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> Media companies are gross. Yeah like someone else said earlier. Welcome to HN where everyone makes half a million dollars a year and no one wants to pay $50/

by rr808 4y ago

> Media companies are gross. Yeah like someone else said earlier. Welcome to HN where everyone makes half a million dollars a year and no one wants to pay $50/mo for content.

tehwebguy 4y ago
Plenty of people here don’t make that much but the sentiment is largely true. Lots of hand wringing in a thread a while back about the tragedy of paying like $14.99 so a family of 4 could watch the newest Spider-man movie I think. Zero sympathy for the companies that seem to be burying content for tax benefits or residual avoidance, just saying the price for someone to watch video content has dropped in a pretty remarkable way, especially inflation adjusted, over the last few decades (theaters may be the exception), though people rarely “own” their copy of content these days. My DVD collection of maybe 40 movies & shows will last as long as I don’t get rid of my PS3 but in 10 years I haven’t watched any of them. There need to be legit competitors so the creators of new content can negotiate deals that don’t allow or incentivize the shelving of content. Currently if someone offers someone who isn’t a household name any contract to make their dream project they probably accept it with no redlining. Meanwhile John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski posted 8 episodes of maybe the dumbest, most tone deaf slop to YouTube in March of 2020 before immediately selling the “show” to Viacom and walking away. The “golden age of TV” ended super suddenly, hopefully this is the end of the re-bundling and we’ll see another unbundling soon!
- hammyhavoc 4y ago
  Optical media doesn't last well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
  - mixmastamyk 4y ago
    My CDs from the 80s and burners from the 90s are in excellent condition: https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx
    - hammyhavoc 4y ago
      Contrasting point: lots of non-functional PlayStation games at this point, which despite not being scratched, have suffered disc rot. Buying them is becoming difficult.
    - tehwebguy 4y ago
      Oh snap maybe burned ones last longer than stamped ones? I should rip all of mine but as one might expect I no longer have a DVD drive on a computer hah
metadat 4y ago
$600/year isn't nothing, even if you're pulling in a half million a year. After taxes, it's $300k, and after the cost of life it tends to get chipped away. Insurance and co-payments, food, shelter, car registration, rent or roperty tax+mortgage, clothing, internet, mobile phone, computer, children and their care, pets and their food+insurance+care, utility bills, property upkeep, auto purchase or repair, and on and on. Even without stepping on the hedonistic treadmill, it's crazy how much life today coats compared to a hundred years ago. Living even a half full life is still expensive before you dump fifty to a hundred bucks a month to Comcast, Disney+, Hulu, YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix for access to entertainment on their timelines.
- tehwebguy 4y ago
  What? It’s like the only thing in your entire list that has gone down in price over time (computers & mobile phones probably count as “up” since not everyone needed them 30 years ago when they were expensive as hell). It used to cost like $3 1999 dollars to rent one VHS for 3 days, now it’s $14.99 for a month of watching as many of hundreds of movies / shows as you have time for. The prices are going to get weird soon though! Amazon Prime is weird because it’s “free” with Prime shipping, HBO is free with AT&T’s main mobile phone plans, Disney+ (and some others, $20/mo max) are free with AMEX Platinum card.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - prirun 4y ago
    > It used to cost like $3 1999 dollars to rent one VHS for 3 days, now it’s $14.99 for a month of watching as many of hundreds of movies / shows as you have time for. The difference is, I picked the $3 movie to watch. The streaming services are limiting what I can watch for $15. If I want something really good, I have to pay for it, individually. I have long theorized Amazon Prime releases shows that are free on Prime until they are rated enough to decide whether the show is any good. If it's good, it's no longer on Prime and you have to pay. If it's shitty, okay, we'll leave it on Prime. I quit using Amazon's Watch List because I spent a significant amount of time scrolling through shows to add them to my watch list, only to find later that they were no longer on Prime and I'd have to pay for them individually. Fuck that.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
amelius 4y ago
I find it more shocking that everyone wants great developer tools, but nobody wants to pay for them. Instead of writing compilers, I'll make people click ads then, I suppose.
- saalweachter 4y ago
  You're missing the obvious business model: ad-supported compiler. You're going to be staring at the compiler output anyway, potentially for minutes at a time waiting for the build/tests to fail. Throw some ads in the progress bar.
  - ValentineC 4y ago
    I remember that Caddy (web server) tried adding ads to their HTTP headers, and even that didn't go well with some non-paying users: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19741730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19741730
  - powerhour 4y ago
    Some folks included ads in npm postinstall scripts, til they were outlawed.
barbazoo 4y ago
I know it's hyperbole but do you seriously think that the average HN user makes anywhere close to that?
- rr808 4y ago
  I certainly dont. I've spent too much time on blind though where I think that idea came from.

by rr808 4y ago

> Media companies are gross. Yeah like someone else said earlier. Welcome to HN where everyone makes half a million dollars a year and no one wants to pay $50/mo for content.

tehwebguy 4y ago

Plenty of people here don’t make that much but the sentiment is largely true. Lots of hand wringing in a thread a while back about the tragedy of paying like $14.99 so a family of 4 could watch the newest Spider-man movie I think. Zero sympathy for the companies that seem to be burying content for tax benefits or residual avoidance, just saying the price for someone to watch video content has dropped in a pretty remarkable way, especially inflation adjusted, over the last few decades (theaters may be the exception), though people rarely “own” their copy of content these days. My DVD collection of maybe 40 movies & shows will last as long as I don’t get rid of my PS3 but in 10 years I haven’t watched any of them. There need to be legit competitors so the creators of new content can negotiate deals that don’t allow or incentivize the shelving of content. Currently if someone offers someone who isn’t a household name any contract to make their dream project they probably accept it with no redlining. Meanwhile John “Jim from The Office” Krasinski posted 8 episodes of maybe the dumbest, most tone deaf slop to YouTube in March of 2020 before immediately selling the “show” to Viacom and walking away. The “golden age of TV” ended super suddenly, hopefully this is the end of the re-bundling and we’ll see another unbundling soon!

hammyhavoc 4y ago
Optical media doesn't last well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot
- mixmastamyk 4y ago
  My CDs from the 80s and burners from the 90s are in excellent condition: https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx https://imgur.com/a/I7fokrx
  - hammyhavoc 4y ago
    Contrasting point: lots of non-functional PlayStation games at this point, which despite not being scratched, have suffered disc rot. Buying them is becoming difficult.
  - tehwebguy 4y ago
    Oh snap maybe burned ones last longer than stamped ones? I should rip all of mine but as one might expect I no longer have a DVD drive on a computer hah

metadat 4y ago

$600/year isn't nothing, even if you're pulling in a half million a year. After taxes, it's $300k, and after the cost of life it tends to get chipped away. Insurance and co-payments, food, shelter, car registration, rent or roperty tax+mortgage, clothing, internet, mobile phone, computer, children and their care, pets and their food+insurance+care, utility bills, property upkeep, auto purchase or repair, and on and on. Even without stepping on the hedonistic treadmill, it's crazy how much life today coats compared to a hundred years ago. Living even a half full life is still expensive before you dump fifty to a hundred bucks a month to Comcast, Disney+, Hulu, YouTube, Spotify, and Netflix for access to entertainment on their timelines.

tehwebguy 4y ago
What? It’s like the only thing in your entire list that has gone down in price over time (computers & mobile phones probably count as “up” since not everyone needed them 30 years ago when they were expensive as hell). It used to cost like $3 1999 dollars to rent one VHS for 3 days, now it’s $14.99 for a month of watching as many of hundreds of movies / shows as you have time for. The prices are going to get weird soon though! Amazon Prime is weird because it’s “free” with Prime shipping, HBO is free with AT&T’s main mobile phone plans, Disney+ (and some others, $20/mo max) are free with AMEX Platinum card.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- prirun 4y ago
  > It used to cost like $3 1999 dollars to rent one VHS for 3 days, now it’s $14.99 for a month of watching as many of hundreds of movies / shows as you have time for. The difference is, I picked the $3 movie to watch. The streaming services are limiting what I can watch for $15. If I want something really good, I have to pay for it, individually. I have long theorized Amazon Prime releases shows that are free on Prime until they are rated enough to decide whether the show is any good. If it's good, it's no longer on Prime and you have to pay. If it's shitty, okay, we'll leave it on Prime. I quit using Amazon's Watch List because I spent a significant amount of time scrolling through shows to add them to my watch list, only to find later that they were no longer on Prime and I'd have to pay for them individually. Fuck that.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

amelius 4y ago

I find it more shocking that everyone wants great developer tools, but nobody wants to pay for them. Instead of writing compilers, I'll make people click ads then, I suppose.

saalweachter 4y ago
You're missing the obvious business model: ad-supported compiler. You're going to be staring at the compiler output anyway, potentially for minutes at a time waiting for the build/tests to fail. Throw some ads in the progress bar.
- ValentineC 4y ago
  I remember that Caddy (web server) tried adding ads to their HTTP headers, and even that didn't go well with some non-paying users: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19741730 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19741730
- powerhour 4y ago
  Some folks included ads in npm postinstall scripts, til they were outlawed.

barbazoo 4y ago

I know it's hyperbole but do you seriously think that the average HN user makes anywhere close to that?

rr808 4y ago
I certainly dont. I've spent too much time on blind though where I think that idea came from.