Bit of a click bait headline.
1 Like
We canceled Prime at the last price increase. Other than Thursday Night Football I don’t think we used any of the extra services. We got it for the free next day shipping, which we used quite a bit, especially during the pandemic.
An easy cancel though, the value just isn’t there anymore. As @Bmosbacker noted, there are other places to shop.
I canceled Prime 3 or 4 years ago and never looked back.
I get it for one month every year (usually offered as a free trial) to catch up on some Prime Video series I like. That’s it.
3 Likes
This is an interesting comment. Some societies are generally more relaxed about some swear words now. In the U.S. do you not have regulations about swearing on tv? In the UK we have regulations about what can be broadcast before 9pm in the evening, and some swear words are covered by that (the F word is still on the banned list).
I agree with you about swear words anyway. But I’m also fed up with the needless violence in programmes post-Game of Thrones. And how miserable everything is. Is it too much to ask that we have a crime show where everyone is mostly happy and the world isn’t ending?
1 Like
For what it’s worth I disagree with this interpretation, though it’s probably cultural. Amazon’s profits have trebled this year and they’ll likely hit $10 billion a quarter next year. They arguably don’t need to increase prices at all, for anyone.
But in any case, attention is a resource, adverts are specifically engineered to exploit it, and charging people to protect their mental headspace creates a two-tier society where the affluent can choose to silence the noise and the less affluent are treated as a resource to be exploited.
If ever you need an example of how capitalism ruins things, you can just refer to the mess that is now streaming services in 2023, compared to where we were 15 years ago. We’ve gone from one or two high quality, reasonably priced services that many could access to a fractured system with escalating costs, low quality content and ads.
5 Likes
We have laws regulating prime-time TV broadcasts, but those laws continue to devolve. As to cable, it seems nearly anything goes except hardcore porn. I agree with you concerning violence, and I’ll add gratuitous sex scenes. Much (most?) of contemporary entertainment is designed to appeal to our baser instincts; it is seldom intended to elevate. This is one reason I’ve found myself starting a series only to stop watching due to all of the above, e.g., Yellowstone, Slow Horses, and many more. I’m increasingly gravitating to sports and older shows that rely on a good storyline, not foul language, violence, and sex to “entertain.”
Ok, I’ll get off my soapbox. 
1 Like
This describes Amazon’s progress on the physical retail side because they’ve made shopping worse to make money from manufacturers, and then squeezed the manufacturers. It doesn’t describe the video side because there is no b2b side of the marketplace in Prime Video to drive the addition of an ad tier or significantly change what’s available to stream. (Overuse of Corey Doctorow’s term is one of my pet peeves, sorry.)
1 Like
Well, if I had known Disney was getting X rated content I wouldn’t have cancelled my subscription!!!
On a serious note, there is simply too much between all of these streaming services for me to ever watch, not if I want to do anything else in life! There are a number of various series that friends have exhorted me to subscribe to and watch, that I have just passed on because I don’t want to spend every free moment in front of the TV.
I know understand the approach others have used, where you wait for an entire season of a show to be available, then subscribe for one month to the service and bing watch all 6 or 8 episodes, rather than subscribing continuously to watch as they first come out. This does require one be able to delay gratification until the entire season is out, and you cannot participate in the weekly discuss of the series at work, but the cost savings is potentially quite substantial.
Even for Apple TV, the fact is that I am only watching two series at present: Silo and Severence, and with neither having a new season out yet, I am paying for a service I am not actively using…
1 Like
We’ve had all this content in the UK for a while now as part of Disney+, it’s in a separate section under ‘Star’
1 Like
The escalating scraping of value from “both sides” (consumers and producers) by a platform is the essence of Doctorow’s enshittification. Adding ads to a streaming service which subscribers have been paying for is a perfect example: you don’t think the content producers are going to get the revenue, do you?
1 Like
That was my first reaction to all of the services adding Adverts (Netflix and Disney also, plus rumours of Apple) if I’m paying why am I getting Ads?
But it’s the way they’re all going. As always, one breaks the beachhead and the others follow when it’s safe.
We only pay for Disney and Netflix at the moment and if prices increase too far, Netflix will also be going. I’ll pay for AppleTV+ a month here and there to watch a series I really want to see, but otherwise I’m cutting back.
It’s really not that long since I cancelled my Cable Bundle to save me money and reverted to our Aerial and Netflix. But with so many services available now and regularl increases in price, it’s easier than ever to spend a lot of money on “TV”
This is, of course, on top of the License Fee you must pay in the UK to watch BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. At least BBC is Ad free.
The whole angle of “we invest lots of money in content, so it costs us more money to provide services, therefore we’re increasing our prices is frankly rubbish. I always read that as “We’ve overspent so we need to recoup some of that money from you”
My question is whether the movies and shows I’ve bought will now have ads in them? That would really suck.
Reading all the flack that this has caused, not just here in MPU, I believe Amazon used the wrong tactic. They should have raised the price of Amazon Prime by $36 for everyone. Then they could offer a $36/year savings for people who opt for the “with advertising” version. It probably would have made customers happier while bringing in extra income by having the advertising requiring opting in rather than opting out.
The providers prefer the with-advertising plans because they make more money. Consider that with advertising they make more money as the number of viewers goes up. Without advertising and with a flat fee for “all you can watch” the more the viewing the greater their costs but without additional income to compensate.
Of course another approach is pay-per-view. Maybe that’s where this all ends up for those that don’t want to see advertisements.
2 Likes
You may be correct. But I suspect Amazon has been pricing Prime based on what they think is the most their customers would pay. i.e. “whatever the market will bear”. They may have found it.
More of an outright lie. “X-Rated” isn’t a colloquialism - it’s a defined term. And it doesn’t apply to the article.
HARUMPH, That presumes that
- You have a local library that has digital media
- Said media are current in any sense of the word
- You can actually get them on your home tv
None of which apply to Rural Colorado.
See above, Amazon Prime is a critical link for rural access to items we cannot get even if we drive 150 milesround trip to the nearest decent sized ctt that actually has a Best Buy. There is a Walmart only an hours drive waya but it’s not a great one, just barely acceptable.
BTDT no broadcast media in our town available easily. The nearest repeater is about 30 miles away and goes out regularly and is only accessible in winter via snowmobile. OTA is not an option either.
What we’ve done is buy a Kodi device and get the app SD Streams. We have god internet so it all works.
1 Like
Now hang on there, Slow Horses is Excellent TV entertainment, Gary Oldman alone is worth watching as is the current Reacher Series. Which is VERY faithful to the books.
6 Likes
Slow Horses is Excellent TV entertainment, Gary Oldman alone is worth watching
I agree, I like the show; I just can’t stand “F…” every other word or sentence. It is not necessary and adds nothing to the show. On the contrary, it is unnecessarily vulgar, degrading, and distracting. The writers need to get a vocabulary. I’m not a prude, I grew up in the military and my father could make a sailor blush. But, such language when used to excess, which I believe Slow Horses and Yellowstone do, substantially and unnecessarily diminishes the “artistic” value of the shows, normalizes vulgarity, and coarsens our lives and our culture. “That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it”.
4 Likes
Uhhh that made me lookup my Prime subscription. It’s ~ 90 EUR / year in Germany.
Quiet a lot, but Amazon wants to sell us so many “nice” products with it
- prime shipping: used by us and shared with 2 household members
- prime video: used by us
- amazon music prime: this is a joke??? only shuffle?
- Prime reading: not used
- Prime Gaming: not used
Soo currently we are using prime video a lot… if it would be only this, that would mean 7,5 EUR / month for video streaming, which is actually fine.
I think if the price is increased next year also for us to have ad-free streaming, I would take it but split the yearly costs somehow to the other household members even when they just have the prime shipping benefit… but also only if there are still shows worth watching.