Piracy was mainstream in the early 90s/2000s. It was only when iTunes came out and the RIAA lawsuits successfully killed the p2p clients that it tamed back down.
Napster made music sharing mainstream c. 1999, but only the most extreme people were DCCing sg1 episodes over modems at that point.
It was the emergence of iTunes that killed off unauthorised sharing - because the product was available at a reasonable price in the way people wanted it.
iTunes changed the music business into what it is today.
The heyday of albums, bands, 20 dollar cds is over. But music has become less special less mainstream and people are less likely to identify themselves by subgroups formed around a music type. Young people are not on mass claiming to be Punks, goths, hippies, metal fans, disco heads, something new etc. Which has slowed down the evolution of music.
I lived that era and that’s nonsense. It was popular amongst tech savvy people, with decent connections, and younger (<25yr old) ones at that. Hell CD burners were not even that mainstream around then (remember how big of a deal it was that the later candy iMacs shipped with a CD burner?)
The most normal, borderline tech-inept people I know were all torrenting stuff 15 years ago. People I know here in Asia were torrenting American music that they couldn't easily/cheaply find here, and Americans I know were pirating anime subs years before they'd ever get legally released in America.
At least in North America, torrenting is no longer mainstream. Netflix is too easy. Adults that were previously torrenters barely use a machine that offers a torrent client anymore, it's mostly iPads and phones for casual use.
It is easy to torrent from a phone/device so many good standalone clients. The streaming of popcorn movie time to kodi plugins life is all about streaming but a lot of content still comes from torrents.
Many people, including me, don't want or have any desire for 'smart' TV. Even using somebody else's smart TV makes me want to kill myself. They run like shit, are slow, laggy, and the picture is subpar compared to even cheap monitors, especially for high-def video. The only plus point they have is size but that isn't a problem either if you don't have a 50 foot long living room.
Yeah. Streaming was basically the answer to TV piracy. Everyone was downloading the latest American TV shows and Japanese anime until Netflix and others showed up.
I wouldn't dismiss their competition either. I specifically paid for Hulu solely for "The Handmaids Tail", an incredibly well done drama. (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5834204/)
Still dwarfed by Netflix with a ~$10B market cap, this battle isn't over. Amazon has a decent shot as well.
Is it not zero sum? In other words, is there a way that Netflix and Amazon Video can cooperate with the result that each earns more income than would be possible if they were purely competitive?
There are only 8 billion people in the world, and each can spend at most X hours per day watching streaming video. It seems to be clearly in the interest of each provider to try to obtain all X of those hours.
> It seems to be clearly in the interest of each provider to try to obtain all X of those hours.
Not so. You're confusing subscription-based revenue-stream with advertising-based revenue-stream.
Netflix's subscription is a flat rate, and they have no ads, so unlike YouTube they don't make money per hour of viewing.
The ideal case for Netflix is if I pay my monthly subscription, but don't watch anything at all. They get their money, but it minimises their server load. Of course, in reality, if they want to persuade me to keep my subscription, they'd better offer good content - if I'm watching nothing at all, I'm likely to cancel.
I really don't see what you're worried about. They're operating under the most pro-consumer conditions possible: honest competition to maximise consumer value.
If they out-compete Hulu, they can charge more than Hulu. Sure. What's the worry? In a functioning marketplace, an inferior service is priced lower.
I don't think there's much risk that they'll go the clickbait route and start acting against the viewer's interests for revenue. I don't see how they could. Subscription services are much more resistant to that kind of thing than free services.
The competition is tough. They're unlikely to feel free to charge significantly more... because they aren't.
I'm fairly confident Netflix aren't dumb enough to try anything like adverts. Millennials hate that kind of thing, and it would be a real mistake.
I wouldn't dismiss Hulu, but they're also very obviously not in the same league. For one, they're US-only. Handmaid's Tale is aired on other channels/services worldwide.
You can. Hulu offers a commercial free option with the customer paying more, though there are six shows that have commercials at the beginning and end.
I don't like ads either. But you do realise that Netflix does extensive product placement, right? That's still advertising that rewires your brain. And you pay for it! Disgusting.
Not sure yet, but you're correct. I signed up because of one good show. Hoping it's not a fluke and they have some other good stuff. Fragmentation does suck, but so far, Hulu/Netflix/Amazon combined are a better deal than what my cable provider was giving me.
I love the Handmaid's Tale, but it drives me bonkers that they release new episodes at the rate of one per week. Release all the episodes in one day darn it! Making me wait pisses me off and (as I'm discovering) want to complain about it online.
No. They watch each episode as soon as it is published. Noone else sees the episode too much earlier than they do, so the probability that someone will reveal something about the plot before you watch it is minimal.
Call me old school, but I actually prefer weekly release. Even for stuff that's already fully released I find watching it at a set pace is a more pleasant / affecting experience.
The Handmaid's Tale is great, and here in the UK is shown on Channel 4 (free to air, only a TV licence is required). Then there's Billions, my current favourite show, which is on Sky Atlantic (subscription, about £30 per month) - also home to Game Of Thrones and everything else HBO.
If you add Prime for Mr Robot and Netflix for Stranger Things, it starts to get quite expensive.
Netflix seems to be creating original content all over the world, which is great. I've seen Netflix original movies and shows offered from Spain, Brazil and many other countries; the quality is much higher when you take the best from many places, and it's enriching and challenging to see other cultures - even via an LCD display.
One odd and disappointing thing we've noticed: Unless required by the script, almost all the protagonists are white-skinned (or very pale), no matter what the country. Even in the U.S., that's only ~66% of the population; in Brazil?
It's bizarre to see and very troubling to me. I'm not sure I want to support that, but there aren't a large number of options that are better. Looking at Amazon, it's pretty similar. Here's a trick to gain some perspective as you go through your day: When you look at a group of Americans - Senators, SV people, faces on movie icons on Amazon, etc, - remember that they come from a country that is only 1/3 white guys. It's striking to see.
Why would the country demographic matter? Wouldn't it be the customer demographic that matters? Do whites make up a larger relative proportion of the customer base?
> Netflix seems to be creating original content all over the world, which is great...
Keep in mind that many of the "Netflix Originals" are not made by Netflix at all. In Australia "The Expanse" is a Netflix Original, even though it was made by SyFy & streamed on Amazon US. Similarly, "Glitch" is labelled Netflix Original in the US, but not in Australia, and it was made for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
As far as I can tell, Netflix Original only means they have exclusive distribution rights for a limited time in that country.
As Netflix becomes a bigger player around the world and it flexes its influence, I expect to see some international jurisdictions to question its power and imperial projection (projecting its values on countries with different values as well as for threatening the viability of local industries)
It's probably best for civility's sake if he didn't. Would it really add much to the discussion if he did? I think it should suffice to say that the range of netflix content is far narrower than the ideological range of the general population.
I'm not furious about anything, did you notice that I'm not the guy upthread? Though I do find your assumption that I like Friends and Breaking Bad to be strange. Why do you assume that?
> "Netflix is providing content for a broader ideological range."
Furthermore, this is not actually the opposite of what I said. ("I think it should suffice to say that the range of netflix content is far narrower than the ideological range of the general population.") You use the word "broader", which is a relative term, but don't specify precisely what you are relating Netflix to. I assume you are relating it to traditional television programming (I assume this since the two shows you mentioned by name were traditional television programming.) But if you'll read my statement again, you'll see that's not what I was relating Netflix to.
I related the range of Neflix content to the ideological range of the general population. Not to traditional television, to the general population. Do I really need to explain that traditional television too only covers a small slice of the ideological range of the general population? I'll do so:
There are ideas and worldviews out there in which you'll never find mentioned or catered to in any mainstream television show or any Netflix show. The reasons for this are as varied as the ideas and worldviews themselves. Some don't get on TV or Netflix because they are difficult to monetize or run contrary to corporate interests. Some are too niche to bother recognizing, and others are offensive to other larger portions of society (I assume you assume it all falls under this later category, because you're eager to act morally righteous. I assume that about you because you assumed I was furious.) Some ideas and worldviews go unrecognized by television and netflix simply because they've gone unnoticed by television and netflix executives and filmmakers.
The sum of human ideology, ideas and worldviews is MUCH larger than the sum of what traditional television and netflix has on display. It's healthy to recognize this because failure to do so necessarily means your understanding of the world is contracted to the intersection of what mass media executives think publishable (that is, what they can agree amongst themselves to publish.)
I now understand your statement meant something like "Netflix content has a narrower ideological range than the ideological range of the whole population"
I recognise why you think this is an important claim here, but I don't think it is a useful comparison - no content provider can provide for the complete diversity of 7 billion people: it's not a fair comparison. A content provider can only make decisions within the resources that they have.
Meanwhile, I was saying "Netflix content has a broader ideological range [than equivalent TV networks and content providers]".
By picking those two shows, I was identifying that Netflix does not exclude people who were previously satisfied with that narrower range of content.
Netflix is no longer competing with traditional television, they're competing with a user-driver modern web. Youtube doesn't allow all kinds of content but even so it has orders of magnitude more coverage than netflix. And for the content you won't find on youtube, it's usually pretty easy to find it on other sites. I think this is a problem for Netflix that is only going to get worse as the older generations that were primed by traditional television become less economically relevant and new generations of "internet natives" come in.
Personally if I'm going to sit down and passively consume media, I usually like it to be about people making things, ideally with constrained resources. Preferably nonfiction. At any point in time Netflix may have a handful of documentaries that fit the bill, but compared to a platform like youtube it's basically nothing.
That may very well be true, but this point becomes moot IMO if you compare Netflix's range to typical studios' range. We can complain about the fact that it's not diverse and broad enough for all, but surely it's broader than superheroes and chick flicks all in English language, isn't it?
That’s one aspect, but the other is cultural imperialism of for example offering Mexican content to all LatAm, or Nigerian content to all Subsaharan Africa. Those other countries at the receiving end may not share the same values with the source countries.
For the local industries, if you mean local creators or content producers, Netflix is "just" a new channel. If anything, it can help them have viability where they were before restricted by the size of their local market.
I havent watched normal television is so long. Cause there is never anything good on anymore. Its either Youtube, Streams or Netflix now from here on in. Even DVDS got phased out.
> Its either Youtube, Streams or Netflix now from here on in
What makes you think the medium has stopped developing? It's quite likely that something else will be invented that will be superior to any of those, and that will make you wonder why you ever put up with them.
Jstaley i never meant these forms of media replacing television. I meant it for my own personal preference. But i cannot see TV really gaining my attention anymore. Too much reality TV Shows these days to ever get me hooked on mainstream TV anymore.
I've seen a couple of Netlflix shows and don't understand the improvement. It's the same TV junk but over the Internet. Now even made by the same people.
Other forms of content have been completely transformed by the change in medium. Podcasts have built upon their radio legacy and diversified tremendously. YouTube allowed people to share nearly anything from incoherent rants to whole college courses.
Netflix merely replaced the ads with subscription and remains the same cognitive parasite TV was, pumping out stuff that you're better off not watching at all. Another Grey's Anatomy or Glee, do you want that?
There's tons of great TV shows nowadays. Mentioning Grey's anatomy and Glee does a disservice to TV.
Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things, Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.
I think what the OP is trying to say here is that for example netflix just mass produces shows with the same people over and over again dropping the quality of its shows.
I'd say netflix has some good shows to watch, but the way its going and the way its producing shows I'd say most of netflix shows are garbage with only a few of them being nice to watch.
What you consider garbage others consider good. Netflix knows what you watch, they are the product, you are the customer. There's no competition for time slots where people who like $goodshow are drowned out by people who like $populartrash
With legacy tv you are the product, the show is the overhead, and the advertisers are the customer. With Netflix you are the customer and the show is the product.
Glee and Grey's Anatomy are from the OP, not my examples. Netflix is hiring the creators of these shows to make more shows, presumably somewhat similar. Breaking Bad is not from Netflix, neither is GoT which was interesting for about 1½ seasons. Even worse, Black Mirror was IMHO better before it moved to Netflix (but to some extent this is true of every show, creators have more pent-up, fresh ideas in the beginning).
While the tidal wave of capeshit is unwatchable and depressing, this is not all the competition Netflix has to contend with. First, you have every movie and tv show ever made. Then you can watch them again. Most shows can't even beat a 7th rewatch of Seinfeld.
Second, you can do something else than watching TV, like hitting the gym, writing a blog, taking your dog for a surprise extra walk, playing with your kids, making a steak instead of having takeout, cleaning your room while listening to Jordan Peterson telling you to clean your room... anything really.
And, I would argue, all of these are a better use of time than anything on Netflix right now.
> Netflix merely replaced the ads with subscription and remains the same cognitive parasite TV was, pumping out stuff that you're better off not watching at all.
I fundamentally disagree - there's plenty of absolute gems on broadcast TV that are rendered unwatchable by ads and requiring a specific time. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one I'm watching right now that I'd never watch on either TV, buy the DVD of or watch a limited selection of episodes on any of the broadcaster's streaming services that have ads.
I'd be more satisfied with Netflix and other streaming services operating in my country if these would offer wider content catalogs not limited by licensing agreements - with ability to rent it, as classic vhs or dvd rental was working (no idea if that was already a thing on Netflix - it operates here since 2016). I had no clue that N. had Family Guy until I read on 3rd part site that it's being pulled out without any information it was there in first place. We're paying same money for the service but available content is different; instead of popular series known and aired in tv, we're getting some cheap uknown fillers. So you see the problem here.
Sadly, such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video streaming casino.
Netflix are clearly only interested in the subscription model, but if you want a la carte rentals, they're available from Google/Amazon/Rakuten/Sony/Microsoft/Apple.
> such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video streaming casino
From a more optimistic angle, it's neat that Netflix can exist at all at its current pricepoint.
Note that Netflix in their mainstay countries is also full of filler - there’s actually only a limited catalogue of well-known TV and movies in general. That’s a huge part of why they’re doing their own shows now, so that they don’t have to fight for licensing.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadIt was the emergence of iTunes that killed off unauthorised sharing - because the product was available at a reasonable price in the way people wanted it.
The heyday of albums, bands, 20 dollar cds is over. But music has become less special less mainstream and people are less likely to identify themselves by subgroups formed around a music type. Young people are not on mass claiming to be Punks, goths, hippies, metal fans, disco heads, something new etc. Which has slowed down the evolution of music.
That’s a niche. Not mainstream.
I had to explain it to several others students in 2001. That is not “was mainstream in the late 90s”. That’s “was breaking out” at best.
Still dwarfed by Netflix with a ~$10B market cap, this battle isn't over. Amazon has a decent shot as well.
There are only 8 billion people in the world, and each can spend at most X hours per day watching streaming video. It seems to be clearly in the interest of each provider to try to obtain all X of those hours.
Not so. You're confusing subscription-based revenue-stream with advertising-based revenue-stream.
Netflix's subscription is a flat rate, and they have no ads, so unlike YouTube they don't make money per hour of viewing.
The ideal case for Netflix is if I pay my monthly subscription, but don't watch anything at all. They get their money, but it minimises their server load. Of course, in reality, if they want to persuade me to keep my subscription, they'd better offer good content - if I'm watching nothing at all, I'm likely to cancel.
If they out-compete Hulu, they can charge more than Hulu. Sure. What's the worry? In a functioning marketplace, an inferior service is priced lower.
I don't think there's much risk that they'll go the clickbait route and start acting against the viewer's interests for revenue. I don't see how they could. Subscription services are much more resistant to that kind of thing than free services.
The competition is tough. They're unlikely to feel free to charge significantly more... because they aren't.
I'm fairly confident Netflix aren't dumb enough to try anything like adverts. Millennials hate that kind of thing, and it would be a real mistake.
https://www.hulu.com/nocommercials https://help.hulu.com/en-us/included-in-no-commercials-plan
The "no commercials" thing is a big deal for me.
If you add Prime for Mr Robot and Netflix for Stranger Things, it starts to get quite expensive.
I record and skip the ads at ×30. Not ideal but what options are there that don't involve DVDs?
One odd and disappointing thing we've noticed: Unless required by the script, almost all the protagonists are white-skinned (or very pale), no matter what the country. Even in the U.S., that's only ~66% of the population; in Brazil?
It's bizarre to see and very troubling to me. I'm not sure I want to support that, but there aren't a large number of options that are better. Looking at Amazon, it's pretty similar. Here's a trick to gain some perspective as you go through your day: When you look at a group of Americans - Senators, SV people, faces on movie icons on Amazon, etc, - remember that they come from a country that is only 1/3 white guys. It's striking to see.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Keep in mind that many of the "Netflix Originals" are not made by Netflix at all. In Australia "The Expanse" is a Netflix Original, even though it was made by SyFy & streamed on Amazon US. Similarly, "Glitch" is labelled Netflix Original in the US, but not in Australia, and it was made for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
As far as I can tell, Netflix Original only means they have exclusive distribution rights for a limited time in that country.
You can actually do faster paced, more engaging content. Just look at 12 Monkeys and Fringe.
They are still listing Friends and Breaking Bad, you're just not furious about those.
> "Netflix is providing content for a broader ideological range."
Furthermore, this is not actually the opposite of what I said. ("I think it should suffice to say that the range of netflix content is far narrower than the ideological range of the general population.") You use the word "broader", which is a relative term, but don't specify precisely what you are relating Netflix to. I assume you are relating it to traditional television programming (I assume this since the two shows you mentioned by name were traditional television programming.) But if you'll read my statement again, you'll see that's not what I was relating Netflix to.
I related the range of Neflix content to the ideological range of the general population. Not to traditional television, to the general population. Do I really need to explain that traditional television too only covers a small slice of the ideological range of the general population? I'll do so:
There are ideas and worldviews out there in which you'll never find mentioned or catered to in any mainstream television show or any Netflix show. The reasons for this are as varied as the ideas and worldviews themselves. Some don't get on TV or Netflix because they are difficult to monetize or run contrary to corporate interests. Some are too niche to bother recognizing, and others are offensive to other larger portions of society (I assume you assume it all falls under this later category, because you're eager to act morally righteous. I assume that about you because you assumed I was furious.) Some ideas and worldviews go unrecognized by television and netflix simply because they've gone unnoticed by television and netflix executives and filmmakers.
The sum of human ideology, ideas and worldviews is MUCH larger than the sum of what traditional television and netflix has on display. It's healthy to recognize this because failure to do so necessarily means your understanding of the world is contracted to the intersection of what mass media executives think publishable (that is, what they can agree amongst themselves to publish.)
I now understand your statement meant something like "Netflix content has a narrower ideological range than the ideological range of the whole population"
I recognise why you think this is an important claim here, but I don't think it is a useful comparison - no content provider can provide for the complete diversity of 7 billion people: it's not a fair comparison. A content provider can only make decisions within the resources that they have.
Meanwhile, I was saying "Netflix content has a broader ideological range [than equivalent TV networks and content providers]".
By picking those two shows, I was identifying that Netflix does not exclude people who were previously satisfied with that narrower range of content.
Personally if I'm going to sit down and passively consume media, I usually like it to be about people making things, ideally with constrained resources. Preferably nonfiction. At any point in time Netflix may have a handful of documentaries that fit the bill, but compared to a platform like youtube it's basically nothing.
The real complaint being dog whistled is that there is _any_ content not matching GP's worldview.
Good. Between DRM, regions, anti theft videos and scratches, I’d given up in them before there was a good alternative.
What makes you think the medium has stopped developing? It's quite likely that something else will be invented that will be superior to any of those, and that will make you wonder why you ever put up with them.
Other forms of content have been completely transformed by the change in medium. Podcasts have built upon their radio legacy and diversified tremendously. YouTube allowed people to share nearly anything from incoherent rants to whole college courses.
Netflix merely replaced the ads with subscription and remains the same cognitive parasite TV was, pumping out stuff that you're better off not watching at all. Another Grey's Anatomy or Glee, do you want that?
Besides the obvious Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad there's Stranger things, Black Mirror, Westworld, just to name a few. Hell, all of the above are much much better than 90% of the crappy Marvel/superhero/blockbuster movie Hollywood keeps spewing nowadays.
I think what the OP is trying to say here is that for example netflix just mass produces shows with the same people over and over again dropping the quality of its shows. I'd say netflix has some good shows to watch, but the way its going and the way its producing shows I'd say most of netflix shows are garbage with only a few of them being nice to watch.
With legacy tv you are the product, the show is the overhead, and the advertisers are the customer. With Netflix you are the customer and the show is the product.
While the tidal wave of capeshit is unwatchable and depressing, this is not all the competition Netflix has to contend with. First, you have every movie and tv show ever made. Then you can watch them again. Most shows can't even beat a 7th rewatch of Seinfeld.
Second, you can do something else than watching TV, like hitting the gym, writing a blog, taking your dog for a surprise extra walk, playing with your kids, making a steak instead of having takeout, cleaning your room while listening to Jordan Peterson telling you to clean your room... anything really.
And, I would argue, all of these are a better use of time than anything on Netflix right now.
I fundamentally disagree - there's plenty of absolute gems on broadcast TV that are rendered unwatchable by ads and requiring a specific time. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is one I'm watching right now that I'd never watch on either TV, buy the DVD of or watch a limited selection of episodes on any of the broadcaster's streaming services that have ads.
Sadly, such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video streaming casino.
Netflix are clearly only interested in the subscription model, but if you want a la carte rentals, they're available from Google/Amazon/Rakuten/Sony/Microsoft/Apple.
> such rental it's not going to happen because companies want to hold their deck of "cards" and refuse to share it with other tables in this video streaming casino
From a more optimistic angle, it's neat that Netflix can exist at all at its current pricepoint.