Disney CEO Bob Iger said Wednesday Disney will begin rolling out a crackdown on password sharing for its streaming services next year.
The company will roll out tactics to mitigate password sharing in 2024. While Iger said Disney should see some effects from the rollout in 2024, the initiatives to prevent password sharing won’t be completed next year.
I know we all PW share, but I have no moral argument why we should be able to PW share. Never understood why so many people get pissed off about these crackdowns. Good TV is kind of expensive to make.
Edit: in this thread, people that don't understand the economics of TV and media.
With Netflix, my argument was that they only let me get 4k with a four screen package, I'm one man in one flat, I don't need four screens so why shouldn't I be able to hand out my other three?
It’s the same as with youtube premium - do I need another music service? No, I just don’t want to have no ads (I don’t have it, just an example).
They just bloat up the package with stuff, so it looks like it’s much and is of “value”, when you are actually paying for a lot of stuff you don’t want/need… but of course they charge you for all of it.
I actually dropped Spotify in favour of YT music sojc it comes with premium. It was during the Joe Rogan Vax stuff too so seemed like an easy decision.
Nah fuck that. I paid for 4 screens so 4 people could use it. They took away my ability to give it to 4 people so Instead of reducing my service back to 1 screen I just didn't need Netflix anymore.
My elderly in-laws will never sign up for it, so Netflix lost it all and gained nothing.
Pricing is an aggregate use case for scale. Generally you don't want to have an overwhelming number of combos in your rate a price cards. It creates hard to market pricing and confusion for customers. And it causes a lot of challenges and confusion when pricing needs to change. So you offer a finite number of tiers that on aggregate cover the true cost and margin of profit needed. I think what most folks dont realize is a lot of streaming services currently operate a loss because they have to be so competitively priced. And cord cutting on cable where TV companies could rely on bundles puts streaming services in a direct to consumer model in a vice grip of pressure.
That's fine. Cancel your subscription. But Disney+ operates at a loss. A way to cut that loss is get more subscribers and or increase cost. I imagine they are going to be calling the bluff to see which of the PW sharers actually cancel vs those that stay and end up with converting recipients of sharers as new customers. But it's naive to say that these companies, which I agree don't deserve a lot of sympathy, are struggling to figure out how to operate a profitable streaming business. But folks want to have there cake and eat it too, don't pay for the service but have unfettered access to the content.
A price increase and reduced marketing expenses helped improve the performance of Disney's streaming unit from January through March. The division ended the quarter with an operating loss of $659 million, compared with $1.1 billion in the prior quarter.
I suspect they operate at a loss to increase their market share, and that Disney as a whole still is quite profitable.
And then we are back to the streaming providers saying "this sharing business must stop", while they constantly move shows around to ensure you need all services and end up paying more than a cable subscription for streaming.
Exactly on the last point, but not the different services bit. Operate at a loss while in customer acquisition mode and gain exposure. Then adjust cost. You seem to get it, but I don't get how you understand that but don't also see why it is not sustainable to operate at a loss forever. So you need to gain customers and or increase cost per sub.
As for many services... DTC kind of fucked things up. Bundles gave users way too much and resulted in perceived bloat or over pay, but the model did allow cheaper costs to get it all, and security of more stable subscriber numbers. In the past all TV providers did was make and provide content to cable providers to distribute. Cable providers did the distribution infrastructure, stb, and billing and marketing of the bundle. Now each TV provider must handle their own marketing, billing, app development, etc. That's a bit more cost per TV provider. DTC and steaming could only remain cheap if cable subs stayed strong. If cable subs drop that revenue needs to be made up on the streaming service. I predict digital streaming bundles will make a come back, but not sure if cable providers, digital provides like a fubo, or someone else will offer the bundles. Bundles should offer lower cost to customer and provide more stable revenue to streaming providers and hopefully can be a win win for both.
You talk about one division of Disney and I talk about the whole company.
I am absolutely sure The Walt Disney Company knows exactly what they are doing with their streaming division and they have planned with that loss from day one, and I guess their plan is: "Spend X to get a user base of size Y", that's why I don't have any sympathy for them.
Disney don't have any financial problems:
Operating income US$12.121 billion (2022)
Net income US$3.145 billion (2022)
If their streaming service is losing a billion/yr for some years it's no big deal.
Well let me break out a tiny violin for them then, it's not like they have a monopoly on a huge number of IPs...oh wait...hmmm guess they do actually huh maybe they shouldn't of spent all that money acquiring all those studios if it isn't actually making them money. But you know I think the world's largest media company can afford to run their streaming service at a loss.
Streaming only makes sense financially when a household can share one account, if they start forcing people to have an account per device or per person they will end up losing customers.