One thing that bothers me personally is that nowadays everything is a membership, but what bothers me most about the subscription model is the fact that the price goes up and up indefinitely and many people really don’t mind paying $2 or more a month.
I mean, let’s take for example the case of Netflix (I know the image is old, but I couldn’t find anything better), where it went from costing $7.99 in 2014 a month to $15.99 in 2019, literally double, and it will surely keep going up and up, if this trend continues and it surely will soon people will be paying $30 a month without any problem.
I understand that a market like Netflix (to follow the initial example) is an expensive market to maintain, both for equipment, staff and licenses and it is obvious that the economy is not the same in 2014 as it was in 2019, but how are people ok knowing that the price doubled in 5 years? If that continues in 2024 the price would be $30, and if it was people would still be fine paying it.
I don’t use Netflix but I understand why people use it, both because of the recommendation algorithm and the simplicity, but damn, if in a year they say they are going to raise the price $5 a month people would be happy to pay it and I don’t understand it, much less those who pay several memberships of the same type (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, etc).
My fundamental problem with Netflix isn’t that it’s $20/mo for streaming TV/movies. Its that Netflix has gone from the single bulk distributor of streaming content to one of at least half a dozen “good(ish)” services that also all want to charge $20/mo. When they had the full Disney/Marvel list plus a bunch of self-published anime plus indie dramas plus a huge back catalog, I was fine with it. But now I’m just going to pirate, because over half of what I use Netflix for is gone.
What’s really got me in a lather is streaming sports, which has functionally become all subscription services that are even more expensive than Netflix. Fuck you, YouTube. I’m not paying $60/mo for sports. It’s practically cheaper to get tickets to the actual games.
And with sports, at least, its much harder to find live streams that aren’t scams or walls of ads or abysmally low grade streams. That’s the one thing I can’t pirate, so I’ve fallen off watching entirely.
Which really sucks, when your team is in the playoffs.
Edit: Seriously, fuck this shit.
If you’re looking for nfl specifically, nfl+ premium isn’t too bad. Local, primetime, playoffs and redzone for $15/month. Sunday ticket is a price gouge, but not really any other way to legally watch your team if you live out of market and they aren’t on primetime
Came here to post this, Netflix sucks now and if they have a show worth watching they’ll probably cancel it within two seasons, plus the TERF apologism too.