8 ms·

Amazon to add limited ads to Prime Video starting in early 2024

62 points by huhtenberg 3y ago

ajcoll5 3y ago
Enshittification strikes again!
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  I just love how versatile that word is :) And yes, this one is a great example of how you can turn your paying customers into being the product that you sell (in addition to charging them) to satisfy your greed.
alex_toms 3y ago
Interesting how every subscription business is slowly turning to the traditional ad-supported model. People might refuse it, but ad-supported is one of the most efficient business models on both the consumer side and business side. Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. Plus, every company needs marketing, and even consumers need it. It allows us to notice things we might need in our lives. Not sure why people thought that the subscription model was going to take over. Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily
- koolba 3y ago
  > Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. Being interrupted and attempted to be brainwashed every X minutes is not “the same quality”.
  - soco 3y ago
    Also, paying for them is not free.
- Retric 3y ago
  Except Amazon Prime continues to be a paid service. I quickly stopped watching prime because they already had excessive advertising, I can only imagine how much worse the service is becoming.
- e61133e3 3y ago
  Hope you forgot the sarcasme sign. Seriously doubt that every company needs "marketing". And refuse to believe that consumers need it.
- adverbly 3y ago
  > and even consumers need it. It allows us to notice things we might need in our lives Just so I'm clear, are you actually trying to say that ads are good for viewers? Do you personally like ads? Do you use an ad blocker? Are you happy when you see an unskippable 15 second tax on your time?
- tupac_speedrap 3y ago
  It's only more efficient in screwing over the customer, you are paying the same amount for less of the video you want to watch. It's a shame really, my family had Sky TV about a decade ago and it always baffled me how you pay for the extra channels and then they still have ad breaks.
- snickerbockers 3y ago
  >Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. But prime's not free. Also the video quality is terrible. >Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily Then that's their fault for having an untenable business model, not the user's fault for expecting the free service to remain free. Anyways, in the AI age user generated content has an intrinsic value as training material so submitting posts to social media sites is basically a transaction.
- gabereiser 3y ago
  Interesting in that once consumers get a taste of an ad-free platform, forever will they wish to return. Ads may be the only way media content as a business makes any money but this really is more telling of where Prime is today. They are losing money. I refuse to watch ads. I block them on all my devices. I don’t watch networks and content that has them. I’ve had a taste of an ad free world and I will do everything in my power to return. If I have a need for something, I’ll research. I would rather go back to pirating content than $20/mo for “limited ads”. It’s fucking Cable all over again.
- Mechanical9 3y ago
  There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising. People and businesses want to communicate what products and services are available. If a random person wants the ability to start their own business, they're going to need the ability to advertise that they have a new product that they want people to try. Or they want to advertise that there's some societal issue that they want people to be aware of. Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing, which political candidates are running, etc, except from 2nd and 3rd hand sources with several layers of spin (and misunderstanding/misinformation) on the information. I personally hate the current state of direct advertising. There seems to be zero prevention of fraud and zero work towards making ads less annoying. I wish that consensual forms of media could convey all that information instead, in an unbiased, informed, and timely manner. Unfortunately that isn't currently happening for several reasons (media underfunding, editorial conflicts of interest, personalized content streams that preclude any sort of unexpected news). I'm not sure what the solution is overall. I think if every company didn't deliver absolute buckets of trash to their own email marketing lists, then we wouldn't block them and they wouldn't have to pay to ruin our other media.
  - edgyquant 3y ago
    >There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising Objectively false
    - gdulli 3y ago
      The best concert I ever saw (Nightmares on Wax) was one I only knew was going to be in town from a TV commercial. I don't follow concert news. I realized recently that I only ever see blockbuster movies anymore because I've hardcore eliminated advertising from my life. I don't know what movies are coming out anymore if they're not huge and mainstream. That's kind of a bummer. Movie trailers were one kind of commercial I did like. Advertising mostly sucks, yes, but like all takes you can be too extremist about it. Sometimes an advertiser's interests align with mine. Maybe I should know the full range of products and services available. I'm not going to forget that the advertiser's message is biased. By blocking all advertising from my life I've introduced a different kind of bias into my choices.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily I wish. Ads are a cancer.
- rchaud 3y ago
  > Ad-supported is one of the most efficient business models on both the consumer side and business side. I'm not sure about that. Detach Prime Video from Amazon, Youtube from Google, Hulu from Disney and then maybe we'd see. As it is, these services all look like loss leaders.
- tomjen3 3y ago
  No we don't need ads for products, since products worth buying are worth people remarking about them, so we hear of the through a filter. Ads don't make services cheaper - you end up paying for the products, the creation of the ad and the overhead, meaning you pay more in the end.
- troyvit 3y ago
  > Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily I'd love to. If we lived in a world where micro-transactions were simple and inexpensive I would love to pay (how much it costs to serve me my content)+(20% overhead for profit). At least my money would be going to the publisher. There were/are a few companies out there that, for a monthly subscription price, give you paywalled content. They sucked because they were selective about that content, but the idea of paying a clearing house a monthly fee, and having a piece of JS on _everybody's_ site that recognized me and provided the content with no ads and no tracking actually makes me want to take off my tin-foil hat and embrace the internet panopticon.
prepend 3y ago
The main reason I dropped prime is that the shipping stopped working. Two days slipped most of the time. But what put me over the edge was their music stopped being included, it was another fee to remove adds and unlock everything. And video had these annoying preroll ads. Frequently for things I already watched. Now there will be ads throughout and it’s a monthly fee to get what was free. I do like some prime shows -maisel and peripheral - but those get conveniently packaged up and downloaded through trackers. The best UI experience for streaming is just torrent files autodownloading and being available the day after. No ads, no confusing interfaces. Id pay for this, but I can’t.
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  The big issue in my opinion is that movie execs have this misguided belief that if you stop people from pirating your content, every prevented download will turn into a sale at full price. But I expect that people will simply stop watching mediocre movie and low-effort series. Or wait for rebates, like those people who avoid cinema and then rent the bluray later. As a result of this misunderstanding, they try technical solutions and the effect is that probably every 2nd person who reads this has Sonar setup to fuel their "web-dl subscription" to Prime. The correct solution would be to lower prices (and that somewhat includes less ads) to make it more attractive to pay for that content. And they will need that strategy anyway to survive a direct competition with Disney = the Marvel cinematic universe. I myself cancelled Netflix when I noticed that none of the people I talk to regularly care enough about their Netflix shows to remember the story... And from that I concluded that it must be mostly filler content.
  - dazc 3y ago
    Same thing with the music industry fighting torrents for years until finally accepting that people will gladly pay a fair price.
    - inversetelecine 3y ago
      Except, they still fight torrents.
ryanklee 3y ago
Wtf am I even paying these parasites for. Navigating this world is such a pain in the ass.
RandomLensman 3y ago
What is curious is that all entertainment really only seems to be viable when heavily cross-subsidized by everyone.
- dsego 3y ago
  You have to wonder as a species if we have too much entertainment, all the endless tv shows, movies, it's hyper production of mostly forgettable noise and variations on the same few recycled themes. Instead we might be better of with less but better quality content or turn to various activities and socializing for fun.
  - cooperadymas 3y ago
    I do agree with the broad premise that we have a glut of content. AI is only going to make it worse. The problem with your argument is that most people love the mostly forgettable noise and variation on the same theme. That's why there are 137 Marvel movies which were all huge hits, 42 different Star Wars productions going on right now, and Gordon Ramsey has 13 simultaneous shows. (Warning: made up numbers). Most people don't want to think when they watch movies. They don't want high concept indie flicks. That's why Netflix and Amazon are huge and Mubi and Criterion Channel aren't.
- rchaud 3y ago
  The streaming bait and switch is another example of Silicon Valley 'disrupting' entertainment by ignoring its history, and then throwing ads back in claiming there was no other way. The arts have only ever flourished under formal systems of patronage; the need for immediate commercial viability is what has led us to a landscape of every service offering 10 comic book/fantasy novel adaptations for every 1 original screenplay.
brianmcc 3y ago
After many years as a subscriber this really brings the value of Amazon Prime into question for me. I no longer order enough stuff from them to make it worthwhile. I do use Prime Reading but the quality is mostly poor, "landfill crime" genre. Such a compromised video service would quite likely push me out - I just won't watch ads on a service I pay for.
MagicMoonlight 3y ago
The whole point of me paying is to make it easier for me. If you’re going to fuck me over even more for paying then I’ll just go hack to pirating 4k rips of the content for free.
- zeta0134 3y ago
  When I was paying for Netflix, I still found it easier to download the shows I was interested in watching as this permitted me to remember my place, dodge their shitty player UI, and not deal with crappy internet problems causing the stream to change to potato quality at random moments. Most of these problems aren't a thing with physical media. Honestly I want to pay for content to support the creators, but that's what I want to pay for. I'm not paying to use your shitty player app and I'm not paying for draconian DRM that lets you take the content away from me later, or restrict the devices I can play the content on, or tell me I can't watch my movie on a flight with no wifi, etc. The payment is on my honor, because the content is frankly stupidly simple to access for absolutely free if I really want to, and that's not going to change. Data isn't going to get *harder* to copy over time. Just let me pay the artists as directly as possible, because that's where I want the money to go, to support their work. Can we make that a thing?
- bombcar 3y ago
  It’s not even worth pirating, the library near me is jammed full of Blu-rays and DVDs.
MAGZine 3y ago
I'm lightly amused by the choice to include the word "limited" in the headline. Sorry, "limited" ads are still ads, no matter how you try and downplay it!
- soco 3y ago
  For Christmas, we present you the new subscription with unlimited ads!
nine_zeros 3y ago
The entire tech industry is going through some massive enshittification. This ads nonsense is everywhere now. Why the f should anyone pay for a subscription if they are going to be shown some ads?
- fooster 3y ago
  People do it all the time. Cable tv.
  - jackthetab 3y ago
    Old man yelling at clouds here. These same arguments were brought up with cable TV back in the day; one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told, was there wouldn't be any ads since we were paying for it. "There's nothing new under the sun"...
    - fooster 3y ago
      Yeah exactly. If I can avoid it I wont watch ads including paying more.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      > one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told Who told you that? Cable TV had ads on practically every channel for the first 30 years of its history, since it was just collecting and transmitting all the local broadcast stations. And even when cable-only stations came out, they often had ads. The second cable-only TV station, TBS, had ads from day one! HBO was an outlier because it didn't have ads. It wasn't the norm.
      - jackthetab 3y ago
        I pre-date cable TV. There was a debate amongst the adults whether the community should allow cable TV in, given the infrastructure and tax costs involved.
        3y ago
huhtenberg 3y ago
There's a crucial difference between what Netflix did and this. Netflix added a new lower-priced ad-supported option, leaving existing subscribers as they were. Amazon however is pushing ads onto existing subscribers and adding a new ad-free option to which one has to upgrade. This burns a lot of goodwill. It just ain't nice. I will be cancelling the subscription once this hits my country as a matter of principle.
- nickcw 3y ago
  ...and the no-ads tier is only available in the US. Looks like I'll be cancelling prime video as no ads is really important to me.
  - AnssiH 3y ago
    > ...and the no-ads tier is only available in the US. That's not what the announcement (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-update-announces-limited-ads https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-u...) says: > We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* for U.S. Prime members and will share pricing for other countries at a later date.
- rerx 3y ago
  While this is true, Netflix hiked prices massively over the years. Their 4K/HDR offering is 17.99 EUR per month here. Amazon Prime including Prime Video is still 8.99 EUR/month, cheaper if paid yearly, without any surcharge for 4K/HDR. So that's more than twice the price for a comparable streaming service.
  - dazc 3y ago
    I cancelled Netflix and will resubscribe for a month over Christmas; they did me a favour with that one.
    - rerx 3y ago
      I just recalled that Amazon increased the price slightly last year when they launched Rings of Power. Typically I subscribe to these services for just a few months at a time, depending on what's interesting. Harder to do with accounts that are shared by a larger household, I guess.
Lev1a 3y ago
As James Stephanie Sterling likes to say: "Corporations don't want some [of your] money, they want ALL [of your] money." Also, ads are (except for very, very rare exceptions) useless wastes of time AND if I'm already paying for the service which doesn't get any better but just more "expensive" through garbage like this, the term "enshittification" most certainly does apply. Edit: Also, like Netflix, Amazon also artificially limit streaming quality to <= 720p just because I don't use Microsoft's spyware system. Fuck 'em.
handyj 3y ago
Pirate bay it is then.
LeoNatan25 3y ago
I will stick with my BitTorrent subscription. No retarded geo-restrictions, no ads for paying customers and the pricing model is a real winner.
- specproc 3y ago
  And their library is second to none.
PeterStuer 3y ago
Final nail in the coffin. I guess this will be the time I cancel prime.
timw4mail 3y ago
And streaming video furthers its devolution into fragmented cable tv...
daedlanth 3y ago
[dead]
causi 3y ago
The entire Prime Video thing for me has never been anything more than a parasitic money-suck for my two-day shipping.
- instagib 3y ago
  It used to be good old shows or movies which cable viewers used to or may still watch more of. I never watched anything on it. Terrible UI. Then, they started making more shows and movies that were good so I watched them. The pre-roll advertisements started but were skippable annoyances. Now ad supported platforms are mixed in with prime content unless you select prime only. UI is bad again. Movies/shows stop in the middle while the app is loading ads or something. The content hasn’t improved much and the “new” section is back to old shows and movies. Back to not watching again. Idk 1-2 day shipping would change for me since the distribution center is closer than the grocery store. I don’t think the three times I needed overnight shipping and two actually went through are worth the yearly charge. Two day shipping gets rescheduled often also.
jiofj 3y ago
I must be missing something because I've been seeing ads in Prime Video for quite some time.
- alistairSH 3y ago
  I think I depends how the show is license. Prime video (the app) has content from other sources that have ads. But shows licensed directly by Prime don’t have ads. Or something like that.
jackhack 3y ago
History repeats itself. I'm old enough to remember when "Cable TV" meant "no advertisements." And then it was just a few between programs. Then during the program, which eventually made it indistinguishable from "over the air" (antenna/aerial) broadcasting. Now Netflix, and Amazon repeat the lesson for another generation of consumer.
- vel0city 3y ago
  > I'm old enough to remember when "Cable TV" meant "no advertisements." You must be infinitely old then, because "Cable TV" at its inception had ads. Cable TV was originally just bundling all the local stations, and it was like that for thirty years. So the first thirty years of cable had ads. Even most of the first few cable-only TV stations had ads. The second cable-only TV station, WTBS, had ads. Nickelodeon, ESPN, CNN, USA, all had ads from their start and were some of the very first cable-only TV stations. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/11/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-cable-television/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/11/02/the-rise-...
redhale 3y ago
Welp, it was a good run, I guess. I'd been considering dumping Prime as I've been using the other benefits less and less the past few years. This will be the final straw for me. Goodbye, worst streaming UI on the planet!
schaefer 3y ago
You know what membership hasn’t shoved ads down my throat? My library card. I value it more and more every day.
- vel0city 3y ago
  I get ads all the time every time I walk into the library. Curated displays showcasing whatever author or topic they're trying to push at the time. Is that not advertising? Not that I mind. I often find neat things in these displays that I might not have thought to look for otherwise. But isn't that kind of the point of ads, to get people to look for things they might not have otherwise known or considered?
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
beej71 3y ago
Another $36/year to remain ad-free...? That's more than enough to break the camel's back in my case.
sys32768 3y ago
I have found I can get fantastic deals on eBay on blu-ray and DVD titles via thrift store sellers, sometimes an entire blu-ray season for $10 shipped. I only keep Prime because of the PBS Documentaries add-on which is fantastic, and those are difficult to find anywhere else.
- inversetelecine 3y ago
  Indeed. Even Amazon third-party has good deals on used discs. I miss FamilyVideo who had tons of rental discs for sale for $2-$5 during sales and $5-10 normally.
mikerg87 3y ago
This is digital shrinkflation
simian1983 3y ago
So, to avoid ads, I should to spend another $2.99 a month? But also all of the writers are on strike, so I’m not gonna see any new content for at least six months? Cool cool. That makes sense.

62 points by huhtenberg 3y ago

ajcoll5 3y ago

Enshittification strikes again!

fxtentacle 3y ago
I just love how versatile that word is :) And yes, this one is a great example of how you can turn your paying customers into being the product that you sell (in addition to charging them) to satisfy your greed.

alex_toms 3y ago

Interesting how every subscription business is slowly turning to the traditional ad-supported model. People might refuse it, but ad-supported is one of the most efficient business models on both the consumer side and business side. Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. Plus, every company needs marketing, and even consumers need it. It allows us to notice things we might need in our lives. Not sure why people thought that the subscription model was going to take over. Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily

koolba 3y ago
> Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. Being interrupted and attempted to be brainwashed every X minutes is not “the same quality”.
- soco 3y ago
  Also, paying for them is not free.
Retric 3y ago
Except Amazon Prime continues to be a paid service. I quickly stopped watching prime because they already had excessive advertising, I can only imagine how much worse the service is becoming.
e61133e3 3y ago
Hope you forgot the sarcasme sign. Seriously doubt that every company needs "marketing". And refuse to believe that consumers need it.
adverbly 3y ago
> and even consumers need it. It allows us to notice things we might need in our lives Just so I'm clear, are you actually trying to say that ads are good for viewers? Do you personally like ads? Do you use an ad blocker? Are you happy when you see an unskippable 15 second tax on your time?
tupac_speedrap 3y ago
It's only more efficient in screwing over the customer, you are paying the same amount for less of the video you want to watch. It's a shame really, my family had Sky TV about a decade ago and it always baffled me how you pay for the extra channels and then they still have ad breaks.
snickerbockers 3y ago
>Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. But prime's not free. Also the video quality is terrible. >Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily Then that's their fault for having an untenable business model, not the user's fault for expecting the free service to remain free. Anyways, in the AI age user generated content has an intrinsic value as training material so submitting posts to social media sites is basically a transaction.
gabereiser 3y ago
Interesting in that once consumers get a taste of an ad-free platform, forever will they wish to return. Ads may be the only way media content as a business makes any money but this really is more telling of where Prime is today. They are losing money. I refuse to watch ads. I block them on all my devices. I don’t watch networks and content that has them. I’ve had a taste of an ad free world and I will do everything in my power to return. If I have a need for something, I’ll research. I would rather go back to pirating content than $20/mo for “limited ads”. It’s fucking Cable all over again.
Mechanical9 3y ago
There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising. People and businesses want to communicate what products and services are available. If a random person wants the ability to start their own business, they're going to need the ability to advertise that they have a new product that they want people to try. Or they want to advertise that there's some societal issue that they want people to be aware of. Consider a world with zero ads. There wouldn't be annoying interruptions. But we also wouldn't ever learn which new movies are playing, which political candidates are running, etc, except from 2nd and 3rd hand sources with several layers of spin (and misunderstanding/misinformation) on the information. I personally hate the current state of direct advertising. There seems to be zero prevention of fraud and zero work towards making ads less annoying. I wish that consensual forms of media could convey all that information instead, in an unbiased, informed, and timely manner. Unfortunately that isn't currently happening for several reasons (media underfunding, editorial conflicts of interest, personalized content streams that preclude any sort of unexpected news). I'm not sure what the solution is overall. I think if every company didn't deliver absolute buckets of trash to their own email marketing lists, then we wouldn't block them and they wouldn't have to pay to ruin our other media.
- edgyquant 3y ago
  >There's a necessity in society for some form of advertising Objectively false
  - gdulli 3y ago
    The best concert I ever saw (Nightmares on Wax) was one I only knew was going to be in town from a TV commercial. I don't follow concert news. I realized recently that I only ever see blockbuster movies anymore because I've hardcore eliminated advertising from my life. I don't know what movies are coming out anymore if they're not huge and mainstream. That's kind of a bummer. Movie trailers were one kind of commercial I did like. Advertising mostly sucks, yes, but like all takes you can be too extremist about it. Sometimes an advertiser's interests align with mine. Maybe I should know the full range of products and services available. I'm not going to forget that the advertiser's message is biased. By blocking all advertising from my life I've introduced a different kind of bias into my choices.
thfuran 3y ago
>Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily I wish. Ads are a cancer.
rchaud 3y ago
> Ad-supported is one of the most efficient business models on both the consumer side and business side. I'm not sure about that. Detach Prime Video from Amazon, Youtube from Google, Hulu from Disney and then maybe we'd see. As it is, these services all look like loss leaders.
tomjen3 3y ago
No we don't need ads for products, since products worth buying are worth people remarking about them, so we hear of the through a filter. Ads don't make services cheaper - you end up paying for the products, the creation of the ad and the overhead, meaning you pay more in the end.
troyvit 3y ago
> Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily I'd love to. If we lived in a world where micro-transactions were simple and inexpensive I would love to pay (how much it costs to serve me my content)+(20% overhead for profit). At least my money would be going to the publisher. There were/are a few companies out there that, for a monthly subscription price, give you paywalled content. They sucked because they were selective about that content, but the idea of paying a clearing house a monthly fee, and having a piece of JS on _everybody's_ site that recognized me and provided the content with no ads and no tracking actually makes me want to take off my tin-foil hat and embrace the internet panopticon.

prepend 3y ago

The main reason I dropped prime is that the shipping stopped working. Two days slipped most of the time. But what put me over the edge was their music stopped being included, it was another fee to remove adds and unlock everything. And video had these annoying preroll ads. Frequently for things I already watched. Now there will be ads throughout and it’s a monthly fee to get what was free. I do like some prime shows -maisel and peripheral - but those get conveniently packaged up and downloaded through trackers. The best UI experience for streaming is just torrent files autodownloading and being available the day after. No ads, no confusing interfaces. Id pay for this, but I can’t.

fxtentacle 3y ago
The big issue in my opinion is that movie execs have this misguided belief that if you stop people from pirating your content, every prevented download will turn into a sale at full price. But I expect that people will simply stop watching mediocre movie and low-effort series. Or wait for rebates, like those people who avoid cinema and then rent the bluray later. As a result of this misunderstanding, they try technical solutions and the effect is that probably every 2nd person who reads this has Sonar setup to fuel their "web-dl subscription" to Prime. The correct solution would be to lower prices (and that somewhat includes less ads) to make it more attractive to pay for that content. And they will need that strategy anyway to survive a direct competition with Disney = the Marvel cinematic universe. I myself cancelled Netflix when I noticed that none of the people I talk to regularly care enough about their Netflix shows to remember the story... And from that I concluded that it must be mostly filler content.
- dazc 3y ago
  Same thing with the music industry fighting torrents for years until finally accepting that people will gladly pay a fair price.
  - inversetelecine 3y ago
    Except, they still fight torrents.

ryanklee 3y ago

Wtf am I even paying these parasites for. Navigating this world is such a pain in the ass.

RandomLensman 3y ago

What is curious is that all entertainment really only seems to be viable when heavily cross-subsidized by everyone.

dsego 3y ago
You have to wonder as a species if we have too much entertainment, all the endless tv shows, movies, it's hyper production of mostly forgettable noise and variations on the same few recycled themes. Instead we might be better of with less but better quality content or turn to various activities and socializing for fun.
- cooperadymas 3y ago
  I do agree with the broad premise that we have a glut of content. AI is only going to make it worse. The problem with your argument is that most people love the mostly forgettable noise and variation on the same theme. That's why there are 137 Marvel movies which were all huge hits, 42 different Star Wars productions going on right now, and Gordon Ramsey has 13 simultaneous shows. (Warning: made up numbers). Most people don't want to think when they watch movies. They don't want high concept indie flicks. That's why Netflix and Amazon are huge and Mubi and Criterion Channel aren't.
rchaud 3y ago
The streaming bait and switch is another example of Silicon Valley 'disrupting' entertainment by ignoring its history, and then throwing ads back in claiming there was no other way. The arts have only ever flourished under formal systems of patronage; the need for immediate commercial viability is what has led us to a landscape of every service offering 10 comic book/fantasy novel adaptations for every 1 original screenplay.

brianmcc 3y ago

After many years as a subscriber this really brings the value of Amazon Prime into question for me. I no longer order enough stuff from them to make it worthwhile. I do use Prime Reading but the quality is mostly poor, "landfill crime" genre. Such a compromised video service would quite likely push me out - I just won't watch ads on a service I pay for.

MagicMoonlight 3y ago

The whole point of me paying is to make it easier for me. If you’re going to fuck me over even more for paying then I’ll just go hack to pirating 4k rips of the content for free.

zeta0134 3y ago
When I was paying for Netflix, I still found it easier to download the shows I was interested in watching as this permitted me to remember my place, dodge their shitty player UI, and not deal with crappy internet problems causing the stream to change to potato quality at random moments. Most of these problems aren't a thing with physical media. Honestly I want to pay for content to support the creators, but that's what I want to pay for. I'm not paying to use your shitty player app and I'm not paying for draconian DRM that lets you take the content away from me later, or restrict the devices I can play the content on, or tell me I can't watch my movie on a flight with no wifi, etc. The payment is on my honor, because the content is frankly stupidly simple to access for absolutely free if I really want to, and that's not going to change. Data isn't going to get *harder* to copy over time. Just let me pay the artists as directly as possible, because that's where I want the money to go, to support their work. Can we make that a thing?
bombcar 3y ago
It’s not even worth pirating, the library near me is jammed full of Blu-rays and DVDs.

MAGZine 3y ago

I'm lightly amused by the choice to include the word "limited" in the headline. Sorry, "limited" ads are still ads, no matter how you try and downplay it!

soco 3y ago
For Christmas, we present you the new subscription with unlimited ads!

nine_zeros 3y ago

The entire tech industry is going through some massive enshittification. This ads nonsense is everywhere now. Why the f should anyone pay for a subscription if they are going to be shown some ads?

fooster 3y ago
People do it all the time. Cable tv.
- jackthetab 3y ago
  Old man yelling at clouds here. These same arguments were brought up with cable TV back in the day; one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told, was there wouldn't be any ads since we were paying for it. "There's nothing new under the sun"...
  - fooster 3y ago
    Yeah exactly. If I can avoid it I wont watch ads including paying more.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    > one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told Who told you that? Cable TV had ads on practically every channel for the first 30 years of its history, since it was just collecting and transmitting all the local broadcast stations. And even when cable-only stations came out, they often had ads. The second cable-only TV station, TBS, had ads from day one! HBO was an outlier because it didn't have ads. It wasn't the norm.
    - jackthetab 3y ago
      I pre-date cable TV. There was a debate amongst the adults whether the community should allow cable TV in, given the infrastructure and tax costs involved.
      - 3y ago

huhtenberg 3y ago

There's a crucial difference between what Netflix did and this. Netflix added a new lower-priced ad-supported option, leaving existing subscribers as they were. Amazon however is pushing ads onto existing subscribers and adding a new ad-free option to which one has to upgrade. This burns a lot of goodwill. It just ain't nice. I will be cancelling the subscription once this hits my country as a matter of principle.

nickcw 3y ago
...and the no-ads tier is only available in the US. Looks like I'll be cancelling prime video as no ads is really important to me.
- AnssiH 3y ago
  > ...and the no-ads tier is only available in the US. That's not what the announcement (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-update-announces-limited-ads https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-u...) says: > We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* for U.S. Prime members and will share pricing for other countries at a later date.
rerx 3y ago
While this is true, Netflix hiked prices massively over the years. Their 4K/HDR offering is 17.99 EUR per month here. Amazon Prime including Prime Video is still 8.99 EUR/month, cheaper if paid yearly, without any surcharge for 4K/HDR. So that's more than twice the price for a comparable streaming service.
- dazc 3y ago
  I cancelled Netflix and will resubscribe for a month over Christmas; they did me a favour with that one.
  - rerx 3y ago
    I just recalled that Amazon increased the price slightly last year when they launched Rings of Power. Typically I subscribe to these services for just a few months at a time, depending on what's interesting. Harder to do with accounts that are shared by a larger household, I guess.

Lev1a 3y ago

As James Stephanie Sterling likes to say: "Corporations don't want some [of your] money, they want ALL [of your] money." Also, ads are (except for very, very rare exceptions) useless wastes of time AND if I'm already paying for the service which doesn't get any better but just more "expensive" through garbage like this, the term "enshittification" most certainly does apply. Edit: Also, like Netflix, Amazon also artificially limit streaming quality to <= 720p just because I don't use Microsoft's spyware system. Fuck 'em.

handyj 3y ago

Pirate bay it is then.

LeoNatan25 3y ago

I will stick with my BitTorrent subscription. No retarded geo-restrictions, no ads for paying customers and the pricing model is a real winner.

specproc 3y ago
And their library is second to none.

PeterStuer 3y ago

Final nail in the coffin. I guess this will be the time I cancel prime.

timw4mail 3y ago

And streaming video furthers its devolution into fragmented cable tv...

daedlanth 3y ago

[dead]

causi 3y ago

The entire Prime Video thing for me has never been anything more than a parasitic money-suck for my two-day shipping.

instagib 3y ago
It used to be good old shows or movies which cable viewers used to or may still watch more of. I never watched anything on it. Terrible UI. Then, they started making more shows and movies that were good so I watched them. The pre-roll advertisements started but were skippable annoyances. Now ad supported platforms are mixed in with prime content unless you select prime only. UI is bad again. Movies/shows stop in the middle while the app is loading ads or something. The content hasn’t improved much and the “new” section is back to old shows and movies. Back to not watching again. Idk 1-2 day shipping would change for me since the distribution center is closer than the grocery store. I don’t think the three times I needed overnight shipping and two actually went through are worth the yearly charge. Two day shipping gets rescheduled often also.

jiofj 3y ago

I must be missing something because I've been seeing ads in Prime Video for quite some time.

alistairSH 3y ago
I think I depends how the show is license. Prime video (the app) has content from other sources that have ads. But shows licensed directly by Prime don’t have ads. Or something like that.

jackhack 3y ago

History repeats itself. I'm old enough to remember when "Cable TV" meant "no advertisements." And then it was just a few between programs. Then during the program, which eventually made it indistinguishable from "over the air" (antenna/aerial) broadcasting. Now Netflix, and Amazon repeat the lesson for another generation of consumer.

vel0city 3y ago
> I'm old enough to remember when "Cable TV" meant "no advertisements." You must be infinitely old then, because "Cable TV" at its inception had ads. Cable TV was originally just bundling all the local stations, and it was like that for thirty years. So the first thirty years of cable had ads. Even most of the first few cable-only TV stations had ads. The second cable-only TV station, WTBS, had ads. Nickelodeon, ESPN, CNN, USA, all had ads from their start and were some of the very first cable-only TV stations. https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/11/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-cable-television/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/11/02/the-rise-...

redhale 3y ago

Welp, it was a good run, I guess. I'd been considering dumping Prime as I've been using the other benefits less and less the past few years. This will be the final straw for me. Goodbye, worst streaming UI on the planet!

schaefer 3y ago

You know what membership hasn’t shoved ads down my throat? My library card. I value it more and more every day.

vel0city 3y ago
I get ads all the time every time I walk into the library. Curated displays showcasing whatever author or topic they're trying to push at the time. Is that not advertising? Not that I mind. I often find neat things in these displays that I might not have thought to look for otherwise. But isn't that kind of the point of ads, to get people to look for things they might not have otherwise known or considered?

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

beej71 3y ago

Another $36/year to remain ad-free...? That's more than enough to break the camel's back in my case.

sys32768 3y ago

I have found I can get fantastic deals on eBay on blu-ray and DVD titles via thrift store sellers, sometimes an entire blu-ray season for $10 shipped. I only keep Prime because of the PBS Documentaries add-on which is fantastic, and those are difficult to find anywhere else.

inversetelecine 3y ago
Indeed. Even Amazon third-party has good deals on used discs. I miss FamilyVideo who had tons of rental discs for sale for $2-$5 during sales and $5-10 normally.

mikerg87 3y ago

This is digital shrinkflation

simian1983 3y ago

So, to avoid ads, I should to spend another $2.99 a month? But also all of the writers are on strike, so I’m not gonna see any new content for at least six months? Cool cool. That makes sense.