Disney+ Reaches 164.2 Million Subscribers, Prepares For Ad-Supported Tier Launch (techcrunch.com) 30
Lauren Forristal writes via TechCrunch: Disney reported (PDF) results for the final quarter of its 2022 fiscal year today, revealing a total of 164.2 million Disney+ global subscribers, an increase of 12 million subs from 152.1 million in Q3. The flagship streaming service was only expected to gain 9.35 million subs. Across Disney's streaming services, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ had a combined total of 235.7 million subscribers, up from 221 million in the third quarter. The company beat expectations of 233.8 million. [...] However, the company fell short of expectations for total revenue, which was reported to be $20.15 billion. Wall Street estimated that Disney would report a 15% year-on-year jump in revenue to $21.3 billion. The direct-to-consumer division lost $1.5 billion. Disney+ is also set to launch a cheaper ad-supported version on December 8th as it looks to find more ways to earn revenue. The company also increased subscription prices for Disney+, Hulu, Hulu Live TV bundles and ESPN+ plans.
Government approved revenue stream. (Score:2)
Disney+ is also set to launch a cheaper ad-supported version on December 8th as it looks to find more ways to earn revenue.
Copyright everything then charge out the wazoo.
People like Ads? (Score:1)
People like Ads?
I guess half the population with an IQ of less than 100 like ads!
Re: People like Ads? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, cable TV has been a successful business model for decades, with customers doing exactly that.
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cable TV has been a successful business model for decades, with customers doing exactly that.
They only had to compete with OTA, where there were ads. Now streaming services have to compete with services without ads, and also sites where they can just download the content without paying, also without ads. Times change. HTH, HAND.
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I'm curious... what happens when you sign up for the Ad-Supported plan and then visit the site with a good Ad Blocker?
If it works the way I expect it to work (you pay less, and most of the ads magically disappear on their own), it sounds like a Big Brain way of subscribing!
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I'm curious... what happens when you sign up for the Ad-Supported plan and then visit the site with a good Ad Blocker?
Visit the site? How quaint. Most people use streaming services through an app on their smart TV or via a streaming media device. There is no adblock, and you're going to get ads.
I have the free Paramount+ that's included with T-Mobile and the ads are so obnoxious I'd still rather sail the high seas. The free subscription is basically only good for browsing through the app, looking for the next thing to snag from rarbg. I'd imagine it would be the same situation with Disney+.
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Visit the site? How quaint. Most people use streaming services through an app on their smart TV or via a streaming media device. There is no adblock, and you're going to get ads.
Very strange, this appears to be a post from before June 15, 2015, when pihole was released. How did it end up in this discussion?
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I assume the ads they are talking about are "television" commercial type spots that are either embedded directly in the videos or the variety where whatever elastic media streaming over http solution they use tells the player what content to grab next, but its STILL served via the first party.
Unless you are doing SSL/TLS interception / MTIM (good luck with your smart-tv and the trust/pinning issues there) you ain't block-ing these ads with some DNS tricks and network/transport layer blocking.
I am sure with
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Unless you are doing SSL/TLS interception / MTIM (good luck with your smart-tv and the trust/pinning issues there) you ain't block-ing these ads with some DNS tricks and network/transport layer blocking.
In fact they tend to use different servers for ads, for convenience reasons. That's why pihole is even useful.
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Well I have only really looked at Freevee after Amazon rug-pulled half the stuff that used to be 'included with prime' and put it there. The ads seem to come from a different hosts, some of the time, but the same networks and the names were not particularly distinguishable.
I did not spend much time looking at it - only long enough to determine it will be 'hard' and even if other people put in the effort and post the recipes attempts at blocking will be broken ever other week. Life in the country on metered
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I did not spend much time looking at it - only long enough to determine it will be 'hard' and even if other people put in the effort and post the recipes attempts at blocking will be broken ever other week.
That's literally how pihole works. Other people put in the effort and you automatically get updates. This is not a secret, their project page is publicly accessible.
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Visit the site? How quaint. Most people use streaming services through an app on their smart TV or via a streaming media device. There is no adblock, and you're going to get ads.
Very strange, this appears to be a post from before June 15, 2015, when pihole was released. How did it end up in this discussion?
You know pihole only blocks DNS, right? DNS level blocking doesn't work when the ads are coming from the same domain as the content you're trying to watch.
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No one likes ads, but they do like free stuff. I don't subscribe to Spotify because it's not worth $10/month or whatever it is now to me to not hear an advert every 20min.
Do you pay a $2/month Slashdot+ subscription that allows you to browse this site without ads (no this service doesn't exist)? Or rather you probably block the ads on here and expect to continue to use the site for free.
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The problem with YouTube Premium is that it isn't really ad free. You don't see YouTube ads, but the videos themselves often have lengthy sponsor sections and ads baked in.
Compared to the experience with SponsorBlock, YouTube Premium is crap. If you haven't tried SponsorBlock, it automatically skips over the sponsor sections in videos, and optionally other things like intro animations and recaps.
Since the official client doesn't support SponsorBlock, and since the clients that do support it also block YouTu
and everyone thought.... (Score:1)
It would crash and burn?
Re: and everyone thought.... (Score:1)
Then imagine the indignity of only having broadcast tv.... It's the equivalent a war crime or something. Just venting.
Par for the course (Score:3, Insightful)
Disney has a product that is well protected by the US congress. It can afford to bulldoze competitors for now.
A quarter of those are in India (Score:4, Interesting)
Where the price of a subscription is about $12 a year.
Amazingly they have more subscribers in India than in the usa
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The average Indian income is $3400US / year
$12/yr represents 0.35% of their yearly income.
The average American income is $31000US / year
$80/yr represents 0.26% of your yearly income.
The average person is better off having a Disney+ subscription in the USA than you are in India.
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umm - no the value of disney+ is what it is to you no matter where you live. If you are paying more for the same thing than someone else; that isn't better.
What your numbers show is the average, and are these averages or medians, because mean income is kinda of a silly measure... is that the average person is the US is generally better off than the average indian and respectively disney+ is more affordable in the USA even if it costs more.
Disney sucks (Score:2)
I subscribe for literally one show a season or year. It was Mandalorian, and now I guess it's Andor. Not even sure why I watch Andor considering we know what happens in the end. I've written to Disney to pay me my hourly rate for wasting my time watching those stupid Jedi shorts.
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Not even sure why I watch Andor considering we know what happens in the end
I'm enjoying the ride regardless, it's not as if we don't already know the good guys are going to win in pretty much anything Hollywood produces anyways.
I'm just hope we keep this movement away from Skywalkers. The Star Wars galaxy is a huge place and the Skywalkers have become a dead horse that first Lucas and now Disney have been beating for far too long.
Much like Hollywood in generally we need new stories and not rehashed old crap.
Didn't they learn anything from Netflix? (Score:4, Interesting)
I quit netflix when they hit the 20$ barrier here in Scandinavia for a 4K sub.
Went to Disney plus and Amazon prime for LESS than that combined and they both have 4K as standard. Still no ADs.
Netflix suffered even more when they started the AD supported streaming that costs 10$ here in Scandinavia for Standard Resolution, losing even more subscribers.
If Disney+ now goes to 12$, I'll still bite... but if they are nearing 20$ like Netflix, it's bye bye Disney+.
Amazon went the right way, they are still less than 10$ here, they started out at 6.99$ here, but a few months ago they reduced to 5.99$, that's the RIGHT direction to go, not the other way.
And the other sub services is gonna suffer horribly from it, and Amazon will probably swallow the entire market. I rarely even watch Disney+, but watch Prime all the time, they have WAY more series etc.
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The fact that they charge more for HD and 4k streams is interesting. Say I subscribe but then just pirate the shows off BitTorrent, so it costs them nothing. Do I get a discount? Seems like morally I'm entitled to pay less than the standard definition tier.
I think in reality the extra money is just so they can headline a low number, then when you get to the checkout you take the up-sell to HD because who wants to watch SD these days?
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I quit netflix when they hit the 20$ barrier here in Scandinavia for a 4K sub.
Went to Disney plus and Amazon prime for LESS than that combined and they both have 4K as standard. Still no ADs.
Netflix suffered even more when they started the AD supported streaming that costs 10$ here in Scandinavia for Standard Resolution, losing even more subscribers.
If Disney+ now goes to 12$, I'll still bite... but if they are nearing 20$ like Netflix, it's bye bye Disney+.
Amazon went the right way, they are still less than 10$ here, they started out at 6.99$ here, but a few months ago they reduced to 5.99$, that's the RIGHT direction to go, not the other way.
And the other sub services is gonna suffer horribly from it, and Amazon will probably swallow the entire market. I rarely even watch Disney+, but watch Prime all the time, they have WAY more series etc.
The difference is that Netflix and Disney+ are trying to be profitable on their own.
Amazon Prime is cross-subsidizing with their online shopping. Get cheap TV, oh now I have faster shipping! Since I have faster shipping I'll buy more stuff on Amazon!
I wonder who these subscribers are (Score:2)
Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ more than Netflix BUT (Score:2)
It's incredibly hard to make a good film (Score:2)
I have spent thousands of hours watching movies and shows, and though I don't consider myself an "auteur", I'm certainly experienced enough to be one if I wanted to. There are vast fields of bad movies out there, entire oceans of content that are just barely entertaining or interesting.
It's just incredibly hard to make a good film.
All the various streaming vendors are fighting over piles of really very low-value titles. You can see nearly everything of value in about a month, tops, on any of them.
Books fare