Enshittification was
defined by Cory Doctorow:
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they
abuse their users to make things better for their business customers;
finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for
themselves. Then, they die.
It looks like
the enshittification of the streaming services is progressing with
breathtaking speed.
It took more than 3 decades for cable to hit this cycle, and
streaming has hit it in less than ¼ of the time.
It's more than
that though. When Netflix was just distributing DVDs, they could profit and
deliver a good service, because once the bought the DVDs, they could rent them
out, no muss no fuss.
For physical media, the content distributors
have no control over the resale or renting of DVDs and tapes.
Then, Netflix started streaming, they had to deal with the
studios, and the nature of IP rules was that the distributors could take most,
if not all of the profits, because they had exclusivity enforced through
copyright law.
It's why, when Netflix moved to
streaming, you constantly had titles cycling in and out of the library.
Every
time that this happened, it was a studio turning the screws.
So,
Netflix turned to producing its own content, and did so using every possible
trick to avoid paying the people who actually directed, wrote, and acted in
these productions.
Which is what led to the current writers and
actors strikes, and Netflix is the most aggressively rapacious of the content
distributors.
OK, after this bit of history, we have Netflix
streaming original and archival content.
The legacy content
distributors, Fox, Paramount, etc., realize that streaming has little or no
barriers to entry, so they can stream their own stuff from their own
websites.
What follows is an orgy of distributing content at a loss
to pick up market share, which is unsustainable over the long term.
As
the old bromide states, "What cannot continue, will not continue," and now the
streaming services are raising prices and reducing the quality of the
services.
There is an alternative, and it is readily available, and
has been readily available for more a very long time.
It only has
fallen into abeyance because streaming was more convenient, and worth the
cost.
Not any more:
The average cost of watching a major ad-free streaming service is going up by
nearly 25% in about a year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis, as
entertainment giants bet that customers will either pay up or switch to their
cheaper and more-lucrative ad-supported plans.
Disney last week
raised the price of its Disney+ and Hulu streaming services
for the second time since last fall, following a
string of similar announcements
by the owners of Peacock, Max, Paramount+ and Apple TV+.
The recent
wave of price increases signals a new phase in the streaming wars. After years
of charging bargain-basement prices in pursuit of fast growth, most of the big
players face a financial reckoning,
with tens of billions of dollars in losses piling up.
Now, in a push for profitability, they are testing the loyalty of
their customers, betting that ratcheting up prices won’t lead more people to
cancel service, an industry phenomenon known as churn.
Nope. The issue will not be churn, that was already a fact of life.
Using technology to share content without permission is the issue.
As streaming services become more expensive and offer less content, this will expand, at the cost of subscriptions.
Expect to see a lot more interest in torrents, or whatever new protocol is in the wings, out there.
