4 ms·

Content costs money to produce. The artists and staff who worked on the content want to be paid fairly. It's great that consumers want cheap stuff, but we can

by arnon 3y ago

Content costs money to produce. The artists and staff who worked on the content want to be paid fairly. It's great that consumers want cheap stuff, but we can't have it both ways. If we go down this route, either the content will be crap (and AI-generated), or people won't be paid fairly.

davidmurdoch 3y ago
Did we not have it both ways for a while?
eatbitseveryday 3y ago
> companies in the streaming space have turned toward nickel-and-diming users at an alarming rate in order to deliver Wall Street its sweet quarterly returns (at any cost). From the article
hamhock666 3y ago
Or the mass market consumer media crap will be replaced by artists creating for the hell of creating (probably not streamed on one of these services).
throwaway43605 3y ago
[flagged]
hedora 3y ago
Post-merger, hbo/paramount/etc fired a ton of talent and cut billions from their annual production budget. Then, they deleted a bunch of first-party content to get a dubious tax deduction. Finally, they doubled prices.
sickofparadox 3y ago
Or maybe just less stuff will be made! Do we really need (or want) ANOTHER re-interpretation of Robin hood or whatever made for modern times? How many Breaking Bad seasons could you make if Disney killed off two Marvel movies a year? One would hope that if the market for content production shrank, the quality of the content would go up. (maybe thats a misguided hope but still)
wand3r 3y ago
I think because there is an overlap between tech and streamers, and also because tech employees are well paid, this philosophy comes up a lot. However, these companies are scum and of course low level employees aren't accruing any of the benefits you mention. These companies are cutting production, cutting quality and raising prices. They would ideally insert adds AND get paid. Also, as I commented in another thread content has grown linearly but it has been fragmented across at least 4 core services while prices double. Thus the real price to an honest consumer is 8x. Sorry but as long as pirating is a better experience than paying this will happen. Demand for TV is extemely elastic and we are outside the bell's curve where demand plummets...
codeslave13 3y ago
Ill happily pay if i dont have to have 5 different subscriptions to see what i want. Its a distribution problem. I refuse to do do all that so guess what….
radiojosh 3y ago
OR...now hear me out...the prices could be reasonable and a bunch of greedy executive middle-men who exploit the artists and other workers could take a smaller cut.
lawlessone 3y ago
>The artists and staff who worked on the content want to be paid fairly. Last i checked many of them in US are on strike because they're not being paid fairly and it has nothing to do with piracy. They aren't having their pay doubled by this. Some executives are getting a bonus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_... One of their main issues was residuals from streaming.
iAMkenough 3y ago
That's not the fault of consumers. That's the fault of greedy overpaid executives. Executives deserve to have pay slashed and massive executive position layoffs before consumers, artists, or production staff feel any inconvenience. That will never happen, so it's on us consumers to overpay to keep artists fed.
- aloe_falsa 3y ago
  The Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had a $40M salary in 2022, which is definitely too much money. However, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the company's $31 billion revenue. So I'm pretty sure the streaming services are charging whatever they can get away with, aka the market equilibrium price, regardless of their executives' salaries.
  - iAMkenough 3y ago
    CEO pay is just a small part of the picture indeed. How much cash have execs wasted on pet projects like Netflix Games? As a customer, I might be okay with paying more if there was a transparent effort to cut expenses and a renewed focus on their core business.

by arnon 3y ago

davidmurdoch 3y ago

Did we not have it both ways for a while?

eatbitseveryday 3y ago

> companies in the streaming space have turned toward nickel-and-diming users at an alarming rate in order to deliver Wall Street its sweet quarterly returns (at any cost). From the article

hamhock666 3y ago

Or the mass market consumer media crap will be replaced by artists creating for the hell of creating (probably not streamed on one of these services).

throwaway43605 3y ago

[flagged]

hedora 3y ago

Post-merger, hbo/paramount/etc fired a ton of talent and cut billions from their annual production budget. Then, they deleted a bunch of first-party content to get a dubious tax deduction. Finally, they doubled prices.

sickofparadox 3y ago

Or maybe just less stuff will be made! Do we really need (or want) ANOTHER re-interpretation of Robin hood or whatever made for modern times? How many Breaking Bad seasons could you make if Disney killed off two Marvel movies a year? One would hope that if the market for content production shrank, the quality of the content would go up. (maybe thats a misguided hope but still)

wand3r 3y ago

I think because there is an overlap between tech and streamers, and also because tech employees are well paid, this philosophy comes up a lot. However, these companies are scum and of course low level employees aren't accruing any of the benefits you mention. These companies are cutting production, cutting quality and raising prices. They would ideally insert adds AND get paid. Also, as I commented in another thread content has grown linearly but it has been fragmented across at least 4 core services while prices double. Thus the real price to an honest consumer is 8x. Sorry but as long as pirating is a better experience than paying this will happen. Demand for TV is extemely elastic and we are outside the bell's curve where demand plummets...

codeslave13 3y ago

Ill happily pay if i dont have to have 5 different subscriptions to see what i want. Its a distribution problem. I refuse to do do all that so guess what….

radiojosh 3y ago

OR...now hear me out...the prices could be reasonable and a bunch of greedy executive middle-men who exploit the artists and other workers could take a smaller cut.

lawlessone 3y ago

>The artists and staff who worked on the content want to be paid fairly. Last i checked many of them in US are on strike because they're not being paid fairly and it has nothing to do with piracy. They aren't having their pay doubled by this. Some executives are getting a bonus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Writers_Guild_of_America_... One of their main issues was residuals from streaming.

iAMkenough 3y ago

That's not the fault of consumers. That's the fault of greedy overpaid executives. Executives deserve to have pay slashed and massive executive position layoffs before consumers, artists, or production staff feel any inconvenience. That will never happen, so it's on us consumers to overpay to keep artists fed.

aloe_falsa 3y ago
The Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos had a $40M salary in 2022, which is definitely too much money. However, it's a drop in the bucket compared to the company's $31 billion revenue. So I'm pretty sure the streaming services are charging whatever they can get away with, aka the market equilibrium price, regardless of their executives' salaries.
- iAMkenough 3y ago
  CEO pay is just a small part of the picture indeed. How much cash have execs wasted on pet projects like Netflix Games? As a customer, I might be okay with paying more if there was a transparent effort to cut expenses and a renewed focus on their core business.