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Netflix is starting to raise prices in some countries as growth spurred by its crackdown on password sharing starts to fade.

The film and TV streaming giant said it had already lifted subscription fees in Japan and parts of Europe as well as the Middle East and Africa over the last month.

Changes in Italy and Spain are now being rolled-out.

In its latest results, Netflix announced that it had added 5.1 million subscribers between July and September - ahead of forecasts but the smallest gain in more than a year.

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[-] shoulderoforion@fedia.io 145 points 1 month ago

See, the problem with publicly traded corporations is, they've got to constantly not only be making as much money this year as they did the previous year, but they've got to increase shareholder value, which means, raising prices, or reducing the product to save costs, we have termed that last bit enshitification. I mean, they don't HAVE to, but if they choose not to, the board of directors will push for a change in CSUITE personnel, and those fuckers are raking in the big bucks, and really really like their 3rd vacation homes in Aspen, so you pay more, or you get less, and sometimes you pay more AND you get less. And the beat goes on.

[-] NotAnArdvark@lemmy.ca 47 points 1 month ago

I don't see what would be wrong with a world where businesses just satisfied themselves with providing employees with a reasonable living, contributed to the communities they were in, and provided a good or service that was needed. Sitting under a tree and reading a book sounds better than watching the world burn in your name-brand clothes and 5 bedroom 2.5 bath house.

[-] NoForwardslashS@sopuli.xyz 29 points 1 month ago

That sir, is communism. And we all learned from 80s action movies that communism is bad.

[-] DdCno1@beehaw.org 18 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

In the real world, communism also suffered from the mandated growth problem, as well as a long list of other issues that some people still like to pretend solely exist under capitalism and some serious problems that are exclusive to this system. Yes, it is actually bad, with and without Cold War propaganda making it sound both worse and better than it actually was. It failed everywhere for a reason.

This doesn't mean that there aren't real issues with capitalism as well. So far, the best system we've come up with as a species is heavily regulated capitalism with strong social safety nets. Not perfect, but nothing is on this rock.

[-] Viri4thus@feddit.org 2 points 10 hours ago

The fact you didn't get the guy was referring to the scare of Communism, rather than advocating for communism, and you immediately went into post hoc rationalisation mode is the best evidence to how accurate his comment is. Furthermore it is an excellent reflection of modern US society. You yanks would rather cut your nose to spite your face than to grow a modicum of empathy for the human condition.

[-] DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 points 7 hours ago

Swing and miss. I'm not even American. I am from a country that suffered under real-world Communism for decades though.

[-] Viri4thus@feddit.org 1 points 7 hours ago
[-] DdCno1@beehaw.org 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

My great uncle (who was 12 at the end of WW2) had to hide from the Soviets for years, caught pneumonia and almost died before he managed to escape over the Iron Curtain. He suffered from serious health complications for the rest of his life. His mother was murdered on the spot, his teenage sister abducted into the Gulag system. She died somewhere in the Ural mountains, never to be heard of or seen again.

You on the other hand feel smug and smart about yourself by using entry level college vocabulary on a topic you know less than nothing about. There are few people on this planet I detest more than those who are, for whatever reason, carrying water for authoritarians and authoritarian systems.

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[-] entropicdrift@lemmy.sdf.org 44 points 1 month ago

I mean, they don't HAVE to, but if they choose not to, the board of directors will push for a change in CSUITE personnel

If the board doesn't maximize profit, the shareholders can sue them, so functionally they do have to.

[-] Album@lemmy.ca 34 points 1 month ago

Specifically, the Board and thus the CEO must maximize company VALUE not profit.

There are other ways to increase company value that do not necessarily result in Q/Q / Y/Y profit increases.

But in the 1970s you get a guy named Milton Friedman who comes along with the concept of shareholder value in a 1970 essay for The New York Times, entitled "A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits".[5] In it, he argued that a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders.

So there's been a lot of argument against it since esp as of late, but the economic hegemony still adheres to Friedman's economic principles.

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[-] DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.com 53 points 1 month ago

lol - I love that I canned all my paid subs that were fucking me up the arse like this, and then used the savings to setup a half-decent Plex server for my family. Fuck those greedy cunts.

[-] karashta@lemm.ee 20 points 1 month ago

I keep telling my friends this. It was incredibly simple to do. And you can start with only a couple smaller 1 or 4 TB drives and still end up starting a decent collection

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[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 11 points 1 month ago

These owners forgot that media is 100% discretionary spend AND has superior alternative that can be had close to free and a bit of labour....

I know owners thinks we are all brain dead and only able to consoom... Is we tho?

[-] Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Pretty much the only one i'm still happy with is crunchyroll. They don't fuck around despite being basically the only game in town.

Netflix I pay for begrudgingly but if they raise the price substantially or add mandatory ads EVER they are gonna be gone. I'm already pissed they are axing Kaos, like so many other good shows before it.

Already axed prime last year due to them adding ads, I don't even miss the expedited delivery because all the big box stores deliver for free, some even same day, at equivalent prices.

Disney recently boned me out of account sharing, so my plex server is getting pimped out. $1000 buy gets you substantial NAS storage for 6-7 years. That's ~$14/mo if you replace nothing for 6 years. By the time drives start dying the sizes double and you can expand your raid as they die off one by one.

Anywho, Plex servers (and other FOSS alternatives now) usually have no problems transcoding and serving multiple 1080p and 4k streams concurrently. Plus you can download media for offline play within the respective server's app on all kinds of devices, and for plex the server owner doesn't need to license guests. That being said, non-plex options are what i'd go with because they are as good or better without any license cost. I just use plex because I bought a lifetime sub before the alternatives were mature. It's nice having a library that only grows, never shrinks. No temporary licenses or content runs so I can have a massive backlog and not worry if I don't get around to it for years. Just a lot of wins, no downsides that I know of.

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Hmm, it appears if we squeeze tighter, more blood will come out. Surely there is no natural limit to this principle.

[-] souperk@reddthat.com 23 points 1 month ago

Friendly reminder that the high seas are always an option. Download stremio, install the torrentio addon, and you are good to go.

[-] DdCno1@beehaw.org 14 points 1 month ago

Only use torrents if you know what you're doing. In the developed world, this usually ends with a very expensive letter in your mailbox.

[-] cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 1 month ago

You can get a VPN or seedbox to avoid those letters. They are a lot cheaper than a single streaming service.

[-] remington@beehaw.org 5 points 1 month ago

Using a VPN solved this problem for me. If you don't want to pay for a VPN, then use OpenVPN Connect.

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[-] AJ1@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 month ago

I guess Canada must be undeveloped, cause I've never seen one of those "expensive letters" in my mailbox

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[-] AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 21 points 1 month ago

You know what? I'm gonna Sonarr and Jellyfin even harder

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[-] als@lemmy.blahaj.zone 19 points 1 month ago

I love that they think upping prices will keep people around to pay those prices?

[-] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 25 points 1 month ago

TBH it has been working so far...

[-] li10@feddit.uk 13 points 1 month ago

Yeah, Lemmy loves to talk about how this won’t work and they’ve moved to Plex, but overall it’s been working great for Netflix.

Eventually the bubble will burst and people will start to drop Netflix, but that’s a way off.

[-] Kichae@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 month ago

The price is still elastic because many people have another streaming service they can drop. But as they all raise prices, they'll all be whittled down to just one. And then possibly none.

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[-] I_am_10_squirrels@beehaw.org 16 points 1 month ago

About once a year, we get a Netflix subscription for about two months. Catch up on everything we want to watch, then cancel it.

After 6 months, Netflix forgets about you. Does that mean we count as a new subscriber every year? How many people like us are inflating their new subscriber number?

[-] TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip 5 points 1 month ago

Obviously Netfilx wants to tell the stock holders how many “new subscribers” they have every quarter. Nobody stopped to think what those numbers actually mean.

Quality down, prices up. How long is this trend going to last?

[-] CileTheSane@lemmy.ca 20 points 1 month ago

Until it stops increasing profits.

Beatings continue until morale improves

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[-] prex@aussie.zone 19 points 1 month ago
[-] Infynis@midwest.social 17 points 1 month ago

Netflix's content has gotten so much worse too. I don't think there are many people left that have a subscription for more than one or two shows. And this seems to be a trend across all the different apps. Makes me glad I set up automatic torrenting for everything I'm interested in, and all it costs me is $5/month for Proton VPN

[-] ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 month ago

I don't know about you but content has gotten better for me.

Ranma 1/2, Squid Games, Super Mario Bros Movie, new season of Arcane. I felt like every 1-2 months, there was always something interesting.

Also note that I don't pay for Netflix. I do own stock.

BUY MORE NETFLIX SUBSCRIPTIONS..

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[-] shirro@aussie.zone 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

They cancelled one too many shows we liked a long time ago and we swore off Netflix for life. Never going back. If they ever make another good show I will wait awhile to see if they cancel it or ruin it before I go get it from somewhere else. They burned a lot of their old loyal customers that made them a success and now they have to acquire new customers faster than they lose them which isn't sustainable.

[-] solsangraal@lemmy.zip 13 points 1 month ago

The company is under pressure to show investors what will power growth in the years ahead, as its already massive reach makes finding new subscribers more difficult.

LOL i think the only potential "new subscribers" remaining are the people who never had and never will have a netflix sub. at this point one of the many reasons i'll never sign up is because fuck shareholders in general

[-] monobot@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

Just idea that they expect growth where there is none is strange. This business are at the limit and have no way to grow faster than economic situation of many people around the world gets better.

Sad part is fir them it is better to destroy service trying to increase growth in meaningless ways, than to just find a way to keep the business that is working.

Idea of infinite growth is ruining us.

[-] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 12 points 1 month ago

It’s not me, Netflix, it’s you.

[-] orcrist@lemm.ee 12 points 1 month ago

The Pirate Bay will always be with us.

[-] AFC1886VCC@reddthat.com 10 points 1 month ago

Don't be a pleb. Sail the high seas!

[-] beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 month ago

I was celebrating the signup / binge / cancel pipeline, but now I’m realising: a next step they could use to prevent that would be putting caps on your watch time, like “you only get 20h of content a month” or something.

Wouldn’t be a surprise to see this. I’m callin it now lol

[-] ilega_dh@feddit.nl 7 points 1 month ago

They’ll call it a “fair use policy” and the exact limits are secret

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[-] IcePee@lemmy.beru.co 6 points 1 month ago

I was shocked about the amount of content when I browsed BBC's Iplayer service. They even have films. If you want to save some well known movies and are in the UK, you could exhaust their selection before even having to put your hand in your pocket to splash out on extra privatised content.

[-] apotheotic@beehaw.org 6 points 1 month ago

*if you're paying for a TV license

[-] RandomStickman@fedia.io 6 points 1 month ago

The death spiral continues

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this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2024
166 points (100.0% liked)

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