One thing that bothers me personally is that nowadays everything is a membership, but what bothers me most about the subscription model is the fact that the price goes up and up indefinitely and many people really don’t mind paying $2 or more a month.
I mean, let’s take for example the case of Netflix (I know the image is old, but I couldn’t find anything better), where it went from costing $7.99 in 2014 a month to $15.99 in 2019, literally double, and it will surely keep going up and up, if this trend continues and it surely will soon people will be paying $30 a month without any problem.
I understand that a market like Netflix (to follow the initial example) is an expensive market to maintain, both for equipment, staff and licenses and it is obvious that the economy is not the same in 2014 as it was in 2019, but how are people ok knowing that the price doubled in 5 years? If that continues in 2024 the price would be $30, and if it was people would still be fine paying it.
I don’t use Netflix but I understand why people use it, both because of the recommendation algorithm and the simplicity, but damn, if in a year they say they are going to raise the price $5 a month people would be happy to pay it and I don’t understand it, much less those who pay several memberships of the same type (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, etc).
You’ll understand it when you realise that capitalism doesn’t just encourage pursuing profit, it encourages pursuing growth.
The “profit” being pursued under capitalism is not the profit of the company itself but instead the profit of the capital-owners with a stake in the company. These people make their profit not from the company being in the black but by the company GROWING. Thus meaning it increases its overall value on the capital markets.
Companies eventually reach a saturation point at which their growth in terms of customers hits a peak, they have acquired all of the customers and aren’t likely to acquire more. When this growth avenue closes they must turn to others to continue “growing” the value of the business for the investor class. This is achieved through measures like cost cutting, reducing staff, and installing incredibly bullshit monetisation schemes that either succeed or kill entire businesses in their attempt to continue their growth.
It has nothing to do with “expensive market to maintain”. They aren’t doing it because they need more money. They do it because they need more growth.
This is also the reason every game you play and liked once upon a time is progressively going more and more to shit.
This is also the reason every game you play and liked once upon a time is progressively going more and more to shit.
This is the worst part for me personally. All of my favorite game franchises have been destroyed, and only indie devs will ever make anything similar again.
Enshittification takes over everything after reaching a certain audience size.
Either a product is intended to appeal fantastically to a niche audience, catering specifically to being the very best thing in that niche to a near art-level of mastery, or a product is consistently watered down to reach the largest audience possible, and at the point it reaches the peak of that audience it must then be cannabilised into pieces for maximum profit.
the price increases and crackdown on sharing got me back into piracy.
and it’s fan-tastic.
I used to pay for 4 services. now I’m down to 2. the less convenient and cheap they make it, the more I cut.
eventually I’ll probably get rid of everything and get one of the cheapo bundles, like PBS Masterpiece Theater, and be a high culture benefactor who pirates all slop.
It’s capitalist rent-seeking as usual. Fiduciary responsibility to keep the stock price high requires growth in revenue. For these subscriptions services, that comes in the form of increasing the number of subscribers. In the business press, subscriber numbers are reported above all. When that growth begins to fail due to market saturation and increased competition, the only thing left is to increase prices.
I just leave the first time I hear about a price jack-up, frankly, and go right back to sailing the seas whatever I was looking for before that streaming service approached a price point I was willing to pay. These ratfuckers don’t get to pull with a parabola ploy; if they got their price point to a place where I’d buy in only to hook me and draw the price up for no good increase in quality of content, I’m ghost.
Barbados and Nassau are real nice this time of year; and I def don’t have an issue with buying up more SSDs to store that hypothetical plunder now that storage space per dollar’s on the rise.
People consume slop and become too lazy to explore alternatives. The only subscription I have is to a gym and some orgs as monthly donations. I cannot imagine being the rube who’s paying $50 a month for 6 different streaming services.
amazon prime has gotten 75% more expensive since I first paid for it as a teenager
You being a teenager when Amazon existed is an infinitely bigger
moment for mePrime has been around since 2005. They could be 37.
Remembering how gilded age monopolies had their prices absurdly low to corner the market only to jack them up as much as possible once they had no competition afterwards
Anyway I just hope that cable plans don’t get completely phased out anytime soon
I canceled Netflix when their model shifted to “focus on original tv shows that we cancel after two seasons. I canceled HBO when they became Max. I guess I get Apple TV for free but I hate their programming so idk. Right now I get Disney and Hulu through my phone plan and pay for a Prime membership because Amazon and COVID basically killed B&M shopping where I live.
I only see my subscriptions decreasing in the future and I plan to focus more on reading and physical media.
There was an interesting development on this front with Disney, who’s also jacking up prices. They had a package dispute with Spectrum, one of the largest cable providers in America. Basically, Disney wants to protect their walled garden of Disney+ so they were asking a ridiculous cut from Spectrum, who didn’t want to pay up that match.
The compromise they came to was that Spectrum customers would only get the basic Holy Rodent Empire channels (Disney Channel, ESPN, maybe a couple others), but Spectrum customers then get access to a discounted rate on a Disney+ subscription. The specifics aren’t out yet, but it looks like it will apply to the ad tier of Disney+.
Which says to me, the trajectory is for these services to become a sort of adjunct to cable, a replacement for on demand. Wouldn’t surprise me if the log-ins and interfaces start getting bundled into the cable boxes or router/modem boxes. Of course, it also wouldn’t surprise me if the net cost ends up being greater for consumers.
Holy Rodent Empire
Cannot imagine using TV subscriptions in 2023. It’s the easiest thing in the world to pirate and none of what you would be paying is actually going to the people who made it
I’m so goddamn sick of everything in this world being a fucking subscription. I want to buy software once and be done with it. Anything these neolib sickos can apply a monthly fee to, they will.
I’ve started building a 100+Tb media server project and been pirating things in 4k. Also, just discovered repack games. Haven’t been enjoying starfield tbh, so I’m pretty happy I didn’t buy it.
Yeah same, the pendulum is really swinging back right now… youtube got so goddamned annoying about adverts (boiled the frog too fast trying to push the ridiculously priced subscription) that I just stopped watching for like two months, then finally set up OSMC/Kodi on a raspberry pi and followed a guide to make an API key to watch completely ad-free. I finally started paying for a VPN after avoiding it for a decade because it feels like it is time to spool up the ol torrent program for the forseeable future
Def. I haven’t seen YouTube ads in years tho. uBlock Origin extension has never failed me. Cleantube on my phone, simple as.
I haven’t seen YouTube ads in years tho. uBlock Origin extension has never failed me.
They just found a way around uBlock Origin in the past couple weeks or so. They finally got me with their bullshit today.
I had two days where an ad tried to play, but it was audio only. Not a thing now.
How to get content without breaking the bank and without needing to become more tech literate:
- Open your relationship or otherwise change to ethical non-monogamy
- Collect dates/partners
- Keep going until one or more of them knows how to acquire content and share it with you for free
Joking because it takes a lot of work/learning/research to do the ethical part of ethical non-monogamy. Learning to sail the seas would be easier.
There’s better parts of ENM than having more streaming services.
Very true.
I don’t think people feel good about it. It does seem like people put up with it, though, which is pretty confusing.
I’m honestly surprised with people paying the extra fee for sharing a Netflix account more than anything.
What alternative exists for people who aren’t tech literate enough to torrent their entertainment?
A proletarian revolution, I suppose.
Community jellyfin servers as far as the eye can see.
I felt the same way before I got into torrenting, but upon taking the time to sit down and actually read a tutorial, I found it was all much easier than I initially thought. All I had to do was install qBittorrent, go to the piratebay website (or RARBG, rest in peace), and click the link to the torrent. qBittorrent will then do the rest for you.
I don’t know how much effort you’ve given to figuring this out already, but if it isn’t much I’d give it another try if I were you. If you get stuck somewhere just make a post about it here. I’m sure there are many comrades who would gladly walk you through it.
Oh don’t worry lol I’m a pirate. Haven’t torrented stuff in a while because I literally have not had the time to watch anything. I was asking the question mostly because I think like 95% of the general population would blow up their computers with viruses if they tried to torrent everything.
Computer viruses aren’t that big anymore. The bigger things are ransomware and data breaches, but those tend to be targeted at corporations more than people. Not saying computer viruses don’t exist, but they’re not a big thing as they were 20 years ago.
Wtahcing 10 minute chunks of pixelated messes of incomplete shows on Dailymotion.
My fundamental problem with Netflix isn’t that it’s $20/mo for streaming TV/movies. Its that Netflix has gone from the single bulk distributor of streaming content to one of at least half a dozen “good(ish)” services that also all want to charge $20/mo. When they had the full Disney/Marvel list plus a bunch of self-published anime plus indie dramas plus a huge back catalog, I was fine with it. But now I’m just going to pirate, because over half of what I use Netflix for is gone.
What’s really got me in a lather is streaming sports, which has functionally become all subscription services that are even more expensive than Netflix. Fuck you, YouTube. I’m not paying $60/mo for sports. It’s practically cheaper to get tickets to the actual games.
And with sports, at least, its much harder to find live streams that aren’t scams or walls of ads or abysmally low grade streams. That’s the one thing I can’t pirate, so I’ve fallen off watching entirely.
Which really sucks, when your team is in the playoffs.
Edit: Seriously, fuck this shit.
If you’re looking for nfl specifically, nfl+ premium isn’t too bad. Local, primetime, playoffs and redzone for $15/month. Sunday ticket is a price gouge, but not really any other way to legally watch your team if you live out of market and they aren’t on primetime
I only ever watch things on live.hexbear.net, lovingly referred to as hextube.
What is this? Please eli5
It is a chat room where people can queue and watch videos together. We watch pirated movies every weekend, the announcements are in /c/movies
Cool! Imma join y’all sooner or later.
