already ditched them most of them and moved to self hosting movies, TV shows and music. I’m still paying for music but the latest drama of losing tons of classics on YouTube music due to SESAC licensing has me rethinking what I’m even paying for.

Streaming services have a catastrophic problem they didn’t see coming.

As they massively expanded the viewing market, they also gave very accurate viewing metrics compared to broadcast TV.

Also, the many, MANY offerings cut the viewing pie into smaller pieces.

And this is the expectation, mostly because while you might stay with a super hit like GoT, they’re super expensive, and huge risks if they don’t take off (see acolyte). Cost sensitive people are likely to subscribe for the season then cancel, or just subscribe the month the season finishes.

The alternative is to try to hook you on a bunch of shows, which means having a ton of them and hoping they nail your niche. People are less willing to do this, but it works if you have more disposable income, or value streaming more.

In any case, they can’t afford all the shows they have to put on, it’s all or nothing now, before they might watch lost on ABC one night, then CBS walker Texas ranger might let the kid fall on the ground the next, but now you have to keep them entertained most days, that’s a shit-ton of content. HBO has it worse, they’re losing their old cable revenue, and their productions are stupid expensive, and they’re one of the winners. Disney has it even worse because disney+ cannibalizes both their cinema sales and they have to put up their crown jewels, star wars and the mcu, all on the same service, devaluing both. Fortunately focusing on kids programming helps because parents basically have to have Disney+ just as a matter of course.

This barely worked on broadcast because the different channels could share the load and cut the ad pie into larger pieces,

If they could count on must-watch blockbusters (ie GoT, which really hurt them when they screwed the landing and killed rewatchability), they could pull it off, but that’s so risky, it’s betting everything on one spin of the roulette wheel.

Cos you haven’t already. You’re a par boiled frog and didn’t even notice.

Because for every one person like you and me with zero ad tolerance, there’s hundreds, thousands of plebs who can’t be bothered to drop the service. It’s the inverse of the whale (re. microtransactions) problem.

What alternative? Every other service who does the same shit? Or even worse, setup jellyfin with sonarr server to completely automate everything and watch everything for absolutely free and continue to do so forever?? The shit some of these pirates do is disgusting.

Remember Netflix’s password sharing ban outrage? It didn’t work, they gained more subscribers. People stay because they don’t know how to sail the high seas or are too lazy to do it.

https://fmhy.pages.dev/ <-- you might want to check this out because piracy is very wrong and horrible wink wink

This is just my opinion, but when Google(and… I don’t know, “them?”) started cracking down on the “letswatch” and 123movie sites, streaming was in a good place, so people happily jumped over. Now, in the time between that and the state of things now, some people lost their patience and skill with looking up a movie. Both my mom and grandma were fine with the 123movies and what not. The sites started to go down when Netflix was still alright, so it wasn’t a big deal. Spend a couple dollars, get all the stuff you want and be sure it’s the best quality, and no malware? Fantastic.

By the time it became this state of affairs, my mom just couldn’t wrap her head around it. I tried to explain some sites are still there, you just may need to search duckduckgo (which she hates for some reason). She never understood torrenting even though we’ve gone over it multiple times. I’ve always liked anime or some shit that was not going to be on Netflix, so I kept using those “skills” and kept up with the changes. Moving to torrenting, a VPN, file converters, learning how to apply subtitles, one by one, over years, it’s not a big deal. You just learn as you do. Having to come back to that after how much has changed ostracized a lot of people.

The people who aren’t affected by them were never their main focus. They wanted the people who weren’t tech savvy, lazy even. They can’t figure out a torrent, or how to even find it in the first place. They won’t know what to search for to protect themselves and will likely get scared by the first copyright notice. They’re hoping that the majority of their customer base will be like that and feel “trapped.”

Because how else am I going to get those deep creases out of my blouses!

Bcs they act as a monopoly in regards to alternatives.

They only slightly intend to compete against each other but pretend nothing else exist (pirates, or people just shifting towards other forms of entertainment).

And they are ofc in cahoots in the sense that their common goal is to normalise paying several hundred moneys per month for streaming services and have the streaming service full of ads regardless.
So in that sense they will not compete but back each other up.

Like land owners/landlords, their main goals are completely aligned.

And that is how ‘market disruptions’ actually work - its not to offer a new service to the end user (like Uber-ish services are the same as taxi services from the perspective of users), it’s to undercut the existing regime with lower prices whilst living on capital given because of the promise that once the old regime is gone they can crank up the prices & actually profitable (we are actually just at this stage right now - watch how much monthly fees are gonna go up in just a few years).

Goal/end stage:
Users are gonna be glued to their ad-ridden TVs just the same as boomers but far better monetised (watching TV is gonna be expensive).

Hulu is treating me with impunity when I reported errors with their apps. Hulu, an eminently cancelable service that a lot of people never paid for in the first place.

Sail the seven seas, friends. These people deserve despondency.

Wife and I started watching the boys on prime. That’s when I realized Amazon is putting ads in the stream.

I just ended up downloading all the seasons in an hour and it’s been no ads on Kodi since.

I’ve ditched all of them except the Disney/Hulu bundle, and that’s only because Amex gives me back $7 a month of the cost.

Amazon Prime used to be okay as a Prime customer, but now you can’t watch a 24 minute show without seeing like five ads. I tried to watch an episode of Invincible and there were two ads before the show even started, two in the middle of the show, and one at the end. It’s freaking insane.

I barely even watch video these days, I get way more mileage out of a good music service like Qobuz or Tidal.

Keep in mind that these people don’t rationalize. They only see numbers. They use smart people to give them a watered down explanation on how it’s possible to raise the numbers even more. If you leave but the people that stay start making the numbers go even higher, they don’t give a fuck.

A: they’re betting most people will accept it, and they’re right. The same thing happened in the early 80s when cable television advertised themselves as the pay-for-ad-free service, then started sneaking ads in. People complained, sure, but we all saw the outcome. They got away with it.

B: Greed, capitalism, and fuck you.