Netflix's Biggest Competition Isn't Sleep -- It's YouTube (venturebeat.com) 115
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings loves to identify sleep as the biggest competition of its service. "Sometimes employees at Netflix think, 'Oh my god, we're competing with FX, HBO, or Amazon, but think about it. If you didn't watch Netflix last night: What did you do? There's such a broad range of things that you did to relax and unwind, hang out, and connect -- and we compete with all of that," he once said. "You get a show or a movie you're really dying to watch, and you end up staying up late at night, so we actually compete with sleep," he added. Turns out, Hastings does not need to look that far for competition.
From a report: Despite Netflix and Amazon investing billions of dollars in producing original content, they are struggling to make inroads in emerging markets. YouTube, on the other hand, is growing rapidly, becoming a daily habit for even new internet users. In India, for instance, YouTube reaches 245 million unique users each month, or 85 percent of all internet users in the country, the company told VentureBeat. About 60 percent of all YouTube traffic in India comes from outside of its six major cities. [Globally, YouTube has 1.9 billion monthly active users.]
As consumption on YouTube grows, creators are also finding loyal audiences. In India alone, YouTube now has more than 600 channels with more than 1 million subscribers, up from 20 channels in 2016. Record label T-Series, which is fighting with PewDiePie for the title of most-subscribed YouTube channel, took 10 years to get to its first 10 million subscribers. In the last two years, it has grown to 60 million subscribers. Globally, YouTube says the number of channels with more than 1 million subscribers has grown by 75 percent this year.
Globally, YouTube told VentureBeat that 75 percent of the platform's watch time occurs on a mobile device. The average watch time for a mobile user is 60 minutes per day. Or in other words, this is the time a user could have spent watching Netflix. According to eMarketer's estimates, an average user would spend about 86 minutes per day watching digital videos on streaming services this year.
From a report: Despite Netflix and Amazon investing billions of dollars in producing original content, they are struggling to make inroads in emerging markets. YouTube, on the other hand, is growing rapidly, becoming a daily habit for even new internet users. In India, for instance, YouTube reaches 245 million unique users each month, or 85 percent of all internet users in the country, the company told VentureBeat. About 60 percent of all YouTube traffic in India comes from outside of its six major cities. [Globally, YouTube has 1.9 billion monthly active users.]
As consumption on YouTube grows, creators are also finding loyal audiences. In India alone, YouTube now has more than 600 channels with more than 1 million subscribers, up from 20 channels in 2016. Record label T-Series, which is fighting with PewDiePie for the title of most-subscribed YouTube channel, took 10 years to get to its first 10 million subscribers. In the last two years, it has grown to 60 million subscribers. Globally, YouTube says the number of channels with more than 1 million subscribers has grown by 75 percent this year.
Globally, YouTube told VentureBeat that 75 percent of the platform's watch time occurs on a mobile device. The average watch time for a mobile user is 60 minutes per day. Or in other words, this is the time a user could have spent watching Netflix. According to eMarketer's estimates, an average user would spend about 86 minutes per day watching digital videos on streaming services this year.
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Forget the content creators banding together, if YouTube simply keeps trying to monetize itself as heavily as it has been recently, they'll lose a number of their regular users.
Right now, it's not uncommon for my wife and I to launch the YouTube app on a TV-connected device right before we hit the hay, watch a video or two as we wind down mentally, then go to sleep. But with them shoving unskippable ads down our throats on what feels like every single video, as well as interrupting the content to shove ads
Makes sense (Score:2)
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While I think this is a bit beside the point of youtube v. netflix, I will say their losses of non-netflix content has been putting a damper on my interest in their selection. The netflix original content has improved in variety thankfully, but still can't easily compete with the plethora of non-netflix content.
Re: Makes sense (Score:1)
Drama, violence, sex, propaganda, competition...
I can't stand TV but I do sympathize with any reasons why people watch it. Boredom and having nothing better to do, two certain reasons. Not really good long-term bases for decisions but those are factors for people.
I want to learn shit. Because I want to do shit.
85 year-old John Doe who worked for USPS his whole life who's now building a geothermal greenhouse growing CITRUS in NEBRASKA isn't on Netflix, but he's the motherfucker I want to listen to.
My girlbab
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There is nothing wrong witch scripted shows. They actually have a lot of value. Star Trek for example, was used to express the problems of society of its time, while being unique enough to not seem threatening. Issue like the cold war and its problems were expressed without latching onto our current prejudice. Or often take such ideas and express them to the extreme to show flaws in the ideas.
This is different from propaganda, which tells you how to think, vs enlightenment gives you more factors to think
Re: Makes sense (Score:1)
I'm not bashing scripted shows. I'm saying that scripted shows do not *necessarily* reflect reality in any valuable way outside of providing entertainment. To come out with the Star Trek argument is a good argument to come out with against a whole lot of shit. I'm with you, that is valuable.
But petty scripted dramatic modern soap opera type crap that just keeps people in emotional holes and past-fixated, or programs meant to, well, program people, with the intent of keeping people thinking certain ways abou
Re: Makes sense (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it is more of an issue of age.
When we were young, these were new concepts to us, and the popular shows of the time that we watch got our attention and such ideas were interesting and radical. However as we grew older we see the same thing over and over again, and no longer gains the same attention, and just seems more blunt, while in actually it isn't as bad as you think it is, but as you got older you ability to spot the deeper meaning has improved, and your views on things get more firmly fixed. So if a show has a "non-standard relationship" a younger person will see this and realize not all families follow the same structure, while the older person will see it as the group you grew up to learn to hate and fear as a threat to your way of life.
The view is that culture peaked when you hit your 20's no matter what your age is, everything else past that is either repetitive or just lazy and shotty.
The Boomers are pining for the easy life of the 1950's and 1960's. Gen X thinks the 1970's and 1980's, Menials are now pining for the 1990's and 2000's
For me as a late Gen X Star Trek TNG was my first experience with it. And its stances allowed me to approach things differently beyond the strict code of my parents. TOS which I watched covered many of the same topics, but showed its age and I didn't enjoy it as much, Voyager and Enterprise just seemed repetitive and just preachy. But if you were to ask a boomer about Star Trek TOS was far superior to all the others...
For most people in the first world, your late teens and early 20's is your most optimistic part of your life, despite the stress and depression we have trying to attract a mate, the future is wide open to us, still under our parents to cover necessities, but the freedom to explore and do what we want. Where in a decade we are tied down with a Job and Family, while brings a new form of joy, means you just cannot getup and leave and explore a different country, take that job where you travel all the time, get the higher paid 1099 work, because you don't need to worry about those benefits.
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F that. Culture peaked in the 1950's, and I was born in 1971.
Something else (Score:2)
but there are others who are looking for something else
And on YouTube they find... PewDiePie and a million Fail videos (basically Americas Funniest Home Videos stretching out til the end of time).
I'm pretty sure that is not what the remaining 95%, according to your statistics, seek...
You figures also do not explain why Netflix subscriber counts keep going up [statista.com]. Seems like maybe you have that percentage reversed.
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Same thing (Score:2)
PewPewDie is about 0.00001% of total views on Youtube.
Same thing for generic cop/medical dramas on Netflix (I've never watched one and watch Netflix all the time), so thanks for undermining your original point there chief.
Maybe it turns out the way the world works for most people is not how you are using it, or even how you describe it...
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I wasn't talking about Netflix, but what the employees (and most people like you) think are Netflix competitors
HBO and Amazon suddenly have a lot of generic cop/medical dramas?
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My only regret is that YouTube is way too much power concentrated in one space.
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Because, cough, cough, Google lies, pretty routinely, as do most tech companies, truth considered entirely an expensive option. I would not believe any numbers coming out of Youtube, just of partial interest. Shoving content on people on the Youtube homepage, making it seem more or less popular by cooking the numbers. I would trust Netflix subcriber numbers more because they would go to jail if they cooked those numbers to inflate share value. So can the Alphabet liars go to jail for lying about Youtube vie
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A successful YouTube Chanel, would be an abysmal failure on network television, just on numbers alone.
But it is cheap to produce on YouTube so these bad numbers are still making you a big channel, because a quality production is costing thousands of dollars per episode vs millions for broadcast.
Sue YouTube production quality is often poor compared to broadcast. But because of the relatively low risk, interesting story ideas and shows can be made. Because an absolute failure will not bankrupt you for life.
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I find the technical channels on youtube to be far superior in quality to broadcast, actually. There are a bunch of technical channels run by engineers, so the dialogue is quite a bit better, production quality is the same if not better. There are a bunch of retired engineers sailing around the world these days producing their own youtube videos about sailing, or rebuilding sailboats, making a ton of money doing it..
My takeaway from this has been that most people working on broadcast reality TV are
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Or this program: I miei vinili" [youtube.com] a talk show where a famous peron tals about its favourite records while they'te played on a turntable in the studio.
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You realize a YouTube channel is equal to a TV show, right?
So the comparison would be, say, 5 YouTube videos per hour, times 24 hours per day versus individual TV channels.
So that works out to 120 YouTube channel videos on one TV channel.
That would become the most watched TV channel overnight.
Amazing... (Score:5, Funny)
You mean to tell me a free video website has more reach than one that requires a monthly payment? I would never have guessed that...
Binge is dead (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Wife will "watch" a series if it's interesting, maybe BBC, after the 10pm news. She's typically asleep by 10:40 and 3/4 episodes often play while she's snoozing.
2) I watch old Star Trek series, maybe the occasional anime or new sci fi series - typically in the background while I'm working on some side project by myself late at night.
3) Young daughter will watch girl cartoons, typically for about an hour at a time per day.
4) Teen boys ignore it. They know how to pirate and don't even bother checking to see if NetFlix has a version of what they want to watch before downloading.
What aren't we doing? Sitting down to watch anything other than the occasional movie together. No one binges series after series anymore; we pretty much got that out of our systems two years ago. And we still pirate GoT and other "premium" series, particularly if the only legit version online is season-limited or injected with commercials. But 3-4 hours of the same series...in the same sitting? Ain't nobody got that kind of time...
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TV (and its internet based replacements) have turned from the focus of attention to something you keep running in the background. I don't really watch anything, most of the time it just runs in a spare monitor as some sort of entertainment for the couple brain cells that are not occupied doing something more worthwhile. Given that most series and shows are only interesting about 5-10 minutes of their 40 minute run, with the rest being useless filler to pass the time between the ads, it's good enough to get
Re:Binge is dead (Score:5, Insightful)
Watching for 3-4 hours straight isn't the only way to do "Binge". What I usually do is watch Netflix about 30 minutes each night (I don't have time for more...), finishing an entire season of a series in a couple of weeks. It's still a "binge" in the sense that I watch the series as one very long movie, and rarely watch other things in the middle. I actually feel that series-watching on Netflix have become the new "book": it takes a long time to finish, every night you continue from where you left off last night, you don't usually do it for 4 hours straight but perhaps more like 30 minutes, and it has a lot of depth and breadth (unlike a short movie).
Netflix still has a lot of series I want to watch, but I wish they had a lot more of the older TV series (there are *decades* worth of excellent series out there). Star Trek is an excellent example of older content they do have, and I watched.
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In our bedroom, we only run an air antenna along with NetFlix and Prime. There ton's of old series. Dragnet, Night Court, Columbo, Space 1999, and more.
I really don't watch a lot of movies, but my Girl Friend does. That and the NetFlix series.
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You ever heard of a guy going on a crazy alcohol binge - 1 glass a night, forever?
Yes but did you see the 68oz glass pitcher he was drinking it out of?
68oz Pitcher [amazon.com]
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YouTube is a different thing. Most of it is amateur or pro-am stuff. Far more niche than any other broadcast format. Videos are typically much shorter than TV programmes. It's a very different beast to Netflix or traditional TV.
That also explains why YouTube's Premium service is such a joke. 12 quid for no ads and a few original shows. Netflix HD is 8 quid. I'd gladly give them a couple of bucks for no ads, but they only seem to be interested in being some kind of very premium music video service.
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I don't even want the original programming. Just ad-free YouTube. A few bucks a month. Exclude music videos if you like. Come on YouTube.
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...No one binges series after series anymore; we pretty much got that out of our systems two years ago. And we still pirate GoT and other "premium" series, particularly if the only legit version online is season-limited or injected with commercials. But 3-4 hours of the same series...in the same sitting? Ain't nobody got that kind of time...
If you're going through the effort of downloading pirated content in order to watch it, you're probably wasting just as much time as the average binge-watcher.
And as far as not even checking Netflix before pirating shit, that's just fucking stupid. Talk about not having time to sit around waiting for shit.
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If you had a geek card, now would be the time you need to turn it in.
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I'm sorry, but since GoT is available via HBO, which is not filled with ads or season limited, what's your justification for pirating it? I mean, I get that $15/mo is too expensive for some people, but are you really pleading poverty?
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The HBO Android TV app is as crappy as it can be. Crashes, hangs, doesn't even remember where you stopped. I cancelled my subscription after the free month just because of that. Watching GoT was such a pain. Sometimes I had to restart an episode from the beginning and skip to the place it crashed otherwise it would crash again.
I'd rather download high quality files and play them on Kodi.
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I'd rather get free stuff too!
Look, for a long time, people said "oh, if only it was available ala carte as streaming, I wouldn't pirate" Then, it was available, and people found a new excuse.
However, if you want a better player, and have Prime already, you can watch HBO through the Prime Video app (for a surcharge). Or, the app on iDevices works pretty well.
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Look, for a long time, people said "oh, if only it was available ala carte as streaming, I wouldn't pirate" Then, it was available, and people found a new excuse.
Not true. Many stopped pirating when it became more convenient, including me. But I just meant that I considered it in the middle of watching GoT (through legal means). Now some will always pirate stuff, and I'm not advocating for that.
However, if you want a better player, and have Prime already, you can watch HBO through the Prime Video app (for a surcharge). Or, the app on iDevices works pretty well.
None of this works for me.
In many countries, you can't buy HBO w/o cable (Score:2)
I seem to remember the $15 dollars a month deal for IPTV-only access to HBO (HBO Now) is available only in a few countries. In other countries, viewers must first subscribe to a traditional multichannel pay TV package including other WarnerMedia channels, typically at $40/mo or more, before being allowed to subscribe to HBO.
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That could be true. I know it's available inside the US. But it's probably not available worldwide.
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4) if your kids were robbing the local convenience store every afternoon would you try to stop them?
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If my kids decided to take their own laundry to a laundromat and wash it themselves - I'd happily pay $2K to see it.
What probably happened here was that the laundromat offered WiFi that someone camped on for a long enough period and with enough content to attract the authorities. And, since the laundromat owner didn't have the sophistication to filter out leeches who put him in the origina
Hard to compete with free (Score:2)
Hard to compete with free
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Well, once you have a Netflix subscription, it's also "free" for the month, in that "all you can watch" sense. So, the question is, is YouTube making inroads among people with a Netflix subscription.
YouTube puff piece? (Score:2)
It sounds like someone at YouTube reached out to somebody at Venture Beat and spoonfed them some PR sound bites.
Why should you watch Netflix *more*? (Score:3, Interesting)
Unlike Youtube, Netflix doesn't get paid (by advertisers) by the amount of time you watch it. A person, like me, can be happy with his Netflix service even if he watches it "just" 30 minutes a day, and even if this person spends other time watching youtube, or, god forbid, sleep.
For me to remain a happy Netflix customer, it doesn't need to swallow up more of my time or compete with Youtube. It needs to continue to show me things I *want* to see (it needs to increase the amount of content it has - especially "older" movies and series, not just new made-for-Netflix content), it needs to remain ad-free (respecting my time) and it needs to remain cheap, and needs to remain convenient (watch on my phone, watch offline, etc.).
By the way, Netflix could fairly easily steal Youtube's thunder, by allowing popular content providers (e.g., those already successful on youtube) to upload content which will be shown on Netflix, in return for $0.002 per view (I think this is about what Youtube pays the content uploaders). People will still use Youtube to listen to illegally-uploaded songs, but to watch original content, ad-free, they could go to Netflix.
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Of course, hosting community content is easy. Policing community content - not so much. Youtube has invested a fortune in their content filtering
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Good points. I might watch more Youtube than Netflix on any given day, but I'm not sending Youtube any money, and I sure as hell am not watching any of their ads. The fact that I watch more of Youtube doesn't benefit them in anyway.
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If you prefer to pay and not get ads, you can get that on YouTube as well. https://www.youtube.com/premiu... [youtube.com]
The two aren't really direct competitors IMO, though. I use both, for different kinds of things.
Who'd have thought? (Score:2)
People prefer free content, even if it's crap?
TV should have been a hint.
Youtube's advantages (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the main advantage of Youtube is that they do a much better job of pushing stuff you want to see. You can subscribe to channels and then they show you a list of all tne new stuff in your channels each day. You can sign up for notifications so you never miss a new video. They can recommend new channels to you based on channels you are interested in.
Netflix seems to be terrible at promoting the content on their service. Every day I go on there and see the same shows and movies being pushed for months at a time. Sometimes I'll go exploring and find that there are great movies on there that they just never tell you about, even if I've watched many similar movies.
The only way to find these movies, especially when viewing in an app is to search by title, but almost nobody searches by title because so many movies just aren't there. When I want to find stuff they aren't pushing, I go to the web interface, where you can click on the name of actor/director/writer and see all the other content that they have for that person. This feature seems to be absent from the apps, and it's kind of a shame, because there is plenty of good content on Netflix, but much of it is impossible to find.
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That's because those are the movies that don't cost as much for Netflix to carry.
The big content companies detest Netflix's payment model ("$15/month for all you can watch? People spend that much on tickets for ONE movie at the theater!"). They hate Netflix in general, blaming it for their decline in DVD sales (due to cheap rentals), and now that they compete directly with Netflix in streaming they want to kill the company completely. So, high prices.
They also charge huge amounts that Netflix couldn't pay u
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My experience with Netflix says it gets a whole lot better if you spend some time actively curating your suggestions.
I'll fairly regularly go through my suggestions and down-vote things I know I'll never watch (like the dozens of Indian movies that show up from time to time). That makes them go away, and new things bubble up. Over time, you weed
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I think this part of the problem. They have removed all ability for me to rate movies effectively. It's all thumbs up or thumbs down. There is no way to tell them I liked one movie more than another, simply that I liked them both. The star rating system made so much more sense. I still don't understand why they got rid of that.
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I didn't even know youtube had a paid version.
My brother sent me a youtube link the other day on some documentary about chimp memory vs human memory and our evolution. Really interesting stuff.
I see it is only episode 1. Episode 2 must be worth a watch. I click episode 2, and you have to have youtube premium. I didn't even know it existed.
Much less how I'd find this kind of full programming vs all the other random youtube stuff.
That will definitely be a challenge for youtube.
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I think the main advantage of Youtube is that they do a much better job of pushing stuff you want to see.
Not in my experience. Like most guys, I have absolutely no interest in Adele’s music - but YouTube seems to think she’s my favorite singer.
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I think the main advantage of Youtube is that they do a much better job of pushing stuff you want to see.
Opposite here. No matter what I seem to search for on YouTube they want to radicalize me. If I want a talk on specific subject, they immediately start pushing most extreme versions of expressed viewpoints. Consequently, I make a point to regularly wipe history and cookies on any device where I watched youtube.
Youtube's biggest advantage (Score:2)
YouTube's biggest disadvantage is also that anyone on the planet can make a video and upload it for viewing, meaning that there are a ton of crappy videos on it not worth viewing. How successful YouTube is thus depends, as you point out, on how well it's able to help viewers sort the wheat from the chaff. It's
YouTube ? No, thanks... (Score:2)
Subscribers seems like a bad metric (Score:2)
I subscribe to a number of channels on YouTube.
But how often do I watch any of them? Maybe once a month. Certainly not every time they publish.
Just because you are subscribes does not mean you are going to watch - and because of the short form there, it's pretty easy to ignore updates for even the slightest reason.
I still do not see YouTube as competing with Netflix, because each has such different time profiles. If I want to watch videos for a few hours, I'm always going to turn to Netflix over YouTube.
Neither one (Score:1)
Re:Neither one (Score:5, Insightful)
Do I have to say it? (Score:2)
Amazon Prime (Score:2)
While the article is looking internationally, domestically in the USA the competition is Amazon Prime. Yes, I'm aware they're now branding Prime as it's own thing, but with so many people joining Prime for Amazon or Whole Foods shopping, you have many millions of customers who see the streaming service as a free bonus. If these people don't already subscribe to Netflix, it's now a harder sell, as they have lots of content available already.
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I love the University of YouTube! (Score:5, Insightful)
I prefer learning stuff over watching yet another cop drama or soap opera
I can attend graduate-level physics lectures by top professors, with great graphics and sound
I can learn glassblowing, welding, knifemaking, machining, woodworking, and more
Currently, I'm watching card magic tutorials
Even some promotional materials are educational. By watching an ad, I learned about longwall coal mining
And then, for fun, there's dead malls and Uncle Bumblefuck (AvE)
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Of course, it's always fun watching people who got law
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speaking of the "University of YouTube" and sovereign citizens, i found this one quite amusing: Lawyer Reacts to INSANE Lawsuit from Sovereign Citizen Law School Applicant [youtube.com].
although this one isn't that good apart from the mockery and subject matter, i've found his other videos entertaining and interesting; I often listen to them in the background.
That's Good News (Score:1)
I'd hate to think I'd have to start paying a monthly fee just to sleep.
When you're competing with PewDiePie... (Score:2)
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What did I do last night? (Score:2)
tl;dr vs essay (Score:1)
Youtube and Netflix are in two different categories. On the web, I often prefer summaries, tl;drs, bullet points. This is what Youtube is: watch a thing for a few minutes, access a news site, go watch another thing for a few minutes. I have watched lots of 4 minute movies on Youtube, for example, without losing my concentration on all the other tabs/apps I have running.
Netflix is like a more detailed article. It forces you to dedicate more of your time. You often need to make time for it. Close all other br
YT has very diffrent content. (Score:2)
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Interesting part is I believe there was a point where Netflix could have better protected their position as 'source of video from any content provider' with Starz. Starz said 'we are willing to be an add-on' and netflix said 'no, we want a flat rate for all users'. Starz took their ball and went home and the precedent was set for all providers.
So we are going to finally get that 'a la carte' we always wanted back in the cable days, and it's going to be expensive. If NF had been a common provider then may
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The loss of the marvel series sucks, but the rest of it isn't much of a loss that I can see. There just isn't that much mainstream Disney stuff on Netflix. Usually there is a Marvel movie or two and a couple of old movies. Disney runs their content like McD's does the McRib. They'll roll out a movie for a few years then lock it up for a decade before making some new release version of it on whatever the new form of media is. Of all the big IP companies though I think Disney has the best chance of making a g
Competition is only part of the problem (Score:2)
The other big part is keeping material available that folks want to watch.
There are so many older movies out there that I would like to see again, but none of them are ever on any of the Streaming Services.
You can rent them via physical media, but good luck finding them as a streaming title.
Really want to see the Internet economy collapse? (Score:2)
I have a youtube channel (Score:1)
competition? (Score:2)
it's true that my tv watching is divided between youtube and netflix, but they are complementary and not competition, both serve different things to watch.
and why would netflix care if i watch youtube anyway, i paid them already, no amount of youtube watching is going to change that.
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If you've ever been on Netflix looking for some old movie from years ago, odds are you won't find it.
It's a good bet you'd find it on YouTube for rent at $3
For instance, Animal House Netflix History: [newonnetflix.info]
12/01/2016: Added to Netflix
03/01/2017: Removed from Netflix
11/01/2018: Streaming Again
It has been available on Youtube [youtube.com] since forever