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Comment by malvim | Hacker News Reader

This is how cable worked, no? And how streaming has been working. And it MIGHT be getting things cheaper, maybe? I guess?

But watching specific stuff you want is hell. The cognitive load of searching a bunch of services, or finding a site that tells you where to watch, then it’s not in that same service in your country, you might have to pay extra, or sign up for another streaming service or… Holy cow, it’s a terrible experience.

I’m not saying I have a better idea, or that it couldn’t be worse. But it’s terrible.

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I agree with you that modern streaming service are a hassle, BUT - I'm old enough to remember Blockbuster, too. It used to be that if you wanted to watch a movie, you drove to the video store, found a copy, paid $2 to rent it for 24 hours, tried to remember to rewind it and got it back to the store before it was late. Streaming services are _definitely_ more convenient.

Right now, you can pretty much rent any movie you want through Amazon Prime with not late fee or rewind penalty, but you have to pay a couple of (extra!) dollars to do it. This is, undebatably, a massive improvement over the way it used to be in every way, but it still bothers me even though I can't put my finger on exactly why.

An analyst friend of mine wrote that Napster was more about convenience than price (free). I disagreed with him at the time but, with the rise of various streaming services, I've come to view myself as at least partially wrong.

Maybe not the broke 20 year old per another comment. (Who doesn't have a lot of money anyway.) But a lot of people are happy and able to pay for a subscription that doesn't involve screwing around with a lot of dodgy stuff.

I thought this conclusion about Napster was and is widely considered as true and most important lesson of that time. Success of YouTube, Spotify, Netflix and Steam and the near-demise of piracy are usually attributed to that.

I'm talking from at least a decade ago. There was a pretty wide assumption (including from myself) that the main attraction of Napster was piracy; it certainly was mine at the time as I replaced a bunch of old vinyl. The expansion of music streaming services are certainly a pretty good indication that convenience of getting mainstream content at prices that people historically paid for vinyl/CDs works pretty well.

Gabe Newell (Valve/Steam) seems to agree with your analyst friend's take.

> The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.

https://www.gamesradar.com/gabe-newell-piracy-issue-service-...

Even Amazon Prime’s catalogue is only a third the size of what Netflix had 15 years ago.

Watching specific stuff you want to see is 1000x easier today than it was in the 1990s, when cable ran this whole industry, and anything you wanted came bundled with 100 things you didn't want.

It still works this way.

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