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Amazon Prime Will Soon Be More Popular Than Cable TV (recode.net)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Recode: Someday soon, more U.S. households will be subscribers of Amazon Prime than cable or satellite TV, according to recent estimates of Amazon's popular shipping and entertainment service. According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million U.S. households now have an Amazon Prime membership*, up from around 66 million at the end of last year. That compares to a projected 90 million U.S. households that will pay for cable or satellite TV this year, according to S&P Global. According to these estimates, more U.S. households may have an Amazon Prime subscription than a pay TV subscription as soon as next year. The implication here is not that Amazon's Prime Video service is more popular than TV; the main reason most people subscribe to Amazon Prime is still the fast delivery of products.
Amazon Prime has a long way to go if they want to keep with cable TV. They have a horrible selection of shows and generally it's like 1 or 2 seasons, with you needing to rent/buy the rest. Netflix & Hulu have way more decent content to watch.
If Amazon Prime wants to be better then cable TV, then they need to start securing better content.
Be seeing you...
I canceled my subscription when they started adding all of the other features. If they want my business again, they can offer separate services at lower individual prices.
So, you cancelled your Amazon Prime subscription at $99 per year because it was getting better with more added services?
Isn't that like saying that you don't want the car with the leather seats, blind-spot warning, and backup camera for the same price as the basic model simply because there are too many features? I guess I'm missing something...
Subscribers does not mean popular. It comes with flat rate shipping. This is not comparable to just cable, Netflix, Hulu, etc. The selection is awful sparing a few shows and movies, I never look to Amazon for my streaming entertainment.
Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
Amazon gives up on pushing Fire TV devices and makes a deal with Apple for Apple TV to be the main standalone Prime Video access device. This happens in September or October this year when Apple announces the new 4K Apple TV.
Although I've been a Prime member for many years, I've watched a handful of videos on Prime over the years - so comparing them to cable subscribers is I feel really stretching things. I feel like there is no way they have the viewership that Netflix does...
The Prime video app is really not good. It also doesn't help they have no AppleTV app (but they are about to change that). I'm sure slowly over time viewership will ramp up, but they are not there yet...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"They don't like paying over $100/month for a pretty basic package loaded with useless channels? Fuck 'em. Watch them cry when they invite friends over to their house."
"They didn't pay their bill on time? Fuck 'em. Cut off their service immediately, even if the big game was on."
"They're having service problems? We'll send someone over at OUR convenience. They better be home all day because our guys have lots of stops to make and they can't make appointments."
"They want to cancel their service? Don't let them. Turn them over to sales reps armed with scripts that will given them some short-term discount so they'll stay, and don't take no for an answer."
This conflates accessibility with actual use under the term "popularity". I have yet to hear anyone say, "hey, did you watch that show on Amazon Prime?" but I've heard plenty of people talking about stuff on cable tv. Similarly, I have yet to hear anyone talk about how they eat their own shit for dinner despite 100% of people having access to their own shit. -_-
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Seriously? Dude, syphilis is more popular than Cable TV.
First, they do offer separate services generally. You can buy a Twitch subscription separately, or you can pay for shipping your goods every time you make an order, or you can digitally rent (or buy) each show you watch individually. Each of those individual actions is cheaper than a Prime subscription. Is there some service you want that you can't get without Prime? Or do you just want an intermediate price for intermediate bundles of services?
Second, your argument is based on the following irrational positions:
1. That the reason new services were added is that the existing services got cheaper to offer.
2. That offering the same service for the same price at a higher profit margin devalues the service that you had previously believed was worth it to you.
The second only makes sense if you have an alternative that did lower their price.
For the first, when Amazon adds another service, that would have the following obvious effects:
1. People who don't care about the new thing don't change their subscription status either way because it changes nothing, and the costs to Amazon are unchanged.
2. People who do care and are already subscribers, now get a new service, and increased happiness. Amazon's costs increase there.
3. People who would not be subscribers because they don't get the value per dollar they expect, now become subscribers (or decide not to unsubscribe after all). This will increase Amazon's revenue and may increase Amazon's profit, depending on how much service they consume vs. their alternative methods to access the service.
4. Even at breakeven, it encourages people who could just as easily choose Amazon or Wal-Mart, or Amazon vs. Youtube Red, or whatever, to choose Amazon due to the halo effect.
There are non-obvious knock-on effects, like the above AC's irrational cancellation, but these are the main ones. It's entirely possible that the cost to offer the services actually increased and that is driving the increase in services to increase volume to help counteract those effects (not saying that happened, just that it's not logically impossible).
I'd be very surprised if Amazon profited off of literally every Prime subscription vs. users just getting the same stuff a la carte. They have to offer Prime to those people as an opportunity cost to get Prime to others.
You get it with Amazon Prime now but in the future it will become tiered
Twinstiq, game news
Costs went up. Price stayed the same.
The difference between prices and costs is pretty basic microeconomics.
> I'd be very surprised if Amazon profited off of literally every
> Prime subscription vs. users just getting the same stuff a la carte. They have to offer Prime to those people as an opportunity cost to get Prime to others.
They can, and perhaps do, "lose" money in that most customers, prime gets them less than what ala carte shipping would get them for the same items. Prime isn't, and shouldn't be, valued that way by Amazon.
The point, I think, is that ala carte customers will buy a few items from Amazon, a few from Walmart, some from eBay, few from Tiger Direct, some from Crutchfield ... Ala carte customers can easily drift away from using Amazon at all. Once people pay $99 for Prime, they are likely to go to Amazon first for almost all online purchases. That, I think, is the point of Amazon Prime. The main value for Amazon isn't getting the $99, it's havimg a customer committed to Amazon.
You are being intentionally stupid. I only want 2 day shipping. I don't want TV shows about transsexuals or all the other garbage that's included now. I buy stuff from amazon once or twice a week, so saying I can get the same two day shipping for $79 by buying ala carte 2-day shipping is factually wrong.
I think you are missing the point. It is impossible for Amazon to 2-day ship stuff to you once or twice a week all year long for $79 (or even $99). They still have to pay UPS, Fedex, etc... In order for your Prime to exist at the sub $100 range, Amazon either has to raise the price of the products it is shipping or find infrequent users to subsidize the frequent users. The "other garbage" that you complain about is stuff that Amazon can provide very cheap in order to hook more infrequent shoppers. The infrequent shoppers are really what drives Prime. They pay the $99 and once they pay it, they tend to do all their purchases on Amazon so not only do they get the added purchases, in many cases, the infrequent shopper never buys enough stuff to fully make up for the $99 worth of shipping that was paid up front.
Yup. Pretty soon your wives are going to be sleeping with the Amazon drone. Just like the milk man did to our wives back then. Only way you can do away with him is to kill Amazon drone. But then again, you wouldn't do that. Yup. Better just let Amazon drone do whatever he wants. Maybe he'll get bored of sleeping with your wives. Yup.
I get that most only have Prime for the shipping, but Prime Video isn't as horrible as all that. There's plenty of overlap with Netflix (which I have sub to as well) but I use it and like it. It's interface *used* to be somewhat lacking, to put it charitably, but it's improved immensely over the time I've been subscriber.
it wasn't always $99/year
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The person you're replying to is anonymous, so he/she may never notice your response.
The Amazon Prime fee used to be $79 per year. They added features, but they also increased that fee to $99. Also, if you were a non-prime member, you could usually ship things for free if you went over $25, now I believe that limit is $50. Not to mention the fact that the shipping delay for non-prime free shipping always seemed to be artificially elongated in order to make Prime membership especially seem more attractive in comparison.
Compared to that, a Costco membership is $60 and Costco.com seems to have good prices for the selection it has. And Walmart.com doesn't have a membership at all, but its prices still seem to beat Amazon's. Please do not take my word for it, your mileage may vary, and there are extensions on your browser you can install that will pull up prices from other websites when you're browsing the Amazon website. One advantage with Walmart.com for some is that the shipping is free if you have it shipped to one of their stores and then pick it up from there.
Not bad from what I've seen. Most same day shipments I've done in the Seattle area took almost two weeks.
This is Seattle, so to be fair their Internet is probably dialup and it took 2 weeks for them to catch up with the backlog of orders they get via their online system.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Yeah, 'cause a la carte is working so well in the CATV world. I've got 357 channels of which I only care about 5 or 6. I see your point, but for $99 a year, I get my money's worth out of the shipping and the music and TV is just a plus. Their music service *is* annoying as they have pushed some songs into my play list that I didn't want and won't let me delete and they keep moving songs I do like to their music unlimited service which I won't pay for.
UPS does the same artifical delay tactic. I once saw a label on a UPS package that said "Don't deliver SDS first day".
Love it. I HATE driving somewhere to get something that I don't "have to have" right now. Prime, it's here in a couple days. Plus, I think I've watched about every documentary on WW2, WW1, Civil war, etc on Prime video they have this past winter, or when the weather is bad.
he cancelled because the price went up.. BECAUSE of all the extra bullshit (that they aren't interested in).
amazon rolls it all together to build a user base for that crap. but the real joke will be when they do start charging extra for this and that and everything else ON TOP of the base prime (which of course will stay priced higher, because fuck the customer).
The Prime subscription price went up 3 years ago from a whopping $79 a year to a whopping $99 a year, a $20 increase, the cost of one Blu-Ray. Watch one movie, read three books, or order one heavy item (i.e. an uninterruptible power supply, etc.) on Amazon Prime and you've made your money back. If he had Amazon Prime, he was ordering stuff through Amazon and getting free shipping. Some of that stuff was likely heavy and would have cost more than $20 for shipping...
You are right that It's quite possible that Amazon will change their service model as they gain customers. If they do, then people who don't like the model will cancel their service. That being said, you're basically saying that you hate Amazon Prime because of what they MIGHT do in the future. That's just as irrational as not eating an apple in front of you when you are staving simply because you believe that it might have a worm in it...
It's not impossible, but it does depend on the details involved. Amazon's shipping money doesn't just come from Prime, it also charges the businesses that are offering their products as Prime Eligible.
Indeed, on some items you can pretty blatantly see the hidden pricing... just look at any Prime Eligible item that is also available as an add-on item.
I don't know if this is enough to make up for every possible pattern of shipment, but I think there are definitely some patterns of weekly shipments that Amazon can still profit off of. It really depends what you're ordering.
When prime first started, they shipped things like automotive flywheels, 2 day, for free. For significantly less than local parts stores were asking.
That had to be brutal, they did fix that.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'