streaming has absolutely no future. if they keep pulling shit like this it’s going to decline even faster. i suppose it’s more about sucking off advertisers than it is pleasing customers, too…if you’re going to fail anyway why can’t you at least make a positive difference in the world?
Are their profits going down?
It will be like the Netflix exodus, the reddit exodus, etc. They’ll make more money. The best you can do is be true to yourself and not participate if you don’t want to.
Sadly, this. Average consumer, and I don’t mean it as an insult, will not look for an alternative to streaming. All these giant streaming companies are gauging how far they can go to increase the profit margins.
I’m a technically savvy average consumer. I’ve just been accepting the enshitification. It feels like every month a different company is raising prices.
I’m about ready to put on an eye patch and fly the Jolly Roger at this point.
Yarr
Clever
My prediction is that it all goes back to Netflix when they decide it’s not worth the time and expense to run their own services. They had a nice passive income thing going on there for many years and can have it again if they just license their IP again.
streaming has absolutely no future.
Streaming isn’t going anywhere, and if anything will likely continue to grow for as cable dies off. It’s just going to consolidate and get shittier (ads) as basically things move back to a model more cable-like. Piracy will probably ramp back to like levels for music in the early 2000’s, but it will remain a niche. Amazon specifically will see blowback for this, but it’s unlikely to move many off of Prime since it’s sort of a tertiary benefit to having a Prime membership, and even if it’s all you got for your Prime membership, it’s still one of the cheapest streaming services.
We need open source streaming or something… Ya kno?
Ppl should make their own YouTube Amazon / Google companies or else we shall all perish do to advertisements
The moment each show got a pre-reel for another Amazon show this was clearly the path they where taking.
Already cancelled a good 6 months ago.
Yeah, Prime Video already has commercials.
Yeah I thought that was a pretty obvious attempt to ease people into it. So this news doesn’t come as a shock. If anything I’m surprised it took this long.
At least they give you a slip button, unlike Paramount+
The mods removed my comment with a link to a great free streaming site with the reason “don’t link directly to pirated content.” (great censorship!)
I don’t see that in the rules, so I guess it’s one of those “mystery” rules they can just make up on the spot.
Anyways, you can find free streaming sites here: https://rentry.co/megathread-movies-and-tv#streaming
I recommend using fmovies. Make sure you have Adnauseam or uBlock Origin installed.
Gotta love phantom rules, just make it up as you go along.
It’s fun to watch people react and move on rather than stop and consider.
I don’t see that in the rules
Then you didn’t look too closely. !technology@lemmy.world’s first rule is to follow the lemmy.world rules and links to the mastodon.world rules page. The first server rule there is “No illegal content.”
Chitak is Swedish - no laws broken.
It’s more about where the host server is located. Server owners in the US can lose protection from law suits if they don’t actively moderate.
Nobody wants a cease and desist from the MPAA or RIAA. Least of all Lemmy admins with no money for lawyers.
oooh yay more content to collect from torrents. Bye Bye Prime.
“We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership,”
The double-speak is relatively subtle, but it’s always interesting to see how much work they put into gaslighting their customers:
- “No action is required from you…” - yes, Amazon hopes we do nothing, but Amazon unilaterally changed the assumptions underlying agreement, so “no action” is an acquiescence to a materially worse reality for us and a better one for Amazon.
- “…there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership” - yes, no additional dollars are required because Amazon is now selling our time and attention, but that is still a new “fee” we are paying.
Pretty gross, Amazon.
The enshittification will continue until profit margins improve
until profit margins improve
Lol
What is this mythical profit margin/amount that companies would be willing to accept? There is no limit to corporate greed…
Pirate services are cheaper and have better apps
Pirate “services”?
Servarr Suite. Netflix interface, piracy backend. Operates over Usenet. Can handle movies, tv, music and ebooks. I’ve been told there are viable workarounds for televised sports, specifically F1.
Yeah, streaming services are losing the plot. I’m good lol.
Give it time and we’ll all be back on Netflix with all the catalogs available there.
If there are commercials, why should someone need an Amazon Prime membership at all? It becomes just like broadcast TV then, and they should just allow anyone to watch to maximize revenue. They have all this AWS infrastructure to deliver video, why not maximize the use of it?
👨🏻🦲🫳🏻💰
But wouldn’t they make more money by not requiring a subscription and having many more viewers? They will get paid for showing ads, not collecting Prime subscriptions.
If you don’t have prime you might not buy things from Amazon which would probably be a net loss compared to the potential ad revenue increase.
Thanks for reminding me to cancel my prime.
You’re welcome.
Nice to know I can finally cancel Prime though. The entire value proposition has now gone. Free shipping is hugely conditional (and prices are artificially jacked to cover it in the first place), and now they want to put the worst thing on the internet (ads) into the only component of Prime I still sorta kinda use sometimes. I’d rather keep the $140 a year or whatever.
Personally, idgaf what they do with Prime Video. After about a decade of having Prime, the only thing that has ever caught my attention was Rings of Power and that shat the bed so I’m good there.
I order enough off Amazon that faster delivery is a major draw for me. Ordering from other merchants is a drag because Amazon set the standard forever ago. But is it worth $140/year? Idk, I’ll have to do the value calculation on that one. But it’s getting closer to not being worth it. Especially if they continue to bundle the cost of video that I don’t use onto my shipping subscription.
I canceled my Prime account this past summer when I was informed they were going to increase my yearly fee. I’ve been a Prime member since 2003. It used to be FREE strict 2 day shipping on everything amazon sold. I think it was $85 a year then. 100% worth the fee. The shipping got worse and worse until the peak shit when they sold the contract for shipping to USPS from UPS for the majority of packages. Used to be if something wasn’t there by the guaranteed delivery date, you could call and complain and you’d get a month of prime added to your account. Then it got so frequent they started changing that to a $5 credit if you complained. Now they just change the “guaranteed” date if it’s going to be late, and no one gives a fuck if it still doesn’t get there. All this time the fee has ballooned to over $140. Now you’re telling me they’re going to start adding commercials to their streaming? It’s total horse shit from one of the largest companies in the world. They shit the bed with the gawd awful Rings of Power and are passing that cost on to us. Fuck Amazon, Hulu, Disney, Netflix. They are all garbage companies. Fcuking pirate everything you can.
I wish delivery / video was separate because I’d cancel immediately.
You can use Amazon to buy things without subscribing. $35+ order gets free shipping
this is one reason why i have never had prime. not that i order much from amazon anyway (very rarely, in fact).
i think people think amazon is a lot more indispensable than it actually is.
Oh look. Another reason for piracy.
Cancelled! Bye!
Me too! I’d been meaning to, but finally did it yesterday right after they sent the email letting me know hahaha
I don’t use Amazon much anymore anyway, because the products are overwhelmed with cheap, poor quality trash you couldn’t peddle on alibaba and completely worthless, largely faked reviews and ratings. I order once or twice a year some replacement cable or adapter I can’t find anywhere else reasonably quick, but that’s pretty much it, so canceling over this ad bullshit doesn’t really hurt me much.
Next on the list is my Netflix sub, which I largely use just for oldtrek reruns as second screen background noise while I use my computer. I could probably, uh, procure those shows fairly easy, or splurge on a collectors edition and would still save money.
If it’s available where you are PlutoTV is free and has a Star Trek channel. You don’t get to pick the shows and it’s only original and tng, but you can leave it on for days with almost as much Star Trek as the average fan could want…
Check your local public libary, a lot of them have DVDs you can check out for free.
Mine also partners with streaming services like hoopla and kanopy so I can stream like 10 movies per month.
Nah, most of it is coming from Alibaba, but at a markup.
There’s a used media shop down the street and I’m contemplating getting dvd/bluray box sets of my favorites so that I have offline media available.
Go ahead, I did the same and I really don’t miss Netflix. I should also mention I have crappy internet, so it’s much better/easier to just download good quality vidéo files overnight than sit through a constantly-buffering 240p stream
