1y ago

Consumers are paying more than ever for streaming TV each month and analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices

finance.yahoo.com Consumers are paying more than ever for streaming TV each month and analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices

Finding new subscribers in a saturated streaming video market isn't easy. And with legacy media companies desperate to recoup revenue declines in their linear TV businesses, the cost of your monthly plan is likely to keep rising.

Consumers are paying more than ever for streaming TV each month and analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices::Finding new subscribers in a saturated streaming video market isn't easy. And with legacy media companies desperate to recoup revenue declines in their linear TV businesses, the cost of your monthly plan is likely to keep rising.

News @lemmy.world

Consumers are paying more than ever for streaming TV each month and analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices

finance.yahoo.com /news/consumers-paying-more-ever-streaming-181821039.html

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90 comments

Yarr harr fiddle dee dee. Fuck Netflix, Hulu and Disney
- https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SLMJpHihykI
  
  I'll have you know I watched two fucking vrbo commercials just to watch that 240p video!
  Arrrrr
  
  https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iH3tqQY0ioI&pp=ygUQeW91IGFyZSBhIHBpcmF0ZQ%3D%3D

I am slowly cancelling services with each price increase. I uave cancelled Netflix and HBO. Will continue until morale improves.

I'm begging zoomers to learn how to torrent
- I'm kind of amazed how my Gen Z buddies are so adamantly against pirating. They think the cops will bust down their door, literally.
  
  As a gen z kiddo, like half of the software on my pc and 90% of my movies are pirated lmao.
  
  I mean i’ve met a lot of millenials like that too. I’m not exactly sure where it stems from
  
  A few of mine got cease and desist orders from their ISP, one got two… so that’s why they’re against it. Some now do VPN, some just hop streaming services. Some just stopped watching as much stuff because: life.
  
  Did you not see the PSA?

With prices going up and likely subscribers going way down the next logical move for the Streaming Companies is to start cracking down on Piracy again as they already had a go at password sharing.
Now I am not saying they will be successful in prosecuting those that are careful, just that there will be a few high profile cases against groups of people who aren't using the best hygiene when it comes to piracy. Fear is their best weapon against piracy that they actually want to deploy, just make sure you do enough research to make sure you aren't in that harvest of low hanging fruit.

No reason to stop raising prices for any business, except for the fact that demand goes down as price goes up. People will cancel or downshift to a cheaper service.
- There's a scene in Fight Club about how auto companies approach recalls, and a similar method is applied for these price hikes. The company predicts how many people will leave or change plans or whatever with their changes and they price it out so that they end up making more money.
  And for a small example let's say you have two customers paying $10/month for a service. If the price increases by $11, and one customer leaves, you are now making $21/month from the service.
  Now it's not as simple as that in the real world, but that's the general idea.
  The issue here is that even if a vocal minority leave these streaming services, or social media there's still a large amount of people putting up with their shit.
  
  And as a bonus you have less customers to provide support to!
  
  That's literally what they teach you about basic economics at school..
  The standard graph of price increasing on one side and customer demand decreasing on the other, and how companies try to find the crossover point.
  
  Sorry mate this is not some special fight club logic. It's not even really accounting or economics logic, it's just kinda common sense.
  What price should I sell my lemonade for? I'll have more customers if I sell it cheaper...
  The part which seems lost on most commenters is that these companies have huge and very sophisticated market research campaigns. They can predict with great accuracy how their demographics will respond.

I've no problem with paying for good services, but when I get a better service from a random pirate streaming site than I do from Amazon Prime, why would I continue paying for that?
I'm just sick of things either being exclusive to one service even though they're decades old, or just plain not available.
Oh, and if I'm paying, I don't want ads. Not ever.
- I’ve no problem with paying for good services
  Exactly. It used to be that netflix was all you needed to get most quality content, and it was a fair deal for customers: you pay a reasonable monthly amount, and you and your family gets convenient access to most streamable movies and TV series.
  Now that quality content is spread out and locked out over half a dozen other streaming services, and subscribing to them all is not just a hassle but also incredibly bad value compared to the original offer.
  In a healthy competitive environment, you would expect companies to counter reduced value by increasing customer value in other ways or by reducing prices, but instead we got price hikes, lots of low quality filler content, crack downs on password sharing, advertising, various unpopular UI changes and other service reductions decreasing value even further.
  To solve this, I think the content producers and streaming services should be split up, because right now they're not really competitors in a true sence but small monopolies who each clutch the keys to their own little franchises. It should be noted for example that music streaming works a lot better: there are various competitors that each hold a viable content library on their own, so you don't need more than one music streaming service. IMO that's because Spotify, Tidal, YT Music, etc. are merely distributors and not the actual producers.
  
  Yeah, the music industry finally got their shit together and made something that was more convenient than just nicking it online. Took their sweet time over it, but I think they realised that it was taking like a minute to download a whole album by that point.
  It's really the model of how to do it well. Very little in the way of exclusives locked to one particular service. Occasionally an artist kicks up a fuss over something and pulls all their stuff from one of them, but it's rare enough that I don't care.
  
  Being totally serious, you should copy and paste your comment and email it to your local US Representative.
- I have a problem paying for DRM. I want to use open source and DRM is the opposite. I like (and buy sometimes) Creative Commons music/audio-books just because it tastes better when artist isn't supporting restricting me. Cory Doctorow is a creative worker who lives and breaths anti-DRM, if you've not explored this. I recommend his old talk "The Coming War on General Computation".
- Source on better pirate streaming service?
  
  Any of these will do. Prime is not a high bar to get over. Some may work better than others, and I think it's down to where you are and time of day than anything else.
  https://fmhy.pages.dev/videopiracyguide/#multi-server
  It's not as good as downloading yourself and running Jellyfin, but it's convenient.
- Yeah some of the arr software is pretty fucking cool for being entirely free.

This is why I Plex/Jellyfin.
- Yup, came to say they should move to Plex/Jellyfish to get away from the streaming shitshow.
  
  Exactly. It's funny because if one streaming company were more like Valve, they could have all of the content on one platform like Steam has with Valve. Piracy is a convenience problem, after all, not a pricing problem, and it sure as hell isn't convenient to have to be subscribed to 5 or more different platforms just to get all the content I'd want to watch.

Weird... why is piracy growing then? Every reasonable person should pay $300 to watch the shows they want on the weekend... and then pay a couple more hundreds in the theater.
- every dollar you raise, the fewer customers you get. the point is that you should want to raise the price whenever the relative drop in customers is less than the relative increase in price to maximise profits (where marginal cost is marginal benefit :) )

Oh how I hate those graphs that could but doesn't start at zero.
- It wouldn’t make any sense in this case, their prices never started at 0.
  
  It's about perceived change.
  For me it's not the same if 1000 to 1001 shows up as a 50% hike because the diagram starts on 999, as a 1 to 2 hike which also shows up as a 50% with the diagram starting at 0.
  They both look the same, but in the first case the hike is 0,1% as in the second it's really 50%.
  So for me it's bad journalism or trying to fake things (which here isn't needed IMO).

Streaming services, digital services in general, should be made to compete on having the best platform, not on exclusive content.
It's all the same wires going to the same machines. Internationally, too. I can see maybe allowing for different pricing for countries with very different wage levels, but if it's online, it should be available everywhere.
- I'm paying for the services that produce the best content, not simply platforms that host content from others. It would be nice if they shared it to other streaming services, but then they would have little reason to create them.
- Streaming services, digital services in general, should be made to compete on having the best platform, not on exclusive content.
  The way to get that is to split them and say: a streaming provider can't be a content creator as well. That way, content creating companies would be incentivized to sell their content to every streaming provider at a price that the market will bear, and streaming providers would be incentivized to compete on providing the best experience to their users.

People in this comment section really thinking that the average person cares enough to go learn how computers really work in order to get tv for free
- You laugh, but that's exactly what happened with Napster and other file sharing software. It starts with the nerds, then someone makes a good easy piece of software for it, then everyone is downloading cars.
- I definitely care enough, but I can't figure it out to save my life. All the online communities just act like everyone's supposed to automatically already know what they're talking about.
  
  That's because it's illegal to discuss -how- to sail the seas in many jurisdictions. You either know or you don't know. The best thing to do is ask a friend IRL to help you out.
  
  If there are any questions or anything you want to know about it, I can help you. Unfortunately sailing the seas is a bit more tricky in the US, Since your isp sometimes sends you a cease and desist. Get a vpn, download qbittorrent and for the basic part, thats really it!
  
  Step 1: If you are in the USA (or other oppressive state), learn about & get a VPN.
  Step 2: Learn about either torrents (more popular) or usenet. And download a torrent client (free and perfectly legal).
  Step 3: Search around for a torrent tracker or indexer where you will search for media content.
  You can google/chatgpt these steps for further insight but it boils down to these three steps. It can get as complex or as simple as you want it to.
- That's why you gotta start a Plex share with your friend group - they get content, you get booze. Win win.
  
  Actually there are a lot of people out there building plex servers on VPS services and charging friends/family/others to access (to offset the price of storage and network charges). That's one of the reasons plex is now blocking certain VPS hosts.
- I think people forget that it happens often. Remember napster/sharebear/lime wire. People learn when motivated.
- I've tried, but I can't get qbtorrent to work correctly. It's just stalls on every download now.
  
  Maybe try downloading a slightly older version, i had the same issue with a specific update around 4.5ish and downgrading fixed it!

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- Why is piracy costing you 4$ a month.
  
  VPN?
  
  not everyone can torrent freely
  
  I'd say piracy is not even free, if done right. I mean, you may want to support JDownloader, MediaFire, Mega, your VPN, and whatnot.
  I'm not into piracy (wink), but if I did, I'd pay my monthly Plex subscription, MediaFire account, and tip JDownloader monthly for their effort.

Remind me if this is still valid a year from now
- I am actually curious. We like to laugh at the obviously anti-consumer practices these streaming services are pushing, saying they'll end up losing their customers to piracy, but the point of the article is to illustrate that just isn't happening and most people will suck it up and pay more for less. Look at how much Netflix gained by killing off password sharing.
  
  True, but the point is that at each level of abuse they impose to their customers, more and more will leave for piracy, and you don't need to go far. A jailbroken firestick with plex installed and a friend who is technically savy and has his own plex server when one can see a bunch of movies (not to mention the free ones on plex)

I already unsubscribed from prime and if Disney+ is changing to the Netflix way of "no no no you cannot share your account" than that will be gone too. I already thought about unsubscribing from Netflix as well.
But I guess me and my friends are not the norm with a plex server that gets feeded by 10 persons who like to buy blurays :D
- Be careful with who you tell about that. The recording agencies love to make examples out of file sharers...
  
  well those are all legal backup copies for private use. It's not like I'd share it with randos on the internet :D

One option that exists for the price-averse is going for the low-subscriber streaming services. This doesn't give you the popular shows everyone else is watching, but it's suitable if your goal is to just entertain yourself with something distracting for a while.
I was briefly subscribed to Shudder, a niche horror flick service that doesn't cost much and has a few decent items on there.
Crunchyroll is relatively cheap for anime, has been buying up other properties to give itself a large library. That said, there are accusations that the money doesn't ever reach the original creators. HiDive is another anime service with some weird options.
There's free services like Pluto TV, usually ad-supported (but hey, a lot of the paid options are giving ads)
Haven't read it, but there's also articles out there about other options, should people decide the major entries are too expensive, and they don't want to go for piracy. Knowing your options is always good.
- Anything good on shudder?
  
  The best thing I found was a horror thriller simply called Revenge. A woman is violated and left for dead by a three-man hunting club. Then, against all odds, she hunts them back and kills them all. Small cast but very intense and bloody.

Ohhhhhhhhhh... it's a pirates life for me. We have never subscribed to any of this shit. Savings have allowed us to eat avacado toast.

Some observers see another reason for the frequent price hikes: to push subscribers to their breaking point, and compel them to opt for a lower-priced, or even free, ad-supported plan instead.
Disney CEO Bob Iger said as much during an August earnings call: “We’re obviously trying, with our pricing strategy, to migrate more subs to the advertiser-supported tier.”
I'll cancel my account before I willingly subject myself to advertising. I'm sure I'm not the only one.
- I'm already in the process of replacing my streaming services with cheaper alternatives.
- It blows my mind that advertising could be worth more than a subscription.
  Their evaluation of advertising must be tied with brand recognition and other general brain washing tactics.
  
  I think it is possible advertising is over valued. There I've said it. I'm not alone in this: https://freakonomics.com/podcast/does-advertising-actually-work-part-2-digital-ep-441/

I'll give you a reason, pirating. Pirating with obfuscated networks (VPN, onion, etc) will never die. People just put it down because the convenience was worth the price. When it no longer is, ships will sail the seas again, and having everything already digital in these services will make it that much easier.
- torrenting over tor would be exhaustive for the onions.
  
  I2P

Raise prices. Blame "the liberal agenda". Profit.

Hulu is currently the only streaming service I still pay for, and that's mainly because TV shows are a removed to pirate (disk space and download times being the main annoyance), but it won't take more than one or two more price hikes for the balance to shift so that it's worth the effort to just go full pirate instead of forking out so much cash.
The fact that Disney just fully bought Hulu bodes very poorly too - I'll bet anything that it's going to get folded into Disney+ soon as a "pay an extra 15/month to access Hulu content, but only through your Disney+ membership sort of deal"
- Here's a tip: I went to cancel my Hulu subscription, and they offered on my way out to instead lower my price for 6 months. I decided to go with it.
  I can't guarantee the same would happen for others, but ultimately it's all gonna be a haggling situation.
  
  Its the same thing cable did.

Arrrrrr

Charge the analysts more first. I’m sure they’ll charge their tune.

Laughs in $0 a month payments for streaming services

Remember March 2012, when SOPA and PIPA were about to pass, and many websites were blacking out as a form of protest, some people were advocating for a "Black March" to have everyone boycott Big Media, pirated or not, for the entire month? Yeah sure it didn't spread like wildfire because of course, the population is already too addicted to popular culture to drop it cold-turkey, but at this rate people may be forced to give it a go by force.

Wouldn't it be great if one company would get with each of the streaming services and put them under one umbrella. They could rent you a device that is mandatory for the service. While charging you a large subscription fee. Even better yet that could lock additional content behind another paywall. Direct TV and the cable companies need to hurry before someone beats them to it.

Only reason I still have Netflix is that T-Mobile pays for it for me. I also used to have Funimation, but Crunchyroll taking over stopped adding captions to translate written text from new dubbed anime. Especially anime that uses a lot of written segues and such that is important to understanding what's going on. So I had to pirate anyway. And now so many services are removing features, especially as they merge, but still continue to raise prices. There just aren't any services worth the cost anymore and I'm not willing to pay hundreds of dollars. That's one of many reasons! why I dumped cable ages ago.

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