Live data from Hacker News

The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

pajiba.com

771–780 of 1001 posts

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#771

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cancelled because it’s not worth the time investment. Good shows are not only difficult to find, but Netflix will release a season or two and unreasonably no longer continue on, without closing out the story. They try to cater to a mass audience and use a large net, but then due to capital costs or whatever reasons, they force their customer to feel stupid for getting invested into a show in the first place. I miss…

This is underrated. I recall hearing a discussion on the extreme desire humans have to hear a story's ending, even when they aren't that interested in the story. There is simply a need to know how it ends. I've caught myself to often watching something I think is a waste of time but needing to know how it ends. This is as much of a weakness as the reciprocity rule. Netflix burned me to many times on this. It's bad ta…

"It's unforgiveable to not finish the story though."

Not to repeat myself, but we all clearly need a little perspective, because for several generations the norm has been television shows being cancelled without closure. To have an expectation that all shows, or even most shows, should have proper conclusions is completely out of line with reality.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#772
post #662

It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its succes…

Not just that but it's sad we can't even just rent the titles we used to be able to rent from videos stores. There is no much content that is just not available and I fear it never will be. If you were fortunate enough to have lived near a cinephile type rental place then you probably remember how directors often had their own sections. You could browse Kurasowa, Orson Welles, Robert Altman, Godard ... I remember loo…

I don’t think the service is doing too hot subscriber wise

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#773
post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about movies, but music streaming is awesome. I have a couple thousand CDs that are sitting in a closet somewhere. For a while I kept them as mp3s on a hardrive, copied other people's mp3s to build up my collection. But its still so limited. I love going through my favorite artists on spotify, listening to the less popular albums I never would have bought and discovering new artists.

Isn't it because it differs so much from movie streaming? On major music streaming platforms you can find most of the popular music artists. I don't have any numbers to back it, but my gut feeling tells me a-number-so-close-to-100 percent that it doesn't even matter anymore it may not be actually 100. Movies? You can't get Disney on Netflix, you can't get Apple on HBO, you can't get... you just can't. Imagine having…

[deleted]

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cancelled because it’s not worth the time investment. Good shows are not only difficult to find, but Netflix will release a season or two and unreasonably no longer continue on, without closing out the story. They try to cater to a mass audience and use a large net, but then due to capital costs or whatever reasons, they force their customer to feel stupid for getting invested into a show in the first place. I miss…

"without closing out the story" To be fair, that was the fate of almost every television show ever made. In fact, your entire first paragraph is just describing what we used to call "television".

that is why netflix was so appealing. at first

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#775
All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and lost less than 1% of their subscriber base in that environment could almost be seen as a positive.

The there is definitely a question whether, now that they have moved so solidly into content production, Netflix is actually a scalable / viable company any more. When they were just sending other people's content around and doing it much cheaper and better that was innovative and different. But content production is an expensive treadmill you can never get off and unless they find a way to innovate on that front, they are up against much more experienced and well established players with no differentiator at all.

But reading the sky falling into the current reported figures seems a little over the top.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#776
post #662

It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its succes…

What people don't realize is that part of the pricing model for various physical media is that the media wouldn't last. VHS tapes, CDs, DVDs, etc all age, get lost, break, get scratches, whatever. They're not "forever".

Now you can say "I can make a digital backup of my DVD". Depending on your jurisdiction you may have the rights to do that. But your own backup of that is unlikely to be durable.

A cloud copy of something on Google, Apple, Amazon or Netflix is essentially forever.

People don't realize what they're effectively asking for is digital rights to something in perpetuity. And you can't really price that realistically.

Streaming services actually far better match what users actually want (in general). There's no issues of storing media or keeping digital copies safe. The limited time you can view something is what makes it economical.

Remember too that most things tend to only ever be watched once. The satisfaction for collection isn't relaly about repeat viewing at for the most part.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#777

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't canceled yet but am considering it. They have a few problems for me - They don't make it easy to discover content. They still have quite a lot of good original content that isn't promoted and a slew of third party things that aren't promoted or discoverable at all unless they happen to make the trending list The majority of their original, promoted content is watered down crap designed for mass appeal. For…

The Netflix UI is so unfortunate. I KNOW they have the ability to recommend me interesting content, but instead they just peddle whatever their latest original content. Also the browsing experience is hellish. It's barely possible to even search by genre.

the worst crime, is suggesting series which I just finished watching. wtf. I know that its technically good for their bottom line if I watch same thing twice (twice the revenue for the same cost), but that ia so frustrating, when trying to find something to watch.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#778
post #775

All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…

I wonder why the market reacted so harshly though, with NFLX losing 1/3 last Wednesday ($347 to $215).

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#779
post #662

It's sad that we cannot own titles but are forced to rent them from these streaming services that can't seem to get their shit together. (Not blaming Netflix per se; this is a pox on all their houses). Used to be nice in the DVD days. I built myself a nice collection then. This was the idea behind digital rights lockers: UltraViolet, which Disney refused to participate in and which closed down in 2019, and its succes…

I still buy hard media (which makes me a Luddite apparently) because I consider it art and refuse to pay for digital media that is allegedly perpetual and then one day it goes missing because the wokes decided it should be memory holed. One of many, many examples: https://screenrant.com/its-always-sunny-blackface-episodes-m... Even things like iTunes Music Store which once claimed that all your past purchases are ava…

Almost a decent comment.

Re: The bottom is dropping out of Netflix

#780
post #775

All the handwringing over Netflix subscriber loss seems to be overlooking the fact that they raised their prices - significantly. Of course they could lose subscribers from doing that. But 200k subscribers out of 150 million? Combined with the end of the pandemic and sky high inflation meaning many people have less opportunity to watch and less money to spend. The fact they raised their prices something like 20% and…

I completely agree. I was only lightly using Netflix so when they last raised prices it was the push I needed to actually cancel. The recent content they've rolled out doesn't justify the heftier price tag compared to competitors. I love the UX of Netflix, but content rules and they're losing that battle. I don't even want to try new shows because of their reputation for cancelling things unceremoniously.
Post reply on HN