One thing that bothers me personally is that nowadays everything is a membership, but what bothers me most about the subscription model is the fact that the price goes up and up indefinitely and many people really don't mind paying $2 or more a month.

I mean, let's take for example the case of Netflix (I know the image is old, but I couldn't find anything better), where it went from costing $7.99 in 2014 a month to $15.99 in 2019, literally double, and it will surely keep going up and up, if this trend continues and it surely will soon people will be paying $30 a month without any problem.

I understand that a market like Netflix (to follow the initial example) is an expensive market to maintain, both for equipment, staff and licenses and it is obvious that the economy is not the same in 2014 as it was in 2019, but how are people ok knowing that the price doubled in 5 years? If that continues in 2024 the price would be $30, and if it was people would still be fine paying it.

I don't use Netflix but I understand why people use it, both because of the recommendation algorithm and the simplicity, but damn, if in a year they say they are going to raise the price $5 a month people would be happy to pay it and I don't understand it, much less those who pay several memberships of the same type (Netflix, Hulu, Peacock, etc).

  • plinky [he/him]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Sunk cost analogue where if you pay 10 bucks, you don't notice them so you renegotiating with yourself 5 bucks increase as a new purchase, not the whole price.

    I'm more puzzled by people watching shows on repeat who don't torrent them and stick a usb into telly shrug-outta-hecks

    Setting up plex is somewhat involved, you need at least nas, big hdd and some juggling around.

    • BountifulEggnog [she/her]
      ·
      1 year ago

      There are plex subscriptions (either a plex share or seed box), to avoid that hassle. Bit of a middle ground I suppose.

    • CatUser@discuss.tchncs.de
      ·
      1 year ago

      That's a good point, I guess people don't mind an occasional $1 or $2 increase but if they were told all of a sudden that the price was going to go up a lot they would leave and especially for many people who are already used to a certain service it's very hard to leave.

    • BelieveRevolt [he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      I just run Plex on my desktop, whenever I want to watch something pirated, I copy it over from an external HDD, start the server and watch on my TV.