So for those who don’t know, this happened with cable back in the day. No ads was part of the pitch, then they were slowly introduced, the appeal of the product fell, and, at least in my circles, fewer held on to the product over time.
the first cable stations were OTA (network) stations from major cities being served to rural areas. those had ads.
the first cable-specific channel was TBS which was just a converted Atlanta NBC channel that also had ads.
as basic cable grew, new channels launched with ads.
Premium channels like HBO launched in the 70s without ads but afaik those channels are still ad-free except self-promotion between shows.
Well, not everyone lives in the US or has the same timeline or window of experience. I should have made the relativism of my statement more clear, though it was touched on briefly.
Unless for some countries the cable experience didn’t have ads from square one, then people in those countries have a different reality.
But globally, yes, you’re point is well made and I didn’t know about it (thanks!), and is arguably much more relevant if that timeline and jurisdiction/territory match that of the corporations which currently run the streaming world, which is very much the case by my count.
Those other countries were then emulating a service that already had ads. Reality is reality. You don’t get to be intentionally ignorant and claim “my reality” about things that are objectively true.
Not if you want to have honest discourse, at least.
Seems like you’re more interested in your truth than the truth.
There is no change to the current price of your Prime membership. We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* that you can sign up for here.
Then there is a price change you damn dimwit, you just gave the shitty tier the same pricing as the old normal tier, and amped up the normal tier by $3.00. I absolutely hate the wording for this, you just know it was to be able to not release the ad membership at a lower price.
Honestly. I’m surprised they haven’t done this sooner. Prince video is included with a normal prime subscription. So, with some of the originals they’ve produced and paying for the rights to many movies/shows, they are probably bleeding money with this service…
streaming has absolutely no future. if they keep pulling shit like this it’s going to decline even faster. i suppose it’s more about sucking off advertisers than it is pleasing customers, too…if you’re going to fail anyway why can’t you at least make a positive difference in the world?
Streaming isn’t going anywhere, and if anything will likely continue to grow for as cable dies off. It’s just going to consolidate and get shittier (ads) as basically things move back to a model more cable-like. Piracy will probably ramp back to like levels for music in the early 2000’s, but it will remain a niche. Amazon specifically will see blowback for this, but it’s unlikely to move many off of Prime since it’s sort of a tertiary benefit to having a Prime membership, and even if it’s all you got for your Prime membership, it’s still one of the cheapest streaming services.
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