depends if the price change is above or below inflation.
if prices rise quicker than inflation you get less value for money
If online services (such as Netflix) only ever raise their prices, does that mean they offer less and less value for money as time passes?
Submitted 8 hours ago by FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world to [deleted]
Comments
breadsmasher@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Paper_Phrog@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
This, and the measurement of the perception of “value” needs to be taken into account.
lIlIlIlIlIlIl@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
This comment isn’t addressing the “digital shinkflation either.
It’s not like the price change means you get the same service - most of the time they make it shittier
Red_October@piefed.world 4 hours ago
Not necessarily.
In theory if the price increases were at a slower rate than general inflation, the effective cost goes down. Additionally, they could add additional content, thus increasing the value of the provided service, at a rate greater than price increases.
In practice, yes Netflix and other streaming services have been becoming less valuable as time goes on because while costs have been driven up, available content has generally stagnated or even decreased as more media companies decide to open their own platform, pulling their content from the competition and diluting streaming value across the board.
Sergio@piefed.social 4 hours ago
Enshittification refers not just to making things crappier, but to a process in which different people benefit. iirc:
- first the customer gets a lot of value and the platform loses money (bc the service is building a customer base)
- then the vendors get a lot of value bc the platform privileges them (this is most obvious with amazon - not sure if there’s a direct parallel with netflix, maybe the rights holders?)
- then the shareholders get a lot of value bc the platform squeezes every single possible penny out of the customer and the vendors.
Netflix is very far into the enshittification process. Many years ago it was a pretty good platform. But now if you are a paying customer, you can expect the service to get continually worse.
FearMeAndDecay@literature.cafe 2 hours ago
Man I remember when Netflix was just borrowing dvds. They’d send them to our house, we’d get a pizza, watch the movie, and then send it back. A perfect little movie night for kid me. And then when they first got into streaming it was cool. We used to watch Netflix on our Wii. Now there’s so much content on Netflix and streaming sites but when we actually sit down for movie night it’s a pain to find anything to watch bc most of it is shit. Or there’s a movie we want to watch but can’t bc it’s on a platform we don’t have bc it’s expensive as hell to have all the streaming services
remon@ani.social 8 hours ago
Not if they also increase the value (like adding new TV shows).
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
But
- the quality of the shows isn’t necessarily positive
and
- the free time you have to watch TV isn’t increasingly with the price
benjirenji@slrpnk.net 7 hours ago
True, quantity isn’t better than quality, but it may cover more interests and cater to a larger customer base, but who are we kidding.
To me it feels Netflix doesn’t have enough signal in the noise. The recommendations rarely deviate from what they generally suggest to customers or my niche just doesn’t have enough shows to watch.
But I’m not sure Netflix actually knows my favorite genres and how they might be combinable. It just suggests general Shonen anime, when I only watch some specific genres of shows regardless whether they are Japanese, animated or neither.
I dunno, can’t be that hard to zero in on my tastes or it doesn’t matter to them that much after all. Who knows.
theparadox@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
Technically, no. However, in today’s society if you are making aren’t making more profit this quarter (line go up) than last quarter you are seen as failing to meet your fiduciary duty to shareholders. More accurately, if the rate at which your profit is increasing isn’t increasing (line describing line go up) you are likely seen as failing the shareholders.
It’s no longer acceptable to deliver to your customers, make a steady profit, and be sustainable. Now you must cut every possible corner, deliver as little value and use as little labor as possible, make more profit, and “stay competitive” or your company may as well be failing… in the eyes of investors.
Unless you claim you are working on a technology like AI that can eventually let the company fire all of its workers and make all the money without having to pay humans for labor… in which case ignorant investors will light money on fire for you until they think someone else is definitely going to do it better or they think you can’t deliver.
dis_da_mor@anarchist.nexus 6 hours ago
thanks for making the business logic of this corporations so clear
IWW4@lemmy.zip 5 hours ago
The measure of the value is not just the increased cost but also the amount of content. Also a big measure of the value is specific to the subscriber.
If you are watching more Netflix now than you were 5 years than it is highly likely your measure will tell the value has increased.
FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
That’s a good relative way to measure value. Never thought of that!
False@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Netflix would probably claim that consumers are getting more value due to increased original programming versus a decade ago. Also blaming inflation.
happydoors@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
One way they will get around this through consolidation of companies as they merge and strike deals. We’ve already seen Disney+ “add value” when they added Hulu to their package. Long history of this but streaming is scary cause it’s not just traditional tv media. The goal of Netflix isn’t to be a movie studio. All of these “streaming” companies all want to become an Amazon. Grow, grow, grow. Add gaming, add some shopping, add a built-in advertising and data aggregation tool, whatever it takes, then get bought out bigger fish. Become new product. I give it a decade before “big tech” controls Hollywood and most American media.
BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 hours ago
It does, even if they have a long list of things you want to watch, the opportunity cost rises for doing that over saving the money for something else. As well market segmentation removed a lot of various back logs for the different platforms so they have to produce more, newer work to keep interest.
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 8 hours ago
Value is inherently subjective. Money, gold, products, services only have value because of people. An ant doesn’t care for a solid brick of gold, it serves no purpose for the ant, but humans see the shiny metal as incredibly valuable. And while the same ant might think that a small insect as valuable food, most humans do not see the same singular insect as all too worthwhile to eat.
What is valuable to you could be worthless to somebody else. In the context of Netflix, most people probably consider it to be decreasing in value as the content (or the quality of it) has not increased enough to compensate. However, there are some people that might be looking forward to a Netflix-exclusive show and believes that it adds a lot of value. In that case, the price increase might be worth it for them.
Something similar could be said for other streaming services. Spotify, Apple Music, etc. could have your favourite artist listed that can’t be listened anywhere, and you might consider that valuable.
inlandempire@jlai.lu 8 hours ago
I think it might fluctuate given that their catalog varies with new entries and shows no longer being available, so youd have to check every now and then and compare the size of libraries vs subscription price over time
slazer2au@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
Only if the content doesn’t drop away.
albbi@piefed.ca 4 hours ago
You could argue as long as content doesn’t increase. As you watch, the effective content that you will want to watch in the future will go down.
Diddlydee@feddit.uk 9 minutes ago
A lot of people complain about Netflix being poor value. I feel like I get more than my money’s worth from it and always have.