Meanwhile, at Amazon Prime...

[Mikey Radio]

That makes sense, but it seemed like there was a lot of bad press towards Netflix due to this, and thought the company's outlook was grim.

I do recall a period when the number of subscribers fell off as people returned to work post-covid, and as one can see below, they didn't have the same explosive growth in revenue vs. previous year that they enjoyed during the first 2 years of the pandemic, but they've never had a year (or in the case of the Sept. 2023 stat below, a quarter) where revenues decreased vs. the previous one.

From the interwebs:

Netflix Revenue 2010-2023 | NFLX

Netflix annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2023. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses...

www.macrotrends.net

• Netflix revenue for the quarter ending September 30, 2023 was $8.542B, a 7.77% increase year-over-year.
• Netflix revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was $32.743B, a 4.03% increase year-over-year.
• Netflix annual revenue for 2022 was $31.616B, a 6.46% increase from 2021.
• Netflix annual revenue for 2021 was $29.698B, a 18.81% increase from 2020.
• Netflix annual revenue for 2020 was $24.996B, a 24.01% increase from 2019.

 

[boiseengineer]

I have nothing but my impression to go on, but seems that the number of video titles available without paying extra has diminished in the last year or so. They also seem to be removing adding or renaming "Channels" a lot.
When I got notified of the addition of commercials (email) it said my current subscription already included the commercial free tier.

 

[tall_guy1]

I do recall a period when the number of subscribers fell off as people returned to work post-covid, and as one can see below, they didn't have the same explosive growth in revenue vs. previous year that they enjoyed during the first 2 years of the pandemic, but they've never had a year (or in the case of the Sept. 2023 stat below, a quarter) where revenues decreased vs. the previous one.

From the interwebs:

Netflix Revenue 2010-2023 | NFLX

Netflix annual/quarterly revenue history and growth rate from 2010 to 2023. Revenue can be defined as the amount of money a company receives from its customers in exchange for the sales of goods or services. Revenue is the top line item on an income statement from which all costs and expenses...

www.macrotrends.net

• Netflix revenue for the quarter ending September 30, 2023 was $8.542B, a 7.77% increase year-over-year.
• Netflix revenue for the twelve months ending September 30, 2023 was $32.743B, a 4.03% increase year-over-year.
• Netflix annual revenue for 2022 was $31.616B, a 6.46% increase from 2021.
• Netflix annual revenue for 2021 was $29.698B, a 18.81% increase from 2020.
• Netflix annual revenue for 2020 was $24.996B, a 24.01% increase from 2019.

Crazy the frenzy that surrounded that one corner. There were many doomers who thought Netflix was actually in trouble, when they will definitely be the reigning winners of streaming.

 

[boombox4]

And we also have to look at what brings YouTube numbers. What percentage are watching movies (either "free with ads" or paid) and how many are looking at music and concert videos and every possible thing from how to put thermal paste on a CPU to how to retrofit your toilet with a bidet.

Correct. And in the Big Picture, every minute spent on YT is a minute not spent watching any form of video elsewhere. So that does actually count, even though not all YT offerings are what one could consider typical TV or Movie fare.

 

[Kelly A]

There were many doomers who thought Netflix was actually in trouble, when they will definitely be the reigning winners of streaming.

Likely the same doomers who were upset because they were blocked from sharing their account information with friends.

 

[michael hagerty]

Correct. And in the Big Picture, every minute spent on YT is a minute not spent watching any form of video elsewhere.

I mean you could make that argument about P***Hub and its X-rated competitors too. I'd provide a comparison chart of those viewing percentages versus legitimate streamers, but someone else can put that one into their search history, thank you very much.

So that does actually count, even though not all YT offerings are what one could consider typical TV or Movie fare.

Okay. But what are we using the viewing metric for? Traditionally, it's to quantify value for advertisers.

According to YouTube as of this moment, here are the hottest videos:




I'm gonna say that there's probably very little competition for the same advertisers as Netflix, Disney/Hulu, Max and (when it launches) ad-supported Amazon Prime.

 

[michael hagerty]

I have nothing but my impression to go on, but seems that the number of video titles available without paying extra has diminished in the last year or so. They also seem to be removing adding or renaming "Channels" a lot.
When I got notified of the addition of commercials (email) it said my current subscription already included the commercial free tier.

Might want to re-read that. It's a very cleverly-phrased notice:

Dear Prime member, We are writing to you today about an upcoming change to your Prime Video experience. Starting January 29, Prime Video movies and TV shows will include limited advertisements. This will allow us to continue investing in compelling content and keep increasing that investment over a long period of time. We aim to have meaningfully fewer ads than linear TV and other streaming TV providers. No action is required from you, and there is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here. Prime is a very compelling value. Prime members enjoy a wide range of shopping, savings, and entertainment benefits, including: (pitch of all the upsides of membership deleted in the interests of time) And, you can expect additional features and programs added in the future for our Prime members. As mentioned above, no action is required from you. If you wish to sign up for the ad-free option, you can click here. And, as always, if you have questions about your Prime membership, you can manage your account here. Thank you for being a valued member of Amazon Prime. Sincerely, The Amazon Prime team

The phrase "no action is required from you" is something we expect to see when nothing is going to change for us.

Other streamers, when adding an ad-supported tier, pitch it as an opt-in "We can save you $3.00 a month. Click here."

What Amazon is doing is making ad-supported an opt-out. Positioning the thing we have now as "a new ad-free option."

And, as quoted in the Hollywood Reporter piece, they don't expect a lot of takers for ad-free. Nor do they want them. They've learned the big bucks are in combined subscriptions and advertising dollars:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90956587/why-every-streaming-service-wants-you-to-watch-ads-now

 

[CTListener]

And we also have to look at what brings YouTube numbers. What percentage are watching movies (either "free with ads" or paid) and how many are looking at music and concert videos and every possible thing from how to put thermal paste on a CPU to how to retrofit your toilet with a bidet.

Or live streams of everything from the drug-ridden Kensington-Allegheny corner in Philadelphia to an eagle's nest in Decorah, Iowa, to a herd of musk oxen in Fairbanks, Alaska, to a long-distance trucker driving across the country. Deepfakes (or are they real?) of a frail, confused Joe Biden. People all over the world scratching lottery tickets, thousands of high school football and basketball games, and dozens of NCAA sports pirated from networks or ESPN. The latter sometimes attract north of 10,000 viewers, yet CBS, ESPN and Fox don't bother to put in a copyright strike on them. I'm constantly surprised at how much YouTube is still the Wild West even after all these years of improved technology to catch infringers and deniers.

 

[michael hagerty]

Or live streams of everything from the drug-ridden Kensington-Allegheny corner in Philadelphia to an eagle's nest in Decorah, Iowa, to a herd of musk oxen in Fairbanks, Alaska, to a long-distance trucker driving across the country. Deepfakes (or are they real?) of a frail, confused Joe Biden. People all over the world scratching lottery tickets, thousands of high school football and basketball games, and dozens of NCAA sports pirated from networks or ESPN. The latter sometimes attract north of 10,000 viewers, yet CBS, ESPN and Fox don't bother to put in a copyright strike on them. I'm constantly surprised at how much YouTube is still the Wild West even after all these years of improved technology to catch infringers and deniers.

Right.

And don't forget millennials hearing old rock songs for the first time, or reacting to "Blazing Saddles" and "Airplane!"

Last month, my wife and I took 44 minutes and watched this high-def walk through Paris (what do you call homesickness when it's not home?) on YouTube:

Yeah, that's 44 minutes we weren't watching "The Crown" on Netflix, "Bosch: Legacy" on Amazon Freevee or "E.R." on Max---but is it really direct competition to those things?

 

[Kelly A]

And all this discussion about programming brings us back around to the simple basic premise; that not everyone likes to watch the same shows, listen to the same music, news or entertainment programming, or find the same foods appealing, as you do. Now with streaming and crowd-sourced programming like on YouTube, anyone can find just about anything to watch or listen to.
It's nothing like the days when we were limited to only our local radio stations, album collections, or three or four local TV stations.
Now that we've ditched DirecTV, my wife was spending several minutes scrolling through various channel choices between YouTubeTV, Amazon/Freevee, Roku, and whatever else showed up. Her comment was; 'Good Lord, this is too much'. 'The woodchopping channel??' 'A channel with just Alf reruns?' My response was; "yeah, isn't it wonderful"?
I reminded her that didn't include the choices on AppleTV.

 

[michael hagerty]

And all this discussion about programming brings us back around to the simple basic premise; that not everyone likes to watch the same shows, listen to the same music, news or entertainment programming, or find the same foods appealing, as you do. Now with streaming and crowd-sourced programming like on YouTube, anyone can find just about anything to watch or listen to.
It's nothing like the days when we were limited to only our local radio stations, album collections, or three or four local TV stations.
Now that we've ditched DirecTV, my wife was spending several minutes scrolling through various channel choices between YouTubeTV, Amazon/Freevee, Roku, and whatever else showed up. Her comment was; 'Good Lord, this is too much'. 'The woodchopping channel??' 'A channel with just Alf reruns?' My response was; "yeah, isn't it wonderful"?
I reminded her that didn't include the choices on AppleTV.

About 30 years ago some standup comic made a joke, the punchline of which was:

"As happy as a red-assed ape that just discovered The Banana Channel on cable."

We're there. Just without the cable.

 

[CTListener]

Last month, my wife and I took 44 minutes and watched this high-def walk through Paris (what do you call homesickness when it's not home?) on YouTube:

Yeah, that's 44 minutes we weren't watching "The Crown" on Netflix, "Bosch: Legacy" on Amazon Freevee or "E.R." on Max---but is it really direct competition to those things?

Pretty sure I've found drive-through or walking tours of just about every place I've ever been in this country, including nearly 20 minutes of video from the town I worked and lived in straight out of college, on my first job:

 

[michael hagerty]

Pretty sure I've found drive-through or walking tours of just about every place I've ever been in this country, including nearly 20 minutes of video from the town I worked and lived in straight out of college, on my first job:

Oh, absolutely. Real-time dashcam videos are a thing:

Six and a half hours looking out someone else's windshield driving from L.A. to San Francisco. You CAN watch that. And to boombox's point, if you do, it's six and a half hours you're not watching something else (unless you're on two devices, which we can't rule out)----but is it competition with Netflix/Disney/Amazon/Max or an alternative?

The answer, since YouTube is an amalgam of user-generated and professional content, I suppose, is "both". But then, if you do apples to apples and factor out the time spent on user-generated, what does that to to YT's viewing times?

 

[CTListener]

Oh, absolutely. Real-time dashcam videos are a thing:

Six and a half hours looking out someone else's windshield driving from L.A. to San Francisco. You CAN watch that. And to boombox's point, if you do, it's six and a half hours you're not watching something else (unless you're on two devices, which we can't rule out)----but is it competition with Netflix/Disney/Amazon/Max or an alternative?

The answer, since YouTube is an amalgam of user-generated and professional content, I suppose, is "both". But then, if you do apples to apples and factor out the time spent on user-generated, what does that to to YT's viewing times?

Watching dashcam videos on 2X speed cuts the viewing time in half, but increases the white-knuckle factor exponentially!

 

[Kelly A]

Watching dashcam videos on 2X speed cuts the viewing time in half, but increases the white-knuckle factor exponentially!

Hey, there's another opportunity: 'The Carsick Channel!'

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

Watching dashcam videos on 2X speed cuts the viewing time in half, but increases the white-knuckle factor exponentially!

Dash cam videos are a symbol of the fact that anyone can produce and broadcast video content that used to be the domain of professional entertainers, directors, producers, broadcast engineers. And they can monetize it with Google ads.
That’s what makes YouTube so revolutionary. It’s broadcasting at the grass roots level. It doesn’t require network executives to decide what to broadcast / stream. There are some talented content creators and influencers out there. That broadcast capability to stream both audio and visual signals has only been available for app. 20 years. Micro computers had to be fast enough to handle the streaming.
So traditional tv receivers, like traditional radio receivers, may be fading out. JMO.

 

[Daryl Lynn L.A.]

This is a thread about broadcasting audio & visual signals by streaming them - Amazon Prime- so I am talking about creating content for streaming and who can control that. So it is still on topic. But it is revolutionary for the world of controlling broadcast signals ( which used to be called “the airwaves “).

 

[DavidEduardo]

Pretty sure I've found drive-through or walking tours of just about every place I've ever been in this country, including nearly 20 minutes of video from the town I worked and lived in straight out of college, on my first job:

The Duck Capital of the World with KWAK radio.

 

[CTListener]

The Duck Capital of the World with KWAK radio.

148,000 views!

 

[michael hagerty]

148,000 views!

Well, there goes another 16 and a half minutes I could have spent watching "Reacher"...