PrinceWith999Enemies @ PrinceWith999Enemies @lemmy.world

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2

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606

Joined

2 yr. ago

I don’t think micropayments have entirely worked yet. There’s still intellectual resistance to paying for an article that you expect to be free, and I don’t know if you could change that by making them available for $.05. It hasn’t been normalized yet.

I also have not yet caught up on 80% of the shows I was enjoying last year, including multiple Treks, shows where people cook stuff or make clothes, or stupid sitcoms that I got eight episodes in before being distracted by jingling keys. Don’t even get me started on my Steam library - I bought a Deck just to try to work through my backlog of more unplayed than played games.

I liked it when Netflix had movies I wanted to watch and shows I had missed. I watched Lost, Heroes (S1), B5, and Battlestar for the first time on the service. There was a service, and it had a lot of content. Then the studios, which had ignored streaming, saw there was a market and jumped in while raising prices or withdrawing licensing.

People went to Netflix from Pirate Bay because, as Steve Jobs pointed out when he got music studios to remove DRM, people will pay for it if it’s easy and reliable. It has ceased being easy and reliable because of fragmentation and predatory pricing.

I hope Netflix’s strategy dies and they have to think of something better. I hope the same for twitter and reddit. But other than the occasional glance in the rear view mirror for an opportune “I told you so,” I really am not planning on paying attention beyond logging off.

I mean, *maybe. *

First, they’re not seeing the effects of their policy yet. Its too soon after launch. I know I haven’t received a notification yet, and if they lock it down, netflix is getting cut. I might rotate them in and out, but like in the case of twitter and reddit, I will walk away. There’s more content out there than anyone can watch in several lifetimes already. If I resubscribe one month per year to catch up on the baking show, so be it.

Second, they’re doing the typical thing where they’re quoting a KPI without context. Once things have settled down (which, again, they haven’t yet) we can see whether their month over month and year over year subscriber count, hours watched, and revenue has increased over what it would have been otherwise. That’s a key part. If, six months from now, they’re showing sustained and above average growth in major markets, then they did make the right call (for them - I’d still be out as a customer). If not, then whoever came up with this scheme should be questioning their decision-making.

In science, cherry picking measurements to support your narrative is called p-hacking. It’s frowned upon. In business ot can get you promoted, unless you happen to work with someone who knows that trick and who is willing to out you doing it.

Profitability is a funny thing, especially with internet services and such. Some companies launch and raise money hand over fist without even having a revenue plan in place - I had a family member who proudly boasted about how he was going to short google at their ipo because they were obviously going to crash hard and were all hype. Other companies have a model for revenue but choose to concentrate on growth instead. Amazon skirted profitability for years as it sank its money into infrastructure and kept its prices low.

Companies can have staggering valuations because of the prospect of growth, and profits (depending on where they are coming from and what you’re doing with them) may not contribute to that perception because that’s money nominally not going into headcount, r&d, etc. This is especially true of streaming services that are rising on the backs of other profit centers, such as Disney. Hollywood accounting is an entirely separate beast anyway.

Ultimately, the importance of profitability is decided by the stakeholders - the large investors, board, and c-suite. If people are happy with the growth model and performance, they’re not going to care as much about the balance sheet. Stock prices stay up. If money starts to get tight, stock prices will fall and the company will go into cost cutting.

All of which is to say that if Netflix starts to lose customers, it should probably get pinched. They’re going after new markets and developing new IP, but the space has become really crowded over the last several years. They’re not going full Musk, but they are making decisions that will affect growth and retention in a per-customer revenue grab. To me, that means they’re having accounting issues and they’re hoping their continuing IP investments and international growth (where they might still be losing money) will be paid for by the customers they do manage to hold onto.

As a customer who subscribes to at least ten streaming services, I’m probably going to just start rotating monthly. That will save money, give me enough time (and focus) to catch up on the series I actually want to finish, and at least theoretically let me show a reaction to the price hikes.

“You know, it makes me take a step back from even wanting to date — to be perfectly honest, it makes me not even want to go there because of the off chance that something could happen … It’s made relationships end very quickly … If I were to get pregnant, it would be fatal to the embryo and me. It’s just made it so that I tend to pull back a little bit more and not have that connection with other people. ” — Margaret

For them, that’s not a bug. It’s about control, full stop.

That belongs in a museum!

I’m glad I ran across this post. I just signed up and was wondering why I was seeing 2y old posts close to the top of my feed. I figured it might be because there’s just zero traffic, so I’m relieved.

It did improve when I switched my client from All to Local.

I don’t remember the details but I remember the story arc. It didn’t turn out well for them.