Below is a look at the most exasperating news from streaming services from this week. The scale of this article demonstrates how fast and frequently disappointing streaming news arises. Coincidentally, as we wrote this article, another price hike was announced.
We’ll also examine each streaming platform’s financial status to get an idea of what these companies are thinking (spoiler: They’re thinking about money).
Netflix starts killing its cheapest ad-free plan in June
Sony bumps Crunchyroll prices weeks after shuttering Funimation
Peacock is raising prices
Fubo cuts 19 channels
In a seemingly desperate push, many streaming services prioritize revenue and profits ahead of building the best streaming service for customers.
We could go on about how this might force people to reconsider their subscriptions, but we should publish before another service makes yet another policy change.
I honestly think they offered good deals for a couple of years to lure the new generations into a false sense of security and make them forget how to pirate :D
They absolutely did. I used to pirate all my media 20 years ago, but then streaming became so convenient and relatively cheap that I just didn’t bother with it anymore.
Now, they’ve pretty much pushed me back out to sea with their ever increasing prices and decreasing content that’s worth watching. I’m not paying $15-20 per service, when they insist on fragmenting it to hell so I’d need 3-4 subscriptions to watch the things I want.
The joke is on them, piracy was motivated by the extreme convenience of streaming to make it as convenient as ever.
One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue. The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.
- Gabe Newell
https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-not-price/
Still as relevant today as it was 13 years (dear god) ago. Sure, not every pirate would pay for media, just like not every pirate pays for games, but charging increasingly more money for a worse product is going to push people towards a solution that basically allows you to search for and watch anything you want, ad-free.
There’s people practically begging to spend money for certain shows and movies to be available, but they’re just not available on any streaming service. What else are they going to do?
I canceled my Hulu+Disney+whatever package this week, as well as my Netflix. Piracy all the way.
What do you use?
I’m not a cop btw
I haven’t done this myself because it’s obviously very illegal, but I’ve been told you set up a server with docker and set up the following containers:
- gluetun for VPN (exit in Switzerland with a fallback to Spain) as these countries have the laxest regulation re downloading licensed media.
- radarr for film
- sonarr for tv
- other *arr instances for subtitles, music, ebooks etc
- qbittorrent piped through the Gluetun container
- jellyfish, plex or XBMC in front as a player.
But what do I know? I haven’t done it myself and only download large Linux distributions because I love distro-hopping.
They let people believe that streaming is cheap, but it is not. A server can send streams to many people at the same time, but not so many as it seems and sever up time is a cost, in terms of energy and in terms of sysadmin time. Maintenance of the network is also expensive, especially in the US where most of the people live in low density neighbourhoods.
To that you have to add the cost of the big data servers that check everything people look at and profile their customers.
The dirty cheap subscriptions were meant to attract new customers, the service was heavily subsidized. The companies looked profitable just because other companies bought more ad space than necessary. Overadvertising is the preferred method to give stealth subsidies, but it is a cost for the other businesses of the network. After a while they have to shift those costs to the customers.
When I worked at an internet provider, Netflix sent us a cache (I’m sure they have several at that ISP now). I can’t imagine it cost them more than a few thousand dollars, as it was just a bare bones box full of hard drives. We gave them free power, internet, and rack space in our data center. Every night during the slow period it would fill up with whatever they thought would stream the next day.
There was nothing to do with neighborhoods, the cache served customers all over Maine and they didn’t pay us anything. Netflix’s costs are more likely content and licensing.
Yeah, that could be true. But seeing as how 99% of companies are following the same business model of squeezing more and more profit out of people, I’m gonna go with Occam’s razor on this one and say they’re most likely just trying to make more money because they can. As long as it keeps working, they’ll keep doing it.
To get an idea of the cost choose any cloud service and see how much you pay for the server usage by the hour. Try to llok at all the other costs involved in the business, production of dedicated content is not cheap. All the company staff, the administration and the billing have a cost.
Do not go by assumptions, measure, try to get an idea of the real costs.
I have access to 40€/month 10Gb symmetric (this is a commercial offer, so it’s obviously cheaper for them). Now tell me bandwith is so so expensive.
It was expensive back in the day, not so much any more, and prices plunge every year.
