Exactly what I dropped by to say. NFL fanatics like me will continue to pay so as to watch that game each week.
nvm
Most of the videos we want to watch we have to rent anyways. Remind me why I’m paying for the service?
Is it really Amazon’s fault you keep wanting the wrong movies? 
There will be no charge to watch stuff on Prime. But you can pay extra not to get “limited commercials”, just like with YouTube, but quite a bit less. Ads on streaming services are not uncommon. Netflix has them, unless you pay more.
The free shipping make Prime well worth it for us.
Most of the stuff gets free shipping, but some things dont, like the used books from indy booksellers. Incidentally, I know a couple of Indy used booksellers and they say that selling on Amazon has saved their business.
So, if you dont watch a lot of Prime video, just a few special shows like Good Omens (which is fantastic!) you may still want prime for the free shipping.
Free shipping? Prime day deals? Other cool stuff?
And you can still watch everything without paying extra.
Thing is, I really resent people putting ads in front of my face when I’m paying them not to. If I wanted to see ads, I would watch cable TV. I haven’t had cable since I was an adolescent. It’s always been Netflix and streaming for as long as I can remember. And I enjoyed that experience almost exclusively ad-free for two decades. They want to change it now because they are greedy assholes who are desperate to grow their unsustainable business model? It’s going to hurt them. My FOMO has limits and these companies are close to breaking them. I hate advertising more than I hate missing the latest show. And I don’t think I’m alone.
Oddly, if you watch Premium channels on Cable TV, there are no ads, except maybe for their own other shows. But you have to pay extra not to get ads on Netflix.
I was also thinking too about how the writers strike is going to affect the availability of content and they maybe couldn’t have picked a worse time to demand more from consumers.
Lately we’ve just been rotating through streaming services depending on what we’re watching. I don’t think Netflix is on our current docket, and I don’t think I begrudged paying more for ads because I already pay more for UHD.
Paramount+ is charging me more to still have to sit through their ads and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I didn’t love Star Trek so damned much.
I find this an odd perspective. The fact is that streaming has been underpriced for a long time, because streaming companies all wanted to build market share. Media companies are upset because they don’t make nearly so much money out of it as they did from cable.
Even with recent price increases for ad-free service, it’s clear to me that I’m getting vastly superior service and value for money compared to cable. I pay $50 a month for high speed internet, and even if added ALL the major streaming services ad-free, I’d still be paying less than I did for cable. For a huge selection of content, all on demand, all completely ad free.
In fact it’s better than that, because none of the streaming services demand a commitment to a long continuous contract, so you can have one or two going and switch between them month to month.
In absolute terms… about $100 per month for high speed internet and on-demand ad-free streaming of everything I want? I think it’s incredible value for what I’m getting.
I agree that is incredible value. It’s nowhere near what I have to pay. My Internet alone is $120/month. And I don’t watch TV that often. One episode a day if we’re lucky.
One of the main problems AIUI is that streaming services were valued as a tech start-up vs. however they value cable and other media. So the expectation of revenue growth is akin to something like Meta, as opposed to say, NBC. This has put them in a bind with shareholders. I have a link about this I can share later. And that was the source of my comment about an unsustainable business model.
Right, but that’s just saying that we have always been getting it at a big discount to a “fair” price, not that what they are doing now is price gouging. And it’s not as though it’s a situation where one company has discounted it to put everyone else out of business and now has massive pricing power. It’s still very competitive.
I can see calling it underpriced if they are operating at a loss. But if it’s just that they weren’t making as much money as cable, then I don’t see that as underpriced. Cable was overpriced, and fewer people are watching TV now that there are other options for video content. Sure, under capitalism, something is “underpriced” if you could make more money—balancing losing customers with increased revenue. But I don’t find that model to be indicative of actual value.
Though I must admit that I object more to the ads than I did their previous price increases. It feels to me like the goal is to annoy enough people to “voluntarily” pay more. Online ads don’t make a lot of money. We know that from all the independent content creators. The price delta seems too high. It’s more obvious on other services, but even the $3 increase here seems like more than they would make off of ads on the average viewer.
With all these moves, including cracking down on password sharing and removing shows and such, it seems like they’re not only calling attention to themselves, but acting like they’re getting desperate, having to pull out all the stops. And yet they don’t seem to actually be in dire straits. So it’s no wonder it comes across like price gouging to a lot of people.
And it’s not like I expect the ad-free tiers to reduce in price as the economy gets better.
I wouldn’t consider it a “big discount.” But circumstances have changed. When Netflix was just Netflix, $17/month is no big deal to me. Then come Hulu and Amazon Prime. Then come AppleTV and Paramount and Peacock and whatever else. So a lot of consumers find themselves paying a hefty price for a smaller fraction of the content of each of these services. When Netflix was all I watched, the cheaper price was worth it. But they’ve jacked up their prices in a much more competitive atmosphere. it’s not worth $17 to watch one season of one series on Netflix. These companies have kind of orchestrated their own failure by all throwing their hat in the ring.
I can’t find that YouTube video I promised, sorry. It’s not in my history for some reason. But it looks like there are many videos on that subject available for those who are interested.
I may rethink my Prime subscription. I just paid for it, so I have another year to think about it.
I agree with this. I don’t think deliberately making their base model more shitty and requiring people to upgrade to the service they were enjoying before is going to win them any favors. It does look desperate.
I live in Chicago which, as a very big city, has great shipping. Indeed, there is a local(ish) Amazon warehouse and, on some items, I can get same day shipping.
BUT…
The two day shipping thing is down the tubes. They have gotten ever more evasive on that one. 2-day shipping if you order before 10a and 2-day shipping is only business days so if you order today, and we fulfill tomorrow, and ship the next day then it can take a week. Not to mention “not fulfilled by Amazon” sellers in which case anything can happen.
Then they have Prime Video but how often do you see something on their Prime Video page that is not free? Subscribe to Paramount or buy this video. Then they have FreeVee which is ad only videos. It already sucks.
And I used Amazon for grocery delivery. They stopped free delivery unless you bought $100 (I think) of food. I am single. Not going to buy $100 of food in a given order.
Now they want to put more ads on Prime.
I am really wondering why I do it anymore. Most big box retailers, having to compete with Amazon, offer free shipping and I do not have to pay $139/year to get it. If they keep adding all these extra costs and ads why do I want to pay $139/year for it?
Pretty sure I’m bailing on Amazon when they put the ads in. There just is really no benefit to having it anymore.
I admit it makes sense for Amazon to find ways to pay for production of new content. I’ve been surprised at the professional product of shows like Terminal List, Jack Ryan and Jack Reacher.
I was expecting something like the original Doctor Who sets. Walls that shook, covered in aluminum foil, and primarily interior shots. Who can forget the endless chases up and down the same hallways 
The cheesy production helped endure fans to the show.
I can’t see much difference in a CBS series and a Amazon series. The professionalism is very similar.
It is extremely expensive to write and produce original content.
The trick is they now only make eight episodes per year and may take two years for another season.
Back in the day, Star Trek: TNG was the most expensive show on TV and they had 24-28 episodes per season. Every year for many years.
And while cancelling TV shows has been a thing for a long time Netflix and Amazon have been notorious for cancelling shows that are loved by some but don’t meet some mass market metric. So annoying (Netflix is especially criticized for this).
Well that’s a bummer. I’ll probably pay. I have five streaming services: Amazon Prime, Hulu, Paramount+, HBO Max and Peacock. (I dropped Netflix a year ago.) I pay extra to go ad free on all of them that offer such a thing, so I don’t see it being any different with Prime.
As for two day shipping, it’s still pretty reliable here. Most stuff arrives in two or three days, and many of my orders are well under $25. A non-trivial amount of my orders arrive next day.
Lately I’ve been watching a lot more streaming, and something like 75% of it has been on Amazon Prime. Ironically, maybe half of that 75% has been on Prime channels with ads, like freevee. And right at this moment I happen to be watching Hell House LLC for the first time (on Prime proper, so no ads) based on a recommendation I saw on Reddit. So far it is awesome.
Someone mentioned the strike, but I think I heard that it just ended so I came to the dope to look for any news when I stumbled across this thread. Anyone know where the strike thread is?
Things were easier and cheaper when Netflix was just about the only streaming service around. In 2008, they signed a deal with Starz that added about a thousand movies to the Netflix streaming service. The deal only cost them about $30 million each year. Later, as everyone developed their own streaming service, the competition for content grew, so that in 2019, Netflix paid something like $500 million for the streaming rights to Seinfeld. And similar deals were struck by various streaming services for other popular shows like The Office or Friends. (Nice deals if you own part of one of these shows.)