So, Disney + is going to start imbedding commercials…

HBO Max is considering doing the same thing. Basically, expect this of all streaming services. Amazon has their own version with "Freevee" that includes ads (but still excellent shows like Bosch: Legacy).

You can have ad free content still, but you'll pay for it.

What I'm wondering is what happens to me, given that I basically got 4 years of D+ at a specific rate. I got a free year from Verizon, and did the 3 year subscription plan. So by my calculations, I should at least have another year of service ad-free regardless of what they do with their service, and they shouldn't be able to force me to upgrade.
 
It seems to me that no matter how much money a publicly traded company makes, they still need to keep increasing their profits for the shareholders. So with streaming services, once they hit a plateau with subscribers, the only option left to increase profits is to charge more for their product. It's unsustainable. And as with all publicly traded corporations, once they can't increase profits, they end up slashing budgets, and cutting jobs and salaries (not for the top brass, of course) to create the illusion of higher profits. It's a never ending cycle of greed.
 
Bloop said:
It seems to me that no matter how much money a publicly traded company makes, they still need to keep increasing their profits for the shareholders. So with streaming services, once they hit a plateau with subscribers, the only option left to increase profits is to charge more for their product. It's unsustainable. And as with all publicly traded corporations, once they can't increase profits, they end up slashing budgets, and cutting jobs and salaries (not for the top brass, of course) to create the illusion of higher profits. It's a never ending cycle of greed.
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I mean, yeah, that's basically how the stock market works: everything is oriented around increasing share value. It's all short-term focused rather than focusing around long-term viability.
 
Picard102 said:
decentralization and Ads were a consumer pain point.
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This exactly. That was the “promise” of iTunes and similar content libraries like Steam. All the content you wanted in one place and you could access it anywhere, at anytime with no interruptions.
That quickly morphed into just a straight copy of the previous entertainment business models with competing platforms, lock in contracts, ever increasing fees, poor quality and multiple pain points.
We’ve gone from “one place for everything you want” to media companies actually bragging about exclusive content and locking benefits behind paywalls. Saying “the only way you’ll get to see this material is by paying us an exclusive fee and letting us control how and when you access” is now a major advertising and promotional point for them.
Anytime one of these companies says “aren’t we great? We locked down exclusive access to this game/show/movie” I find myself screaming “No! You’re not great! You’re ruining the experience for your own customers.” Same thing when every 2-bit studio declares they’re starting their own platform.
1 step forward, 2 steps back.
 
What I can't fathom is why the entertainment industry gets a pass time and time again from consumers? Whether it's Disney, or Hulu, HBO Max, Netflix, or whoever it is, people don't seem to recognize the power they wield as paying customers. These services aren't necessities like utilities or groceries and people can just as easily cancel their subscriptions if the fees get to be too absurd.

Streaming is a great convenience and it certainly has it's place, but there will come a point where the price just might not be worth it. Making shareholders happy is important for a company, but I think too many of them forget that customer service is equally important to their survival as a business. I think it's perfectly reasonable to take them to task if they raise rates or if their content sucks. You're paying for their service, which is by definition, discretionary. If that service is no longer meeting your needs, you go elsewhere.

It's hilarious to me that with the deluge of content available to us, it can still take my wife and I almost an hour to find a something we'll want to watch together. This was a concern back in the days of cable, and the long standing joke was, "look, we have 150 channels and there's still nothing to watch." I guess some things never change.
 
Psab keel said:
What I can't fathom is why the entertainment industry gets a pass time and time again from consumers? Whether it's Disney, or Hulu, HBO Max, Netflix, or whoever it is, people don't seem to recognize the power they wield as paying customers. These services aren't necessities like utilities or groceries and people can just as easily cancel their subscriptions if the fees get to be too absurd.
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Which is the position I've always had. If I'm not getting the service I want at a price I'm willing to pay, I do without. It's really simple. It's why we cut the cord in the first place, because we were paying for all of this content that wasn't worth watching. Streaming doesn't make it any better.

I was having this exact same discussion with someone over comic books. He spends all of his time complaining how terrible they are, yet he still keeps buying them week after week. STOP DOING IT! You are just giving them your money, rewarding them for their incompetence, just so you can complain about it. That's idiotic. In fact, the whole idea of rage-watching, or in this case, rage-reading, I guess, is dumb. If you do it, you've got problems. Stop watching things you don't enjoy. Stop paying for things you don't enjoy. Stop supporting things that you don't like. Stop being an idiot. It's the only way that things will change.

It's really not that hard.
 
Riceball said:
Hulu has been doing this before Disney decided to do the same, Netflix had recently announced that it was going to do the same, and the anime streaming site has been doing this for forever whee you could watch things for free but with tons of commercials and at a much lower video quality.
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Fair enough. However that doesn't mean that it's a good idea for the trend to continue especially with a behemoth like D+. The only reason this persists is because consumers continue to allow it to. If we don't say no now and keep making excuses it's going to continue to get worse. If D+ shows this is successful with their customers then more streaming services will likely follow suit. If we again adopt the attitude that nothing can turn the tide and things will escalate no matter what, then that is what will occur.
 
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Acting as if the consumer is powerless is just the mentality ANY of these streaming services are counting on so they can continue increasing prices. There's a lot of truth in the sentiment that you tell corporations how you want to be treated by rewarding their tactics with your hard earned money, or by refraining from purchasing their services. While price increases are always inevitable, if enough people are willing tolerate a bit of incovenience, the market will eventually have to shift to suit their needs and not just serve to profit the company alone. The consumer has the cash, so vote with your wallet! The only power these industries have is the power we give them.
 
Starganderfish said:
This exactly. That was the “promise” of iTunes and similar content libraries like Steam. All the content you wanted in one place and you could access it anywhere, at anytime with no interruptions.
That quickly morphed into just a straight copy of the previous entertainment business models with competing platforms, lock in contracts, ever increasing fees, poor quality and multiple pain points.
We’ve gone from “one place for everything you want” to media companies actually bragging about exclusive content and locking benefits behind paywalls. Saying “the only way you’ll get to see this material is by paying us an exclusive fee and letting us control how and when you access” is now a major advertising and promotional point for them.
Anytime one of these companies says “aren’t we great? We locked down exclusive access to this game/show/movie” I find myself screaming “No! You’re not great! You’re ruining the experience for your own customers.” Same thing when every 2-bit studio declares they’re starting their own platform.
1 step forward, 2 steps back.
Click to expand...
Very similar to the video game industry,years ago it started as a “pay to win” if you PO the game you received exclusive content that give you an edge.Then you buy the base game and have to pay for “exclusive” weapons,levels etc that should have already been in the game.
 
Psab keel said:
Acting as if the consumer is powerless is just the mentality ANY of these streaming services are counting on so they can continue increasing prices. There's a lot of truth in the sentiment that you tell corporations how you want to be treated by rewarding their tactics with your hard earned money, or by refraining from purchasing their services. While price increases are always inevitable, if enough people are willing tolerate a bit of incovenience, the market will eventually have to shift to suit their needs and not just serve to profit the company alone. The consumer has the cash, so vote with your wallet! The only power these industries have is the power we give them.
Click to expand...
Your absolutely right about voting with your wallet.Alas some like to be powerless and let the corporations dictate what the consumer will do.Read back a few pages,a few people have flat out said the would pay more for no commercials.Unless everyone is willing to stand together...
 
Does not surprise me. I know most probably don’t notice, but In spite of big numbers I doubt very many are actually paying for it currently. I actually have TWO different free subscriptions that come with other things I buy.

The current model is likely the “first ones free” offering to get people hooked. Note the ad version will likely become what we get as “free” with all the other things that come with Disney plus, and the ad free you’ll have to pay for.

Hulu is kind of the same thing. It also comes free with my internet provider, but if I want ad free I have to pay.
 
Psab keel said:
What I can't fathom is why the entertainment industry gets a pass time and time again from consumers? Whether it's Disney, or Hulu, HBO Max, Netflix, or whoever it is, people don't seem to recognize the power they wield as paying customers. These services aren't necessities like utilities or groceries and people can just as easily cancel their subscriptions if the fees get to be too absurd.
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Two reasons:

1. People aren't bothered enough to quit altogether, because they want the content.

2. Other options are either unavailable or dwindling. By which I mean there is no competing service that offers people what they want in the model they wish to consume it, so they make do with what they have. Again, because they want the content.

Psab keel said:
Acting as if the consumer is powerless is just the mentality ANY of these streaming services are counting on so they can continue increasing prices. There's a lot of truth in the sentiment that you tell corporations how you want to be treated by rewarding their tactics with your hard earned money, or by refraining from purchasing their services. While price increases are always inevitable, if enough people are willing tolerate a bit of incovenience, the market will eventually have to shift to suit their needs and not just serve to profit the company alone. The consumer has the cash, so vote with your wallet! The only power these industries have is the power we give them.
Click to expand...
The consumer isn't powerless insofar as they have the ability to decide whether they spend their money.
 
That's my point, exactly. The consumer has more power than they give themselves credit for and if enough people were truly fed up with it, they could shift the market enough to get the streaming services to rethink their price hikes.

Again I'm well aware that most might gripe about it for a while but just cough up the cash in the end, but on principle I think it's predatory the way these companies feel they can strong arm everyone into complying.
 
This is the same thing that happened with cable, the big draw was not having ads... until you do.
How long was it before cable started running ads? How many subscribers were lost when they did? I never had cable, only Dish network for a few months in 1996. That was the last time I paid for TV until I signed up for HBO max to watch GOT season 8.

Currently I've got HBO, Prime, YouTube RED, Netflix (with my phone plan) and Peacock (with my internet). The last two I don't think I'd keep if I had to pay for them, not enough on either to interest me.
I found RED to be the cat's meow, haven't seen or heard an ad on YouTube all year and I consume several hours a day of audio/video there.
 
Cable always had ads. It was pay channels that didn't and still don't. At least that's how it was here.

Streaming was invented as a way to one-up the cable industry, keep the price down and not have ads. No ads was how they got people away from cable in the first place.

As for as what Solo4114 said, it's option 2. HBO added ads, netflix caved and added ads, hulu always had a package with ads, so Disney just said 'why should we lose that money?' and added an add supported tier. Yeah, if you could get what you wanted by going to a place without ads, great. I'd do that too. The problem is, they all have now and even if they don't, these companies have managed to create services that house just 'their' content so you have no option to get it anywhere else.

This is likely the argument against studios owning theaters. If Disney owns AMC (for example) and they put out Avatar II in theaters only, then they can release it to AMC only and instead of $15/ticket or whatever your local rate is, it becomes $50 across the board and you have no choice because you won't find any theater showing it at a different price because Disney owns all the theaters showing it. Same thing will happen here. Are people going to drop disney if they jack up rates to 30/month? I'm sure they will, but at some point they'll sign up for a month, binge everything they want and quit again. If you want to see Star Wars or Marvel, for example, there is no other choice.

It didn't seem this crass 20-30 years ago, but now, that's the model. Create a company, generate buzz, cash in with an IPO and now stockholders call all the shots and do so to squeeze every penny out if they can.
 

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