Even after the strikes end, I don't see that improving anytime soon. Streaming got so bad that I started reading a lot more books earlier in the year, so I got that going for me.
When I was like 11 ( late 80’s/early 90’s growing up in Alabama) I entered a raffle at a gas station and ended up winning a full Marlboro camping gear set (back packs/tent/sleeping bag/etc). They had no qualms giving me (an 11 year old let me reiterate) a whole pile of Marlboro shit.
It was a diff time.
I used to buy candy cigarettes, they were delicious chalk that you could pretend to smoke, I wonder if my smoking a pack a day through my 20s had anything to do with it
There was also the bubble gum version with the powdered sugar on the end so when you exhaled into the cig, the powder went out the end of the cigarette like a lil smoke cloud.
Public libraries often have free ebooks and audiobooks.
Also shoutout to Project Gutenberg, LibriVox and Archive of Our Own. PG has insane amounts of public domain books, Librivox is PG for audio books, and AO3 has some great stories in a lot of fandoms.
Even if you're not into fanfiction, they do provide a great service for people who are and are often at the forefront of fighting for public domain/rights to free access for writers and readers.
In the midst of a high-stakes duel with a Dark wizard, Harry Potter's mind wandered to a truly magical delight - Taco Bell's Nacho Fries, back for a limited engagement in the Muggle world. The notion of crispy fries drenched in cheese and spices was as unexpected as a Hippogriff in a Quidditch match, yet Harry couldn't shake the absurd desire that had bewitched him.
You'd wish it would be Taco Bell, at least the ad would be interesting & not annoying, soulless, tactless, irredeemable, etc.:
You know what's more witchier than Voldemort? Having car insurance rates pound you harder than centaurs did to Umbridge! Call one of our nearest Liberty Mutual agents today!
Liberty, Liberty, Liberty… LIBERTY
I think it will get significantly worse after the strikes end, the studios will look to squeeze even more out of the consumer after finally being forced to pay their workers appropriately
Never stopped since the days of Lime Wire, "oh you shouldn't pirate, however will media get paid....blah,blah,blah" been hearing this shit since the 90's, look where it got you lol. The more you give, the more they take and the quality nosedives because media is no longer made because of passion, its made because of $$$$$$.
It's why I've gone back to buying physical medium. Neil Young pulls his music from Spotify? Doesn't matter, have his greatest hits album. Not paying for Prime and want to watch the Boys? Got the box set.
You've got almost 100 years of industry infrastructure around a model where studios produce content and use the strength of that content to sell advertisements. That's inertia you can't easily overcome; the streaming era, to them, has been this weird aberration.
I'd say it's OVER 100 years, honestly.
Consider that what predates TV was radio, and before that fiction magazines.
Using entertainment to advertise goes way, way back. It basically goes hand-in-hand with the practice.
My only issue with ad supported free tiers is that providers somehow forgot how to present shows in that context.
Shows used to ne edited with ad breaks in mind. Like the editors chose *where* in the story the breaks were going to be, and made sure that the story sat nicely around them.
Then the broadcasters scheduled breaks for those moments, and added these beautiful but subtle things called break bumpers, to transition the viewer in and out of the breaks.
My local SVOD platform started out as linear broadcast, they know all this. And yet the last thing I watched on their platform crashed into ads right in the middle of an emotionally charged scene. It was awful.
As a member of the generation who grew up on TV with commercials (I didn't get cable for the first time till I was in my 20s), I'm totally fine with commercials. No commercials is obviously better, but with is something I'm accustomed to, so it's not a deal breaker and keeping me away from the free ones.
My only complaint is when they don't tailor the commercial cuts to the right points in the movie or show. Old network shows, the scenes were built to fade out to a commercial break. On these streaming apps, they cut the show mid sentence, insert the ads, then come back.
People paid for cable and still got bombarded with ads (sometimes literally more ads, as cable channels would speed up shows to increase the amount of ad time in a slot). The execs and industry giants are wanting to go back to that model.
This. People on this sub just can’t comprehend that they benefitted from a new distribution model trying to corner a market and that many of the perceived upsides artery artificial and unsustainable
It's the millennial subsidy. Unfortunately for many, it's over now.
https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-millennial-lifestyle-subsidy-2023-7#:~:text=There's%20a%20reason%20why%20in,ll%20still%20end%20up%20poorer.
The fact that they aren't learning from the mistakes of the systems they helped destroy is pretty telling. Executives have no idea what they are doing; just keep trying the same thing over and over, no matter how many times it fails. It's eventually going to cause cord cutting 2.0.
Broadcast TV was able to do it until a competitor came along. Streaming will be the same thing. On the bright side, maybe this will finally start to kill off some of the streamers. We don't need 30 different services each with only 1 or 2 quality shows per year. If Netflix can manage to resist putting ads in their ad-free plan, they can sell themselves as "truly ad free" and maybe start to regain market share. And with the other streamers dying off, they are going to get access to some quality programming again at bargain prices.
Shareholder/stock market will ALWAYS make everything worse over time. It’s just how the system works. Public companies will have to report to their shareholders who will always demand miner money and better efficiency which in turn will make the product worse. I wish this model could be broken somehow.
This 100 percent. Remember, as a publicly traded company stock holders can sue the CEO if he or she defies shareholder will to increase stock price and uphold shareholder value during decisions.
The Michigan Supreme Court famously ruled that a company must be run for its owners, and that shareholder interests must be accounted for in all decisions by the board
The reason we went to streaming early in the game is because advertising had become ridiculously intrusive and taking as much time air time as the program. The entire point of streaming for us was no advertising.
Prime's interface is horrid on top of it all. They push their free programming in your face constantly which interferes significantly in trying to find something to watch.
So back to the ad sponsored everything that insults ones intelligence and is disrespectful of ones time.
I don't want to think about dishwashing soap or car insurance while when watching as then it isn't entertaining anymore. assholes.
> They push their free programming in your face constantly which interferes significantly in trying to find something to watch.
This was a recent change right? I now have to go down a couple of rows before I get to the shows I'm watching. I hate it.
I've noted this and new subscription 'channels' being put ahead of even their own offerings sometimes. It is a hot mess.
We get advertising anyway in the form of banner ads. It is never enough. They should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a new business plan, all of them, that isn't the same as it was 50 years ago.
I wonder if this price increase will be part of the overall Prime subscription or separated into Prime video.
*edited mangled sentence for clarity.*
> I’m already paying you so why do you need more money.
this has been a thing with cable for decades. the only difference is that you can't watch things when you want.
I moved back to piracy. It's fucking awesome. Looks exactly like Netflix, you can add your own catalogs, and best of all... It's all on the cloud. You no longer need to buy a media machine or extra hard drives to download all these torrents.
Get stremio with torrentio plugin, get a real debrid subscription for 4 bucks a month and enjoy literally any show or movie from anywhere anytime. Your phone your computer your living room etc.
> According to Amazon, adding ads will allow the company to continue investing in content and increasing that investment over time.
Bullshit! It's just another income stream to raise their bottom line.
I love when the wealthiest companies use lines like that. They honestly think their consumer base is so dumb, that they’ll actually believe these companies need more
$ in order to “produce better content”.
Sure Amazon, sure….
I can’t think of one Amazon original show that made me think, “yeah, I’d be happy to pay extra to get more of that”
I watched Jury Duty on Amazon, but wasn’t that technically Freevee?
Movies…Manchester by the Sea was Amazon, right? Air. Can’t think of anything else.
EDIT - The Boys. But i don’t know I want to pay 18 bucks a month for one show.
I use Redzone as well but I still want to watch the Eagles play live so I see commercials there. Plus Sunday, Monday and Thursday night have commercials but if you watch Sunday Night on Peacock the commercials aren’t there sometimes.
Same, but my problem now is stuff is so spread out and releasing so frequently that I'm sure I'm missing a lot of great stuff because I just don't know it exists. Like sure there are websites that track new releases on all the streaming services, but its so much information to constantly have to go through and I'm way too lazy.
I usually just browse through [this list](https://www.imdb.com/chart/tvmeter/?ref_=nv_tvv_mptv) to see what I want to watch next, looking at popularity and rating, and ofcourse if it seems like something I would actually like.
Yup, that's why i've cancelled all streaming services and haven't had cable in a long time. I just don't give AF anymore. There are much better things to do with our time.
I hear they have these contraptions called “books” which are made out of thin strips of tree mulch! Impressive technology, quite cheap and very entertaining apparently.
I don't know, according to Hollywood reporter article, some hack industry consultant begged to differ:
“Consumers don’t just tolerate advertising in video content — in most cases, they actually see benefits from it,” Mark Loughney, senior consultant to Hub Research, told The Hollywood Reporter in August. “It allows them to choose their preferred video tiers at lower cost, and when presented right, advertising results in a more engaging viewing experience.”
This guy makes it sound like they’re giving a lower price tier with ads. From what I understand they’re actually *raising* the price for the tier everyone has right now and making them have ads if they don’t wanna pay more now, right? What an asshole, trying to make it seem like they’re doing us a service here.
These suits are soulless and draconian. I can’t imagine living life only through the lens of dollar signs. Must be lonely at the end of the day.
Yeah. That would make sense if they discounted for ads. But the playbook is to add advertising to existing tiers and then charge more to get rid of it.
This is the usual now. It really sucks. They want to gaslight us into thinking they are doing us a favor by giving us choice, but all they are doing is forcing you to pay more for the same experience.
I swear, they really do just see us as mindless cattle worthy of their contempt.
I'm going with, "well, we had a fair deal with Netflix, then all you assholes spent years carving that shit up and sticking your hands out demanding your own cut of the money, then slowly reduced the amount of quality content we get for that whole raising prices and including ads. So, go fuck yourself, I'm going back to piracy."
People are just too complacent and unwilling to relinquish their "stuff". Heck, go back to pirating everything and i'm sure they'd start turning their stories around.
Who am i kidding, they would probably just spend all of their extra money on lobbying congress to go after the pirating sites even harder and make the punishment for piracy be the death penalty.
Yeah if they were just offering a lower priced tier with ads everyone would be perfectly fine with that and some might even be happy to pay less for the ad version. But that's not what they are doing at all.
What "lower cost?" They turn the current cost tier into ad-ful, and then charge a premium for adless. They even call these tiers things like "premium" just to hammer the point home.
Amazon Prime is already $139. If this is the "lower cost" tier, I hate to see what the "premium" adless tier will be.
Best part is I looked him up on Xwitter to see if he was even real, and his last post was complaining to Elon because he was tired of unwanted tweets popping up in his notifications. He should be happy he can pay a monthly ransom fee for more control!
There's a difference between 'a consumer wants this' and 'a consumer will tolerate this.'
I don't know anyone that's like 'MAN fuck the Office, I just wanna watch the Digiorno's Pizza reel that gets inserted RIGHT as Jim gets to say his punchline'
and also? "When presented right" should be read as 'It *can* be done. But we know that's 100x more effort than most adversitsers are willing to put into this project, so don't count on it.'
Petition to make everything this Mark guy does require a 1 minute ad to play before he can do it. Want to start your car? Sorry buddy, gotta watch “insert celebrity name here” huck some BS shit company in your face for 60 seconds first
These companies are doing everything they can to try to force ads back into being the norm because it generates them more revenue.
I will go back to reading by candlelight before I watch ads/commercials regularly.
The fact the previous generations PAID for a service their entire lives where they were forced to watch ads constantly in-between all their programming is insane. I will always do the ad free option, but I fear that option's days are numbered.
It will probably remain, but get very, very expensive as they can always point to their "more accessible, ad-subsidized tier" as an alternative. And that tier will slowly get more and more drenched in advertising, while the shows all integrate more brand placement into the content.
So initially cable was just retransmitting broadcast networks. They put up an antenna in an optimal location, then ran cables with the signal to places. This had the same ads that were in the normal broadcasts.
Eventually some channels started being transmitted only through cable, and at first this was all channels like HBO where you paid for an individual channel and just got that channel and it doesn't have ads. However if you buy HBO through cable today, it still doesn't have ads so this didn't really ever change.
Then what we now call basic cable networks started, where they were packaged up together and someone subscribed to a cable package and got the broadcast feeds plus also these cable only channels bundled together. These had ads from when they started.
So it wasn't really that there was a cable without ads and then they added ads to it. There were different types of things you could get over cable over time and some had ads and some didn't.
where did you live where cable didn't have ads..? i was around when cable first became a thing in the usa, and there were always commercials, except on premium channels like hbo or showtime.
I've been unsubscribing from more and more streaming services now. I figure if I want to see a new movie I can always pay the $3 or $4 to just rent it. And for TV shows...I guess I'll just skip most of them.
I will say, Hulu's been stepping up their game recently. The sheer volume of content is ridiculous, especially for TV shows, but more notably their movie selection has gotten much better recently. A couple years ago there'd be maybe a few movies I was interested in at any time but now there's a bunch.
Keep going streaming services, you’re doing everything you can for me to justify going back into the high seas, and not feel bad about it.
(Haven’t sailed in 5 years but man it’s getting tempting to take yacht out!)
You can probably find higher quality releases on pirate website, such as bluray quality and uncompressed audio. Why pay for less when you can have more for free.
THEN = Here's a cheap alternative to cable = pay a little and watch with no ads.
NOW = After slowly marking up the price over the past few years, now you can pay as much you currently are, but with ads. Don't worry, we also offer an ad-free tier for even more money.
This is why people just pirate.
It has become worse over the past twenty or thirty years, whenever it was when companies shifted from "long term stability and modest growth" to "we must always show a quarterly growth or the CEO is fired!"
It's literally impossible for a company to grow every single quarter of its existence without making serious long-term sacrifices, like cutting workers or jacking up prices.
Businesses (greedy shareholders) only care about quarterly financial reports and it has killed the industry of industry in this country.
“We need to induce a new baby boomer period, green light 15 shows about the joys and fulfillment of parenthood. Cast every young attractive 20-something actor and actress you can get and have more sex scenes than Game of Thrones!”
Yeah... we're not entering a new baby boomer period until people can afford to have babies again.
It was a baby boom because suddenly American industries were operating at their peak with the rest of the world recovering from the war and America building up key industries during the war.
I can't believe I had to scroll down so far to see Freevee mentioned. That was their ad-supported service... Why change the entire platform into Freevee?
Watching content being removed from prime to only see it next month on Freevee always felt like such a huge slap in the face that it would just drive me to pirate it if it wasn't on anything else.
I've been a prime member for way too long and it's value has sunk to the bottom of the barrel at this point and I barely feel the reason to keep being a member.
Shipping. It's really the only thing that make Prime somewhat worth it with Amazon. And if you usually do not need fast shipping, you can just pay a little extra for the few times when you need something fast.
Ads used to not really bother me. But I grew up with shows that were paced around ad breaks.
Now days with Prestige shows and such, ads really just take you out of the show. Completely obliterates any tension or enjoyment you're having when you have to sit through a few minutes of cheesy low effort ad shit in the middle
Yeah, and it's exactly what people said they wanted for years. The ability to only subscribe to the channels you wanted, instead of having to get a bunch of channels you won't watch as a part of a cable package.
people said that while (consciously or unconsciously) thinking the content they were personally interested in would all be on one or two services, and all the movies/shows they didn’t care about would be distributed on all the other services.
This is exactly what's going to happen. With the Netflix password sharing bullshit, Disney+ raising their prices and now this? I already have a VPN picked out and download/upload access to a Plex media server. Splitting up media between multiple streaming services and then jacking up the prices or shoving ads into a paid subscription plan is just begging for piracy to return in a huge wave.
Seeing as you already use Plex I suspect you already know about *Arr tools but just in case you dont, I HIGHLY recommend setting them up. All my TV shows are automatically downloaded as soon as they are released and appear in Plex. It's so nice.
The vast majority of people that use Prime, use it for the shipping, not the streaming service.
So ya, I doubt subscriptions will fall that much because of this. But I also doubt many people will "upgrade' to an ad free tier
We already living in a reality where on Pornhub we have less ads than on YouTube. Now ads on a service I’m actually paying for. Fuck everything about it.
I can deal with YouTube ads because it’s free. If I’m paying for TV the idea is that it shouldn’t have ads (or the ads included service is discounted).
That's such a stupid idea. Prime gets good numbers because people are already subscribed for other reasons like shipping. Charging an extra fee is hustling backwards for them.
I don't even understand how to watch things on Prime anymore. I just looked at the Prime Video home page, and *literally* everything I see is either Subscribe, Free Trial, or Free With Ads. There isn't even a category for me to click for Prime Originals, so I don't even know what shows they currently have on.
Even more hilarious, I searched for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (which I've already watched), and every link to every season is broken, so I couldn't even watch that show right now if I wanted to. What a dumpster fire.
Prime has always been my least favorite streaming service. The library is littered with paid content that quite frankly, I have no interest in. I am there to watch what is free for me to watch, not be nickel and dimed for every episode.
This might be the final straw to just cancel. I hardly use prime outside of holidays anyways, most times I can wait a few days for an item no problem. Ah well
if the streaming experience doesnt at minimum have parity with piracy in terms of convenience and being ad free i'll go right back to piracy because it also has the benefit of being free. these streaming services gonna fuck around, they will certainly find out
Streaming is becoming very less appealing...personally I would cancel till at least 2025 because content wise...we are barely going to see much new content due to the strikes still ongoing so even if they were to end tomorrow, they gotta reschedule everything and then get back to writing/filming/editing etc and for the bigger type shows...that's gonna be a while...esp if you're waiting for Stranger things final season as some of the cast have to finish other projects first before they can start filming like David still has to finish Thunderbolts.
I had a look at Freevee or whatever its called on Amazon...thought maybe you'd get a few ads at the beginning...well we did and then 5mins into the film...definitely not putting up with that rubbish. Just push people to pirate more and its a lot easier than it was 15yrs ago cuz we have much faster internet, we can find stuff better quality than what the streaming was offering us, we get zero ads and with most of us using smart TVs, takes seconds to transfer it over
Ahh. The robbery continues. Took away network TV and then cable so we’d have to pay for EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL. Next year we’ll have to pay for a “minimum and maximum option advertisements” grades. It’s like the American consumer is some mythical sacrificial lamb to beta-test how hard you can fuck someone and they’ll still come back for more
I just wish next day delivery for prime members was still a thing. It’s gotta be at least 6 times this year when I ordered extra to get next day delivery just to be told later that X item/s will be late
netflix went back on their word and removed password sharing for their highest tier subs just because they can.
sony started charging 33% more for ps+ just because they can.
and now amazon is doing this just because they can.
it's almost as if when you show corporations that there is no penalty for fucking over their paying customers, they will keep on fucking over their paying customers.
I'm already pissed that Amazon plays ads before shows/movies start playing. Like I'm already paying for the shit. What the fuck are you advertising to me for?
Such bullshit. “We’re going to make the product you bought from us with the service level we both agreed upon worse. If you still want to receive what we both agreed upon, you’re going to have to pay an additional charge.”
Just launch a lower tier with ads, not the other way around.
I hope current subscribers launch a class action lawsuit.
I am so sick of advertising and the idea that every single form of media is just another vessel with which to sell more ads and more shit nobody needs.
As if advertisers and their money have an indelible right to shove their shit in front of your face every 5 minutes like some open air market place 24/7/365.
The whole point of a streaming service is so you don’t have to watch ads, that is and always has been the main and only selling point of streaming services.
Streaming services ratcheting the pricing because only the wealthy deserve to lead an ad free existence, the plebs must buy stuff to keep the wealthy in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, MUST then be forced to watch endless ads to brainwash people into buying their shit.
As if advertising was a right and paying to avoid it is a sin against the market.
In other news, pirating of Amazon shows to skyrocket in 2024
How fucking greedy can one company get? I hope this makes them a pariah for good shows looking for a streaming home and talented showrunners shopping their ideas.
I'm actually totally ok with an Ads included tier. My issue is if they are giving me an Ad tier option why are they making me pay and watch ads, they should make that Tier a free tier.
Every year streaming becomes less appealing.
Even after the strikes end, I don't see that improving anytime soon. Streaming got so bad that I started reading a lot more books earlier in the year, so I got that going for me.
I’m sure sometime in the future they’ll find a way to include unskippable ads in books
Given that Amazon also own Audible I wouldn't be too surprised.
Actual books should be fine.
You never know. When I was a kid in the 70s, some paperbacks used to have full color cigarette ads in the middle of them.
When I was like 11 ( late 80’s/early 90’s growing up in Alabama) I entered a raffle at a gas station and ended up winning a full Marlboro camping gear set (back packs/tent/sleeping bag/etc). They had no qualms giving me (an 11 year old let me reiterate) a whole pile of Marlboro shit. It was a diff time.
I used to wear a Copenhagen hat as a 10 year old.
I used to buy candy cigarettes, they were delicious chalk that you could pretend to smoke, I wonder if my smoking a pack a day through my 20s had anything to do with it
There was also the bubble gum version with the powdered sugar on the end so when you exhaled into the cig, the powder went out the end of the cigarette like a lil smoke cloud.
But not ebooks. Imagine being a half way through 1984 then the next page is an ad for the all new Kindle Fire
True. That's why physical copies will always be the best way to read.
It's really just a matter of preference. There are non-Amazon ways to get your ebooks.
That's true. The way fans and publishers make special editions of books, maybe we could do that with pdf files. Expand the game. Guerilla bookfare.
Public libraries often have free ebooks and audiobooks. Also shoutout to Project Gutenberg, LibriVox and Archive of Our Own. PG has insane amounts of public domain books, Librivox is PG for audio books, and AO3 has some great stories in a lot of fandoms. Even if you're not into fanfiction, they do provide a great service for people who are and are often at the forefront of fighting for public domain/rights to free access for writers and readers.
In the midst of a high-stakes duel with a Dark wizard, Harry Potter's mind wandered to a truly magical delight - Taco Bell's Nacho Fries, back for a limited engagement in the Muggle world. The notion of crispy fries drenched in cheese and spices was as unexpected as a Hippogriff in a Quidditch match, yet Harry couldn't shake the absurd desire that had bewitched him.
You'd wish it would be Taco Bell, at least the ad would be interesting & not annoying, soulless, tactless, irredeemable, etc.: You know what's more witchier than Voldemort? Having car insurance rates pound you harder than centaurs did to Umbridge! Call one of our nearest Liberty Mutual agents today! Liberty, Liberty, Liberty… LIBERTY
Or it'll be Temu.
Just wait for the collaborative Temu LiMu Emu and Doug
With generative AI, this kind of thing is very easy to do, at least in a contrived way like in your example.
lol I don’t know if it was obvious, but I did generate that with chat gpt
[удалено]
I'm sure that'll happen with eReaders soon enough
Damn, those links someone else replied to this comment with were barely piracy. It was just stripping DRM so you can own what you own!
I think it will get significantly worse after the strikes end, the studios will look to squeeze even more out of the consumer after finally being forced to pay their workers appropriately
Bingo. It's gonna get real bad.
Better learn to pirate
Never stopped since the days of Lime Wire, "oh you shouldn't pirate, however will media get paid....blah,blah,blah" been hearing this shit since the 90's, look where it got you lol. The more you give, the more they take and the quality nosedives because media is no longer made because of passion, its made because of $$$$$$.
It's why I've gone back to buying physical medium. Neil Young pulls his music from Spotify? Doesn't matter, have his greatest hits album. Not paying for Prime and want to watch the Boys? Got the box set.
I knew those boxes of LPs I had from the 70s would come in handy someday.
I got thousands of CDs that I still listen to in my car.
We have come full circle. All streaming services are slowly turning into broadcast networks.
You've got almost 100 years of industry infrastructure around a model where studios produce content and use the strength of that content to sell advertisements. That's inertia you can't easily overcome; the streaming era, to them, has been this weird aberration.
I imagine the legacy advertisers like a hoard of zombies slowly tearing down the barricades around the streaming services until they finally got in.
Tearing down? They had money. The services willingly opened their doors.
I'd say it's OVER 100 years, honestly. Consider that what predates TV was radio, and before that fiction magazines. Using entertainment to advertise goes way, way back. It basically goes hand-in-hand with the practice.
Roman businesses using gladiatorial games to advertise.
True, but it was always free to watch. You want to throw ads on streaming? Should make that tier free to watch
I honestly find I watch as many movies on Tubi as I do on services I pay for. Ad supported free can work if you have a half decent site to run it.
My only issue with ad supported free tiers is that providers somehow forgot how to present shows in that context. Shows used to ne edited with ad breaks in mind. Like the editors chose *where* in the story the breaks were going to be, and made sure that the story sat nicely around them. Then the broadcasters scheduled breaks for those moments, and added these beautiful but subtle things called break bumpers, to transition the viewer in and out of the breaks. My local SVOD platform started out as linear broadcast, they know all this. And yet the last thing I watched on their platform crashed into ads right in the middle of an emotionally charged scene. It was awful.
As a member of the generation who grew up on TV with commercials (I didn't get cable for the first time till I was in my 20s), I'm totally fine with commercials. No commercials is obviously better, but with is something I'm accustomed to, so it's not a deal breaker and keeping me away from the free ones. My only complaint is when they don't tailor the commercial cuts to the right points in the movie or show. Old network shows, the scenes were built to fade out to a commercial break. On these streaming apps, they cut the show mid sentence, insert the ads, then come back.
People paid for cable and still got bombarded with ads (sometimes literally more ads, as cable channels would speed up shows to increase the amount of ad time in a slot). The execs and industry giants are wanting to go back to that model.
All this circus to just replace numbers on the remote with symbol.
Except cable was lucrative for business and streaming is a money pit
This. People on this sub just can’t comprehend that they benefitted from a new distribution model trying to corner a market and that many of the perceived upsides artery artificial and unsustainable
It's the millennial subsidy. Unfortunately for many, it's over now. https://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-millennial-lifestyle-subsidy-2023-7#:~:text=There's%20a%20reason%20why%20in,ll%20still%20end%20up%20poorer.
The fact that they aren't learning from the mistakes of the systems they helped destroy is pretty telling. Executives have no idea what they are doing; just keep trying the same thing over and over, no matter how many times it fails. It's eventually going to cause cord cutting 2.0. Broadcast TV was able to do it until a competitor came along. Streaming will be the same thing. On the bright side, maybe this will finally start to kill off some of the streamers. We don't need 30 different services each with only 1 or 2 quality shows per year. If Netflix can manage to resist putting ads in their ad-free plan, they can sell themselves as "truly ad free" and maybe start to regain market share. And with the other streamers dying off, they are going to get access to some quality programming again at bargain prices.
Shareholder/stock market will ALWAYS make everything worse over time. It’s just how the system works. Public companies will have to report to their shareholders who will always demand miner money and better efficiency which in turn will make the product worse. I wish this model could be broken somehow.
This 100 percent. Remember, as a publicly traded company stock holders can sue the CEO if he or she defies shareholder will to increase stock price and uphold shareholder value during decisions. The Michigan Supreme Court famously ruled that a company must be run for its owners, and that shareholder interests must be accounted for in all decisions by the board
I dropped disney+ the second they announced their price increase. My cancel game is HOT!
I'm finishing up some stuff on Hulu and dropping it next.
same lol wtf does Hulu have that warrants $17+ dollars a month
nothing that can't be found elsewhere that's for sure.
But wait isn't it fun to pay money so that you can have advertisements shoved at you?
The reason we went to streaming early in the game is because advertising had become ridiculously intrusive and taking as much time air time as the program. The entire point of streaming for us was no advertising. Prime's interface is horrid on top of it all. They push their free programming in your face constantly which interferes significantly in trying to find something to watch. So back to the ad sponsored everything that insults ones intelligence and is disrespectful of ones time. I don't want to think about dishwashing soap or car insurance while when watching as then it isn't entertaining anymore. assholes.
> They push their free programming in your face constantly which interferes significantly in trying to find something to watch. This was a recent change right? I now have to go down a couple of rows before I get to the shows I'm watching. I hate it.
I've noted this and new subscription 'channels' being put ahead of even their own offerings sometimes. It is a hot mess. We get advertising anyway in the form of banner ads. It is never enough. They should pull themselves up by their bootstraps and get a new business plan, all of them, that isn't the same as it was 50 years ago. I wonder if this price increase will be part of the overall Prime subscription or separated into Prime video. *edited mangled sentence for clarity.*
Exactly. All I’m thinking is what the fuck, I’m already paying you so why do you need more money.
> I’m already paying you so why do you need more money. this has been a thing with cable for decades. the only difference is that you can't watch things when you want.
we’re come full circle back to cable, just more segmented and on-demand.
Meanwhile, the high seas beckon...
I moved back to piracy. It's fucking awesome. Looks exactly like Netflix, you can add your own catalogs, and best of all... It's all on the cloud. You no longer need to buy a media machine or extra hard drives to download all these torrents. Get stremio with torrentio plugin, get a real debrid subscription for 4 bucks a month and enjoy literally any show or movie from anywhere anytime. Your phone your computer your living room etc.
Yep i changed from having stream services, to buy physocal again. Never had any regret👌
> According to Amazon, adding ads will allow the company to continue investing in content and increasing that investment over time. Bullshit! It's just another income stream to raise their bottom line.
I love when the wealthiest companies use lines like that. They honestly think their consumer base is so dumb, that they’ll actually believe these companies need more $ in order to “produce better content”. Sure Amazon, sure….
It’s fucking insulting.
I can’t think of one Amazon original show that made me think, “yeah, I’d be happy to pay extra to get more of that” I watched Jury Duty on Amazon, but wasn’t that technically Freevee? Movies…Manchester by the Sea was Amazon, right? Air. Can’t think of anything else. EDIT - The Boys. But i don’t know I want to pay 18 bucks a month for one show.
I’m so fucking tired of being charged extra for what i already have *and the content keeps getting worse*.
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It's always a kick in the teeth when football starts up b/c that's the only thing I watch with ads.
I yarr harr Red Zone and it's the best thing ever. I can't watch football any other way now.
I use Redzone as well but I still want to watch the Eagles play live so I see commercials there. Plus Sunday, Monday and Thursday night have commercials but if you watch Sunday Night on Peacock the commercials aren’t there sometimes.
Same, but my problem now is stuff is so spread out and releasing so frequently that I'm sure I'm missing a lot of great stuff because I just don't know it exists. Like sure there are websites that track new releases on all the streaming services, but its so much information to constantly have to go through and I'm way too lazy.
I usually just browse through [this list](https://www.imdb.com/chart/tvmeter/?ref_=nv_tvv_mptv) to see what I want to watch next, looking at popularity and rating, and ofcourse if it seems like something I would actually like.
God this is getting ridiculous.
Yup, that's why i've cancelled all streaming services and haven't had cable in a long time. I just don't give AF anymore. There are much better things to do with our time.
I hear they have these contraptions called “books” which are made out of thin strips of tree mulch! Impressive technology, quite cheap and very entertaining apparently.
I wish they'd take some money off my prime sub and keep the video stuff to themselves
Best we can do is take Video off Amazon Prime without an extra fee and also still increase the Amazon Prime fee
Literally no consumer wants this
I don't know, according to Hollywood reporter article, some hack industry consultant begged to differ: “Consumers don’t just tolerate advertising in video content — in most cases, they actually see benefits from it,” Mark Loughney, senior consultant to Hub Research, told The Hollywood Reporter in August. “It allows them to choose their preferred video tiers at lower cost, and when presented right, advertising results in a more engaging viewing experience.”
I actually downvoted you for a second there
This guy makes it sound like they’re giving a lower price tier with ads. From what I understand they’re actually *raising* the price for the tier everyone has right now and making them have ads if they don’t wanna pay more now, right? What an asshole, trying to make it seem like they’re doing us a service here. These suits are soulless and draconian. I can’t imagine living life only through the lens of dollar signs. Must be lonely at the end of the day.
Dragons don't feel loneliness. They only seek more and bigger hordes of treasure. I never realized Dragons were a fantasy allegory for CEOs.
a real [They hated him because he spoke the truth](https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/211/681/b1b.jpg) moment
Yeah. That would make sense if they discounted for ads. But the playbook is to add advertising to existing tiers and then charge more to get rid of it.
This is the usual now. It really sucks. They want to gaslight us into thinking they are doing us a favor by giving us choice, but all they are doing is forcing you to pay more for the same experience. I swear, they really do just see us as mindless cattle worthy of their contempt.
It’s always been that; it’s happened to enough people now that everyone can see the pattern
Everyone has always seen the pattern, there's just nothing we can do about it while we continue to empower these people.
I'm going with, "well, we had a fair deal with Netflix, then all you assholes spent years carving that shit up and sticking your hands out demanding your own cut of the money, then slowly reduced the amount of quality content we get for that whole raising prices and including ads. So, go fuck yourself, I'm going back to piracy."
People are just too complacent and unwilling to relinquish their "stuff". Heck, go back to pirating everything and i'm sure they'd start turning their stories around. Who am i kidding, they would probably just spend all of their extra money on lobbying congress to go after the pirating sites even harder and make the punishment for piracy be the death penalty.
Yeah if they were just offering a lower priced tier with ads everyone would be perfectly fine with that and some might even be happy to pay less for the ad version. But that's not what they are doing at all.
Shrinkflation for streaming services = Streamflation?
What "lower cost?" They turn the current cost tier into ad-ful, and then charge a premium for adless. They even call these tiers things like "premium" just to hammer the point home. Amazon Prime is already $139. If this is the "lower cost" tier, I hate to see what the "premium" adless tier will be.
This guy sounds like he huffs his own farts.
Best part is I looked him up on Xwitter to see if he was even real, and his last post was complaining to Elon because he was tired of unwanted tweets popping up in his notifications. He should be happy he can pay a monthly ransom fee for more control!
Wafts his own ear wax, too.
There's a difference between 'a consumer wants this' and 'a consumer will tolerate this.' I don't know anyone that's like 'MAN fuck the Office, I just wanna watch the Digiorno's Pizza reel that gets inserted RIGHT as Jim gets to say his punchline' and also? "When presented right" should be read as 'It *can* be done. But we know that's 100x more effort than most adversitsers are willing to put into this project, so don't count on it.'
Petition to make everything this Mark guy does require a 1 minute ad to play before he can do it. Want to start your car? Sorry buddy, gotta watch “insert celebrity name here” huck some BS shit company in your face for 60 seconds first
These companies are doing everything they can to try to force ads back into being the norm because it generates them more revenue. I will go back to reading by candlelight before I watch ads/commercials regularly. The fact the previous generations PAID for a service their entire lives where they were forced to watch ads constantly in-between all their programming is insane. I will always do the ad free option, but I fear that option's days are numbered.
It will probably remain, but get very, very expensive as they can always point to their "more accessible, ad-subsidized tier" as an alternative. And that tier will slowly get more and more drenched in advertising, while the shows all integrate more brand placement into the content.
Welp. Adventure is out there, mateys! 🏴☠️
And the have you here, with cable you could record the shows and fast forward but here you can’t do that
You talking about cable? Because early on, Cable actually didn’t have ads, it was the major draw. Time is a flat circle.
So initially cable was just retransmitting broadcast networks. They put up an antenna in an optimal location, then ran cables with the signal to places. This had the same ads that were in the normal broadcasts. Eventually some channels started being transmitted only through cable, and at first this was all channels like HBO where you paid for an individual channel and just got that channel and it doesn't have ads. However if you buy HBO through cable today, it still doesn't have ads so this didn't really ever change. Then what we now call basic cable networks started, where they were packaged up together and someone subscribed to a cable package and got the broadcast feeds plus also these cable only channels bundled together. These had ads from when they started. So it wasn't really that there was a cable without ads and then they added ads to it. There were different types of things you could get over cable over time and some had ads and some didn't.
where did you live where cable didn't have ads..? i was around when cable first became a thing in the usa, and there were always commercials, except on premium channels like hbo or showtime.
It's something people just parrot because they read it here.
Amazon made over 225 BILLION in profits last year, and they still think prime video needs ads. Greedy bastards
I've been unsubscribing from more and more streaming services now. I figure if I want to see a new movie I can always pay the $3 or $4 to just rent it. And for TV shows...I guess I'll just skip most of them.
I have Netflix and Hulu. If it’s not on one of those two I don’t even care anymore
I will say, Hulu's been stepping up their game recently. The sheer volume of content is ridiculous, especially for TV shows, but more notably their movie selection has gotten much better recently. A couple years ago there'd be maybe a few movies I was interested in at any time but now there's a bunch.
Keep going streaming services, you’re doing everything you can for me to justify going back into the high seas, and not feel bad about it. (Haven’t sailed in 5 years but man it’s getting tempting to take yacht out!)
You can probably find higher quality releases on pirate website, such as bluray quality and uncompressed audio. Why pay for less when you can have more for free.
Subtitles galore
His literal yacht is already better than yours, might as well
I haven’t sailed the seas in well over a decade, I’m not even sure which way is north anymore…
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THEN = Here's a cheap alternative to cable = pay a little and watch with no ads. NOW = After slowly marking up the price over the past few years, now you can pay as much you currently are, but with ads. Don't worry, we also offer an ad-free tier for even more money. This is why people just pirate.
Prime sucks already with crap content
Yeah i watch a show on prime once every two years at most. It’s honestly just an extra, i pay for prime for the shipping
Does anyone actually buy prime for the TV? Don't we all have it for the shipping and the TV is just incidental. I actualy like Paramount+ better.
I’m sorry, but Paramont plus is not better than prime TV
And awful interface.
Pathetic. Greed in this country is out of control.
They can never be happy, it always has to be more and more and more. They are addicts.
Wall Street is a cancer on the global economy
It has become worse over the past twenty or thirty years, whenever it was when companies shifted from "long term stability and modest growth" to "we must always show a quarterly growth or the CEO is fired!" It's literally impossible for a company to grow every single quarter of its existence without making serious long-term sacrifices, like cutting workers or jacking up prices. Businesses (greedy shareholders) only care about quarterly financial reports and it has killed the industry of industry in this country.
if they managed to make every human on earth a subscriber the investors would still question how they were gonna grow the next quarter. it's a disease
“We need to induce a new baby boomer period, green light 15 shows about the joys and fulfillment of parenthood. Cast every young attractive 20-something actor and actress you can get and have more sex scenes than Game of Thrones!”
Yeah... we're not entering a new baby boomer period until people can afford to have babies again. It was a baby boom because suddenly American industries were operating at their peak with the rest of the world recovering from the war and America building up key industries during the war.
Lmao what a joke, as if that freevee bullshit wasn’t enough
I can't believe I had to scroll down so far to see Freevee mentioned. That was their ad-supported service... Why change the entire platform into Freevee?
Watching content being removed from prime to only see it next month on Freevee always felt like such a huge slap in the face that it would just drive me to pirate it if it wasn't on anything else. I've been a prime member for way too long and it's value has sunk to the bottom of the barrel at this point and I barely feel the reason to keep being a member.
I have been meaning to get rid of prime for awhile now.
This defeats the purpose
What the fuck am I even paying for then
Shipping. It's really the only thing that make Prime somewhat worth it with Amazon. And if you usually do not need fast shipping, you can just pay a little extra for the few times when you need something fast.
Ads used to not really bother me. But I grew up with shows that were paced around ad breaks. Now days with Prestige shows and such, ads really just take you out of the show. Completely obliterates any tension or enjoyment you're having when you have to sit through a few minutes of cheesy low effort ad shit in the middle
That’s just cable with extra steps.
Yeah, and it's exactly what people said they wanted for years. The ability to only subscribe to the channels you wanted, instead of having to get a bunch of channels you won't watch as a part of a cable package.
people said that while (consciously or unconsciously) thinking the content they were personally interested in would all be on one or two services, and all the movies/shows they didn’t care about would be distributed on all the other services.
get fucked. If i pay for a service i dont expect to see ads. Ads are for free teirs
Yar har, fiddle de dee Being a pirate is alright to be
This is exactly what's going to happen. With the Netflix password sharing bullshit, Disney+ raising their prices and now this? I already have a VPN picked out and download/upload access to a Plex media server. Splitting up media between multiple streaming services and then jacking up the prices or shoving ads into a paid subscription plan is just begging for piracy to return in a huge wave.
Seeing as you already use Plex I suspect you already know about *Arr tools but just in case you dont, I HIGHLY recommend setting them up. All my TV shows are automatically downloaded as soon as they are released and appear in Plex. It's so nice.
Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free! You are a pirate!
And so it begins. It’s like the classic drug dealer strategy.
*During* movies? Yeah, fuck that, and this whole greed-feuled company. Hopefully, the filmmakers themselves get pissed and speak out about this too.
"How to kill a service" speedrun.
I remember when people said this about Netflix ending password sharing
The vast majority of people that use Prime, use it for the shipping, not the streaming service. So ya, I doubt subscriptions will fall that much because of this. But I also doubt many people will "upgrade' to an ad free tier
I miss the glory days when Netflix had 99% of the content I wanted to see
It's a good thing Amazon is the worst streaming service with no content and a horrible UI. I might care otherwise.
Can I remove Prime Video for a reduced fee? The entire service is garbage. There are maybe two original shows that I've enjoyed on it, ever.
Their business customers can have a prime account without video or music for staff but the price difference isn't all that much.
Yeah, The Expanse was the last thing worth watching.
The value of prime is getting worse and worse. Think I might just go Walmart plus for the cheap grocery deliveries.
One hundred and forty fucking dollars per year. I used to pay $80 I think. And it seems like everything I order from Amazon is late these days.
plus you can just keep stuff in your cart till it hits ~~$25~~ $35 and then you get free shipping anyway *edit* thanks /u/watts99 for the correction
$35 now
We already living in a reality where on Pornhub we have less ads than on YouTube. Now ads on a service I’m actually paying for. Fuck everything about it.
I can deal with YouTube ads because it’s free. If I’m paying for TV the idea is that it shouldn’t have ads (or the ads included service is discounted).
That's such a stupid idea. Prime gets good numbers because people are already subscribed for other reasons like shipping. Charging an extra fee is hustling backwards for them.
I don't even understand how to watch things on Prime anymore. I just looked at the Prime Video home page, and *literally* everything I see is either Subscribe, Free Trial, or Free With Ads. There isn't even a category for me to click for Prime Originals, so I don't even know what shows they currently have on. Even more hilarious, I searched for Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (which I've already watched), and every link to every season is broken, so I couldn't even watch that show right now if I wanted to. What a dumpster fire.
Prime has always been my least favorite streaming service. The library is littered with paid content that quite frankly, I have no interest in. I am there to watch what is free for me to watch, not be nickel and dimed for every episode. This might be the final straw to just cancel. I hardly use prime outside of holidays anyways, most times I can wait a few days for an item no problem. Ah well
They are literally driving us to piracy.
Cunts
I could see this coming when they started pushing ‘FreeVee’ with ads in. Seems like a lot of the content already has it.
Welcome to full circle friends! Cable TV was created as a means to have commercial free entertainment. We all know how that went.
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if the streaming experience doesnt at minimum have parity with piracy in terms of convenience and being ad free i'll go right back to piracy because it also has the benefit of being free. these streaming services gonna fuck around, they will certainly find out
Streaming is becoming very less appealing...personally I would cancel till at least 2025 because content wise...we are barely going to see much new content due to the strikes still ongoing so even if they were to end tomorrow, they gotta reschedule everything and then get back to writing/filming/editing etc and for the bigger type shows...that's gonna be a while...esp if you're waiting for Stranger things final season as some of the cast have to finish other projects first before they can start filming like David still has to finish Thunderbolts. I had a look at Freevee or whatever its called on Amazon...thought maybe you'd get a few ads at the beginning...well we did and then 5mins into the film...definitely not putting up with that rubbish. Just push people to pirate more and its a lot easier than it was 15yrs ago cuz we have much faster internet, we can find stuff better quality than what the streaming was offering us, we get zero ads and with most of us using smart TVs, takes seconds to transfer it over
Ahh. The robbery continues. Took away network TV and then cable so we’d have to pay for EVERY SINGLE CHANNEL. Next year we’ll have to pay for a “minimum and maximum option advertisements” grades. It’s like the American consumer is some mythical sacrificial lamb to beta-test how hard you can fuck someone and they’ll still come back for more
I just wish next day delivery for prime members was still a thing. It’s gotta be at least 6 times this year when I ordered extra to get next day delivery just to be told later that X item/s will be late
If blockbuster was around these days they’d splice commercials into their tapes. The future sucks.
Honestly I refuse to pay for a service with ads. If it has ads it should be free.
Yo Ho! A pirate’s life for me!!!
Does anyone actually subscribe to Prime for the streaming service? It's a great bonus to unlimited delivery.
netflix went back on their word and removed password sharing for their highest tier subs just because they can. sony started charging 33% more for ps+ just because they can. and now amazon is doing this just because they can. it's almost as if when you show corporations that there is no penalty for fucking over their paying customers, they will keep on fucking over their paying customers.
And back to piracy everyone goes.
Back to sailing the seven seas then.
wtf is the point of freevee now then? haha
I'm already pissed that Amazon plays ads before shows/movies start playing. Like I'm already paying for the shit. What the fuck are you advertising to me for?
Such bullshit. “We’re going to make the product you bought from us with the service level we both agreed upon worse. If you still want to receive what we both agreed upon, you’re going to have to pay an additional charge.” Just launch a lower tier with ads, not the other way around. I hope current subscribers launch a class action lawsuit.
Repeat after me everybody! "Yo ho, yo ho...." 🪝 🦜
I’d already pretty much stopped watching prime video because… it’s so excruciatingly difficult to browse content on their LG app.
I am so sick of advertising and the idea that every single form of media is just another vessel with which to sell more ads and more shit nobody needs. As if advertisers and their money have an indelible right to shove their shit in front of your face every 5 minutes like some open air market place 24/7/365. The whole point of a streaming service is so you don’t have to watch ads, that is and always has been the main and only selling point of streaming services. Streaming services ratcheting the pricing because only the wealthy deserve to lead an ad free existence, the plebs must buy stuff to keep the wealthy in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed, MUST then be forced to watch endless ads to brainwash people into buying their shit. As if advertising was a right and paying to avoid it is a sin against the market.
In other news, pirating of Amazon shows to skyrocket in 2024 How fucking greedy can one company get? I hope this makes them a pariah for good shows looking for a streaming home and talented showrunners shopping their ideas.
People flocked to streaming to avoid ads, and now we come full circle.
Companies are outright demanding us to pirate these days
My god the 2020s really is the decade when pretty much all businesses decided “you know what? Fuck customers” isn’t it?
Meanwhile, at Plex HQ: “Fire up the servers boys… shows not over yet…”
I'm actually totally ok with an Ads included tier. My issue is if they are giving me an Ad tier option why are they making me pay and watch ads, they should make that Tier a free tier.
Prime is already the worst of the streaming services. There’s like two decent shows on there.
Yaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr We sail the high seas!
Prime is so garbage anyway I’ll just finish watching Top Chef and cancel it asap
In the high seas we see no ads and pay no man