I remember 10 years ago that the answer to rayiner's question was always "I don't want to pay a ton of money for a whole bundle of crap I don't want when all I want to watch is one specific thing." I saw it all the time.
Now people complain about the complexities of unbundling.
It's fairly clear to me that these complaints, while real, aren't the core issue which is: people would rather get content for free than pay for it. So a lot of the time they will.
The rhetoric about bundling vs unbundling is just the justification.
> It's fairly clear to me that these complaints, while real, aren't the core issue which is: people would rather get content for free than pay for it. So a lot of the time they will.
That's not a fair framing. It's not that people want everything for free, it's that they aren't willing to pay an arm and a leg to get everything. I'm happy to pay for 2-3 networks (and do) for 30-50 or so a month but in return I want EVERYTHING meaning live sports and all the shows with no region blocking. I am not willing to pay 150 per month for that and I am not willing to pay 50 for a small subset of content which comes and goes. Sorry, the product was overpriced as a bundle and is still overpriced as an a la carte offering. I don't currently torrent but I understand why other people do as the current setup is highly irritating. You can say I'm being unreasonable and maybe I am, but it is how I feel.
In my comment I explicitly note that I am not stealing content and am in fact probably paying for more content than most users. I am expressing my annoyance at the current business model, not advocating or admitting to piracy.
> I remember 10 years ago that the answer to rayiner's question was always "I don't want to pay a ton of money for a whole bundle of crap I don't want when all I want to watch is one specific thing." I saw it all the time.
> Now people complain about the complexities of unbundling.
Why do you treat people like they are one amorphous blob? People want different things. There will always be people unhappy with the way things are. Are you trying to discount their complaints?
There will be people who cannot afford entertainment and will pirate no matter what. That a red hearing and it doesn't matter.
I don't care about bundles/deal/special arrangement all I care about is convenience. Netflix used to be more convenient to watch quality series and I was using it exclusively.
I paid fair price for convenience. Starting show where you left of skipping intros etc, all of those things made me pick netfilx over torrents.
But now the scales are tipping other way as EVERYONE wants a piece of pie, making exclusive deals with a single platform (plus amount of crappy show on netfilx making it time consuming to find new stuff to watch there, and their terrible recommendation algorithm, if you can call it an algorithm).
I still use netflix, but I can see myself dropping it in the future and stick to one place that have all.
So far no solution besides “pirating” has met this one simple requirement:
“On-demand access to any movie or TV show I can think of that has ever been digitized, from one service.”
That’s it. If you can provide that, take my money. In the, say 20 years since broadband existed, literally no legit company has offered this yet, for any price.
> That’s it. If you can provide that, take my money. In the, say 20 years since broadband existed, literally no legit company has offered this yet, for any price.
That's because they insist on (and we permit) keeping control of both licensing and distribution. If content companies couldn't distribute themselves, or make exclusive deals for distribution, and just had to say "here's the price sheet, anyone who wants our stuff and can pay our rates can distribute it" there'd probably be such a pay-one-bill-and-watch-anything service—but it'd own no content itself. There'd also probably be a few cheaper ones licensing a wide variety of cheaper content—a single, cheapish streaming service with damn near every B-movie and failed or obscure TV show ever made, as an example. The services would have to compete on price and UX, not primarily by which content they can prevent other services from accessing—so, better for the viewer than the current situation.
Given that entertainment media aren't like other goods (you can't just go find someone else to make you a satisfactory replacement for Casablanca, say) and we grant legal monopolies on copyright, it seems anti-consumer and anti-competitive to allow same entities to also own & control distribution.
People listen to the same songs a couple dozen times. Maybe more. They watch the same show once, maybe twice. So the opportunity to monetize is far lower and the cost to produce is far higher. It never takes $1m to make a song, now we have television shows with million dollar per episode production budgets.
> People hate the cable companies because you're paying high prices for a bunch of bullshit.
People also love cable companies because of all the content, always have and always will. That is why they pay them billions a year. I am not sure what your point is?
Yes, but the guy I responded to was mentioning the common complaint against cable. That you were paying for all the stuff you didn't want to get the things you want.
So I don't see your point. Yes, cable has a lot of stuff. But not everyone wants all of it.
That's the issue. No one wants to feel as if they're paying for stuff they aren't using.
The issue is that we are headed back to the "unnecessary package but I want that one thing" territory. In the olden days, there were only a few streaming services (legit ones). Now they are all splitting out with rights being given and revoked on dates that appear arbitrary to the consumer.
No, I'm gonna use the same answer that I'd have used 10 years ago: The cable-company upper management isn't entitled either. They appropriate the art from the artists and call it "fair compensation", but it isn't.
Keep in mind that these are the same cable companies that charge for basic broadcast channels, too. There's charging for stuff that people might not watch, and then there's charging for stuff that is freely available in the air for anybody to tune into.
Over the air broadcast signals don't work in a lot of places so you need to send the bits over a cable. Putting that cable in the ground and sticking the right equipment on the end costs money. That's a totally reasonable thing to pay for even if the bits are free.
I think you might be underestimating how much the market has changed.
The group of people who used to complain about bundling, is largely not the same as the people who are now complaining about unbundling.
What happening is basically reverse price anchoring. Most young people have never paid for cable, and their idea how much this service is worth is based on the price of Netflix.
I'm one of them. I'm already not sure if I get enough out of my Netflix subscription, paying for 2+ subscriptions would be unthinkable for me right now. I couldn't care less that people used to pay $160+ so even with 5-6 subscriptions I would still be better off than cable. It just doesn't match my idea of how much this content is worth.
I think it will take the industry a long time to significantly raise how much people think these services are worth. I can't see it getting it back to a similar price point as it was in the past.
I've yet to see a single studio offer to sell me a DRM-free copy of a movie or TV show, at any price. Until they do, their offering is strictly worse than what 'piracy' is offering.
It's also because every company wants their walled garden à la Apple. It's unbundled, but still bundled. Sell a movie or a season of episodes for $1-5 and no one will be able to complain about this anymore.
Now people complain about the complexities of unbundling.
It's fairly clear to me that these complaints, while real, aren't the core issue which is: people would rather get content for free than pay for it. So a lot of the time they will.
The rhetoric about bundling vs unbundling is just the justification.