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huhtenberg
dazc
They obviously have the advantage of people having Prime for deliveries and the inertia required to change shopping habits.
Like you, I think this is a step too far and I will gladly suffer the inconvenience of buying stuff from other retailers in the future.
blitzar
> I will gladly suffer the inconvenience of buying stuff from other retailers in the future
Tried it and failed. Higher prices, costly 5 day "express" shipping and questionable / non-existent return policies - the time and effort required to wade through is not worth it.
I want to not use Amazon too - but other retailers make it really really hard.
nytesky
What are you buying that you experience this? Household goods from target (bonus probably not fake), electronics Best Buy and B&H, Costco for a lot of misc, and clothing from old navy and h&m etc. all have easy returns and often better prices than I see at Amazon (even for books oddly — Target must track Amazon prices to the penny).
beardyw
Not my experience at all.
soco
My Prime Video doesn't give me deliveries. Also no Kindle, just that: video. Might be a country thing, or a different subscription you have in mind?
rerx
Absolutely a country thing!
In countries where the Amazon Prime membership (originally this was for fast free shipping only) is available, Prime Video is included with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime#Availability
Outside of those countries you can typically get Prime Video as a cheaper, separate subscription: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Prime_Video#Availabilit...
In Germany, for instance, I don't think you can get Prime Video without the full Amazon Prime subscription. In countries where the shipping benefit is more costly (like the US) they may offer different membership tiers.
rerx
While this is true, Netflix hiked prices massively over the years. Their 4K/HDR offering is 17.99 EUR per month here. Amazon Prime including Prime Video is still 8.99 EUR/month, cheaper if paid yearly, without any surcharge for 4K/HDR. So that's more than twice the price for a comparable streaming service.
dazc
I cancelled Netflix and will resubscribe for a month over Christmas; they did me a favour with that one.
rerx
I just recalled that Amazon increased the price slightly last year when they launched Rings of Power.
Typically I subscribe to these services for just a few months at a time, depending on what's interesting. Harder to do with accounts that are shared by a larger household, I guess.
beardyw
As an F1 fan I subscribe each year for Drive to Survive just for a month (and I hate the fake commentaries, but has some interesting content).
DueDilligence
[dead]
nickcw
...and the no-ads tier is only available in the US.
Looks like I'll be cancelling prime video as no ads is really important to me.
AnssiH
> ...and the no-ads tier is only available in the US.
That's not what the announcement (https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/entertainment/prime-video-u...) says:
> We will also offer a new ad-free option for an additional $2.99 per month* for U.S. Prime members and will share pricing for other countries at a later date.
MagicMoonlight
The whole point of me paying is to make it easier for me. If you’re going to fuck me over even more for paying then I’ll just go hack to pirating 4k rips of the content for free.
zeta0134
When I was paying for Netflix, I still found it easier to download the shows I was interested in watching as this permitted me to remember my place, dodge their shitty player UI, and not deal with crappy internet problems causing the stream to change to potato quality at random moments.
Most of these problems aren't a thing with physical media. Honestly I want to pay for content to support the creators, but that's what I want to pay for. I'm not paying to use your shitty player app and I'm not paying for draconian DRM that lets you take the content away from me later, or restrict the devices I can play the content on, or tell me I can't watch my movie on a flight with no wifi, etc. The payment is on my honor, because the content is frankly stupidly simple to access for absolutely free if I really want to, and that's not going to change. Data isn't going to get *harder* to copy over time. Just let me pay the artists as directly as possible, because that's where I want the money to go, to support their work. Can we make that a thing?
bombcar
It’s not even worth pirating, the library near me is jammed full of Blu-rays and DVDs.
prepend
The main reason I dropped prime is that the shipping stopped working. Two days slipped most of the time.
But what put me over the edge was their music stopped being included, it was another fee to remove adds and unlock everything.
And video had these annoying preroll ads. Frequently for things I already watched.
Now there will be ads throughout and it’s a monthly fee to get what was free.
I do like some prime shows -maisel and peripheral - but those get conveniently packaged up and downloaded through trackers.
The best UI experience for streaming is just torrent files autodownloading and being available the day after. No ads, no confusing interfaces. Id pay for this, but I can’t.
fxtentacle
The big issue in my opinion is that movie execs have this misguided belief that if you stop people from pirating your content, every prevented download will turn into a sale at full price.
But I expect that people will simply stop watching mediocre movie and low-effort series. Or wait for rebates, like those people who avoid cinema and then rent the bluray later. As a result of this misunderstanding, they try technical solutions and the effect is that probably every 2nd person who reads this has Sonar setup to fuel their "web-dl subscription" to Prime. The correct solution would be to lower prices (and that somewhat includes less ads) to make it more attractive to pay for that content. And they will need that strategy anyway to survive a direct competition with Disney = the Marvel cinematic universe.
I myself cancelled Netflix when I noticed that none of the people I talk to regularly care enough about their Netflix shows to remember the story... And from that I concluded that it must be mostly filler content.
alistairSH
That applies to me. I rotate some of my streaming subscriptions are shows/movies release. Peacock, HBO, Netflix all are monthly and I turn them off periodically.
dazc
Same thing with the music industry fighting torrents for years until finally accepting that people will gladly pay a fair price.
inversetelecine
Except, they still fight torrents.
lancesells
I haven't used Amazon for years but it's amazing they were able to include all of the things you mentioned for the price. Fast Shipping, video, music.
But the only way I can look at it is the consumer benefits while the rest are either subsidized or screwed over. Fulfillment workers are in horrible conditions, musicians make nothing on their music, and filmmakers lose their royalities and pay and increasingly become a sort of gig worker.
srustagi
stremio + torrentio + real debrid 34 usd/yr for cached torrents streamed over https
Lev1a
As James Stephanie Sterling likes to say: "Corporations don't want some [of your] money, they want ALL [of your] money."
Also, ads are (except for very, very rare exceptions) useless wastes of time AND if I'm already paying for the service which doesn't get any better but just more "expensive" through garbage like this, the term "enshittification" most certainly does apply.
Edit: Also, like Netflix, Amazon also artificially limit streaming quality to <= 720p just because I don't use Microsoft's spyware system. Fuck 'em.
LeoNatan25
I will stick with my BitTorrent subscription. No retarded geo-restrictions, no ads for paying customers and the pricing model is a real winner.
specproc
And their library is second to none.
jackhack
History repeats itself. I'm old enough to remember when "Cable TV" meant "no advertisements." And then it was just a few between programs. Then during the program, which eventually made it indistinguishable from "over the air" (antenna/aerial) broadcasting. Now Netflix, and Amazon repeat the lesson for another generation of consumer.
vel0city
> I'm old enough to remember when "Cable TV" meant "no advertisements."
You must be infinitely old then, because "Cable TV" at its inception had ads. Cable TV was originally just bundling all the local stations, and it was like that for thirty years. So the first thirty years of cable had ads. Even most of the first few cable-only TV stations had ads. The second cable-only TV station, WTBS, had ads. Nickelodeon, ESPN, CNN, USA, all had ads from their start and were some of the very first cable-only TV stations.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradadgate/2020/11/02/the-rise-...
MAGZine
I'm lightly amused by the choice to include the word "limited" in the headline.
Sorry, "limited" ads are still ads, no matter how you try and downplay it!
soco
For Christmas, we present you the new subscription with unlimited ads!
ryanklee
Wtf am I even paying these parasites for.
Navigating this world is such a pain in the ass.
alex_toms
Interesting how every subscription business is slowly turning to the traditional ad-supported model. People might refuse it, but ad-supported is one of the most efficient business models on both the consumer side and business side. Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality. Plus, every company needs marketing, and even consumers need it. It allows us to notice things we might need in our lives. Not sure why people thought that the subscription model was going to take over. Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily
koolba
> Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality.
Being interrupted and attempted to be brainwashed every X minutes is not “the same quality”.
soco
Also, paying for them is not free.
gabereiser
Interesting in that once consumers get a taste of an ad-free platform, forever will they wish to return. Ads may be the only way media content as a business makes any money but this really is more telling of where Prime is today. They are losing money. I refuse to watch ads. I block them on all my devices. I don’t watch networks and content that has them. I’ve had a taste of an ad free world and I will do everything in my power to return. If I have a need for something, I’ll research. I would rather go back to pirating content than $20/mo for “limited ads”. It’s fucking Cable all over again.
snickerbockers
>Allows more customers to access a service, for free, with the same quality.
But prime's not free. Also the video quality is terrible.
>Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily
Then that's their fault for having an untenable business model, not the user's fault for expecting the free service to remain free.
Anyways, in the AI age user generated content has an intrinsic value as training material so submitting posts to social media sites is basically a transaction.
adverbly
> and even consumers need it. It allows us to notice things we might need in our lives
Just so I'm clear, are you actually trying to say that ads are good for viewers? Do you personally like ads? Do you use an ad blocker? Are you happy when you see an unskippable 15 second tax on your time?
thfuran
>Imagine having to pay for every single service/website we use daily
I wish. Ads are a cancer.
tomjen3
No we don't need ads for products, since products worth buying are worth people remarking about them, so we hear of the through a filter.
Ads don't make services cheaper - you end up paying for the products, the creation of the ad and the overhead, meaning you pay more in the end.
Retric
Except Amazon Prime continues to be a paid service. I quickly stopped watching prime because they already had excessive advertising, I can only imagine how much worse the service is becoming.
e61133e3
Hope you forgot the sarcasme sign.
Seriously doubt that every company needs "marketing". And refuse to believe that consumers need it.
ajcoll5
Enshittification strikes again!
fxtentacle
I just love how versatile that word is :)
And yes, this one is a great example of how you can turn your paying customers into being the product that you sell (in addition to charging them) to satisfy your greed.
nine_zeros
The entire tech industry is going through some massive enshittification. This ads nonsense is everywhere now. Why the f should anyone pay for a subscription if they are going to be shown some ads?
fooster
People do it all the time. Cable tv.
jackthetab
Old man yelling at clouds here. These same arguments were brought up with cable TV back in the day; one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told, was there wouldn't be any ads since we were paying for it.
"There's nothing new under the sun"...
vel0city
> one of the benefits of cable TV, we were told
Who told you that? Cable TV had ads on practically every channel for the first 30 years of its history, since it was just collecting and transmitting all the local broadcast stations. And even when cable-only stations came out, they often had ads. The second cable-only TV station, TBS, had ads from day one!
HBO was an outlier because it didn't have ads. It wasn't the norm.
fooster
Yeah exactly. If I can avoid it I wont watch ads including paying more.
nine_zeros
> People do it all the time. Cable tv.
Which means it is time for the alternative to rise again - piracy.
brianmcc
After many years as a subscriber this really brings the value of Amazon Prime into question for me. I no longer order enough stuff from them to make it worthwhile. I do use Prime Reading but the quality is mostly poor, "landfill crime" genre.
Such a compromised video service would quite likely push me out - I just won't watch ads on a service I pay for.
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There's a crucial difference between what Netflix did and this.
Netflix added a new lower-priced ad-supported option, leaving existing subscribers as they were.
Amazon however is pushing ads onto existing subscribers and adding a new ad-free option to which one has to upgrade.
This burns a lot of goodwill. It just ain't nice. I will be cancelling the subscription once this hits my country as a matter of principle.