Streaming TV Prices Double As ‘Enshittification’ Takes Root, Likely Driving Users Back To Piracy
from the here-we-go-again dept
Amazon is now charging Prime customers an extra $3 a month to avoid ads that didn’t used to exist. Netflix is charging password sharers extra for sharing passwords, in addition to yet another looming price hike. Apple just doubled the price of Apple TV on the heels of price hikes by Disney, Hulu, and ESPN. HBO Max just announced it would be charging users more money if they want to enjoy content in 4K.
As the streaming market has saturated and growth has slowed, companies in the streaming space have turned toward nickel-and-diming users at an alarming rate in order to deliver Wall Street its sweet quarterly returns (at any cost). Streaming service prices have more than doubled since the technology came to market, and there’s really no sign of it slowing down.
One interesting wrinkle in this march towards consolidated annoyance is the streaming sector’s interest in driving more users toward ad-based tiers, where profits can continue to skyrocket:
“Why? Unlike a paid subscription, which brings in a fixed amount of revenue each month, there is no ceiling to advertising revenue. The number of ads displayed and the rates a streaming platform can charge marketers for the ads are constantly fluctuating, offering unlimited revenue upside.”
Higher prices, more restrictions, more ads (in Amazon’s case, even if you’re already paying $15 a month for Prime). At the same time, just like cable did, you’re going to see a renewed push for mindless consolidation as the “only solution” to the pesky problem of too much competition and not enough profits:
“With so many streaming services, and no end in sight to price hikes, something will have to give at some point. The streaming industry is on the verge of losing some of its major players, analysts agree. “The macro, high-level view is that there are too many streaming services losing too much money, and someone is going to raise the white flag,” said Rich Greenfield, analyst at LightShed Partners.”
As the sector consolidates, it will look for additional options to cut costs, whether it’s via layoffs or offshored, lower quality customer service. Again, this precise trajectory was how the U.S. public ultimately got stuck with hugely unpopular giants like Comcast, and there’s absolutely zero indication that anybody in the video entertainment industry learned anything from experience.
As we saw with traditional cable, streaming giants seem poised to try and push their luck, driving frustrated customers to other options, including piracy. At that point, as we saw with traditional cable, the companies involved will blame absolutely everything but themselves for the shift.
Filed Under: ads, competition, enshittification, password sharing, piracy, price hikes, streaming, tv, video
Companies: amazon, apple, disney, netflix
Comments on “Streaming TV Prices Double As ‘Enshittification’ Takes Root, Likely Driving Users Back To Piracy”
Likely no, it is already happening. People used to maintain many services at the same time because they were cheap enough. Some started to cycle and subscribe for a month and binge watch what they want, others decided to maintain some streaming services that provide better cost-benefit and ignore content on the rest or pirate what they want. I’m in that second category. After many years without downloading movies and series I just did it a month ago or so with Netflix content I wanted to watch. Netflix was the first to go because it’s too expensive compared to the others but Max and Amazon are quickly sticking their necks on the chopping block competing to see who goes first.
But there’s another problem they are creating. A lot of people are increasingly going without. This is money leaving the table they can’t blame on piracy but on their own incompetence and greed.
It was good while it lasted, so long!
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“A lot of people are increasingly going without. ”
Yes, I have also read about many full time essential workers who are forced into choosing between paying rent, utility bills and putting food on the table.
Their priorities are obviously mixed up as they definitely need to start paying for the advertising filled crap tv shows no body wants to watch anymore.
No need to pay for streaming because The Hunger Games now occurs in your living room.
4k, or 4k, where are you?
It isn’t just the price. Streaming companies have fallen back on the good ol ,”good user experience? No go fuck yourself” approach.
back to the high seas
i used to subscribe to paramount plus on their ad free tier. Now they show an add for their own shows before the show im watching starts.
i cancelled them and will now take to the high seas for what i want to watch on from them
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yo ho, yo ho!
Stupid Networks Ignore Ad Potential
They could just charge for ADs like TV networks do, instead of charging people who subscribe. How long will it take them to figure out the obvious?
Sunscreen
I hear of these high salaries paid to these actors, and the first thing that occurs to me is, there is restraint of competition in media that results in the price discovery for this content skyrocketing.
I hope that AI can change this, and in time, I think it will. What is an actor – it is a good looking person that can act. What happens if AI can take a good looking person that can’t act, and changes that to where that good looking person can act?
Prices go way down. I was watching this actor’s strike, and I was struck on how these actors think their “likenesses” is so valuable. But, I don’t think we need their likenesses, at least, not at the prices that these likenesses currently command.
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“I hope that AI can change this, and in time, I think it will.”
Hahahahaha – no
Re: AI??
What? You think if AI lowers costs for studios, the studios will charge less for their product?!? Have you ever seen a corporation lower prices because costs were lower? Ever? No, they will pocket that money as profits and keep raising prices, like they always have.
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Which actors? I hope you’re not dumb enough to think that Tom Cruise’s salary is the same as the salary for the background actors who don’t get regular work.
That would be interesting. In reality, though, for every “movie star” who can’t act, there’s hundreds of working actors who can very much do the job but get paid poverty wages. If you look on IMDB and see an actor who did 200 movies, that’s not because they couldn’t act nor is it because they were being paid millions…
Then volunteer yourself. Do a day’s work, then watch as you appear everywhere in random shows without being paid for it.
Reminder: we’re not talking about Stallone suddenly being able to get a decent performance at his usual 6-7 figure fee. We’re talking about “that guy… from that thing” not being asked to turn up on set…
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That is a problem at the heart of copyright disputes, if you get paid for a days work, why should also get paid when what you produced is put to use. Software developers, employed to develop software, only worry about being paid while they work, rather than every time someone makes money from the software they wrote, why should actors be any different.
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There are arguments that that’s problematic, too, at least for artistic software.
At any rate, it’s meant to parallel how musicians and other artists get paid royalties for their work.
I'm ok for now
As long as there are monthly tiers and ad-free tiers, I’ll just churn around 1 at a time. I’m finding that I might not even be able to cobble together a solid 12 months of good content per year, so I’m working in pauses between subscriptions of a couple weeks. Maybe longer. That will hold down costs even more. I’m still pretty far from resorting to piracy but if I get frustrated enough…
I have a budget!
I have to stay within budget for $ and ad overload.
I am retired. I have a fixed income and must maintain my budget or I can’t afford other things (like food). All the price increases and endless ads put me into a position where I must cut some media out as I am not entertained by ads. First it was youTube (there are just too many ads to enjoy their product), next one to cut is Hulu (I liked the streaming of live TV, but I am going to broadcast again). I have also cut out the specialty streams like Paramount+, and Peacock.
Too many ads and too many $$’s to watch their content. I guess, after some time, I will cut all the excess out and start saving some cash.
Especially to Harold above, but to everyone else as well:
If you aren’t using AdGuard, then you’re doing it wrong, period. Even on YouTube, It. Just. Works. Period.
I also have a limited budget, so I’ve never “enjoyed the privilege” of a streaming service, which in turn means that I don’t know for certain that AdGuard will work on any of them. But for something that’s essentially free, it’s worth a trial run, no?
(Out of all the various ad-busting products out there, AdGuard works best for me. You may have other priorities where a different ad-buster might work better for you.)
[salty predicted tears blow in the wind]
THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!
Greed was supposed to magically disappear when streaming started. Inflation wasn’t supposed to affect streaming. Cutting the cord (fallacy -already explained ad nauseum) was supposed to fix things!
Oh the humanity…
Maybe AI, combined with crypto, can save us…from the lack of entertainment
Im waiting
To have a return to the old ways of taxing the rich.
Corps used to create their OWN agencies to do their OWN business.
Now they hire it all out. Insted of paying 1 company to do its thing, we have to pay 10 or more. Each with their own Top wage earners.
Then we need to start taxing internal STOCK exchanges. Where they use Stocks to pay the top wage earners. And they exchange them on retirement at a LOW interest rate, insted of the IRS wage rates.
Then lets keep a Good IRS rate on ALL wages, top to bottom. As well as NOT restrict the deductions for Social security. As its a great thing, when a corp Goes Bankrupt and use’s the retirement FUNDS to pay for it, and all the retired goto Social sec. to get money to live.
Who thinks Monopoly with an infinite Bank is a GOOD THING? Where they can Borrow and borrow, and hardly ever pay back to the bank.
we have had this happen to many times.
A Person on Quora asked, as a republican farmer what would happen if all the farmers STOPPED sending food to the Democrat cities.
I suggested he think about the Fuel, electric, Chemicals, and TV, cable, Internet, Phones, he uses, being Cut off from the Cities, where most of the main hubs are.
Farmers are Not Self sufficient Since they use Mechanical devices, and NOT manual labor.
We are all dependent on Tech. But how can we threaten them? We are dependent To them. WE HAD regulations to control capitalism. But Stopped enforcing them.
I’m sure all these corps raising their prices at the same time is merely coincidental. No dodgy backroom deals being cut whatsoever. No siree.
As an aside, the only only TV sub service in this household is my wife’s Apple TV account. She said it’s going up from $9.99 to $12.99 and would therefore be cancelling it. I pointed out that we pay $12 every four days for cat food so wondered if she would be cancelling the cats too?
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Yeah, but you can’t eat a streaming service.
yo ho ho mother fucker!
i be sail’n me pirate ship for many years now!
too many “other” options out there! why pay for inferior service! with a couple of ad blockers and VPN. i be sail’n the high sea’s with little to no ad’s for free!
Another issue is that any potential market disruptor is immediately hamstrung by the fact that they need the content from the major studios to even stand a chance at gaining any momentum – and said studios also control their own streaming services that they’ll protect at all costs (meaning they’ll likely price the licensing fees so high that it’s not economically viable to start a new service).
Well THAT'S not true
“… there’s absolutely zero indication that anybody in the video entertainment industry learned anything from experience.”
They learned two of the most important things. If people have no choices, you can charge whatever you want. Similarly, you can cut service and people may complain but what are they going to do?
TL;DR: They learned that monopolies are lovely things.
And you wonder why several pirate sites. in BRICS countries, and getting more subscribers.
There are quite a few of time now, all using the IPTV Smarters app as the client to access their sercices
They are all in countries where the USA has no jurisdiction so the Commercial Felony Streaming Act cannot be enforced there. The USA has no jurisdiction in India, Russia, China, Pakistan, or Iran, where the dozens of services like this are now run from. US law in null and void in those countries.
Running anywheres from $15 to $50 a month for as many as 50,000 channels from all over the world, these services are just going to keep growing popularity
My blank stare is telling
Streaming sidesteps all value added marketing to store shelves. Remember the $5 bin at Video Stores? BTW, pawn shops got hit with “remove that media, DVD sets like — Buffy… and more. So, after removing films from secondary market where are we. Publishers have “tear off” — cover art removed, balance to landfill. Tapes, dvd files of some older works got that kind of treatment.
The independent “Movie Maker” gets too little support from the distribution brokers. <– Opinion Alert.
Lastly, funny thing about the streaming is its quality. It cannot have the high Q of a MPEG2 in many products. The 4K Ultra or whatever does not look any better on a mobile or tablet 1080p. Maybe that is the worst keep secret. 99% of my mobile or tablet movies are SD stream, HD when stated, Extra for BIG $4K is throwing money away. Get bigass (65″ and bigger) TV and 4k disk player and compare to DvD/blu-ray player and same TV.
Sorry about the rant. I have NASA stream live via %6k modem via REALPLAYER that look better than network streaming service. Now it’s live youtube NASA, SpaceX, car racing and other not-ball-sports.
I am easily entertained by good stories and well produced movies/series. The biggest problem is the lack of well thought out movie and series.
Last streamed series that had the nerve to make me laugh and need a tissue was on Netflix. (they learned one simple thing – comic to live action must not have all sort of stupid inserted from pop culture not in the source.
#DevidFruit
Still don’t get it
Why are tech people so against advertising? Writer and reader.
Never bothered me. Maybe because I’m older and it’s just always been there, maybe because I find good advertising entertaining maybe because I actually support the idea of supporting things I enjoy.
Ad-based streaming subscriptions keep streaming companies alive.
I have no issue with Prime. The current leader in streaming with hundreds of 3rd party choices available, often at a lower price than the primary source. Paramount, Max, Eros, Shudder, etc. all in one place. .
Amazon has long pushed some form of advertising, often for other Amazon originals films, ahead of their movies. I see no issue with them maintaining a cost benefit with some minor advertising.
The problem isn’t the services, it’s over paid actors and crews. Entertainment is like sports, most people are paid way too much money.
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I mean, we didn’t like ads for cable, either. But even with cable, they generally did a much better job at putting the ads at reasonable parts of whatever was being streamed.
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There I will agree. Why they don’t put advertising in the advertising cut of tv shows. You know where the cuts were by the jarring scene end. But they place the advertisements elsewhere?
That’s actually annoying!
piracy
ive always been pirating even during the dial up internet days. why give these multi billion dollar regimes even more money. i can find everything online for free the very minute its available for download. and streaming is the digital version of block buster video