3 ms·

Okay, but 6-700k of this million were not paying users, but password-borrowers.

by not_your_vase 4y ago

The_Colonel 4y ago
Still a significant loss. Netflix expected more paying customers from this step, not less.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wartijn_ 4y ago
  They still expect more paying customers from this step. > Last week Netflix missed expectations for new subscribers in the first quarter, but the company said that the password-policing plan and a cheaper streaming version with ads will accelerate growth in the second half of 2023. They’ve ran test in a couple of countries. Maybe an initial drop in subscribers followed by an increase is in line with their expectations.
pokepim 4y ago
They are probably going back to torrenting and similar. When disney was slow to rollout in some countries my friends did not want to wait for Mandalorian to drop with Disney plus over there in Europe. They just downloaded it for free and did not even need to sign up for disney when it came one year later. If the streaming companies start to provide subpar and cumbersome service and charge hundreds of dollars for it per year I can see people going back to proven and free ways that were very popular 15-20 years ago
- pdimitar 4y ago
  Why was this comment dead? Since when are HN comments policed for the word "torrent"? Vouched it so it's visible. It also makes a valid point, torrenting is definitely a reality and denying it will not make it go away.
  - kalleboo 4y ago
    Looks like all the comments this user has posted for the past month have been killed
    - pdimitar 4y ago
      Now that you mentioned it, I went and checked and it became much weirder.
hackernewds 4y ago
So they lost 300k users and also lost 700k promoters of the service. At the cost of scaled server costs?
- dspillett 4y ago
  With energy prices shooting up, that scanned server cost is more significant now than it used to be, and per-user bandwidth costs don't drop forever due to economies of scale, so there may be more cost efficient promotion methods than 700,000 non-paying users. There was a study a while back (can't find it ATM, I'll have another look later) that suggested those using other people's accounts were more likely to be heavy users in terms of bandwidth than average, so perhaps this sort of thing has been factored in to the plan. Having said that, I can't imagine they expected 300k dropping their account now they can no longer share it. Perhaps there are a lot of friend groups clubbing together to share the cost of subscription services like Netflix.
  - nsteel 4y ago
    > per-user bandwidth costs don't drop forever due to economies of scale, Can you explain why? I'd have thought they absolutely do and on top of this their caching strategy becomes even more effective.
    - dspillett 4y ago
      > Can you explain why? Bandwidth isn't an infinite resource. It effectively is up to a certain scale and with a few caveats (the costs are not consistent globally) but I'm sure Netflix is beyond the scale where it can be assumed to be and at that point they will be bidding against other big users for peering priority. With a dedicate server I have some stuff on I can upgrade to 10gbit unmetered for a lot less than 10x the cost the current 1gbit unmetered link (in my case neither dedicated, but 1-shared-to-10-shared will likely scale in cost similarly to 1-dedicated-to-10-dedicated). With another where I have a total bandwidth cap not a speed cap I could likely extend that cap relatively cheaply. At the scales required by a small company, even one running SaaS services, the same is usually true. But at Netflix's scale a small percent increase in any particular locality is still a huge amount of extra to ask for, and it might not really be available (it could be allowed to eat into slack for a short time, this is one of the reasons why networks are provisioned for more than 100% of expected use, but if the extra is needed permanently then infrastructure upgrades may be needed). They can get around lack of cheap bandwidth by instead temporarily increasing compression rates (this will in fact happen automatically, as dropping overall bit-rate is supported to deal with congestion at the level of a user's connection and that will kick in due to congestion elsewhere too) but this will be easily detectable by some users (particularly those with huge screens and great eyesight) who will compare the quality with other streaming content providers and talk about the difference which may affect future sales. > on top of this their caching strategy becomes even more effective Caching in terms of keeping data geographically spread will reduce international bandwidth needs, and ISP-level caching through their local boxes will help considerably again (and get more effective as more users join from the same ISP), but there will always be an amount of traffic that needs to travel costly routes (the ISP level caches will only be large enough to support the best caching candidates, like new high-profile shows, a small proportion of the whole catalogue, and many ISPs do not have that facility at all).
ragebol 4y ago
I wonder how much this affects the public not talking about the shows and this leading to less engagement. And thus snowballing into even less users, as there is less people to promote shows etc.
vivegi 4y ago
That may very well be. But now, their engagement metric on hours viewed [1] is going to drop like a brick and the analysts who started tracking that for the past several quarters will be scratching their head. [1]: https://top10.netflix.com/ https://top10.netflix.com/
progx 4y ago
But 1 User is (probably) a Premium user. If you remove 3 users, the Premium user could downgrade to Normal. Personally i share with 3. The 3 watch from time to time Netflix, they will not buy an account, only 1 oder 2 Month a year. If these 3 go, i can downgrade my package to 13 Euro (in Germany) and i will only order it 3 - 4 Month a year. Currently i pay every month 18 Euro. The time changes, Netflix is not the only player on the market, we can choose now from many.
ghosty141 4y ago
Many people share the cost so did DID lose paying users since for many paying the whole subscription price is not worth it alone.
commitpizza 4y ago
My brother pay for a "multi-device" account. When they introduce this and the family get cut off he will most likely unsubscribe in time or downgrade to a personal account.

Okay, but 6-700k of this million were not paying users, but password-borrowers.

The_Colonel 4y ago

Still a significant loss. Netflix expected more paying customers from this step, not less.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
wartijn_ 4y ago
They still expect more paying customers from this step. > Last week Netflix missed expectations for new subscribers in the first quarter, but the company said that the password-policing plan and a cheaper streaming version with ads will accelerate growth in the second half of 2023. They’ve ran test in a couple of countries. Maybe an initial drop in subscribers followed by an increase is in line with their expectations.

pokepim 4y ago

They are probably going back to torrenting and similar. When disney was slow to rollout in some countries my friends did not want to wait for Mandalorian to drop with Disney plus over there in Europe. They just downloaded it for free and did not even need to sign up for disney when it came one year later. If the streaming companies start to provide subpar and cumbersome service and charge hundreds of dollars for it per year I can see people going back to proven and free ways that were very popular 15-20 years ago

pdimitar 4y ago
Why was this comment dead? Since when are HN comments policed for the word "torrent"? Vouched it so it's visible. It also makes a valid point, torrenting is definitely a reality and denying it will not make it go away.
- kalleboo 4y ago
  Looks like all the comments this user has posted for the past month have been killed
  - pdimitar 4y ago
    Now that you mentioned it, I went and checked and it became much weirder.

hackernewds 4y ago

So they lost 300k users and also lost 700k promoters of the service. At the cost of scaled server costs?

dspillett 4y ago
With energy prices shooting up, that scanned server cost is more significant now than it used to be, and per-user bandwidth costs don't drop forever due to economies of scale, so there may be more cost efficient promotion methods than 700,000 non-paying users. There was a study a while back (can't find it ATM, I'll have another look later) that suggested those using other people's accounts were more likely to be heavy users in terms of bandwidth than average, so perhaps this sort of thing has been factored in to the plan. Having said that, I can't imagine they expected 300k dropping their account now they can no longer share it. Perhaps there are a lot of friend groups clubbing together to share the cost of subscription services like Netflix.
- nsteel 4y ago
  > per-user bandwidth costs don't drop forever due to economies of scale, Can you explain why? I'd have thought they absolutely do and on top of this their caching strategy becomes even more effective.
  - dspillett 4y ago
    > Can you explain why? Bandwidth isn't an infinite resource. It effectively is up to a certain scale and with a few caveats (the costs are not consistent globally) but I'm sure Netflix is beyond the scale where it can be assumed to be and at that point they will be bidding against other big users for peering priority. With a dedicate server I have some stuff on I can upgrade to 10gbit unmetered for a lot less than 10x the cost the current 1gbit unmetered link (in my case neither dedicated, but 1-shared-to-10-shared will likely scale in cost similarly to 1-dedicated-to-10-dedicated). With another where I have a total bandwidth cap not a speed cap I could likely extend that cap relatively cheaply. At the scales required by a small company, even one running SaaS services, the same is usually true. But at Netflix's scale a small percent increase in any particular locality is still a huge amount of extra to ask for, and it might not really be available (it could be allowed to eat into slack for a short time, this is one of the reasons why networks are provisioned for more than 100% of expected use, but if the extra is needed permanently then infrastructure upgrades may be needed). They can get around lack of cheap bandwidth by instead temporarily increasing compression rates (this will in fact happen automatically, as dropping overall bit-rate is supported to deal with congestion at the level of a user's connection and that will kick in due to congestion elsewhere too) but this will be easily detectable by some users (particularly those with huge screens and great eyesight) who will compare the quality with other streaming content providers and talk about the difference which may affect future sales. > on top of this their caching strategy becomes even more effective Caching in terms of keeping data geographically spread will reduce international bandwidth needs, and ISP-level caching through their local boxes will help considerably again (and get more effective as more users join from the same ISP), but there will always be an amount of traffic that needs to travel costly routes (the ISP level caches will only be large enough to support the best caching candidates, like new high-profile shows, a small proportion of the whole catalogue, and many ISPs do not have that facility at all).

ragebol 4y ago

I wonder how much this affects the public not talking about the shows and this leading to less engagement. And thus snowballing into even less users, as there is less people to promote shows etc.

vivegi 4y ago

That may very well be. But now, their engagement metric on hours viewed [1] is going to drop like a brick and the analysts who started tracking that for the past several quarters will be scratching their head. [1]: https://top10.netflix.com/ https://top10.netflix.com/

progx 4y ago

But 1 User is (probably) a Premium user. If you remove 3 users, the Premium user could downgrade to Normal. Personally i share with 3. The 3 watch from time to time Netflix, they will not buy an account, only 1 oder 2 Month a year. If these 3 go, i can downgrade my package to 13 Euro (in Germany) and i will only order it 3 - 4 Month a year. Currently i pay every month 18 Euro. The time changes, Netflix is not the only player on the market, we can choose now from many.

ghosty141 4y ago

Many people share the cost so did DID lose paying users since for many paying the whole subscription price is not worth it alone.

commitpizza 4y ago

My brother pay for a "multi-device" account. When they introduce this and the family get cut off he will most likely unsubscribe in time or downgrade to a personal account.