I can’t stand all the freevee crap they have been forcing down our throats too. They pack a record amount of commercials into those movies and it’s all clunky when you pause and go back, or need to fast forward or rewind. Just wish there was better ways to get rid of the freevee crap, but if 2.99 gets rid of those ads too, I might be inclined to upgrade. I know it wil just be the stuff that has no ads now tho.
We came of age in streaming at a time when Netflix was a de facto monopoly and, importantly, monopsony. Its monopoly/psony was based on a technical moat: streaming was very challenging to pull off, and only Netflix had the technical talent necessary to make it happen.
Whether through the goodness of the hearts of those in charge or through fear of regulation, Netflix didn't do much to extract monopoly rents. But monopsony is generally treated much more lightly by regulators than monopoly, and Netflix extracted monopsony rents on those who made movies -- if they wanted to get money after theatrical distribution, they had to make a deal with Netflix, the end. Netflix extracted a monopsony rent and distributed it partly to themselves and partly to the end users.
Then the technical moat eroded as it became technically easier and easier to build the infrastructure necessary to stream movies. Movie makers (studios etc) were eager to end their dealings with a monopsonist, and they all jumped head-first into the bandwagon of making their own streaming service (Disney+, Paramount+, HBOMax being the Warner Brothers streaming service, etc.). They also saw that Netflix had a great business and wanted in on that money.
But the Netflix business was built on the monopoly/psony. The monopsony surplus being driven to consumers meant that prices were low for consumers and they stayed subscribed to Netflix, delivering Netflix an enormous audience. Post-technical moat, the audience fragmented, and it turns out that there are in fact fixed costs (mostly tax liabilities related to writing off the costs of making a movie) associated with maintaining a big library. Without the big audience and the monopsony surplus, the economics of streaming haven't actually been attractive at all, so now the streaming providers are all aggressively increasing prices/including ads to jack up the revenue stream.
Obviously, the end of free capital/rise of interest rates was also a factor in all this, but I think the monopsony story is the big one.