Are the streamers runnign out of st(r)eam?

[Randy Stankey]

The bean counters at movie studios and parent media companies have sped up the total life cycle of a movie as a means of playing some kind of cash flow game, one that doesn't make any sense to me. The movies aren't even the point anymore. It seems to be more about positioning a company to buy other companies or be sold to another company.

Remember how I keep bitching about people referring to movies as "product?"
I hate it when people think of customers as a "revenue stream."

They just want people to sit at home, type their credit card number into their website then stare at their television for two hours then repeat the same thing, all over again, the next day.

It's this kind of thinking that is killing the movie industry.

People are no longer customers to be served. They are just ripple in a revenue stream.

[Marcel Birgelen]

They just want people to sit at home, type their credit card number into their website then stare at their television for two hours then repeat the same thing, all over again, the next day.

Well, it's worse than that... they just want you to it once and then charge you automatically every next month and rake in the cash. That's what the "subscription model" is all about... getting cash cash from your "primary revenue stream" with minimal fuss and by doing the utmost minimal to keep them hooked up to your services.

Paying per view isn't a-la-mode anymore, it's the all-you-can-watch buffet, as long as it lasts. Maybe it will last until the majority of the people start realizing they're paying to be fed the same low-quality, re-heated shit every single day, but maybe that's exactly what many people want.

I guess the latest Netflix price-hikes has pushed many people over-the-edge though: You can see it in their subscriber numbers and the fact that they started to back-track on their price increases in some markets.

[Randy Stankey]

I hate the subscription model! I absolutely, freakin' HATE it!

All it does is give somebody else permission to take money out of your bank account, whenever they want, without asking. Of course, the claim is that you gave them permission when you agreed to their terms but that's just bullshit. If there is less money in your account and you didn't specifically approve the transaction, they TOOK your money!

I think there should be a law to the effect that all electronic transactions or purchases, via the internet, have to be approved by the card owner on a PER-TRANSACTION basis.

[Leo Enticknap]

Software is going in this direction, too, with the consumer and business software giants discouraging (or, in the case of Adobe Creative Suite, no longer selling, period) outright license sales and replacing them with a subscription model. This even extends to some software features in cars: apparently Tesla charges three figures a month for its near-autonomous self driving features.

[Steve Guttag]

It really brings up the question of ownership of something. This is not limited to just software, as manufacturers have ceased to provide schematics, make available repair parts and even serialize things so you can't, necessarily, repair your own stuff, even if you had the proper part.

I, personally, would be in favor of legislation that would compel manufacturers, including software developers that must offer a purchase version of their software that may not exceed the cost of say 3-5 years of a subscription version. Likewise, I would be in favor of legislation that would stipulate that when one purchases a product, it is theirs, in its entirety. How they use it is their business and how they choose to repair it is their business. This wouldn't violate any copyrights as nobody would be compelled to provide source code but the use of that code would be owned by whom purchases the product that uses it.

As the various firms have been consolidated and acquired, the notion of a completely free-market has vanished as one does not have choices and it only takes a handful of companies to set the standard of things like the subscription model.

Now, if you own your software (well, the use of your software), you wouldn't be entitled to any new features...just patches to repair anything that is defective in what you purchased. Much the same that if you buy a 2020 vehicle, you don't get the new features of a 2021, just the warranty repairs to any defects in the 2020.

There are some types of softwares that lend themselves to subscription models anyway. Accounting software comes to mind where tax and other things associated with accounting change on a regular basis such that running old versions may open one up to not properly following current regulations. Things involving money always tend to need to keep up. But, if I don't want to update my word processor, why should I need a subscription? Furthermore, I shouldn't be compelled to have Microsoft always feel that it HAS to update my OS if I don't want it to.

[Frank Cox]

Subscriptions exist even for candy, believe it or not.

For the past few months I haven't been able to find Skittles at the places where I usually buy my candy. Since they sell rather well, my wife did some web browsing to see if she could find some at a reasonable price that she could just order online.

She found some, but to get the price you had to subscribe to receive X boxes per month indefinitely. And if they didn't have what you were actually subscribed to get, "we reserve the right to substitute another item that we are sure will meet your expectations as well."

So it's a license to ship you anything that they happen to have laying around in their warehouse and bill you for it automatically.

No thanks.

[Bobby Henderson]

Software is going in this direction, too, with the consumer and business software giants discouraging (or, in the case of Adobe Creative Suite, no longer selling, period) outright license sales and replacing them with a subscription model. This even extends to some software features in cars: apparently Tesla charges three figures a month for its near-autonomous self driving features.

Lots of newer vehicles have all sorts of subscription packages. When I bought my 2018 Chevy Silverado it had Sirius|XM and the OnStar/MyChevy service loaded. The OnStar/MyChevy stuff is $40 per month! Most people I know get rid of that pretty quickly. While there might be some anti-theft benefits and the cool factor of being able to remotely start your vehicle using your phone is it really worth $480 per year? Plus my insurance company (USAA) didn't give me squat for discounts for having the service. So why keep it? Waste of damned money. Sirius|XM is a little more useful (it works outside of the vehicle). But there are less expensive music services one can use on a portable device.

Adobe opened a Pandora's box of sorts with Creative Cloud. Many people were skeptical Adobe would have any success. But their gamble paid off big time. I wish I had bought a bunch of stock in Adobe back then. Adobe had a lot of leverage over the print graphics market because Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat are very much industry standards. We have 3 licenses of Creative Cloud at my workplace. Plus I have a subscription of Astute Graphics' suite of Adobe Illustrator plug-ins. A lot of the branding assets we receive are generated using Adobe software, particularly Illustrator. There is a lot of features and effects within Illustrator that do not translate at all to rival graphics applications. It ends up being cheaper for us to just use Adobe's software than waste a shit-ton of time trying to fix client artwork when it fails to import accurately into a non-native Adobe application.

Other companies saw Adobe's success and intended to copy it. Much of Autodesk's software is all sold via subscription now (AutoCAD, Maya, etc). I've used another vector drawing program, CorelDRAW, for over 30 years. They now sell it either as a subscription or a version with a one time purchase of $549, but the license cannot be upgraded at all. I think Corel is struggling. They don't have the kind of leverage titans like Adobe and Autodesk wield. CorelDRAW has had squat in terms of worthwhile upgrades and the application gets hardly any bug fixes at all. That's despite the fact a number of bugs have existed in CorelDRAW going back 3 or more version cycles. Meanwhile Adobe issues updates frequently to Illustrator, both in terms of adding new features or improving existing ones and issuing lots of bug fix updates. Adobe is seen by many as a bad guy. But they're actually pretty responsive to user feedback and requests. I've managed to get a couple new features incorporated into Illustrator myself.

The only thing blunting any of this software-as-a-service stuff in the graphics industry is lower priced or free applications. I have the desktop and iPad version of Affinity Designer, the iPad version of Vectornator and the desktop version of Inkscape. They're interesting applications, but have too many serious drawbacks or missing features to be productive in an actual graphics production environment.

DaVinci Resolve Studio is, I think, the only low cost video production application suite that works very well in a professional environment. But one could argue Blackmagic Design sells the studio suite for only $295 (and offers Resolve 18 for free) as a loss leader to entice users into buying its professional video production hardware.

Having to deal with software subscriptions for work is one thing. It's an easy tax write-off, btw. It turns into something that is a cost of doing business. Subscription-based entertainment at home is far more of an optional luxury. Subscription-based entertainment, I think, is poised to go through a serious down-turn. The rampant inflation on basics like food, rent, etc will force a lot of people to hack away a bunch of those services. I think satellite TV companies (Dish, DirecTV) are quickly becoming irrelevant. Streaming services like Hulu Live and YouTube TV cost considerably less. But even those services are questionable considering how so many cable TV networks are wastelands of reality TV content and other garbage. The "news" channels are in the business of sowing discord in the American public, jerking off their rage boners with anger pornography. Live sports is the only thing worth a damn, and even that isn't so great these days. All in all it seems like a better idea to get outdoors or at least go to the gym.