Amazon started Prime video in order to reward Prime members for their loyalty. Now Amazon has gotten greedy. Since Amazon’s owner has his own space program and a yacht that is so big he cannot get it to the ocean, Amazon cannot claim that it needs the extra money. I like Prime video and I hate ads, so I will pay the $3. But I will switch from buying Kindle books and buy Apple Books and will buy all of my electronics from Best Buy in order to punish Amazon for its greed.
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Amazon Prime Video to Feature Ads From January 29, With $2.99 Fee to Avoid Them
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Even though I buy many things from Amazon, most of my electronics I get at best buy, seem to be better deals, especially if you get open box stuff
Prime Video didn't have ads, and now Amazon have introduced an ad-supported tier but bumped up the price of the non-ad tier. This is pure profiteering, not necessarily a bad thing, but definitely unwelcome. You now have to pay $2.99 more for the same thing you got before.
If you get rid of your Amazon account you will find - like I did - that you save a ton of money, because you don't *need* that Thing.
Besides, Amazon isn't always the cheapest place on the internet, and their 1-day shipping slipped to 2 days and is now "Whenever days". Trying to find things on their website is infuriating. It's 19,000 results that have something to do with what you searched for, but the first 1,200 are sponsored and likely unrelated to your search.
If you get rid of your Amazon account you will find - like I did - that you save a ton of money, because you don't *need* that Thing.
Besides, Amazon isn't always the cheapest place on the internet, and their 1-day shipping slipped to 2 days and is now "Whenever days". Trying to find things on their website is infuriating. It's 19,000 results that have something to do with what you searched for, but the first 1,200 are sponsored and likely unrelated to your search.
It's hardly greed, the streaming services are all running at massive amounts of negative cashflows and the few technically posting profits are only doing so because of it accounting practices (a big one being how they amortise the content costs but that eventually adds up. You might not account for your $100m season up front, rather just $10-20m of that but you are then paying for that content cost for the next 5 to 10 years on top of the new seasons and all new shows).
The problem is as much as streaming sounds great it just doesn't work as a business model in it's current format. it requires too much continued outlay to keep 'archive' content and too much new content to be produced to keep people subbing while each service being too cheap. While the overall price of all services is getting closer and closer to cable sub prices people aren't subbing to them all every month, some will never sub to some, others will sub to some one month, cancel the next and sub to others so they can't scale back. Back in cable days networks could have months without new seasons or shows, their channel was bundled so they still got their cut in the quite months as others had new content that kept people paying their cable sub in those months. Even premium networks like HBO could have months of nothing new as broadcast allowed them to use a movie as a draw or rerunning a buzzy show for those who didn't catch it the first time (or who wanted to rewatch it when ways to rewatch and rewatch binge style didn't exist).
Ads just allow them to reduce the negative cash flows without charging customers more as they are price sensitive. More will quit if they charged everyone $3 more than will due to add. And those who hate adds the most will pay $3.
Ultimately though I feel we will see more mergers reducing the number of premium services and then we will end up back with bundling. We will pay cable companies and the likes of Apple and Amazon a single fee and it will get us access to all the premium services plus alot of FAST services inside the office interface of the company we pay for the bundle as ultimately bundling is the best for most. Services don't have to chase subs meaning they don't need multiple new shows and seasons each month to get their cut so they can run more efficiently and it keeps costs for us down
Bezos now owns less than 10% of Amazon.
Prime Video has to make positive revenue. Amazon is not in the charity business. Prime Video has laid out billions of dollars in expenditures recently, and I doubt the layout has been as successful as hoped.
Disagree. See my previous post about Prime Video.
I currently have Prime, but I'm not going to pay the extra $2.99. I don't even keep Prime all year long, taking breaks.
Just buy Prime when you need it.
Warner Brothers Discovery is possibly on the block in 2024. Their merger agreement stated they could not sell off their parts until Spring 2024, IIRC. IMO the merger has been a disaster, and the only winners in the merger were the financiers.
So could Amazon buy a chunk of WBD, maybe all the Warner legacy stuff, or New Line Cinema? All would be a big outlay of money. Perhaps the current price rise is in anticipation of 2024 acquisitions.
Since when did that become the standard? People have been paying for and subscribing to content for ages that have ads e.g., television, newspapers, and magazines. There is no rule or guideline that says ads have to be able to support the entire cost of producing and delivering content. If anything, a pay/ad hybrid models has been the standard more so than a free/ad model. At least with most current premium streaming services, subscribers have a choice of going with ads or without ads. Which they choose, if either, is entirely up to them.
It doesn't necessarily matter how profitable a company is overall or how much money it has. The financials of each product/service should be evaluated independently. If Prime Video is losing money or not meeting "reasonable" profit goals, for example, a subscription price increase can be justified.