Obviously having one monopoly streaming service would be bad, but in the meantime having more of them is also not great for consumers since they each charge a flat fee so you have to pay more to see shows from different studios. The ideal would be something more akin to music streaming where you can more or less pick a provider these days, but video streaming doesn't seem to be moving there in any hurry.
I think like all media consolidation this will send a lot of people back to the seven seas..
Netflix is the Walmart of entertainment at this point. Yeah you can find basically anything there- and VERY occasionally, you'll find something damn good- but you're wading through a sea of mediocre shit to do so.
And like, personally I unsubbed forever ago because I'm not interested in subsidizing all the garbage to get the occasional Frankenstein. Meanwhile I've maintained an HBO subscription for that entire time.
Obviously I am but one data point here and I know my opinion is in the minority, but yeah. I don't pay attention much to Netflix.
They all had their chance. They blew it.
HBO was never what you thought it was, and HBO Max definitely wasn't.
In the medium term you'll get a D+/Hulu-esque split with maybe a discounted bundle of Netflix and HBO Max together - the evidence is pretty strong that bundles reduce churn.
If they ever do go to one library, it'll be because Netflix feel they are able to push prices to the same level as both services combined.
But they have the data and I don't. I assume there's enough stickiness and inertia that most people are not canceling and restarting services all the time. I know I don't. I just decide I don't care enough about most content (and don't really watch much video or binge watch anyway).
They're probably making more with users saying "I'll subscribe now but cancel when I'm done watching this show" then don't bother cancelling.
Annual plans are a big factor in the stickiness of Amazon's efforts. Especially with Amazon's dark patterns around trying to make people forget they pay it (and making it hard to cancel).
It is curious there aren't more explorations in increasing stickiness. Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
This is so silly. It's like saying "Sweet manufacturers all had the chance to sell the same sweets, and they blew it. So I just nick most sweets." Just say "I don't like paying for things and can get away with this, and my ethics only work in public or when I'm forced to obey them." And then we're done.
Apple is less pronounced but I'm very much in the Apple ecosystem so TV+ isn't really a big adder.
>Though admittedly cable's biggest trick (long term contracts) is maybe thankfully out of reach for most of the streamers.
Yeah. You make too much of an on/off ramp for just a streaming service and that's a hard pass for me.
The stickiness is probably just that. Even as they raise prices, it's still less than we're paying for pretty much anything else. Gas, electricity, food, housing. Cut Netlix and well great, I just reduced my monthly spend from $5000 to $4980. Really making a dent there. I can retire comfortably now. It's almost as patronizing as the old avocado toast thing. Avocado toast might be overpriced and nowhere near worth it, but it isn't the reason anyone is broke.
But, yes, if you're either poor or optimizing points on an airline or whatever is sort of a hobby, then sure. But otherwise, it's just not very interesting to many of us and involves mental overhead we can just live without.
Not only this, but there's also Stranger Things, which imho had too many long breaks between seasons. Black Mirror was another one that was really popular. Squid Game as well.
Narcos is another and one of my personal favorite shows of all time, really captures a lot of details that I had no idea about as known by the DEA agents who went after some of the biggest drug lords of our time.
They also fund and produce some of the best high quality documentary series.
https://screenrant.com/marvel-netflix-tv-show-cancellations-...
Netflix is a different creature because of streaming and time shifting.
They don't care about people watching a pilot episode or people binge watching last 3 seasons when a show takes off.
The quality metric therefore is all over the place, it is a mildly moderated popularity contest.
If people watch "Love is Blind", you'll get more of those.
On the other hand, this means they can take a slightly bigger risk than a TV network with ADs, because you're likely to switch to a different Netflix show that you like and continue to pay for it, than switch to a different channel which pays a different TV network.
As long as something sticks the revenue numbers stay, the ROI can be shaky.
Black Mirror Bandersnatch for example was impossible to do on TV, but Netflix could do it.
Also if GoT was Netflix, they'd have cancelled it on Season 6 & we'd be lamenting the loss of what wonders it'd have gotten to by Season 9.
Are you really making that argument in 2025? You must be very young.
Bittorrent didn’t become popular because no one wanted to pay for things. In fact people stopped when Netflix was good. I stopped, all my friends stopped. It was no longer a mainstream thing. We even put up with a few price hikes. Then 1 service became whatever and people started torrenting and streaming sites started popping up.
Everyone was willing to pay for convenience. No ones wants to pay even more for in convenience.
You’ll note music piracy is not really a thing anymore. Thanks Spotify.
There's plenty of valid arguments against piracy, but equating it to zero-sum material theft is not one of the strong ones.
Here is a list of hundreds and hundreds of HBOs work over the past several decades. How many do you even recognize the name of? 20%?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HBO_original_programmi...
It's an item available for purchase at a price. If you take it without paying that price then the seller is out money they would otherwise have received. If everyone pirated Netflix's output then they would have to shut down, just the same as a grocery store would if everyone stole their produce. The only reason that doesn't happen is because piracy is a minority activity.
However, not everyone who pirates something was ever going to buy it in the first place. A huge portion of the world lives in sufficiently deep poverty that the option was either: have the thing for free or not have it at all. These folks don't represent lost sales.
Luckily though, "price" is not the same thing as "cost". If they watch for free, it doesn't cost us anything.
Just out of curiosity, how certain are you that "piracy is a minority activity"?
Bootleg DVDs, pirated files were common place. I could literally go out whenever and spend change on a VCD. Or a friend would have a copy of whatever movie on their HD. I’d go to anime screenings where people would bring their RAID arrays full of fan subbed anime. Music was pirated all over the place. Digital players just made music piracy more common. Everyone used BitTorrent. Everyone. People got sued. ISPs used to send out letters saying “we think you’re torrenting. Please stop or we’ll cancel your service”.
You know what didn’t happen? The entertainment industry didn’t collapse. You know why? Because none of these people were never going to spend money on entertainment. You know what I did if I couldn’t afford to see a movie or get a new CD in college? Something else.
When Netflix started streaming, they fixed all this. We all stopped BitTorrenting because Netflix was easier. They know how to fix it and they fixed it for a while. Sell us convenience. But I’m not paying and managing 5 subscriptions.