Yesterday my social media feeds exploded in outrage and hatred for Netflix. They are raising their prices! The bastards, how dare they?! People were raving and proudly claiming they had canceled their subscription already. Fuck Netflix for trying to up the fees on them. Right? No not really. At most you are now paying an extra $8 a month. Personally I’m paying an extra $3.99. If you can’t afford that $8 bucks maybe you shouldn’t have Netflix to begin with or should make a choice as to which you prefer, streaming or Dvd.
Netflix is fighting an uphill battle, they have given us an amazing product. We get pretty much any movie or show streamed directly into our homes or sent straight to our mailbox for a low price. However, people are livid, they want new releases and every obscure show they can think of. Sure in recent months the Instant Queue hasn’t been looking all that great but I still have 226 titles in my queue right now. Plus in the last week I’ve gotten Star Trek, X-Men, and Spider-Man all lined up to watch, it is a geek wet dream in my queue. And Netflix paid a lot of money for me to have that. In fact just this year they spent $100 million to get films from Miramax and an estimated $91 million for all of Mad Men that should start streaming this month. ($1 million per episode for all 7 seasons, new seasons start streaming after completion on AMC.)
Studios and networks aren’t as big of fans of Netflix as we are, because in their eyes Netflix is taking money out of their pocket. Instead of going out and buying new releases people are waiting for it to hit Netflix so the DVD sales don’t do as well. I don’t need to go buy Community to catch up I can just order it delivered to my mailbox for a fraction of the cost. The studios hold all the cards in this game too, they can tell Netflix they have to wait for new releases if they want to give us the old shows that we crave. Plus Netflix has to fight the other renters. Redbox is in the fight trying to get their cut from the Studio and beat Netflix to the punch. I stop every time I leave the grocery store to see if there is anything worth renting from them then I go home and fire up the Instant Queue.
We Robots had a lengthy conversation about why it is/isn’t bullshit for them to raise their fees and the consensus was “We want a solid reason why and American ISPs suck ass.” Netflix rationalization for the increase was that we had all been getting DVDs at a bargain and they needed to up the prices to reflect the real world costs. I can understand that, we really weren’t paying that much and shipping centers and employees cost a whole lot more than streaming. So far as ISPs go I suggest you read this article about why they are all bastards.
A quote from a G+ friend on the 11th (who was bitching about Netflix today) sums this up for me pretty well. “People are using their $400 phones and $60 per month data plans to post their excitement about getting a free Slurpee, which if they paid for would cost $1.50 and be 4x the size.” Basically, calm down people Netflix is a damn good service and you really aren’t paying that much for it and if you don’t like the increase you can change your plan and still get a great product.