this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

They'd absolutely 100% be losing money with a $2 ad free tier. Ads make significantly more than that per user per month. Same with your """solution""" for higher res video. Bandwidth is goddamn expensive.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, but they'd get a large number of users to subscribe.

And then maybe they wouldn't complain when they raised the price to $3. And a few months later maybe $3.50. Then $5.

A few years ago, people wouldn't have paid over $15 for a standard Netflix tier without 4K. But the way to boil a frog is to make them nice and comfy in lukewarm water, then keep increasing the temperature slowly... So even if they lose money, maybe a low price for the ad-free YouTube could make sense, from a business perspective.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every time Netflix rises prices it makes it to the news (let alone all the drama on twitter/reddit/etc), I don't know what frog boiling you're talking about.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Yet they keep posting more and more profits. Subscriber count has only increased despite the content being lower quality and prices being higher. The fact that we don't like them increasing the prices doesn't mean it isn't working for them.

I'm not arguing it will work forever, but for now, it's been a viable strategy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Plus, no way would it ever stay at that price. Nothing ever does. The only service I pay for now is spotting, and that's just to have ad-free music on my half-hour drive to work.