this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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Consumers are paying more than ever for streaming TV each month and analysts say there’s no reason for the companies to stop raising prices::Finding new subscribers in a saturated streaming video market isn't easy. And with legacy media companies desperate to recoup revenue declines in their linear TV businesses, the cost of your monthly plan is likely to keep rising.

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[–] [email protected] 159 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yarrrr, we be seein' about that...

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Yeah I don’t have the budget to subscribe to multiple streaming services, let alone cable or even one service. Thank god there’s not a lot I’d want to watch…even if sailing high seas.

[–] [email protected] 124 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (62 children)

Streaming:

-Charges you unreasonable amount of money

-If you cancel the subscription, you lose it all

-If they change the terms, you may lose access to some of the things in your library

Torrent:

-Costs a grand total of 0$

-Allows you to retain content for eternity

-Requires a 5 second effort to enter the name of a show/film in Sonarr/Radarr

The choice is clear.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

plus, you fight corporate greed.

Theft removes the original, priacy makes a copy.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 1 year ago (3 children)

No reason to stop raising prices for any business, except for the fact that demand goes down as price goes up. People will cancel or downshift to a cheaper service.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There's a scene in Fight Club about how auto companies approach recalls, and a similar method is applied for these price hikes. The company predicts how many people will leave or change plans or whatever with their changes and they price it out so that they end up making more money.

And for a small example let's say you have two customers paying $10/month for a service. If the price increases by $11, and one customer leaves, you are now making $21/month from the service.

Now it's not as simple as that in the real world, but that's the general idea.

The issue here is that even if a vocal minority leave these streaming services, or social media there's still a large amount of people putting up with their shit.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

And as a bonus you have less customers to provide support to!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

That's literally what they teach you about basic economics at school..

The standard graph of price increasing on one side and customer demand decreasing on the other, and how companies try to find the crossover point.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

downshift to a cheaper service.

Yarr matey

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

People will cancel or downshift to a cheaper service.

Streaming platforms make more money from you if you use the cheaper ad-supported plans. The price hikes are to get you off the ad-free plans.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/netflix-disney-now-pushing-subscribers-to-ad-tiers-1235572459/

[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Yarr harr fiddle dee dee. Fuck Netflix, Hulu and Disney

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 1 year ago (10 children)

I'm begging zoomers to learn how to torrent

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I'm kind of amazed how my Gen Z buddies are so adamantly against pirating. They think the cops will bust down their door, literally.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

As a gen z kiddo, like half of the software on my pc and 90% of my movies are pirated lmao.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I mean i’ve met a lot of millenials like that too. I’m not exactly sure where it stems from

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Why is piracy costing you 4$ a month.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I do pay a little for Usenet and my NZB indexer, about $115 per year all said and done. And I pay for hardware and electricity, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 1 year ago

I am slowly cancelling services with each price increase. I uave cancelled Netflix and HBO. Will continue until morale improves.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago

With prices going up and likely subscribers going way down the next logical move for the Streaming Companies is to start cracking down on Piracy again as they already had a go at password sharing.

Now I am not saying they will be successful in prosecuting those that are careful, just that there will be a few high profile cases against groups of people who aren't using the best hygiene when it comes to piracy. Fear is their best weapon against piracy that they actually want to deploy, just make sure you do enough research to make sure you aren't in that harvest of low hanging fruit.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Really? No reason to stop raising prices? My Jolly Roger got something to say about that.

Piracy has never been easier or safer or faster than it is now, and these platforms think driving people away with overpriced subscriptions for shitty content is beneficial for them?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Piracy isn’t easier than not bothering to cancel your subscription for most people. I’m sure they’ll lose some people, and especially the demographic here, but I don’t know about the average person.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Weird... why is piracy growing then? Every reasonable person should pay $300 to watch the shows they want on the weekend... and then pay a couple more hundreds in the theater.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I've no problem with paying for good services, but when I get a better service from a random pirate streaming site than I do from Amazon Prime, why would I continue paying for that?

I'm just sick of things either being exclusive to one service even though they're decades old, or just plain not available.

Oh, and if I'm paying, I don't want ads. Not ever.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I’ve no problem with paying for good services

Exactly. It used to be that netflix was all you needed to get most quality content, and it was a fair deal for customers: you pay a reasonable monthly amount, and you and your family gets convenient access to most streamable movies and TV series.

Now that quality content is spread out and locked out over half a dozen other streaming services, and subscribing to them all is not just a hassle but also incredibly bad value compared to the original offer.

In a healthy competitive environment, you would expect companies to counter reduced value by increasing customer value in other ways or by reducing prices, but instead we got price hikes, lots of low quality filler content, crack downs on password sharing, advertising, various unpopular UI changes and other service reductions decreasing value even further.

To solve this, I think the content producers and streaming services should be split up, because right now they're not really competitors in a true sence but small monopolies who each clutch the keys to their own little franchises. It should be noted for example that music streaming works a lot better: there are various competitors that each hold a viable content library on their own, so you don't need more than one music streaming service. IMO that's because Spotify, Tidal, YT Music, etc. are merely distributors and not the actual producers.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This is why I Plex/Jellyfin.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

Now chart hours of content against cost across the market, and watch it go vertical. Bonus for weighting by critical rating.

Piracy is the only reasonable choice.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Thanks for the reminder to cancel Disney+ and HBO Max - I almost forgot! ;)

Still have Peacock, because that's comped through my mobile provider.

My wife does Amazon Prime, Netflix, and Hulu. I had Prime but realized I only ever used it for free shipping, which I can get anyway by bundling my orders and setting ship dates.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh how I hate those graphs that could but doesn't start at zero.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It wouldn’t make any sense in this case, their prices never started at 0.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Don't forget sharing is caring. 😉

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Streaming services, digital services in general, should be made to compete on having the best platform, not on exclusive content.

It's all the same wires going to the same machines. Internationally, too. I can see maybe allowing for different pricing for countries with very different wage levels, but if it's online, it should be available everywhere.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Remind me if this is still valid a year from now

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (15 children)

People in this comment section really thinking that the average person cares enough to go learn how computers really work in order to get tv for free

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

You laugh, but that's exactly what happened with Napster and other file sharing software. It starts with the nerds, then someone makes a good easy piece of software for it, then everyone is downloading cars.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I already unsubscribed from prime and if Disney+ is changing to the Netflix way of "no no no you cannot share your account" than that will be gone too. I already thought about unsubscribing from Netflix as well.
But I guess me and my friends are not the norm with a plex server that gets feeded by ~10 persons who like to buy blurays :D

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

One option that exists for the price-averse is going for the low-subscriber streaming services. This doesn't give you the popular shows everyone else is watching, but it's suitable if your goal is to just entertain yourself with something distracting for a while.

I was briefly subscribed to Shudder, a niche horror flick service that doesn't cost much and has a few decent items on there.
Crunchyroll is relatively cheap for anime, has been buying up other properties to give itself a large library. That said, there are accusations that the money doesn't ever reach the original creators. HiDive is another anime service with some weird options.
There's free services like Pluto TV, usually ad-supported (but hey, a lot of the paid options are giving ads)

Haven't read it, but there's also articles out there about other options, should people decide the major entries are too expensive, and they don't want to go for piracy. Knowing your options is always good.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Ohhhhhhhhhh... it's a pirates life for me. We have never subscribed to any of this shit. Savings have allowed us to eat avacado toast.

[–] UFODivebomb 10 points 1 year ago

Raise prices. Blame "the liberal agenda". Profit.

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