guess the subscription lives another day (at least until they try to start charging per location).
      - breput 4y ago
        That's the thing - you're probably not going to broach the subject with your brother as long as it doesn't really impact you at all. If Netflix tightens the screws, now you have an uncomfortable situation to deal with. The smart move for Netflix would have been to silently transition the "freeloaders" to the ad-supported plan. They should have just done that without all of the dicking around in South America and under the radar. Freeloaders start seeing ads with a friendly link to upgrade to the paid plan. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but Netflix gets paid either way.
HankB99 4y ago
I canceled when they last raised prices. So far I haven't heard anything that would bring me back. I did not share my password and Generally only watched on one screen. I'm sure they can tell. But they just kept jacking the prices up while lots of content went to other streaming services. The Balkanization of TV content.
- 8bitben 4y ago
  Yeah, same here. It turns out that data-driven, 'viral-focused'[1] TV content is just not enough to justify a price increase over the media giants that have huge back catalogs to depend on. They are a content company trying to behave like a tech company. [1] Drive to Survive is a good example of this - once a year bait to get people back. I imagine there are similar single-show subscribers in other genres that cancel immediately after.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >They are a content company trying to behave like a tech company. I'd say that it originally was reversed. With the advent of streaming, they saw the writing on the wall that all studios would prefer to have their content on their own platform. Like, duh! So in order to combat the loss of that back catalog content, they had to become a content company. They just can't compete as well now that everyone has their own platform that needs content.
    - cptaj 4y ago
      They are sure giving it their best shot by cancelling shows people love and removing features that differentiate them.
      - dylan604 4y ago
        It's a risk. You green light something that sounds like it could do well only for it to totally bomb. You cancel and cut your losses when it's not an obvious winner. It's a bummer for those slow burn type of shows that get better in season 2+, but bean counters don't consider that. Then again, writers need to know this going in and not make them such a slow burn unless there's guarantee of enough time. I don't envy, but I am finding I watch less and less of their content.
justahuman74 4y ago
I'd be easier to understand if it was just back to 'single screen' accounts, no simultaneous viewing on the one account though fuzzy ideas of families and houses.
- curious_cat_163 4y ago
  That becomes tricky with mobile devices.
jupp0r 4y ago
If I can’t use my Netflix subscription (on a TV) when staying in an AirBnb or similar when traveling, I’ll just cancel it. This seems to be such a straightforward use case that I can’t believe they’ll risk angering their customers over this.
- mattwad 4y ago
  It says they'll allow you to use it while you travel. I'm guessing they just won't let you use Netflix in more than one place at once.
  - jupp0r 4y ago
    They say they’ll allow me to use it on my phone and tablet while traveling. How incredibly gracious of them.
  - singron 4y ago
    They already had limits on simultaneous streams. I think they are limiting the number of TVs that can use the app, and then they will continue the quality downgrades on the non-TV platforms.
beprogrammed 4y ago
Uhoh, Netflix is in trouble. Lots of people are cancelling because they don't like the price, now their solution is to start cracking down and charging more. This will be a long slow decline where competition fights its way in. The hard part for corporations to understand and get behind, is cheap is better, coming in at a very low prices picks up lots of people and goodwill, and starves competition. Netflix used to be the example of low price for great value.
- calvinmorrison 4y ago
  Here's what I don't get... there's more media than EVER in history (well, by definition there always will be). Netflix started out as a place I could get any movie. I remember my neighbor got "Kellys Heros" in the mail from Netflix and we ate Chinese Food. I felt bad but they offered it. In my family we had no TV and NEVER got takeout. To this day, it's one of my favorite flicks. So many films, so cheaply to be had. Clint Eastwood did what, 500 films? Surely they can fill up a good catalog. All this spending on Netflix's own studio is ludicrous cheap-money investment banking startup lunacy. Just give me a big catalog of films, and give me all the stupid tv shows too. MASH, The Office, whatever. Pay HBO for sopranos and move on. Or, just be a carrier. That's what Netflix is good at. Delivering reliable and easy to access, good quality streaming. Don't worry about the rest. I love my Roku because I can search and it'll tell me what service has the film or show I want to see. There's a good number of Cary Grant films I get for free consistently. All that to say, Netflix seems to spend money on stupid stuff.
  - sp332 4y ago
    Studios launched their own streaming services, and will not allow Netflix to carry their shows and movies. They want that money for themselves.
    - calvinmorrison 4y ago
      Which is why they should focus on being a carrier. Get the netflix catalog + if you want HBO you cant get a package for X price. Their expertise is in streaming. They should have been selling the technology stack to Paramount, Disney, CBS, whoever.
disillusioned 4y ago
Netflix is facing an existential threat: they own basically no durable, quality content licenses. Their early streaming ascendancy was finally eclipsed by the logical conclusion of... each and every content owner building their own competing streaming service, and removing the content from Netflix. So Netflix, which used to be this phenomenal value where, for one $15 or so/mo fee, you could watch a _ton_ of the shows you loved, along with some of their new and interesting original content... now just has... that new and a lot of times not interesting original content. Being able to obviously read the tea leaves, they started investing insane gobs of money: $17 billion on content in FY21, $18B this year. (It's not clear to me what the breakdown is of that amount on original content vs licensed content.) But content is all they have. It's all they _can_ have. It's all any of these streaming services can have, but the rest are not purely streaming businesses. Disney is going to spend $33B this year (though $11B of that is sports rights via ESPN). And Disney has... the entire Disney catalog, as well as Marvel AND Star Wars, analogs to which Netflix has precisely zero of. (Disney doesn't even anticipate + being profitable until 2024 at earliest, which is really saying something.) So it becomes a question of, can you make it back on volume? Can you outrun the giant boulder? And more importantly, is there anything about Netflix that positions them to manage this risk better than any of their competitors? HBOMax has the WB portfolio AND HBO portfolio. Disney is Disney. Peacock is attached to a cable/internet conglomerate and television studio. I genuinely don't know if their way out here is to keep throwing $20M per special to the likes of Dave Chappell and Louis CK. Investments like Stranger Things feel like a better ROI, especially once you know you have a following, and arguably no one has better data insight than Netflix but I think content costs have spiraled, Netflix is temperamental and sometimes cancels fan favorite series, and sometimes funds series' that make no sense or are effectively obviously clickbait ("How to Build A Sex Room", "Too Hot to Handle", what is this, Cinemax?) But then, they stumble on the odd mega-hit, like Tiger King or Squid Game or Bridgerton or The Crown. Not even odd hits, then. They do produce hits, and good content. But the question is, is the model itself sustainable? Can you be a pure streaming studio, where your subscriber base outpaces your content and tech costs? That's been the case historically; they've been profitable. But more and more, people are consolidating accounts, leaving after bingeing the few shows they care about, and abandoning Netflix, and Netflix doesn't have a capacious room of other business models they're attached to. And people are weird creatures. There are plenty of people who consider immediate access to Friends or The Office to be deeply compelling reasons _alone_ to maintain their HBO or Peacock subscription. We know that because Netflix paid $100M for a single additional year of Friends _alone_. And literally $500 MILLION dollars for 5 years of Seinfeld. What's it say about the model that they know that it's worth it to pay half a billion dollars on a single property for all of five years, domestic only? Woof.
jjulius 4y ago
It's fascinating, watching them point the gun at their own foot and slowly pull the trigger.
- beej71 4y ago
  Strategy: increase prices and restrict product to be more appealing to customers.
deleted 4y ago
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fartcannon 4y ago
What if they went the other way, reduced the price and lowered restrictions to the point where, in a world with numerous alternatives, people keep their service simply because it's inexpensive? Because what they're doing now isn't going to work (for me).
- cptaj 4y ago
  Same here. They're already the most expensive and now they want to remove the features that made us love them. Original series we love? Lets cancel all of them. Sharing screens? Oh god the horror, god forbid people share what they pay for. Binge watching? No no no, we will go back to cable and drip feed you episodes. I bet disney infiltrated their exec ranks and are pushing these ideas to sabotage them.
  - ridgered4 4y ago
    > Binge watching? No no no, we will go back to cable and drip feed you episodes. Did they change this recently? Netflix has always done a season dump in my experience. While I like it personally, I kind of think it's a mistake because it reduces the "water cooler" discussions that keep the property in the public consciousness for longer and allow it to build up a following.
cptaj 4y ago
This is so ridiculous. They already charge for screens, its clear and we all know it. The fact that now they want to limit where those screens are is purely a transparent money grab with no technological basis. Its like they WANT people to hate them. They're the most expensive option already, if they can't make it work without extracting more value then they're 100% going to go under.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Just wait until they introduce commercial breaks...
- IshKebab 4y ago
  Why would they need a technological basis to charge money?
4pkjai 4y ago
> Over the last 15 years, we’ve worked hard to build a streaming service that’s easy to use, including for people who travel or live together. It’s great that our members love Netflix movies and TV shows so much they want to share them more broadly. But today’s widespread account sharing between households undermines our long term ability to invest in and improve our service. > We value our members, and recognize that they have many entertainment choices. So we’re working hard to make great TV shows and films, and to be as thoughtful as possible about how we charge for use across multiple homes. We will be notifying members in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala by email and on Netflix. For more information, visit our help center. After reading the first ten words of these paragraphs, it's obvious you don't need to read any further. Might be fun to make an AI that strips out junk/corporate filler.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
MonkeyMalarky 4y ago
Literally the only thing stopping me from cancelling Netflix is that I'd be cutting off my sister. If they do that for me, I'm out. Their catalog is pitiful and their new content is so often so terrible it's become a meme. The saddest thing is that there's really innovative projects that will suffer without their funding. Like Love Death and Robots. But even in interviews they say it's unsustainable.
- ZephyrBlu 4y ago
  Love, Death and Robots is amazing. I wish there was way more of that kind of content.
daveyjonezz 4y ago
It would be an amazing act of caste system creation if they subsidized the major markets by charging only smaller markets paid sharing from now on. I mean how much more obvious is it that they know this is a bad move?
pimlottc 4y ago
> An Update to Paid Sharing Oh, a title like this is never good news...
DeRock 4y ago
Here’s the summary stripped of the corporate BS: “We used to scale simultaneous streaming with your Netflix plan tier. We now want you to give us more money for that feature, so we are going to gaslight you into thinking you were never supposed to share simultaneous streams with anyone but yourself. To do this, we will rename it a “homes” feature, and pretend the page you used to use to manage logins is new and justifies the price increase. But in reality, we can’t compete, we’ve already done as many explicit rate increases as our users will tolerate, and feel now is a good time to blame inflation for a blatant money grab.”
- benjaminwootton 4y ago
  That’s not really fair. They’ve been relaxed about account sharing historically as I assume the metrics were more important than the revenue. However, they really do have the moral and legal right to put an end to it at the moment of their choosing. In what world is it reasonable to pay once then share the service with 2/3/4 households?
  - thisismyaccoun7 4y ago
    >In what world is it reasonable to pay once then share the service with 2/3/4 households? Perhaps the one where the plan I pay extra for says I can use it on up to four devices at once, which is literally in the first paragraph of their help page for plans (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926)
    - bombcar 4y ago
      Clearly that's only if you want to watch four things at once, or the same show on four screens around you.
      - benjaminwootton 4y ago
        Or more likely 4 viewers in your household, such as different children watching different things simultaneously. To stretch this to entire different households sharing passwords was never a reasonable interpretation.
bit_logic 4y ago
The hype for Netflix stock was based on them becoming the Spotify of video and a tech advantage in streaming. It became clear a while ago that the studios wouldn't allow this and they no longer have a tech advantage. The market is finally adjusting their stock to match reality. Now they are fighting a battle they can't win. HBO, Disney, etc. have huge back catalogs that immediately makes their streaming services more valuable, in addition to all the new content they make. They shouldn't have given up so quickly on physical media. Physical media does not have the licensing issues. They could've invested heavily like the way Amazon did on lowering delivery time. Maybe they could've gotten physical media delivery down to one hour or same day. This would counter the studios back catalog because while Disney can instantly stream their back catalog, it's only Disney. Netflix would have access to back catalogs of all studios (at the tradeoff of waiting for the physical media) That's a tradeoff that many customers would make (access to more back catalog diversity in exchange for the delay of waiting for disks). At the same time, they could produce streaming content with a different business model. How many times do customers complain about favorite shows getting canceled after a season? What if there was a way for customers to select which shows they want supported? Like pick your top five every month and your subscription money will go to that show. Instead, they went the route of just spending a lot of money making new content as if they're a studio. But they can't beat the studios at being a studio, Disney and the others are the best at that.
- asadlionpk 4y ago
  You think selling vhs and dvds is a better business? I don’t know anyone who has a bluray player.
  - iamevn 4y ago
    > I don’t know anyone who has a bluray player. Everyone with a playstation or an xbox has one.
    - bgorman 4y ago
      The new Xbox and PlayStation consoles come with variants without physical media
peteforde 4y ago
I don't understand the anti-Netflix hate. If you don't like their catalog, you have lots of options. Password sharing is the rampant default. It's not just grandma in the home or your daughter at college. It's your friends, your exes, your old housemates. Netflix has been, IMO, remarkably chill about this for a very long time. Y'all are talking like they are audaciously stealing something you believe that you are owed. I think that what got lost along the way is that Netflix forgot what their real product innovation was: long-tail convenience. Whether being able to order from a massive catalog of DVDs or stream things in hi-def without having to worry about torrents or FTP servers, Netflix really changed the way we access media. They've also played a massive role in popularizing alternative comedy to the masses. Same with documentaries, to a different degree. I do think they've made some questionable content production decisions. It's highly likely that if they'd stuck to financing comedy specials, documentaries and bringing back shows like Arrested Development and Firefly, they might not have scared Disney, Amazon, HBO and Hulu into competing with them. Their greed made it impossible for the incumbents to not compete.
- deleted 4y ago
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gnicholas 4y ago
So they're reporting earnings tomorrow, and they chose to release this news update today. Is it to signal that their initial 'test' of these fees was a success, and now they're rolling it out more broadly? Or is it because they have lousy results to announce, and they want analysts to see that they'll be improving their margins (among people who don't bail, that is) with these new fees?
lapser 4y ago
For those of us who don't live in those markets, how does this $2.99 compare with a new subscription? Like I get people will pay $2.99 extra for additional homes, but how much cheaper (if at all) is this compared to me getting a new plan? What will this look like when this model inevitably comes to other markets? I'm guessing subscriptions in Argentina is vastly cheaper than say the UK or US.
mynameisash 4y ago
Netflix, as an employer, is apparently very much of the mind that they're not a family but a team, and if you're not contributing to the success of the team, you're cut. And I mean, every corporation is that, but Netflix is loud and proud about that. Or so I'm lead to believe. With that said, I guess they shouldn't be surprised if their once-loyal customers tell them to pound sand because they're no longer a good value versus the new game in town.
- bilbo0s 4y ago
  What's the new game? Is that Disney+?
gnicholas 4y ago
> Travel included: You can watch while outside the home on your tablet, laptop or mobile. So what can't you do, exactly? Can you plug these devices into a TV? Can you not access your account on a TV or Roku/etc. device? What if you are at an Airbnb somewhere — can you log into their TV and use it there? If a kid splits time between his mom's house and his dad's house, does he have to designate one house as his home and the other as "travel" (and have usage restricted there, in whatever way it is restricted)?
xnacly 4y ago
Here's the thing, i probably use netflix 1h a day at a minimum but this is really outrageous. I mainly have netflix to watch shows while driving to work and for my parents and my little siblings, otherwise i wouldve already canceled.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  I really hope this is a language issue and you don't actually mean you're watching TV while driving
rdm_blackhole 4y ago
My family shares a 4 streams account. We all live in different countries. There is not 1 "home". On top of that I regularly move from 1 country to another so where does that leave me? If the concept of "home" becomes a problem, then I'll be going back to pirating content. You choice Netflix, you can choose to make the life of your users harder or you can back off and leave the paying subscribers in peace! One thing is for sure is that if and when I stop paying for Netflix, I won't be back so it'll be net loss for them.
miked85 4y ago
Netflix's content quality has gone down significantly in the past few years, while at the same time increasing in price. I can't see how this wouldn't just result in a very large amount of cancelled accounts.
pcthrowaway 4y ago
I'm going to buck the trend here and say I might try subscribing for a little bit to see if it's worth the cost. My parents have been Netflix subscribers since before they did streaming, and I've never paid a dime for Netflix (though I've been subscribed to Prime for a few years, and have tried other subscription streaming services in the past). Netflix is probably 40-70% of my legal streaming though (though IIRC it's also a little bit more expensive than Prime, which also offers free shipping, so it's not a direct comparison). I'm in my late 30s now and living in a different country than my parents. Is it easy to be outraged that they're cutting off access to something that has been free (for me) for over a decade? Sure. But emotion aside, it might honestly just be time to consider subscribing and seeing how much it costs, and give it a cost-benefit analysis on its own merits (past usage terms aside). If I decide against it, I'm really just out of the cost of a few months, and realistically its brought more value to me over the last 10 years than it could reasonably cost in a few months. I do want Netflix to survive because they really did validate the idea of streaming for all the services they're now competing with.
sofixa 4y ago
Did everyone here who is complaining miss that part of TFA: > Members on the Basic plan can add one extra home, Standard up to two extra, and Premium up to three extra If you're on the Premium tier, 4 simultaneous streams, you get 4 "homes" to share it with. It seems that you get the same amount of homes as streams. I find that perfectly reasonable. Netflix are in a tough spot and need to continue producing content, which requires money. They don't have Disney's money, so it's either increased prices/tightened sharing rules, or a downward spiral.
- d1sxeyes 4y ago
  I think you missed the bit of TFA directly above it: these are not included, this is a limit on how many more you can pay for. > Buy additional homes: To use your Netflix account in additional homes, we will ask you to pay an extra [$2.99 per month per home]. Members on the Basic plan can add one extra home, Standard up to two extra, and Premium up to three extra. If you got the same number of homes as streams, I think that would be more or less fair enough, but if I'm a single user with an individual account, why should I have to pay extra to be able to habitually watch in different locations (e.g. at home and at my partner's house, at home and at university, at home and at my sick parent's house, etc.), and why should I be limited to only one other place?
gliiics 4y ago
Netflix won over piracy because it was cheap and had a lot of shows that most people wanted to see. Watch them literally reverse both of those things - make it harder and pricier to use a legal service, and mostly have shitty dramas with one or two hits a year - and try to guess what will happen!
linsomniac 4y ago
For comparison, and hoping that netflix doesn't devolve to that point, I submit Spotify. My wife and I have the "2 people" plan. But it is draconian that only one device be used at a time. So if I'm listening and my wife starts the car, my shower/work tunes shut off. The car doesn't have multiple profiles. Similar happens if she is in the kitchen and starts tunes via voice (bluetooth from her phone understands it is a different profile). To be fair, Google Play has similar draconian limitations. I assume this is part of their agreement with the music industrial complex.
- thn-gap 4y ago
  I really thought that Spotify Duo allows 2 people to keep their respective accounts, just that one person pays for both. Are you sure about the one device restriction? I can't find it anywhere.
  - linsomniac 4y ago
    Each person gets one device, our problem is that sometimes devices "leak" to the other person because you have to pick a person account for a shared device. I'm sure it is limited to one device per person because when the kids are in school I'm pretty much guaranteed to have my shower music stopped with a "Music has stopped because you are listening on another device" message when my wife takes the kids to school.
fatnoah 4y ago
I guess I come out ahead with this. I currently have the $19.99/month plan to cover my family in my house and my mom in her house. I guess I can downgrade the plan to the $15.49/month and spend $3 to add a home, so I'll save $1.50/month.
lol768 4y ago
Why is this (and the previous functionality) being rolled out seemingly exclusively in Latin American countries?
byenetflix 4y ago
Comments here made me realize I waste too much time browsing Netflix and saving things to watch later but never actually watching anything so I just deleted my profile. My wife still watches it occasionally but she hates their interface. Lots of things pop up that she finds disturbing and there's no way to tell it "never show me this again!". I'll leave it to her to decide if it's worth it to keep our subscription but in the words of Mr. Collins, I've got better things to do with my time. I really don't care any more.
Auracle 4y ago
I don’t fully disagree with what they’re doing, but how they’re doing it is stupid. The 4K plan can do what - 4 streams at once for ~$20? They just raised prices on that. Instead, they should make every plan one or two streams and actually lower the base price. They could then do ala carte add on streams. That would let them tackle the issue while at least being able to spin the PR. Either way, we cancelled. $20 a month is a ridiculous price compared to other services. If they want to be a premium service they need to get or make some more premium content.

84 points by lxm 4y ago

This seems like a reasonable middle ground. I'm almost embarrassed at the number of people sharing my password. I hope Netflix can survive their dwindling subscriber growth. They were the ones who kicked off the streaming era, and they've continually put out great original content. They've certainly made some missteps (cancelling great series and overpaying for content) but TV would be worse without them.

hammyhavoc 4y ago
I don't know if I'd use "continually" versus "throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks". But yes, cancellation is all a part of that model of content creation and curation.
ceeplusplus 4y ago
TV would definitely be worse without streaming. That being said, their recent content has been absolute garbage. Contrived writing, poor directing, and it feels like everything is social justice tinged. Can't say the same about HBO. Euphoria has a lot of the same themes around sexuality, race, etc. but they're tastefully written rather than forced in because some director needed to fill their DEI quota. Their moat used to be the streaming platform. Now everyone else has copied it, so content is king.
- ugjka 4y ago
  Someone shares their Netflix with me, the only thing I watched in last 3 months was Jackass 4.5. If I browse, everything there is B or C class content. If I lose access, I lost nothing
- superb-owl 4y ago
  > social justice tinged Check out the Dave Chappelle controversy. Likely that will change your opinion of Netflix as a PC-obsessed company.
dannyphantom 4y ago
> I hope Netflix can survive their dwindling subscriber growth. They were the ones who kicked off the streaming era Totally agree that they kicked off the streaming area; and with those missteps, have provided ample source material in which competitors can improve on. They have successfully captured as much market as one could reasonably expect and it would be good for the market if they had an contender in the space. Personally, I think users should be able to pass around their passwords as much as they want. Netflix can't lose revenue if it was never going to be bought by the party using the password anyway. I understand account restrictions and the terms of use can explicitly outline that it is not allowed; but I'm paying for your service, I'll use it how I want, respectfully.
- snoopy_telex 4y ago
  There is a cost associated with the providing of the streaming, so it’s not entirely neutral to Netflix to have never subscribers using the service.
LordAtlas 4y ago
> They were the ones who kicked off the streaming era, and they've continually put out great original content. Agree with the first bit, but now their content is the text definition of Sturgeon's Law.

foota 4y ago

What's with the country list? Seems like a weird choice.

qbasic_forever 4y ago
Start with a small market and expand from there. When I worked on online services for a FAANG we would regularly roll out new features to large markets to test before going global. Brazil was always a great option to get a lot of folks and good feedback.
bsimpson 4y ago
They don't want to get it wrong and piss off a major market.
- gchamonlive 4y ago
  I wouldn't be so quick to explain the country list like that. Sometimes, companies choose to launch features at specific locations that serve as a good proxy for adoption in other areas. Where I live in Brazil, companies constantly launch different brands of products like sodas or snacks NOT because they don't want to disrupt other more demanding markets, but because my city has a very demanding market itself. If the product sticks here it is a good proxy that it will be successful everywhere else, because we are seen as hard to adopt new ideas. Go figure. I am not saying that this is the case here, only offering a different hypothesis. Maybe those countries offer the exact configuration of demographics, content consumption profile and account sharing habits that would make for a good proxy as to whether the new paid sharing features would work well elsewhere.
  - bsimpson 4y ago
    I'm sure it's both. They're not going to run tests in a market they don't think is predictive of a broader population. Also, US-centric companies tend to be US-centric. (Netflix is based in Silicon Valley.) Running a test in a small Latin American economy feels less risky than somewhere like the US (or even Europe), where mistakes will be loudly noticed by personal social ties and the English-speaking media at large.

awinter-py 4y ago

widespread account sharing between households undermines our ability to spend 17b a year on bridgerton clones and report it as 5 billion on our 10-k

bsimpson 4y ago

Family accounts are inherently blurry. There are families where someone moves out (e.g. a teenager graduates) or lives outside the home (e.g. Grandma's in a nursing home). Some groups of friends get together, call themselves a family, and pitch in for an account. Some families spent the summer in a cabin. Some people are away from home for more than 2 weeks at a time (traveling through many destinations). IDK how they support multiple profiles in a way that's fair to everyone. I will say that Netflix hasn't added much value to my life over the past years. Most of my watching has either been with other people (e.g. going to a friend/family member's house and casting from my account), or on an airplane. My parents and my brother have profiles on my account - we live apart, but we're still a family. My main motivator for keeping my Netflix subscription is not interrupting my family members when they do want to watch something. If Netflix starts charging per "house" that you login from, I'm canceling my account.

alejo 4y ago
I did the same weeks ago already, for similar reasons. They piloted this change in my home country and there are families that live in different countries…
spaceman_2020 4y ago
Bingo. I just keep it because my parents and in-laws use it sometimes. If they’re going to tell me they can’t login from a different house, its adios Netflix for me. Neither my parents or in laws care enough to pay for their own subscription.

goochtek 4y ago

If I visit my in-laws house for a few days, which is a common occurrence, am I unable to watch my Netflix account on one of their TVs? It sounds like I would be restricted to only mobile devices.

tantalor 4y ago
Maybe it's one home at a time?

causality0 4y ago

I pay for two streams; I'm going to use two streams however I please. If Netflix doesn't like it they can kick me off and I'll go back to pirating their content. Either way I'm not bothered.

spoonjim 4y ago
You don't pay for two streams, you pay for two streams at one address in conformance with their Terms of Service. That of course has nothing to do with whether you pirate their content or not.
- cptaj 4y ago
  This is the worst kind of right you can be. People do pay for two streams and expect to watch them anywhere. That has been the de facto way to use netflix ever since its inception and it also goes for other streaming services. This is the expectation of service. Nobody cares about terms of service.
  - causality0 4y ago
    Even that's being generous. My expectation of service reflects the situation as it existed when I signed up: half the current price with about three times as many shows that I cared about watching.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    >That has been the de facto way to use netflix ever since its inception The pedantic me wants to remind you that the original way to watch Netflix was to have DVDs delivered to your home. That was the original inception. By developing their backend so that streaming on the internet became so ubiquitous, they dug their own grave. All of the studios got to sit back and watch (popcorn included) as Netflix paved the way by doing all of the expensive R&D, find all the gotchas in delivering video to shitty home connections, mobile, etc. Once it was stable and established, all of the studios said thanks, hired people away, and built their own. They then took their ball and went home to their own platforms. Meanwhile, Netflix has pretty much been thrown a haymaker leaving them in standing knockout.

rnernento 4y ago

I predict a massive backfire on this one.. I know Netflix is struggling but as competitors (see HBOMax) get better and better now is not the time to both raise prices and give people a reason to revisit their active subscription. I know plenty of people who only continue to pay for Netflix because they share it with a bunch of people. They don’t really have any killer content right now and as far as I can tell no streaming service has figured out how to deal with people who just cycle between services… This is not the right problem to focus on right now.

akagusu 4y ago

First we payed for screens, now we need to pay for homes, then what? What will they invent to take more money from us? Interesting how companies invent new ways to take our money as consumers and also invent new ways to pay us less money as employees. I won't give my money to them.

koolba 4y ago
I bet their ideal end state is a BBC style license where you pay for every screen capable of receiving a stream. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licence
gruez 4y ago
> First we payed for screens, now we need to pay for homes, then what? >What will they invent to take more money from us? You never paid "for screens" (ie. unrestricted access except for number of screens). >4.2. The Netflix service and any content viewed through our service are for your personal and non-commercial use only and may not be shared with individuals beyond your household. [...] [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20180613033307/https://help.netflix.com/legal/termsofuse https://web.archive.org/web/20180613033307/https://help.netf...

tedunangst 4y ago

What's the breakdown of complainers? Is it mostly paying subscribers who intend to cancel because their parents can't watch for free? Or is it mostly non paying viewers who will do nothing as their parents continue to pay for a subscription they no longer access?

pseudo0 4y ago
Rocking the boat is probably a bad idea for Netflix. If they start sparking family discussions about usage, a lot of families will have moments where everyone says "I thought you were using it." And then they just cancel rather than absorb the multi-home price hike for a service they hardly use.
- audiodude 4y ago
  Exactly. See other comments in this thread, people saying "The only reason I haven't cancelled Netflix already is because I'm pretty sure my brother in law is using it".
- breput 4y ago
  This is absolutely happening now and is a thing. I downgraded to the $9.99/month SD one screen option because I asked and no one else was watching at all and now I'm rethinking even continuing with that. The upcoming ad-supported tier might be an option but I suspect many subscriptions will become very ephemeral.
  - pseudo0 4y ago
    It prompted me to pull up the handy "recent device streaming activity" tab and it turns out my brother is still using it, so I guess the subscription lives another day (at least until they try to start charging per location).
    - breput 4y ago
      That's the thing - you're probably not going to broach the subject with your brother as long as it doesn't really impact you at all. If Netflix tightens the screws, now you have an uncomfortable situation to deal with. The smart move for Netflix would have been to silently transition the "freeloaders" to the ad-supported plan. They should have just done that without all of the dicking around in South America and under the radar. Freeloaders start seeing ads with a friendly link to upgrade to the paid plan. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, but Netflix gets paid either way.

HankB99 4y ago

I canceled when they last raised prices. So far I haven't heard anything that would bring me back. I did not share my password and Generally only watched on one screen. I'm sure they can tell. But they just kept jacking the prices up while lots of content went to other streaming services. The Balkanization of TV content.

8bitben 4y ago
Yeah, same here. It turns out that data-driven, 'viral-focused'[1] TV content is just not enough to justify a price increase over the media giants that have huge back catalogs to depend on. They are a content company trying to behave like a tech company. [1] Drive to Survive is a good example of this - once a year bait to get people back. I imagine there are similar single-show subscribers in other genres that cancel immediately after.
- dylan604 4y ago
  >They are a content company trying to behave like a tech company. I'd say that it originally was reversed. With the advent of streaming, they saw the writing on the wall that all studios would prefer to have their content on their own platform. Like, duh! So in order to combat the loss of that back catalog content, they had to become a content company. They just can't compete as well now that everyone has their own platform that needs content.
  - cptaj 4y ago
    They are sure giving it their best shot by cancelling shows people love and removing features that differentiate them.
    - dylan604 4y ago
      It's a risk. You green light something that sounds like it could do well only for it to totally bomb. You cancel and cut your losses when it's not an obvious winner. It's a bummer for those slow burn type of shows that get better in season 2+, but bean counters don't consider that. Then again, writers need to know this going in and not make them such a slow burn unless there's guarantee of enough time. I don't envy, but I am finding I watch less and less of their content.

justahuman74 4y ago

I'd be easier to understand if it was just back to 'single screen' accounts, no simultaneous viewing on the one account though fuzzy ideas of families and houses.

curious_cat_163 4y ago
That becomes tricky with mobile devices.

jupp0r 4y ago

If I can’t use my Netflix subscription (on a TV) when staying in an AirBnb or similar when traveling, I’ll just cancel it. This seems to be such a straightforward use case that I can’t believe they’ll risk angering their customers over this.

mattwad 4y ago
It says they'll allow you to use it while you travel. I'm guessing they just won't let you use Netflix in more than one place at once.
- jupp0r 4y ago
  They say they’ll allow me to use it on my phone and tablet while traveling. How incredibly gracious of them.
- singron 4y ago
  They already had limits on simultaneous streams. I think they are limiting the number of TVs that can use the app, and then they will continue the quality downgrades on the non-TV platforms.

beprogrammed 4y ago

Uhoh, Netflix is in trouble. Lots of people are cancelling because they don't like the price, now their solution is to start cracking down and charging more. This will be a long slow decline where competition fights its way in. The hard part for corporations to understand and get behind, is cheap is better, coming in at a very low prices picks up lots of people and goodwill, and starves competition. Netflix used to be the example of low price for great value.

calvinmorrison 4y ago
Here's what I don't get... there's more media than EVER in history (well, by definition there always will be). Netflix started out as a place I could get any movie. I remember my neighbor got "Kellys Heros" in the mail from Netflix and we ate Chinese Food. I felt bad but they offered it. In my family we had no TV and NEVER got takeout. To this day, it's one of my favorite flicks. So many films, so cheaply to be had. Clint Eastwood did what, 500 films? Surely they can fill up a good catalog. All this spending on Netflix's own studio is ludicrous cheap-money investment banking startup lunacy. Just give me a big catalog of films, and give me all the stupid tv shows too. MASH, The Office, whatever. Pay HBO for sopranos and move on. Or, just be a carrier. That's what Netflix is good at. Delivering reliable and easy to access, good quality streaming. Don't worry about the rest. I love my Roku because I can search and it'll tell me what service has the film or show I want to see. There's a good number of Cary Grant films I get for free consistently. All that to say, Netflix seems to spend money on stupid stuff.
- sp332 4y ago
  Studios launched their own streaming services, and will not allow Netflix to carry their shows and movies. They want that money for themselves.
  - calvinmorrison 4y ago
    Which is why they should focus on being a carrier. Get the netflix catalog + if you want HBO you cant get a package for X price. Their expertise is in streaming. They should have been selling the technology stack to Paramount, Disney, CBS, whoever.

disillusioned 4y ago

Netflix is facing an existential threat: they own basically no durable, quality content licenses. Their early streaming ascendancy was finally eclipsed by the logical conclusion of... each and every content owner building their own competing streaming service, and removing the content from Netflix. So Netflix, which used to be this phenomenal value where, for one $15 or so/mo fee, you could watch a _ton_ of the shows you loved, along with some of their new and interesting original content... now just has... that new and a lot of times not interesting original content. Being able to obviously read the tea leaves, they started investing insane gobs of money: $17 billion on content in FY21, $18B this year. (It's not clear to me what the breakdown is of that amount on original content vs licensed content.) But content is all they have. It's all they _can_ have. It's all any of these streaming services can have, but the rest are not purely streaming businesses. Disney is going to spend $33B this year (though $11B of that is sports rights via ESPN). And Disney has... the entire Disney catalog, as well as Marvel AND Star Wars, analogs to which Netflix has precisely zero of. (Disney doesn't even anticipate + being profitable until 2024 at earliest, which is really saying something.) So it becomes a question of, can you make it back on volume? Can you outrun the giant boulder? And more importantly, is there anything about Netflix that positions them to manage this risk better than any of their competitors? HBOMax has the WB portfolio AND HBO portfolio. Disney is Disney. Peacock is attached to a cable/internet conglomerate and television studio. I genuinely don't know if their way out here is to keep throwing $20M per special to the likes of Dave Chappell and Louis CK. Investments like Stranger Things feel like a better ROI, especially once you know you have a following, and arguably no one has better data insight than Netflix but I think content costs have spiraled, Netflix is temperamental and sometimes cancels fan favorite series, and sometimes funds series' that make no sense or are effectively obviously clickbait ("How to Build A Sex Room", "Too Hot to Handle", what is this, Cinemax?) But then, they stumble on the odd mega-hit, like Tiger King or Squid Game or Bridgerton or The Crown. Not even odd hits, then. They do produce hits, and good content. But the question is, is the model itself sustainable? Can you be a pure streaming studio, where your subscriber base outpaces your content and tech costs? That's been the case historically; they've been profitable. But more and more, people are consolidating accounts, leaving after bingeing the few shows they care about, and abandoning Netflix, and Netflix doesn't have a capacious room of other business models they're attached to. And people are weird creatures. There are plenty of people who consider immediate access to Friends or The Office to be deeply compelling reasons _alone_ to maintain their HBO or Peacock subscription. We know that because Netflix paid $100M for a single additional year of Friends _alone_. And literally $500 MILLION dollars for 5 years of Seinfeld. What's it say about the model that they know that it's worth it to pay half a billion dollars on a single property for all of five years, domestic only? Woof.

jjulius 4y ago

It's fascinating, watching them point the gun at their own foot and slowly pull the trigger.

beej71 4y ago
Strategy: increase prices and restrict product to be more appealing to customers.

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fartcannon 4y ago

What if they went the other way, reduced the price and lowered restrictions to the point where, in a world with numerous alternatives, people keep their service simply because it's inexpensive? Because what they're doing now isn't going to work (for me).

cptaj 4y ago
Same here. They're already the most expensive and now they want to remove the features that made us love them. Original series we love? Lets cancel all of them. Sharing screens? Oh god the horror, god forbid people share what they pay for. Binge watching? No no no, we will go back to cable and drip feed you episodes. I bet disney infiltrated their exec ranks and are pushing these ideas to sabotage them.
- ridgered4 4y ago
  > Binge watching? No no no, we will go back to cable and drip feed you episodes. Did they change this recently? Netflix has always done a season dump in my experience. While I like it personally, I kind of think it's a mistake because it reduces the "water cooler" discussions that keep the property in the public consciousness for longer and allow it to build up a following.

cptaj 4y ago

This is so ridiculous. They already charge for screens, its clear and we all know it. The fact that now they want to limit where those screens are is purely a transparent money grab with no technological basis. Its like they WANT people to hate them. They're the most expensive option already, if they can't make it work without extracting more value then they're 100% going to go under.

dylan604 4y ago
Just wait until they introduce commercial breaks...
IshKebab 4y ago
Why would they need a technological basis to charge money?

4pkjai 4y ago

> Over the last 15 years, we’ve worked hard to build a streaming service that’s easy to use, including for people who travel or live together. It’s great that our members love Netflix movies and TV shows so much they want to share them more broadly. But today’s widespread account sharing between households undermines our long term ability to invest in and improve our service. > We value our members, and recognize that they have many entertainment choices. So we’re working hard to make great TV shows and films, and to be as thoughtful as possible about how we charge for use across multiple homes. We will be notifying members in Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala by email and on Netflix. For more information, visit our help center. After reading the first ten words of these paragraphs, it's obvious you don't need to read any further. Might be fun to make an AI that strips out junk/corporate filler.

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MonkeyMalarky 4y ago

Literally the only thing stopping me from cancelling Netflix is that I'd be cutting off my sister. If they do that for me, I'm out. Their catalog is pitiful and their new content is so often so terrible it's become a meme. The saddest thing is that there's really innovative projects that will suffer without their funding. Like Love Death and Robots. But even in interviews they say it's unsustainable.

ZephyrBlu 4y ago
Love, Death and Robots is amazing. I wish there was way more of that kind of content.

daveyjonezz 4y ago

It would be an amazing act of caste system creation if they subsidized the major markets by charging only smaller markets paid sharing from now on. I mean how much more obvious is it that they know this is a bad move?

pimlottc 4y ago

> An Update to Paid Sharing Oh, a title like this is never good news...

DeRock 4y ago

Here’s the summary stripped of the corporate BS: “We used to scale simultaneous streaming with your Netflix plan tier. We now want you to give us more money for that feature, so we are going to gaslight you into thinking you were never supposed to share simultaneous streams with anyone but yourself. To do this, we will rename it a “homes” feature, and pretend the page you used to use to manage logins is new and justifies the price increase. But in reality, we can’t compete, we’ve already done as many explicit rate increases as our users will tolerate, and feel now is a good time to blame inflation for a blatant money grab.”

benjaminwootton 4y ago
That’s not really fair. They’ve been relaxed about account sharing historically as I assume the metrics were more important than the revenue. However, they really do have the moral and legal right to put an end to it at the moment of their choosing. In what world is it reasonable to pay once then share the service with 2/3/4 households?
- thisismyaccoun7 4y ago
  >In what world is it reasonable to pay once then share the service with 2/3/4 households? Perhaps the one where the plan I pay extra for says I can use it on up to four devices at once, which is literally in the first paragraph of their help page for plans (https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926 https://help.netflix.com/en/node/24926)
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Clearly that's only if you want to watch four things at once, or the same show on four screens around you.
    - benjaminwootton 4y ago
      Or more likely 4 viewers in your household, such as different children watching different things simultaneously. To stretch this to entire different households sharing passwords was never a reasonable interpretation.

bit_logic 4y ago

The hype for Netflix stock was based on them becoming the Spotify of video and a tech advantage in streaming. It became clear a while ago that the studios wouldn't allow this and they no longer have a tech advantage. The market is finally adjusting their stock to match reality. Now they are fighting a battle they can't win. HBO, Disney, etc. have huge back catalogs that immediately makes their streaming services more valuable, in addition to all the new content they make. They shouldn't have given up so quickly on physical media. Physical media does not have the licensing issues. They could've invested heavily like the way Amazon did on lowering delivery time. Maybe they could've gotten physical media delivery down to one hour or same day. This would counter the studios back catalog because while Disney can instantly stream their back catalog, it's only Disney. Netflix would have access to back catalogs of all studios (at the tradeoff of waiting for the physical media) That's a tradeoff that many customers would make (access to more back catalog diversity in exchange for the delay of waiting for disks). At the same time, they could produce streaming content with a different business model. How many times do customers complain about favorite shows getting canceled after a season? What if there was a way for customers to select which shows they want supported? Like pick your top five every month and your subscription money will go to that show. Instead, they went the route of just spending a lot of money making new content as if they're a studio. But they can't beat the studios at being a studio, Disney and the others are the best at that.

asadlionpk 4y ago
You think selling vhs and dvds is a better business? I don’t know anyone who has a bluray player.
- iamevn 4y ago
  > I don’t know anyone who has a bluray player. Everyone with a playstation or an xbox has one.
  - bgorman 4y ago
    The new Xbox and PlayStation consoles come with variants without physical media

peteforde 4y ago

I don't understand the anti-Netflix hate. If you don't like their catalog, you have lots of options. Password sharing is the rampant default. It's not just grandma in the home or your daughter at college. It's your friends, your exes, your old housemates. Netflix has been, IMO, remarkably chill about this for a very long time. Y'all are talking like they are audaciously stealing something you believe that you are owed. I think that what got lost along the way is that Netflix forgot what their real product innovation was: long-tail convenience. Whether being able to order from a massive catalog of DVDs or stream things in hi-def without having to worry about torrents or FTP servers, Netflix really changed the way we access media. They've also played a massive role in popularizing alternative comedy to the masses. Same with documentaries, to a different degree. I do think they've made some questionable content production decisions. It's highly likely that if they'd stuck to financing comedy specials, documentaries and bringing back shows like Arrested Development and Firefly, they might not have scared Disney, Amazon, HBO and Hulu into competing with them. Their greed made it impossible for the incumbents to not compete.

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gnicholas 4y ago

So they're reporting earnings tomorrow, and they chose to release this news update today. Is it to signal that their initial 'test' of these fees was a success, and now they're rolling it out more broadly? Or is it because they have lousy results to announce, and they want analysts to see that they'll be improving their margins (among people who don't bail, that is) with these new fees?

lapser 4y ago

For those of us who don't live in those markets, how does this $2.99 compare with a new subscription? Like I get people will pay $2.99 extra for additional homes, but how much cheaper (if at all) is this compared to me getting a new plan? What will this look like when this model inevitably comes to other markets? I'm guessing subscriptions in Argentina is vastly cheaper than say the UK or US.

mynameisash 4y ago

Netflix, as an employer, is apparently very much of the mind that they're not a family but a team, and if you're not contributing to the success of the team, you're cut. And I mean, every corporation is that, but Netflix is loud and proud about that. Or so I'm lead to believe. With that said, I guess they shouldn't be surprised if their once-loyal customers tell them to pound sand because they're no longer a good value versus the new game in town.

bilbo0s 4y ago
What's the new game? Is that Disney+?

gnicholas 4y ago

> Travel included: You can watch while outside the home on your tablet, laptop or mobile. So what can't you do, exactly? Can you plug these devices into a TV? Can you not access your account on a TV or Roku/etc. device? What if you are at an Airbnb somewhere — can you log into their TV and use it there? If a kid splits time between his mom's house and his dad's house, does he have to designate one house as his home and the other as "travel" (and have usage restricted there, in whatever way it is restricted)?

xnacly 4y ago

Here's the thing, i probably use netflix 1h a day at a minimum but this is really outrageous. I mainly have netflix to watch shows while driving to work and for my parents and my little siblings, otherwise i wouldve already canceled.

pcthrowaway 4y ago
I really hope this is a language issue and you don't actually mean you're watching TV while driving

rdm_blackhole 4y ago

My family shares a 4 streams account. We all live in different countries. There is not 1 "home". On top of that I regularly move from 1 country to another so where does that leave me? If the concept of "home" becomes a problem, then I'll be going back to pirating content. You choice Netflix, you can choose to make the life of your users harder or you can back off and leave the paying subscribers in peace! One thing is for sure is that if and when I stop paying for Netflix, I won't be back so it'll be net loss for them.

miked85 4y ago

Netflix's content quality has gone down significantly in the past few years, while at the same time increasing in price. I can't see how this wouldn't just result in a very large amount of cancelled accounts.

pcthrowaway 4y ago

I'm going to buck the trend here and say I might try subscribing for a little bit to see if it's worth the cost. My parents have been Netflix subscribers since before they did streaming, and I've never paid a dime for Netflix (though I've been subscribed to Prime for a few years, and have tried other subscription streaming services in the past). Netflix is probably 40-70% of my legal streaming though (though IIRC it's also a little bit more expensive than Prime, which also offers free shipping, so it's not a direct comparison). I'm in my late 30s now and living in a different country than my parents. Is it easy to be outraged that they're cutting off access to something that has been free (for me) for over a decade? Sure. But emotion aside, it might honestly just be time to consider subscribing and seeing how much it costs, and give it a cost-benefit analysis on its own merits (past usage terms aside). If I decide against it, I'm really just out of the cost of a few months, and realistically its brought more value to me over the last 10 years than it could reasonably cost in a few months. I do want Netflix to survive because they really did validate the idea of streaming for all the services they're now competing with.

sofixa 4y ago

Did everyone here who is complaining miss that part of TFA: > Members on the Basic plan can add one extra home, Standard up to two extra, and Premium up to three extra If you're on the Premium tier, 4 simultaneous streams, you get 4 "homes" to share it with. It seems that you get the same amount of homes as streams. I find that perfectly reasonable. Netflix are in a tough spot and need to continue producing content, which requires money. They don't have Disney's money, so it's either increased prices/tightened sharing rules, or a downward spiral.

d1sxeyes 4y ago
I think you missed the bit of TFA directly above it: these are not included, this is a limit on how many more you can pay for. > Buy additional homes: To use your Netflix account in additional homes, we will ask you to pay an extra [$2.99 per month per home]. Members on the Basic plan can add one extra home, Standard up to two extra, and Premium up to three extra. If you got the same number of homes as streams, I think that would be more or less fair enough, but if I'm a single user with an individual account, why should I have to pay extra to be able to habitually watch in different locations (e.g. at home and at my partner's house, at home and at university, at home and at my sick parent's house, etc.), and why should I be limited to only one other place?

gliiics 4y ago

Netflix won over piracy because it was cheap and had a lot of shows that most people wanted to see. Watch them literally reverse both of those things - make it harder and pricier to use a legal service, and mostly have shitty dramas with one or two hits a year - and try to guess what will happen!

linsomniac 4y ago

For comparison, and hoping that netflix doesn't devolve to that point, I submit Spotify. My wife and I have the "2 people" plan. But it is draconian that only one device be used at a time. So if I'm listening and my wife starts the car, my shower/work tunes shut off. The car doesn't have multiple profiles. Similar happens if she is in the kitchen and starts tunes via voice (bluetooth from her phone understands it is a different profile). To be fair, Google Play has similar draconian limitations. I assume this is part of their agreement with the music industrial complex.

thn-gap 4y ago
I really thought that Spotify Duo allows 2 people to keep their respective accounts, just that one person pays for both. Are you sure about the one device restriction? I can't find it anywhere.
- linsomniac 4y ago
  Each person gets one device, our problem is that sometimes devices "leak" to the other person because you have to pick a person account for a shared device. I'm sure it is limited to one device per person because when the kids are in school I'm pretty much guaranteed to have my shower music stopped with a "Music has stopped because you are listening on another device" message when my wife takes the kids to school.

fatnoah 4y ago

I guess I come out ahead with this. I currently have the $19.99/month plan to cover my family in my house and my mom in her house. I guess I can downgrade the plan to the $15.49/month and spend $3 to add a home, so I'll save $1.50/month.

lol768 4y ago

Why is this (and the previous functionality) being rolled out seemingly exclusively in Latin American countries?

byenetflix 4y ago

Comments here made me realize I waste too much time browsing Netflix and saving things to watch later but never actually watching anything so I just deleted my profile. My wife still watches it occasionally but she hates their interface. Lots of things pop up that she finds disturbing and there's no way to tell it "never show me this again!". I'll leave it to her to decide if it's worth it to keep our subscription but in the words of Mr. Collins, I've got better things to do with my time. I really don't care any more.

Auracle 4y ago

I don’t fully disagree with what they’re doing, but how they’re doing it is stupid. The 4K plan can do what - 4 streams at once for ~$20? They just raised prices on that. Instead, they should make every plan one or two streams and actually lower the base price. They could then do ala carte add on streams. That would let them tackle the issue while at least being able to spin the PR. Either way, we cancelled. $20 a month is a ridiculous price compared to other services. If they want to be a premium service they need to get or make some more premium content.