> The move was linked to a fall in users of more than a million, two thirds of whom were using someone else’s password
> Subscription cancellations in the first quarter tripled compared to the previous period, according to Kantar’s research. Of all remaining Netflix subscribers in Spain, one-tenth said they planned to unsubscribe in the second quarter.
So they lost 300,000 paying users whom they think will come back, but 10% of existing users plan on leaving despite Netflix investing in Spanish content.
I think the issue is that people who are paying for an account they are sharing are likely to keep the account active so their family members can continue watching, even if they are also using a competitor. When the family are cut off, they cancel.
> I think the issue is that people who are paying for an account they are sharing are likely to keep the account active so their family members can continue watching. When the family are cut off, they cancel.
That's the case for me indeed. I myself basically stopped watching Netflix, somehow the content doesn't do anything for me anymore.
But I shared my account with family and they watch it. If this gets to us, and I'm the only one who can watch it, I'm for sure cancelling. The family members with whom I'm sharing the account are very unlikely to get their own account either.
(Sharing accounts is a great form of stealth giving to family members who would otherwise not be able to afford such "luxuries". It's much easier to say "hey, I got one free account on my Spotify plan, would you like to use it? Otherwise, it will go to waste" as opposed to awkwardly offering money directly)
Interesting you say that the content doesn't appeal to you anymore. I feel the same way. My observation is that, for the most part, most of Netflix's original content is reality TV and comedy specials.
They don't even seem to be bothering to create great content like Stranger Things anymore. We are at the enshittification of Netflix stage.
You have to love that under "Why was X cancelled" they basically just compliment the show runner and actors for their work or cite "creative differences", rarely do they actually provide an actual explanation, such as "The show had to few viewers".
It's also becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Shows get canceled before they can conclude, so I don't watch any Netflix shows now until after the final episode airs. But the final episode never airs because there weren't enough people watching the show while it was in production.
But then why do the rug pull of making one or two seasons of a good show and then killing it? That serves to piss off everyone who took the time to watch and get interested in the show. If Netflix only wants to make reality tv they should just own that.
I stopped even considering Netflix shows with only one or two seasons because they almost always get killed mid-story. Which means I pretty much never watch Netflix now. Out of state relatives using the account is the main thing keeping me subscribed, so when that sharing gets cut off it'll be the end of my subscription.
Short seasons are perfectly valid and have existed since before Netflix. I remember watching British TV shows in which a season consisted of six half-hour episodes, and feeling that more (and more interesting) things had happened in that time frame than a USA season of 24 one-hour episodes.
These days that’s even more of a plus. When someone recommends something to watch the first thing I check is how many seasons it’s up to, then the number of episodes, then the runtime. Shows with too many seasons of too many too long episodes are immediately ignored.
And they have so many (non-'original') where they only have a few series available at the end or in the middle. I don't understand the licencing/purchasing decision that can lead to that. Seems to happen far too often for it to be different studios/licencors, obviously that happens sometimes.
BBC's QI is one example. I understand new series not being available on Netflix (in the UK) as the BBC now have their own subscription platform. But it's not just that, because Netflix don't have the earliest ones either, just a seemingly random set in the middle, perhaps even non-contiguous.
I found that to be one of the drawbacks of Netflix, and all other streaming services. A story that could easily be told in 100min or a few hours takes 10+ hours to slog through. Excessive sequences of characters getting high, or repeating tasks, or irrelevant side quests to pad the content time statistics, or make people feel like their monthly fees are worth it.
Yes, this is especially true for successful shows. They can be told in 2-3 seasons but they end up as 5 seasons. The pace of storytelling crawls to a halt in the middle seasons typically.
I almost feel it is a problem with the thumbnails. Everything looks so unappealing. I've liked a few Netflix shows in the past year (heck if I could name them though), I have a profile on my brother's account, but I primarily watch through an IPTV service. When I browse in the Netflix app I cannot find a single thing I want to watch.
Their entire business model is that there is value in the long tail of possible choices. The paradox of choice is not a complete description of human behavior.
It is outdated. Streaming is now cable, which means the business model should revert back to be cable like. Get a couple of killer titles that carry the brand... Disney is doing this well with the Marvel titles. one ends, a new one starts, and they start putting ads of the "new" thing.
I feel the same way, it's becoming harder and harder to find something interesting. Just the other night we opened it up and couldn't find anything in 5 minutes browsing and just went to watch TV instead. That's not the experience you want your users to have.
their catalog isn't as good as it used to be. They've cut a ton of content for seemingly zero reason recently (including their own shows like westworld).
What I like best about HBO is that they have an A-Z listing of every show they have (something people have been asking Netflix for since day one of their streaming service) and how peaceful it is to use their platform.
You can browse without anything auto-playing, you can pause a show for more than 3 seconds and ads don't start rapidly flashing on the screen, and shows don't jump to more ads immediately as credits start rolling so you can actually let an ending sink in without having to scramble for your remote.
HBO max is just much nicer to use than netflix.
I also really like their "last chance" section because things are leaving all the time and that gives you some warning.
What? Has this changed recently? I mainly use their AppleTV app, and sometimes their web app. With the AppleTV app, there are a bunch of thumbnails that look like DVD covers. When you swipe over to one of them, at first nothing happens, but just as you're about to move to the next one, the one you're on expands shoving everything to right off the screen. Moving one-to-the-right, then causes everything to collapse down again for a second, until the newly selected thing suddenly expands for no reason. It's incredibly spastic and makes it very hard to get to a specific item.
I could have sworn it auto-played a preview, too, but I might be misremembering that.
If that's changed recently (I haven't browsed the app since "The Last of Us" ended), then great! But using it for the past year or two has been a non-starter. I just look up their shows in the search section of the AppleTV and add them to my Up Next queue so I can avoid interacting with their app at all costs.
Hulu and Netflix seem to not be so painful to use. AppleTV+ used to be perfect but a recent update made it equally unusable. I set the Home Row on my AppleTV to be my "Up Next" queue, and now only interact with the TV app from the home screen. It has less functionality that way, but it also has none of the suckage.
It doesn't help that their software changes so much from device to device. It's been pleasant to use on phone, PS5, and roku but I haven't tried apple+
Even when you're using the same device they A/B test on us. Netflix recently introduced a weird sound effect as their main ad loads (it plays after their usual intro sound effect) but other's I've spoken to hadn't heard it.
I'm watching korean drama and fantasy, also chinese or spanish, they've got a different way of story telling, and I find the aesthetic appealing, can recommend sysyphus, or so, sci-fi and time-travel
Cold case files, the first 48, unsolved mysteries, any cooking show - "reality TV" is a huge market. It's not all toddlers and tiaras and big brother, those were just the "huge, impossible to ignore" ones.
My situation exactly. We're sharing a 4 screen account with 3 friends and no-one even watches netflix every month - we just liked the idea of having access, in case we want to watch something. We already decided, when netflix doesn't allow low-use sharing any more, we'll just cancel and forget about it.
> "Towards the end of 2018, European Parliament approved a law that requires all platforms that provide audiovisual content throughout the continent to have at least 30% European productions within their programming."
It is so well known that it's common to automatically skip content from within the EU. It's usually low-quality fund-farming subpar filler stuff. The most notable exception are spanish films, and those from lesser-known EU countries. Anything from france and germany is almost by definition trash.
In other words: no different than almost all efforts of the EU to "regulate the market" instead of creating incentives.
My family is in the process of finding the best suitable and possible emigration target. Unfortunately this is common. The hardest problem are family ties and care of our parents :/
If your downvoting because of derailing the thread, I deserve it, go on. I'm just frustrated how the EU is, at least from the perspective of my bubble, losing almost every game it wants to play.
I would say it is known and while they are obliged in a way to do it, I don't believe any other streaming service is doing it in the scale that Netflix does
The mistake Netflix makes is to assume that the families and friends, who have been using a shared login, will signup for a subscription on their own. They won't, the value proposition isn't there anymore and these are people who didn't want to pay for the subscription to begin with.
I have serious doubts about Netflix calculations on this decision, but I also don't see what else they could do. They can't buy the content people want and they struggle to produce high quality movies and shows. Their productions are beautiful, but the scripts are severely lacking. Sometimes they get lucky and do a good season of a show, only to screw up subsequent seasons.
> I think the issue is that people who are paying for an account they are sharing are likely to keep the account active so their family members can continue watching, even if they are also using a competitor. When the family are cut off, they cancel.
Definitely the case for me. I am able to help out 10-20 family members across 4 countries, and all I have to do is pay a measly $17.99/mo. If that goes away, I will be cancelling my subscription.
> Definitely the case for me. I am able to help out 10-20 family members across 4 countries,
You're sharing an account with 20 people across 4 countries? It's honestly kind of amazing that they let this level of sharing go on for so long.
It's hard for me to believe that out of 20 different people, every single one of them would decide to boycott Netflix forever because of this. If even 1 of those people decides to re-subscribe, Netflix has lost nothing. If 2 or more subscribe, they win.
Extrapolate this across their userbase and it's not hard to see why they're doing it. Obviously some people will cancel, but I guarantee Netflix has run pilot trials and analyzed the net effect to their bottom line.
> If even 1 of those people decides to re-subscribe, Netflix has lost nothing. If 2 or more subscribe, they win.
While extrapolating over a large dataset, it's important to get the initial numbers as correct as possible. Since the person you're replying to is paying for the most expensive plan (probably to get the 4x devices-at-a-time perk for so many people), the plan those people would re-subscribe at is important (and less likely to be the same plan if only for one person).
They'd need at least 3 people to re-subscribe on either of the two cheapest plans to net a profit, or they'd need at least 2 people to re-subscribe on the "Standard" $16/mo plan to net a profit. Anything less is a net negative. It's a favorably-biased population for Netflix, but that'd still require a 15%-30% conversion rate for users.
I'm sure they'll come ahead in the end, but I imagine a high % of the expected profit comes from cutting costs from serving 20x "free" users per plan rather than converting them into paying users themselves.
You’re assuming they have no variable costs (content fees, peak demand services) in delivering the service. One person at $12.99 a month is certainly more profitable than 10+ at < $1.799/mo.
I guess their calculus is how much does it cost to support 10-20 streaming users. Is it worth getting $18/mo for? I don't know the answer, but that seems to be their approach.
It feels the same as back when the music industry thought that those that pirated music would automatically purchase it if the "free" version was removed. They were wrong then and the streaming services are just as wrong now.
I think Netflix (and others) are looking at that 10-20 x $18/month and salivating, not realizing that the money just isn't there. They need to take a page from the Microsoft book and let people "steal" some of the content so they can have a least some paying customers. It beats having no paying customers.
I'm pretty out of the loop. Is pirating still easy? I thought tbp isn't reliable any more, and finding reliable torrent sites is kind of hard now? Younger people aren't really on the computer anymore. Like your not going to be torrenting off ipads and stuff
TBP is now proxy software that anyone can install[0] which talks to a central API[1] for torrent listings. Each provider can tailor the experience and add ads or donation buttons as they desire. You can search for "TPB proxy list"[2] to find a list of TPB sites. I currently use tpb.party which I find the fastest and least intrusive.
Reading your comment makes me sympathize greatly with Netflix. I don't think they should care about customers who demands a "measly" price to continue their subscriptions.
I was on the fence about it since I share it with 2 people who wouldn't get a subscription otherwise due to technical reasons... but this is really shameless.
Absolutely agree. I also had a family account that kept instead not watching anything anymore. In the end I felt like paying for watching propaganda that I could see for free in national television. This came at the perfect time as an excuse.
I don't think there is an agenda, but design by committee has gotten to the point where it does look like there is one. If you are hell bent on checking the same set of was-well-received-before boxes in every piece of schlock you pump out, people reasonably start to believe that checking boxes is the point. From there any checkbox that doesn't align with viewer's world view is perceived as propaganda.
I mean, what are said documentaries about the nazis like? Are they presenting an uncritical viewpoint? I don't think I've ever seen a documentary about the nazis not include the context of all the horrible shit they did
Not OP. They're pushing an agenda is the general criticism. E.g. I'm all for them not excluding minorities. If the show does good, it does good. It's a universal unassailable good/win. But when they want to enforce quotas and promoting DEI content synthetically and unnaturally, then they've crossed a line.
I think Netflix sees 3 people sharing 1 account and thinks that 2 of the 3 would maybe pay for accounts if they block sharing.
But in reality they end up losing the 1 account instead because none of the 3 people are willing to pay full price individually. They were all willing to pay 1/3 of the price when sharing.
According to Netflix, there is an initial wave of cancellations, but over the ensuing months, they end up with more paying subscribers than there were before the password-sharing crackdown.
They've initialized this crackdown in a few different waves. I can't imagine they would continue to do it if it were detrimental to their bottom line.
> They've initialized this crackdown in a few different waves. I can't imagine they would continue to do it if it were detrimental to their bottom line.
Companies regularly do things that are detrimental to their bottom line because they either misunderstood how their customers use their product, or because they are trying to please shareholders, or a combination of both.
> According to Netflix, there is an initial wave of cancellations, but over the ensuing months, they end up with more paying subscribers than there were before the password-sharing crackdown.
The question begging to be asked here is whether those are new subscribers or people that were using someone's else password, natural growth, or just a good show landed in meantime and a bunch of people subscribed
Yeah, we'll see how this works out for them in the long run. I have a feeling that the end result here is they'll drive away people who use them for years, and would have continued to use them for years out of loyalty, in exchange for customers who are a lot less attached to them, and will probably be more likely to cancel later on.
It's an increasingly crowded market, everyone's distracted, everyone's sick of subscriptions, and nobody has enough money. If I was going to alienate a major chunk of my userbase, this would not have been the time I would've picked.
> If I was going to alienate a major chunk of my userbase, this would not have been the time I would've picked.
It does seem like this was a plan that was in the works for a couple years, and momentum is keeping it moving. I doubt they would have picked this timing if they knew what was coming!
This is where I am. Once they cut off password sharing here I'll be cancelling my subscription. They produce very little content I watch these days and license even less as other streaming services have started ring fencing it. It's not a huge expense, so it's fine as long as my parents are getting use out of it, but once that's gone it's going to make no sense for me to keep paying.
Netflix had some great quotes about this from their earnings and specifically called out Kantar's data would show less viewers in the short term.
They had noted they saw or expected the users who were on someone else's account and who used it actively to come back with their own accounts or convince the account holder to pay for them
> Subscription cancellations in the first quarter tripled compared to the previous period, according to Kantar’s research. Of all remaining Netflix subscribers in Spain, one-tenth said they planned to unsubscribe in the second quarter.
So they lost 300,000 paying users whom they think will come back, but 10% of existing users plan on leaving despite Netflix investing in Spanish content.
I think the issue is that people who are paying for an account they are sharing are likely to keep the account active so their family members can continue watching, even if they are also using a competitor. When the family are cut off, they cancel.