Streaming services are not being picked up by people under 34
(which is probably why Jack Manifold got that Netflix deal)
Just keep raising the prices and injecting ads in a paid service, it’ll get better I swear!
And fragmenting libraries across more $15/mo services!
I stopped subscribing to services long term years ago, now, I just don’t subscribe because of how segmented it is.
More segmented, higher prices per segment, more ads
Getting squeezed from every side
“It’s just $10 more bro, it’s not that much.” Yeah, except every streaming service is doing it, my rent goes up 40%, insurance covers less, and food is more expensive. I don’t have unlimited money.
No way they’re all pirating. I fear that it may be Instagram or tiktok they’re spending their time with
I’m pushing 40 and honestly if people didn’t share streaming passwords with me, I just wouldn’t watch anything streaming I have a digital antenna for the news and a library card for everything else.
Almost certainly. The form of media being consumed is changing and it’s increasingly hollow short form media.
Not saying it’s as bad as social media but the quality of content streaming services produce is pretty bad. Pretty sure I read the services actually dumb down a lot of content so it can be “second screen” content that can be followed while gaming or scrolling.
Netflix produced shows, in particular, is doing this, yes. I’m sure others too. Not all media is being produced that way. And even then, even if they’re handholding the viewer and diminishing the narrative quality as a result, it’s still something that takes more than 3 minutes of attention span to follow. And streaming older media is also an option, none of which was made that way. I’d argue you still get more out of watching an episode of Gilmore Girls for the 3rd time than 30 minutes of tiktok slop.
Have you been on tik tok? Cause what you get is what you interact with. Back when I had it (before the “ban” 🙄) I mostly got comedians, scientists, artists, and people encouraging me to clean my house. It was great for entertainment and for learning.
I have never had the app. Only things I’ve seen on it is shit family sends me directly. But it’s not just the content I’m critical of. It’s the form factor. The infinite scrolling short form videos. It’s certainly better if the content itself is good and valuable. But the model itself seems to breed shorter attention spans and makes people more distracted, and it’s more addictive/harder to disconnect.
I don’t mean streaming services are bereft of any decent content, a portion of their original stuff is good and a lot of their licensed stuff is good as well. I was just pointing out that just because it’s longer form, it doesn’t mean it’s automatically better than social media content.
Better quality/entertainment? Not necessarily. Better for human brain health? Particularly young developing brains? Almost certainly, I’d bet.
Nah now you just go the farmers market and buy a vSee or Super box.
Do not use a superbox. They are the hackers Trojan horse. Listen to the superbox episode on Darknet Diaries podcast.
True. Highly recommended to isolate with a second router if you do.
Also YouTube and twitch
Are those any worse than tv? It’s the same concept just a different source
The only reason the TV gets turned on at our house is for background noise while my wife scrolls TikTok.
Ah the advertisement finally fucked you didn’t it?
The fragmentation probably doesn’t help.
🏴☠️ 😘
This is the answer. When Netflix had everything and was $8, I was willing to pay. Now you need at least 5 streaming services at $15/mo each to get even half the (good) content.
I was willing to pay until the enshittifiers flew too close to the sun. Radar and Sonarr are all I need now.
If I want to follow a few shows, I have to switch among, at least, three different streaming services, each one having a sub of no less than 10€. And in many cases, I have to deal with fragmented shows that are scattered among several services.
Meanwhile, the seven seas offer a free or extremely low-cost alternative in which I can watch everything without restrictions and with an even better UI than many services.
Add that the economy nowadays make people fear an unexpected 100€ expense because it would mean you can’t eat that month. And they are surprised that customer count is falling?
Plus streaming services have a habit of cancelling series suddenly. Taking Lucasfilm (not even the entirety of Disney) for an example, Willow and The Acolyte were great shows that just got axed with no resolution. How am I supposed to feel invested in new shows if I have no reason to think they’ll get conclusions? It sapped my enthusiasm for the universe so much I didn’t even bother with Skeleton Crew or Maul. Thankfully Andor got an ending.
I think if valve just decided to start selling movies and shows on Steam like they do with games, they’d win.
Funny you said that, Steam use to sell movies. I bought Ghost in the Shell, Battle Royale, and John Wick.
I don’t think their player works on Linux.
Who needs their player. Just sell me the content and let me play it how and where I wish.
Assuming that’s too consumer friendly for the modern market, I can’t imagine it would be a monumental hurdle to overcome for the company so heavily invested in Proton.
Everything is worth what its purchaser will, or in this case, won’t pay for it.
(with apologies to) - Publilius Syrus
Holy shit. You mean in an economy where people have tj work three jobs just to afford rent and food aren’t paying for luxuries like Netflix and Hulu??? WHAT IS GOING ON !!!
Yes, it’s a mystery not even Sherlock Holmes himself could solve.
Well i wouldn’t know because the new Sherlock show is on Amazon prime and my grocery bill went up again this month
The original stuff is out of copyright or however one would put it. Download and read, feel free and happy.
Gee, I wonder if that’s got anything to do with the extreme enshittification the industry is seeing. It’s almost as though younger people are less likely to be able to afford increasingly expensive luxuries right now.
Jacking up the price repeatedly in the first few years (since every service except Netflix is still relatively new) isn’t a great way to build consumer trust. I think most platforms were banking on popular IPs (Star Wars and Marvel for Disney; DC, ASOIAF and Harry Potter for WB; LOTR and The Boys for Amazon; Star Trek and D&D for Paramount; etc) to trigger some kinda compulsive “gotta watch 'em all” response from fans of those IPs, but if you ask me, it seems more like fans are starting to burn out on those franchises. I’m a huge Star Wars fanboy and there’s a Darth Maul series out and I can’t even muster the interest to watch it.
turns out the streaming industry was purely based on stock investment AKA vibes about what the future might bring.
Product claims to be the future -> Lot’s of investment -> Product is dirt cheap and great -> doesn’t turn a profit ever -> loses investors -> gets enshitified -> less users -> less investment -> dies
repeat
It’s not losing investors that’s a problem, in a sense it’s too many investors that’s a problem. Investors give, but also take. A sustainable business needs to be from the start working to free itself from the need for continued investment.
Infinite growth in a finite world is the ideology of a cancer cell. Every investor expects a return, and in tech they expect a big one to offset the huge number of investments in failed ventures. The more attention they get the bigger the demands that get placed on them are. Tech has been taking these problems to extremes.
OpenAI is the worst here. It simply can’t make the amount of money it needs to to become profitable, much less give investors their expected returns. And if it could manage to do so it would be catastrophic to everything else. It’s become the equivalent of someone who’s gotten so juiced up and muscular that they can no longer reach their mouth to eat, much less to eat their maintenance calories.
There is the biggest elephant in the room of enshitification and the rise of piracy again. Why pay for Netflix when Plex or even better jellyfin are available for free/a one time fee for hosting Plex? Why deal with ads and lower quality video when buying/building a NAS costs about the price of a years worth of the top tier steaming platforms and you can control what’s on there not be up to the whims of what the streaming service might have available from other production companies that haven’t set up their own streaming service yet? The fact that neither enshitification nor piracy was mentioned is telling.
To be fair you don’t even need to resort to piracy to get a better service, I’ve been buying up used DVD/BR boxsets with the money I used to put into streaming. For less than half the cost I get a version I can keep rather than rent.
Same for CDs, with 6 months of Spotify payments I’ve managed to buy 90% of what I was listening to and even managed to get some nice deluxe versions with extras like DVD documentaries about the band, etc.
When collecting physical media again is a better, cheaper option than streaming you know the companies have really fucked up.
But is Plex that big with younger people in general?
Maybe, maybe not, but piracy is very much on the rise with all people but younger people in particular.
Thanks-that link doesn’t seem to be working at the moment though.
The article here seems to be implying the demographic of streaming is changing.
I was curious if it younger people (I) are shifting how they access it through piracy (what you were suggesting); (ii) it’s more of a broader shift from shows to YouTube or other types of “modern” content
Or more likely both but I was interested how much of each factor.
In that link it talked about how 70%+ of millenials and 60 some odd % of Gen Z were pirating last year for at least some of their entertainment, with classic downloading, intercepting streaming from the streaming services for access directly (being the most popular for you get people) and some other forms of piracy.
Ah, yes. The “disrupter” business model led to new market entrants who once stablished, become the new enshittification / price scalping vampires.
Our samsung TV has channels just like broadcast TV, tubi, a free to stream (with commercials) app has a section that’s like broadcast TV. Youecan’t pause it and stuff is played on a predetermined schedule.
So in some cases streaming has gone full circle and I don’t really understand why. If I can’t pause something I’m streaming, and watch it when I want then what’s the point?
