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MoviePass' New Business Plan Is To Charge You Whatever It Wants (qz.com)
MoviePass is rolling out peak pricing, its own version of surge pricing that will charge customers more to see popular movies during what the company considers "high demand" times. Quartz reports: MoviePass is a subscription movie ticket service that typically costs $9.95 a month to see up to one movie in U.S. theaters per day. The company has been hemorrhaging cash to subsidize these monthly subscriptions, which can cost less than a single movie ticket in some U.S. cities. The company is looking to raise another $1.2 billion by selling stock and debt. But if MoviePass wants to survive, it also needs to start losing less money on its subscribers, and fast.
That's where peak pricing comes in. "Peak Pricing goes into effect when there's high demand for a movie or showtime," MoviePass wrote in its email. "You may be asked to pay a small additional fee depending on the level of demand." Movies currently experiencing peak pricing will be marked with a red circle containing a white lightening bolt; movies growing in demand that "could enter Peak Pricing soon" will get a gray version of the icon. MoviePass doesn't say how much the "small additional fee" will be, but we can expect it to be $2 or more. In the example MoviePass emailed to users today, the extra fee is $3.43. "Note: the actual Peak Pricing surcharge will vary based on showtime and movie title," the email adds.
"We lose money on every sale, but make it up in volume"
MoviePass changes it's business model faster than new the Javascript community mints new frameworks. It's exhausting. Last Tuesday it was $9.95 a month and you can see three movies every full moon plus you get SoundCloud for free on weekends and next week it'll be $15 a month and twice a week someone will break into your home, tie you to your couch, and force you to watch John Travolta's latest space opera, and they will also bill you for a potion of the food in your fridge.
I get whiplash trying to keep up with their constant quest to find a profitable business model, and somehow it still hasn't occurred to them that "bring in more money than you spend" is the only viable solution.
Thomas Galvin
Here's what they're not getting:
The " theater experience " is currently so poor, you could give me the tickets for FREE and I still won't go to the theater to see the movie.
I will wait for it to come out on Pay Per View, Blu-Ray or $random_streaming_service so I don't have to:
1) Wonder if my vehicle is getting broken into out in the theater parking lot while I see the show
2) Show up an hour early if I want any chance of a decent seat
3) Deal with folks on phones, folks who want to talk the whole time or heathen children running wild
4) The fact that management refuses to do anything about #3 even when it's brought to their attention
5) Put up with a poorly maintained sound system that's turned up a few dB past the threshold of pain
6) Worry about sticking to the floor where the soda was spilled a few days ago
Not artificial scarcity at all. Seating availability at a given theater for a given movie session is limited.
That's not what's scarce. It's VC funding that's scarce. The theater being too full to sell tickets is good news for MoviePass because they don't have to sell any more tickets.
You'd have to get inline behind the investors who have seen the share price drop from a high of $38 to a low of 18 cents. Today's close was $0.1906. Movie pass is losing somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million a month and are churning out billions of new shares to try to cover it.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
My new plan is not to use MoviePass. It's basically the same as the old plan, where I also didn't use MoviePass.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
For me, It has nothing to do with "theater experience". Going to a movie theater and watching a movie in a dark crowded room is going out and doing something. Watching a movie on your TV is not that. People will always want to "go out and do something".
Personally, I just don't want to get stuck in a place for 2 to 3 hours.
When I watch movies at home I pause it all the time. And may take a week or so to even watch the entire thing, and may fall asleep not remembering if I watched the entire movie or not. And may dream up the end of the movie or have a dream of me watching the end of the movie. I don't even care if it's a redbox DVD that I had out so long I already bought it. I just want to watch it (or not) stress free.
Meanwhile, movies are getting longer and "free time" is getting shorter...
But, but, but... Free Markets! The Invisible Hand! Muh profits!!
The only thing the invisible hand ever did for the consumer was to fist him. And it didn't even give a reach-around.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.