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MoviePass Reveals Annual Subscription For $6.95 a Month (slashfilm.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: MoviePass seemed like the deal of the century: $10 a month to see one movie a day at the theaters? No contest. But in the three months since the start-up company seeking to disrupt the theater market with a Netflix-like service launched its new business model, MoviePass has been plagued by technical hiccups, backed-up deliveries, and potential lawsuits. As the company expanded its operations, it finally began to settle into its new subscription base of more than 600,000 users. And now MoviePass is already offering up a new deal: an up-front annual subscription of $89.95, which amounts to about $6.95 a month. But how much of a discount is it really? The MoviePass annual subscription is a limited-time promotion that will last 12 months, according to the website. Users pay $89.95 up front, plus a $6.55 processing fee. "Once your year is up, your plan will convert back into your $9.95 a month. Offer valid until it's not. Limit two per household," the MoviePass website says.
This is what we affectionately call Paul Ryan math.
on individual basis, expenses incurred by this company on behalf of a regular movie going subscriber, overwhelm its possible income.
business is supposedly built on assumption that most of its subscribers will not see even one movie a month.
but that seems foolish since subscribers who go to the trouble of paying upfront payment are likely to be people who will make use of their subscription.
so this is now basically using new subscriber cash for future year to pay for current month. so will need ever more new subscribers to service older ones. in other words, a pyramid schemes.
I had Movie Pass last year. First it was $29.95. Then, when I actually started watching a movie a day, they raised my rate to $39.95. They reduced the number of movies to be watched by telling me I could only see each movie once. Then they required me to take a picture of my ticket stub. The final straw was when they created a basic "lottery" of movies I could watch by issuing only a small number of tickets per film (so it became a first-come-first-served ticket.)
I've come back to Movie Pass because of the $9.95 price and it looks like they've relaxed nearly all the constraints. But I'm troubled by the small print...
2.4 MoviePass reserves the right to offer members a new price option if they exceed watching a certain amount of movies per month.
SO, while they advertise a movie a day, they will probably charge you more if you actually attempt it.
I almost wonder if this is a way to rake in some additional revenue before the company goes belly up for any variety of reasons such as result of some ongoing litigation. If they're only going to be around for another 2 months, $89.95 seems like a hell of a lot better to them than the usual $20. Just enough time for a big round of bonuses for hitting various growth targets before the corpse of the company is picked over by various jackal^H^H^H^H^H^Hlawyers.